P.I.N. Point - Sprint 4

P.I.N. Point - Sprint 4

My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on the game P.I.N. Point. P.I.N. Point is a fast-paced assassin shooter game where you are tasked with taking out a target using your sniper and gadgets, and the faster you take him out, the higher the profit. We just finished up our fourth sprint, which went a lot better than the first three. We were much better prepared and knew exactly what needed to be put in the game, as well as the priorities for each card.

One example of the 15 NPC textures

Hat texture

There were some small hiccups during this process, but far fewer than the previous sprints for this project. One of the major ones was that our team was not sure how to go about texturing the NPC characters. We needed to have between 12 and 24 different variations on the NPC textures, but adding this many texture maps for color, normals, and metal/roughness would very quickly bloat the size of the game, which our group is trying to avoid. As the one doing the textures, I was tasked with figuring out how to remedy this. I ended up going to one of my professors, who specializes in 3D art, Connor Zelinsky, who was able to tell me the easiest and best way to go about this. When texturing all 15 of the texture maps that I completed, each color set uses the exact same normal and roughness map, so rather than having 15 color maps, 15 roughness maps, and 15 normal maps, there are 15 color maps, but only 1 roughness and normal map, which vastly lowered the amount of storage used on these textures. I’m definitely glad that I learned this, as I can use this same process for future projects that require many textures of a similar style.

Sniper texture

The only other problems that I ended up having were some UVs that needed some slight changes. Some UVs were broken apart when I was trying to lay them out on a few of my models, but some slight modeling changes fixed this with no major issues. Each of these only took a few minutes, and were, for the most part, problems that I have encountered during past projects, so I immediately knew how to fix them.

Building textures

Now on to what went well this sprint, which was definitely the majority of my experience these past two weeks. I was mostly doing textures for the models I completed in past sprints, and I was extremely happy with how they came out, most notably the sniper and hat. These are some of my favorite textures I have ever done, and I’m extremely excited to see them implemented fully in the game. I completed 7 cards this sprint, which covered the work on the 15 NPC textures as well as the UV for the model, the sniper texture and UV, the low and high poly model, UV, and texture for the hat, and the UVs and textures for the walls, roof, and trim of the buildings. Most of my time was spent on the NPCs for sure, as I needed to make so many different iterations, as well as hand-draw all of the hair, facial hair, and eyebrows.

High and low poly hat models

Overall, I had a lot of fun working on the project this sprint. I think our group has finally hit its groove, and everything went a whole lot smoother this time around. As the 3D artist, it was really nice to have a firmly set style and materials that my designer wanted for each asset, and this made it a whole lot easier for me to turn in something my designer liked on the first try, rather than having to tweak it once I was already finished. I am happy with the work I got finished this sprint, and I can’t wait to see my assets in action.