Over the Hedges

Do you know how long I spent looking at hedges this week? Too long. Longer than any human can do so while staying sane. The worst of it begin after that of it there didn't seem to be that much of a compromise to my problem which was 'how the hell do you make a game hedge look good?'.

If it wasn't clear I've been making a modular hedge kit this week, so we can piece the gardens together however we want or change it around if need be.

I find modular kits are usually fun to make, hedges less so. I looked at a lot of games to get a look at their approach and they range from boxes with textures slapped on them to strange meshes within meshes. In the end it was decided chamfered edges and the texture would be enough and if it looks a did flat we can pretend the palace gardener is pedantic about keeping the shrubbery trimmed.  

That was only half the fun as Mark and I sent a good couple of hours trying to get the texture sorted. Tiling a leaf texture can be bad enough but we also had to dedicate a big chunk of time trying to chase down and stamp out a bit of shading information that made it look like there were big claw marks running across the surfaces. It's surprising how well an error can manage to hide, especially surprising because it was only on a 512.

Thankfully that fight came to an end and we were able to get some hedges into the whitebox to start getting a feel for the palace gardens. I noticed they are still very obviously tiling so I suppose technically this round goes to the hedge texture but at least in Unreal 4 we can set up the material to apply variations and make it less noticeable. 

Speaking of Unreal 4 it updated to 4.7 this week and with it brought improved foliage shaders and for the other members of my team it was like their prayers had been answered since I know they've been having a lot of trouble convincing the trees and grass to shade correctly.

So all in all the vegetation has been on and off this week. 

I also got around to reconcepting the palace after our tutor deemed it to not be 'Oxford enough'. So this time around I looked at Blenheim palace in Oxfordshire and used pictures to create a Photoshop Frankenstein's monster to work off. I still really liked Anya's original design so I tried to keep any details I could with it.

Before and After

 So need to get around to remodeling that at some point too. That's pretty much been my life this week, hedges aren't the most exciting things in the world but the technical side of the modularity helps. Plus should these guys ever decide to work on a sequel I think I have a shot at the job.

But yeah in all seriousness hedges suck.