Container City part two

When first starting to construct assets for our container city we had a few hiccups with the modularity when trying to set a standard for the scale we would use. We decided on a final scale that would export with the correct proportions in engine, this way we wouldn't have to mess around scaling assets in Engine and disrupting the modularity.

I modeled the primary container that would be used as the main component for building the level. When building the level, the container was broken up into segments; front, top, back and sides. This meant we could save a lot of tri's on areas where we wouldn't see the full container, which helped our fps immensely. I also modeled numerous assets for populating the level such as an oil drum, pallets, gas tank and modular shop shutters to be used in place of the sides of some containers. Since the container would be the primary modular asset featured throughout the level, this was modeled first and used as a scale reference when modeling all the other assets.

When modelling the container, I thought the corrugated edges on the side panels were far too sharp. Chamfering the corners meant using far too many tri's, so I decided to have the corrugated side panels all on the same smoothing group and bake a very high poly chamfered version of the side panels into the low poly. This made the corrugated sides looked more like the sides of a real shipping container with much softer light hitting the edges. Rather than have another albedo texture for a different coloured container, I created instances of the original material in Engine to create colour variations. Since this project, I have learned a lot more about the high poly baking workflow in Max, and would probably have taken some different approaches when creating my assets.

Below are some final shots of our level: