Week 2 - Tuesday: Mansion Exterior

This week I have finalised the exterior face of the mansion environment. I am eager to include this part of the environment within my Unreal Engine scene, as I feel having an exterior provides players with a sense of place and scale rather than having them start inside the mansion.

Completed front section of the mansion exterior.

Originally I wanted the exterior to look more like a traditional southern US mansion, however I felt this would limit the scale of the environment too much. Instead I drew inspiration from northen mansions as they convey a much stronger sense of grandeur and wealth.

 Old Westbury gardens a mansion in New York state. Built in 1906.

Because the location of the abanoned mansion is left a secret to the player, I think I can fake some of the finer details. I want to make a strong environment piece first and foremost, so I am willing to overlook some historical inaccuracy.

Front orthographic view with person for scale.

The building is mainly comprised of a modular wall piece that I created to fit within the grid spacing system of Unreal Engine:

Render of my modular exterior piece.

You can see how the pieces fit together in the animation below:

A demonstration of the modular pieces fitting seamlessly together.

I felt it was important to have the exterior finished during the modeling of the interior rooms so that I could make their dimensions match the outside in a realistic way. Now that I have the exterior completed, I will be finishing the interior scenes and texturing them first as this is where the bulk of my assets will be housed.

I will bring the exterior of the mansion into Unreal Engine once I am happy with how the interior rooms look in the game.

PATH THROUGH HISTORY. (2018), Old Westbury Gardens [Online Image]. Available at: https://paththroughhistory.iloveny.com/listings/Old-Westbury-Gardens/30477/#.W2h6k6LLxEo [Accessed: 29/05/2018].