Maya Blockout of
Life is Strange
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Design Goals
This Maya Blockout is a small project I made to improve my level design workflow. This project took a few days to complete.
Here are the tasks I completed in this project.
Created a 2D map that is drawn to scale using the main game as reference.
Blocked out level in Maya using appropriate metrics
Imported blockmesh to UE4 and set-up collision and lighting
Scripted cinematic events.
Scripted AI that walks throughout the halls.
Dressed environment using Mannequins.
Many game studios use Maya as it allows a huge variety of tools to manipulate primitive shapes in creative ways unlike engine plugins like ProBuilder and SuperGrid.
There were three main focuses I wanted to accomplish with this project:
Recreating an environment as close to scale as possible. With this environment being set in a man-made structure, I had to create the architectural pieces (e.g. walls, floors) on the grid.
Establish the narrative beats/atmosphere using mannequins. I tinkered with the main skeletal mesh to create static meshes of each unique character and placed them in their respective locations within the hallway. I also scripted some of them to walk in a straight path to further elicit this piece of the narrative.
The third and most important focus was to design the environment with metrics in mind. I documented my metrics on my 2D map (shown above).