1. FINAL YEAR PROJECT PROPOSAL
The Battle of the Bulge Environment
P Daylion Templeton

2. Overview
For my final year project my aim is to create an environment, initially I researched several different ideas, but I eventually decided to create an environment based on World War 2. After researching several key battles and environments I settles on the battle of the bulge, the environment will focus on a snowy forest area on the front line. My focus for this piece will be centred to a small collection of American foxholes in the treeline that have been constantly attacked by German artillery for several days, with a transport vehicle delivering vital supplies to the frontline. I picked this particular environment because of its significance in the war, but also because of the stark contrast between the beauty and peacefulness of the snowy forest scene and the ugliness and brutality of war. My aim is to create an as realistic looking environment as possible that could potentially work as a level for a Battlefield or Call of Duty style game, however my focus will more be on its artistic style, realism and faithfulness to the actual battle than to the design principles of laying out the level to be a fun and dynamic to play in the environment.

3. Motivation, Rationale and Reasoning
My motivations for choosing this project are that I want to create a large piece for my portfolio that will hopefully help me with applications for jobs after I have finished the course, the piece also reflects the kind of work that I wish to create when in industry and the studios that I wish to work for in the future. This project will also allow me to showcase both my abilities in hard surface modelling and also more organic modelling as well as my skills and proficiencies in using an industry standard engine to create and enhance my final environment. I am also interested in the history of World War 2 and have enjoyed reading about it and watching documentaries on the subject, as well as playing games based in this time period for many years. Also after looking over my previous work and assessing my strengths and weaknesses I feel that this project will allow me to further develop my skills as an artist whilst not being too far out of my comfort as to potentially cause me too many major problems as to not achieve my goals for the project.

4. Areas of Investigation, Background Research.
There are several areas of investigation in this project, firstly will be the battle itself, the environments it took place in, the tactics employed by both sides and the weapons and equipment that they both used. Another key area will be the technical side of the project, how to create the effects, such as dynamic snow build-up in the engine, as well as the terrain tools. As background research I have already began to investigate the battle, I have also compiled a series of tutorials and forum posts, by both Epic and the community, on the unreal engine and systems that I want to employ in my level.

5. Literature Review and Ethics.
Some of the books that I have identified that may be helpful during the project:
Bishop, C. (2016). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II: The Comprehensive Guide to Weapons Systems, Including Tanks, Small Arms, Warplanes, Artillery, Ships and Submarines.  Amber Books Ltd.
Caddick-Adams, P. (2015). Snow and Steel: Battle of the Bulge Arrow Publishing.
Kelman, N. (2004). Video Game Art. Assouline Publishing.
Byrne, J. (2014). Lighting and Rendering. New Riders.
Ethically this project covers a very serious and sombre subject matter that must be respected and handled with thought and care. My project will therefore try to stay as close as possible to the realism and grim reality of war and will not compromise on the gore and horrors that this means depicting.

6. Technical Overview
For this project I plan to use the Unreal Engine to build my environment as it is the game engine I am most comfortable in and it also has an extremely large community and many online tutorials that I cold potentially utilise to aid me in my project. For my tree models and the undergrowth I plan to utilise photogrammetry to aid in the creation of the base of the trees where the most detail is required and then use Speed tree with a ZBrush pass for the tops and the leaves, where slightly less detail is needed. To create my tileable ground textures I will utilise Substance Designer and ZBrush in my workflow. To create my assets I will be using a pipeline that I am already familiar with, I will use 3DS Max to create and unwrap my models, I will then make use of ZBrush to sculpt my high poly models and Knald to bake Normal, AO and any other maps I require, to texture my models I will be using Substance Designer and Painter before importing them into the engine where further changes to the textures can be made using the material editor within Unreal. I may add extra programs and steps to this pipeline as they are required throughout development. I will make use of Unreal to create dynamic snow and snow build-up in my environment, I will also aim to create both day and night versions of my lighting setup.

7. Project Deliverables
At the end of this project I hope to have delivered on the following:
1 fully complete environment in the Unreal Engine.
1 short video showing off the level, and the development process.
A series of beauty shots of the environment.
Sources files (3DS Max, ZBrush, FBX, Substance Files and Texture Files).
Pre-production work (Sketches, Reference Material, Concepts and Moodboards).
A final report.
A weekly project blog.

8. Project Plan

9. References
Bishop, C. (2016). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II: The Comprehensive Guide to Weapons Systems, Including Tanks, Small Arms, Warplanes, Artillery, Ships and Submarines.  Amber Books Ltd.
Caddick-Adams, P. (2015). Snow and Steel: Battle of the Bulge Arrow Publishing.
Kelman, N. (2004). Video Game Art. Assouline Publishing.
Byrne, J. (2014). Lighting and Rendering. New Riders.
Image References.