"Eugenio" The Security Guard

The Original Security Guard

Artifact description

My stepdad, Eugene, saw my “Showcase Gallery” that I had create for my final project presentation in GAM-465 to display my most-prized collection of artifacts, with all of the AI “gallery visitors”, and he thought that there should be someone guarding the exhibits!

I had taken the Unreal Engine 3rd person character model, changed the textures to a wooden texture and made a simple AI that made them wooden-mannequin visitors of the gallery that paced to the different exhibit and could track me if I toggle on tracking. There were adult and children AI visitors created, each with their own voices and phrases commenting on the exhibits and the gallery.

For the security idea, I then made another copy of the new adult male "gallery visitor" AI character blueprint and created a security guard that only paced to hunt the player character wherever they go in the gallery. I recorded my stepdad spouting off the rules of a gallery like “No running in the gallery” and “No touching the exhibits” or “You break it, you buy it!”
This worked great for GAM-465 where my main focus was on the gallery and the slideshow part of the gallery. The security guard would even run to chase you if you were trying to get away!

"Eugenio" The
Security Guard

Updated Artifact

Tool(s) used

- - Blender 4.3
  - Unreal Engine 5.1.1
  - Make My Statue - Provided by MakerWorld.com

Highlighted skills

- - For this character, I exported this original Unreal Engine 5 third person character model and worked on it in Blender.
  - I updated the character model to have skin, hair, eyes, and a badge of different materials than the two default colors.
  - I created and applied different skin textures that ranged from making it look more cyborg, human, and then ended on a more android-like texture. I have reimported into Unreal Engine to update the textures and make the new AI character hunt the player again.
  - Utilizing existing assets and artifacts from different sources to combine into a new and unique character exhibits an ability to work with project assets from different artists and creators.
  - Also updated was the AI pawn sensing and roaming to not just hunt the player, but also randomly choose another gallery visitor to find and tell the rules to. The idea was to have an android version of my stepdad monitoring the gallery for shenanigans!

Reflection

- How would you describe the process of creating and polishing the artifact?
  - - I had a lot of fun making this artifact. It was a new experience adding familiar voices and faces to my project.
- What did you learn as you were creating it and improving it?
  - - I have learned many new techniques for merging vertices and joining polygon faces.
- What challenges did you face?
  - It was challenging combining the multiple-source artifacts into a cohesive model.
- How did you incorporate feedback as you made changes to the artifact?
  - I did not receive much feedback on my updated model other than "You have some additional polishing that could be done because there is always room for some extra polish, but well done overall."
- How was the artifact improved?
  - Added my dad's, stepdad’s, and grandfather's faces to the character.

The Texture Updates

YouTube face morph showing the evolution of the textures used to transform the character model.

Texture Image Carousel

The Face Swap Smurf, The Super Hero, The Cyborg, The Human, and The Android.

Human "Eugenio"

"Eugenio" Just Hangin' out at The Showcase Gallery

"Eugenio"
The Android Security Guard
Refined Artifact

Ben (My Gpa)
The Android Security Guard

Eric (My Dad)
The Android Security Guard

The Android Security Force

Face Renders

Provided By MakerWorld:
"Make My Statue"
https://makerworld.com/makerlab/makeMyStatue

The face renders for the Showcase Gallery security staff were all generated by the "Make My Statue" AI from MakerWorld. I downloaded the STL files generated from the website and used the face, ears, head and hair from the Eugenio statue STL and added it to a copy of Unreal Engine's default 3rd Person Character model blueprint. After the updates to Eugenio in Blender, I face-swapped the updated model to add Ben, and Eric to my security staff.