Week 5 Project Self Assessment

What was the end goal for the project at week 1?
To create and render an environment similar to the concept art that was posted earlier on the blog

What is your goal for the final project as it stands right now?
To create a much smaller environment piece still going off of the concept art but allowing myself to focus on much more detail within the constrained area to make it look nicer and then place it within a real time engine or renderer (such as UDK or Marmoset)

What has been your biggest obstacle in your project thus far?
Figuring out how I wanted to do everything; such as allowing myself to create an entire environment like how I had originally painted in the concept and forego some high end details that would be missed with the scale of the environment and the camera shots I had planned to do, or to focus on higher end details within a much smaller environment so that even with it being smaller the detail would allow it to otherwise succeed.

Are you ahead, behind, or right on pace for finishing your project at this moment?
I feel that I'm currently right on the edge of behind and right on pace, the reason being that I changed from a full environment to the smaller section within the environment and having the idea of taking most or all of my pieces into zbrush allowing me to give the necessary detail.

What are your biggest technical obstacles in the coming weeks?
Trying to figure out how I want to do the stained glass. If I decide to do it in a regular animation environment my concern greatly decreases because I have had decent experience creating glass in the past with materials within maya. My current decision, however, is to have everything shown in a real time environment and I have no experience creating or using glass within a game engine, especially with my want for it to look as nice as possible since it will be one of the focal points of the entire piece.

Write a full list of everything that you have left to do.
Finish the pedestal and retopologize a low poly version for use within the game environment and use the poly paint or create UVs to create a diffuse, spec, and normal map within either ZBrush, 3DS Max, or xNormal.
Learn how to create or use glass in the way I want for the real time environment to create a stained glass effect in real time.
Create, sculpt and then retopologize and create maps for the walls, ground, and ceiling of the environment.
Turn the textured plane into a cloth object and find out how to implement it within the real time engine.

Write a week by week breakdown of how you will accomplish these tasks.
Week 5: Finish pedestal and begin on walls/floor
Week 6: Get farther on/finish some of the walls and floor
Week 7: Have all pieces sculpted and retopologized, begin texture and map creation
Week 8: Have textures done and begin placing in the environment
Week 9: Have everything placed and done, final touches and tweaking where necessary
Week 10: Turn it in!