Devlog #8 Now You're Thinking With Portals

The Process

Final week; finally done!

I am really proud of what I managed to make this week, there's still a lot of things I think I could add or improve, but I think I'll call it here.
Perfection is the enemy of progress.

So to quickly run through what I've done this week:

• I gathered feedback from my peers on where to take my diorama and how I could improve it.
• I applied their feedback to my project.
• I experimented with different configurations for my diorama.
• Made some additional 2D graphical assets to add polish to my project.
• Pushed myself and completed the whole project this week.

I started with feedback. A lot of my colleagues commented that my diorama will look better when it's a smaller but finished product. I realised what they meant, and to apply this feedback I scaled down the whole room, and made the assets smaller to fit in relation to the room.
I asked about possible placements of thing, and drawn my own conclusions which led me to a test chamber that I'm really happy with how it turned out. Most of the time was spent with stuff like placing the tiles and arranging the models. I don't really know how to document that stuff because, it's a process that requires constant changing, feedback, applying the feedback, and changing again, so I decided to just summarise it this way.

The other major feedback I got was that there needs to be more colour other than white, and sure enough, I had completely forgotten that I got textures for the black tiles too. I changed the whole room to black, and strategically placed the white tiles, to match with how it's done in-game. I think this was the biggest improvement I've done, and really got me closer to the goal.

The next thing I noticed was that I needed more verticality in my design. I didn't want to get more models to achieve this, so I just shaped the room differently, adding a lower and higher sections. I decided that I want this room to be a solvable puzzle, like in portal, so I placed the button at the bottom of the room, the cube dispenser at the top along with the cube itself, and my tall button in the mid section, that would activate the dropper. I was really happy with how that turned out.

Lastly, before the other major thing I did to this diorama, was using varied textures on the walls. It was a real eye-sore that the walls and floor had a repeating pattern, and I literally had alternate textures sitting in my folder. Naturally I duplicated the materials, swapped the textures and applied that across my diorama to break the pattern and add visual interest. I even went a little beyond and made a mask in the Blender shading graph that would randomise the metallicness of each of the small tiles, using a brick noise texture.

I was already super proud of what I had made, and I only needed to add polish. I did this by adding infographics from the game, and connection lines on the floor and walls, as suggested by my peer. It took a bit of time fiddling with planes in the 3D space to get them as close to the walls as possible without them clipping, but eventually I positioned them around in placed where they fit, which was a great improvement to the feel of the diorama.

At this point, I started scope-creeping my project, and wanted to add a ton of new stuff to it. For example, I even experimented with Blender's new Ray-trace Portal node, in hopes that I could create the titular portals from the game, but I realised that would add a ton of work by me needing to learn how it work, and also adding additional shaders later to make them look good. Therefore, I scrapped this idea although given more time, I would definitely experiment with it.

One thing I did quickly add, is a little stickman that's present in the promotional material for the game. The promotional material in of the game features an endless white void and these black round characters. I concluded that it would take me very little time, and would look great in the end so I quickly modelled a paper thing dude, and painted him with solid colours of black with a white outline. It added some extra flair to he diorama with a minimal time cost, so it was worth the investment so to speak.

And there it is! That's the whole project complete with these last extra detail. I really excided my own expectations with the final result and I didn't think I could make something so stunning looking. I still don't quite believe that I managed it, but I'm really proud overall.

The Evaluation

Looking back on this last stage of the project, I gathered a lot of helpful feedback from peers, which pushed me to rethink the scale and colour of the room. Scaling down the room and adding black tiles really made a difference, even if it meant a lot of back-and-forth with the arrangement. I experimented with verticality and varied textures on the walls, and while these changes gave the diorama a more dynamic look, there were moments when it felt like I was scope-creeping a slight bit. I even dabbled with the new Ray-trace Portal node, only to scrap it because it would have added too much extra work. It took a bit of balancing between polishing what I had and chasing new ideas. In the end, some of the smaller details, like the placement of the connection lines and infographics, could’ve used a bit more care, but overall, the whole thing came together really nicely. The addition of the little stickman was a good call on my part, as it didn't waste any time and only added to the Portal atmosphere.

The Reflection

I’m honestly blown away by how well this project turned out. Seeing everything come together into a proper, game-like environment felt really good and made me proud. The final diorama looks way better than I originally imagined, and I’m especially happy with the little details, like the stickman and the floor connection lines, which added that extra bit of Portal flair. Even though I had to cut some of the more ambitious ideas, I think it was the right move. This whole project was a big learning experience. I’m walking away from this feeling more confident in my ability to create full environments and take on larger-scale projects in the future.