VR Integrated Heritage Recreation

Create assets for history-based games. This book covers the fundamental principles required to understand and create architectural visualizations of historical locations using digital tools. You will explore aspects of 3D design visualization and VR integration using industry-preferred software.

Some of the most popular video games in recent years have historical settings (Age of Empires, Call of Duty, etc.). Creating these games requires creating historically accurate game assets. You will use Blender to create VR-ready assets by modeling and unwrapping them. And you will use Substance Painter to texture the assets that you create.

You will also learn how to use the Quixel Megascans library to acquire and implement physically accurate materials in the scenes. Finally, you will import the assets into Unreal Engine 4 and recreate a VR integrated heritage that can be explored in real time. Using VR technology and game engines, you can digitally recreate historical settings for games.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

* Create high-quality, optimized models suitable for any 3D game engine
* Master the techniques of texturing assets using Substance Painter and Quixel Megascans
* Keep assets historically accurate
* Integrate assets with the game engine
* Create visualizations with Unreal Engine 4

WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR

Game developers with some experience who are eager to get into VR-based games

DR. ABHISHEK KUMAR is Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University. He is an Apple Certified Associate, Adobe Education Trainer, and certified by Autodesk. He is actively involved in course development in animation and design engineering courses for various institutions and universities as they will be a future industry requirement.

Dr. Kumar has published a number of research papers and covered a wide range of topics in various digital scientific areas (image analysis, visual identity, graphics, digital photography, motion graphics, 3D animation, visual effects, editing, composition). He holds two patents in the field of design and IoT.

Dr. Kumar has completed professional studies related to animation, computer graphics, virtual reality, stereoscopy, filmmaking, visual effects, and photography from Norwich University of Arts, University of Edinburg, and Wizcraft MIME & FXPHD, Australia. He is passionate about the media and entertainment industry, and has directed two animation short films.

Dr. Kumar has trained more than 50,000 students across the globe from 153 countries (top five: India, Germany, United States, Spain, Australia). His alumni have worked for national and international movies such as Ra-One, Krissh, Dhoom, Life of Pi, the Avengers series, the Iron Man series, GI Joe 3D, 300, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Prince of Persia, Titanic 3D, the Transformers series, Bahubali 1 & 2, London Has Fallen, Warcraft, Aquaman 3D, Alita, and more.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO BOOK

Chapter Goal: In this chapter we will introduce the readers to the book and its concepts.

Sub Topics

Scope of this book

Topics covered

CHAPTER 2: INTRODUCTION TO SOFTWARE

Chapter Goal: In this chapter the readers will be introduced to the software applications that we will use throughout the book for creating our scene and everything related to it. Software that we will use are Blender, Substance Painter, Quixel Bridge and Unreal Engine 4.

Sub Topics

Blender

Substance Painter

Quixel Bridge Unreal Engine 4

CHAPTER 3: ACQUIRING RESOURCES FOR OUR PROJECT

Chapter Goal: In this chapter we will explore how we can acquire various resources that we will require for creating our project.

Sub Topics

Websites for getting textures

Collecting References

Creating basic plan

CHAPTER 4: DESIGN VISUALIZATION

Chapter Goal: We will learn the basic tools of the software which we are going to use for heritage recreation. After that we will create a white box level using Blender and UE4.

Sub Topics

Basics of Blender

Basics of Substance Painter

Creating White Box scene

CHAPTER 5: MODELLING OUR SCENE

Chapter Goal: In this chapter we will start modelling our scene. We will create optimized game ready models that can be used within any game engine.

Sub Topics

Modelling the Temple

Modelling the ground assets and stairs

Modelling additional assets

CHAPTER 6: UNWRAPPING THE MODELS

Chapter Goals: In this chapter we will create UV map for our models and explore in detail the UV editing tools provided by Blender.

Sub Topics

Unwrapping the Temple

Unwrapping the various ground assets and stairs

Unwrapping the remaining smaller assets

CHAPTER 7: TEXTURING ASSETS USING SUBSTANCE PAINTER

Chapter Goal: We will now see how we can texture our assets using Substance Painter which is an industry standard tool for texturing.

Sub Topics

A quick introduction Substance Painter

Texturing our Larger structures

Texturing the smaller assets

CHAPTER 8: CREATING FOLIAGE

Chapter Goal: Here we will see how we can create game ready foliage like grasses, bushes and trees.

Sub Topics

Creating grass

Creating Bushes

Creating Trees

CHAPTER 9: EXPORTING TO UNREAL ENGINE 4

Chapter Goal: We will see in this chapter how to export assets to Unreal Engine 4.

Sub Topics

Basics of Unreal Engine 4

Creating lightmap UVs

Exporting models from Blender

Exporting textures from Substance Painter

CHAPTER 10: IMPORTING INTO UNREAL ENGINE 4

Chapter Goal: In this chapter the readers will see how we can import assets into Unreal Engine 4 and set them up for use.

Sub Topics

Import settings

Exploring properties editor

CHAPTER 11: MATERIAL SETUP IN UNREAL ENGINE 4

Chapter Goal: Readers will now learn how to create materials with the imported textures that can then be applied to the meshes.Sub Topics

Simple material setup

Complex material setup

Working with Master and Instanced materials

CHAPTER 12: INTEGRATION WITH VR

Chapter Goal: We will assemble the scene and write scripts for gameplay part of our scene. We will set up our scene to work with VR devices and bake everything into executable file.

Sub Topics

Creating landscape

Assembling scene

Creating gameplay scripts

Building our scene into an executable