work

hello! i know its past the deadline for hand-in (which i missed) but i thought id upload some work thats not yet made it up.

first of all you can see the material for a new mesh id created for my level; its a light to go in a mystical cave. what you can see below are the three textures of my own paseed through several filters to change the affect on the mesh's look. the colour map is connected to two multipliers which are in turn connect to the specular and diffuse channels. these give the mesh its colour and also its reflective qualities. the reason i did not make a specific specular map for this mesh is because i knew that the colour would work fine. the two vector constants connected to these multipliers decreases the colour saturation of the diffuse channel and blue the reflection on the mesh. the emissive channel is governed by a multiplier into which feed a texture and another constant3vector, and together control the the the runes glow on the outside of the mesh. the constant plugged into the specular power node gives the item a wide reflective angle. the normal map at the bottom gives detail to the mesh.



next you can see my first attempt at creating a custom particle system which i hoped would be smoke. you can see the rotator plugging into the texture sample channel causing it to rotate. this then plugs into both the diffuse and emissive channel causing a nice wobbley glow. the constants and depthbiasedalpha are supposed to control the alpha on the material however for some reason i could not get this to work as it was supposed to as can be seen two pictures down.





the above picture shows the UI for editing particle emitters. from the picture it is clear that the material sourced was inhibiting how the particle works and so i used a material already existing in unreal and made some changes to it in this editor; i gave it an orange glow instead of white and also affect the colour saturation of each particle of the course of its life. the results can be seen below.



the picture below show the mesh's with shaders applied to them. i then used the tools in maya to apply the textures i had created in zbrush to the model.



and below can be the resulting render.



i had originaly intended to get this character moving in maya but due to time constraints and several computer errors (lots of openGL error 14's) i no long thought this feasable.



the above picture shows some work ive done in maya using ncloth. the initial setup is relatively easy; merely selecting the relevent items and making one an ncloth object and another an ncloth passive object. then you must add several frame to allow time for the item to fall as well as heavily editing the options shown on the right of the above image. after this lengthy process i finaly attained a behaviour i liked from the material and exported the resulting mesh as an obj. i then textured it in zbrush before exporting it to unreal. the result was a table cloth drapped perfectly over my table mesh.

the crunch

i continued my work with maya and unreal by attempting to bind the character to a skeleton. as the unreal engine uses very specific coordinates for its rigging i had to download a 3ds max file already containing a skelten, export it as an .fbx file on a friends computer, import it into maya and then rebuild it as the process of moving it from application to application caused some of the bones to be imported as meshes.



however after dicovering the mesh requirements for such an action my in game character ha undergone a reddesign.







however i found that imprting the head (which had a high poly count) caused the engine to crash so temporary alterations were made.



i actualy really like the look of this character and it has inspired me to create a niche for it in my game as an anicient guardian used to protect magical places.

i used the following textures to all for easy placement of UV's that unreal can read easily.





however after trying two different methods for importing my character, both of which met with failure i am going to try using 3dsmax to export the meshes as this application communicates much easier with the unreal engine.



my level has also undergone a small rediesign; it now takes place in the realm of a god.



with all the recent failures i am feeling less than confident about my project in its final week than i wouldve have hoped or anticipated.

Unreal: update

The above picture shows my current progress adapting the model for the unreal engine. The last thing that remains to be done is some sculpting on the armour and the rigging. Following this process i will test the mesh in unreal before continuing to texture it in zBrush and then importing the textures to unreal.

Unreal importation

Having been working solidly on my design document for the last two weeks or i thought it was time to get back to my dude.



The above image shows the pieces i intended on creating the model for importing into unreal however research has shown that the mesh must be made up of specific parts so the model will require some redesign; the char will be topless but for a pair of metal pauldrons on each shoulder.

I intend on using nCloth for the maya render so i will need to use the full torso in order to get the proper effect. This will push up the poly count and will probably cause my laptop much death and overheating however i believe this necessary so that my rendered video will look at its best.

more work

recently i have been working largely on my design document which is going well and growing rapidly. below is an image i created from screen dumps of Google Earth using the clone and stamp tool in Photoshop CS3. It shows the game world of Ark and will be used later to make a front cover for the design document as well as going on the degree show website.



i have also been working hard on my character ready to bring them into maya for UV generation, animation and colouring before importing them into Unreal. i have been using the topology tools in zBrush in order to create a belt and vambraces for him as well as creating a long sword in maya and then importing it into zBrush. i have also added detail to the shows and added eyes and alot of facial detail and resculpting has been undertaken.













over the easter holiday's i did a lot of work on meshes for my level. despite a few hickups mainly due to my workflow everything went well and i have sucessfully created and imported a selection of meshes into my level. however due to time constraints i may redo my level as furnishing an entire house will take a lot longer than i had previously imagined.





below you can see how i modeled the cushion to fit with the chair mesh. by creating new diffuse maps for the cushion i can get maximum use out of just the one chair mesh.



below is how the meshes stand currently in my level.

more work

this week i have been primarily focusing on building yet another new, streamlined website. however i tried learning actionscript 3.0 in order to do this and found like some function such a getURL have been removed. i have spent alot of time trying to ascertain just how to link to exterior websites from flash but so far have found nothing. as such my website is now under construction using actionscript 2.0.

i have also been creating a chair in Maya for placement in my Unreal level. i have however also been encountering problems with this; mainly the textures rapping incorrectly around the meshess come time to import them into unreal.



i am so far unable to think why this could be happening as all of my maps are sound as was the creation process in Maya.









however i suspect i am fast approaching the solution to the problem.

recently i have also been finalising some of my ideas for the design document, compiling a list of images i will need and begining the implementation of them. i have also been steadily working through the wordy part of the design doc.

design doc

What you can see below is what the contents page for my design document will eventually look like. I am currently working on the features section and producing concept art.

1. Title Page
1.1. Game Name – Perhaps also add a subtitle or high concept sentence.
1.2. Copyright Information
1.3. Version Number, author, date
2. Table of Contents – Make sure this includes all the subsections to make finding material. If practical, hyper linking the document will help here.
3. Design History – This is a change listing quickly describing each major version and changes.
4. Section I - Game Overview
4.1. Game Concept
4.2. Feature Set
4.3. Genre
4.4. Target Audience
4.5. Game Flow Summary – How does the player move through the game. Both through framing interface and the game itself.
4.6. Look and Feel – What is the basic look and feel of the game? What is the visual style?
4.7. Project Scope – A summary of the scope of the game.
4.7.1. Number of locations
4.7.2. Number of levels
4.7.3. Number of NPC’s
4.7.4. Number of weapons
4.7.5. Etc.
5. Section II - Gameplay and Mechanics
5.1. Gameplay
5.1.1. Game Progression
5.1.2. Mission/challenge Structure
5.1.3. Puzzle Structure
5.1.4. Objectives – What are the objectives of the game?
5.1.5. Play Flow – How does the game flow for the game player
5.2. Mechanics – What are the rules to the game, both implicit and explicit. This is the model of the universe that the game works under. Think of it as a simulation of a world, how do all the pieces interact? This actually can be a very large section.
5.2.1. Physics – How does the physical universe work?
5.2.2. Movement
5.2.2.1. General Movement
5.2.2.2. Other Movement
5.2.3. Objects
5.2.3.1. Picking Up Objects
5.2.3.2. Moving Objects
5.2.4. Actions
5.2.4.1. Switches and Buttons
5.2.4.2. Picking Up, Carrying and Dropping
5.2.4.3. Talking
5.2.4.4. Reading
5.2.5. Combat – If there is combat or even conflict, how is this specifically modeled?
5.2.6. Economy – What is the economy of the game? How does it work?
5.3. Screen Flow
5.3.1. Screen Flow Chart – A graphical description of how each screen is related to every other
5.3.2. Screen Descriptions – What is the purpose of each screen?
5.3.2.1. Main Menu Screen
5.3.2.2. Options Screen
5.3.2.3. Etc.
5.4. Game Options – What are the options and how do they affect game play and mechanics?
5.5. Replaying and Saving
5.6. Cheats and Easter Eggs
6. Section III – Story, Setting and Character
6.1. Story and Narrative - Specific details like scripts and cut scenes may not be in this document but be in the Story Bible.
6.1.1. Back story
6.1.2. Plot Elements
6.1.3. Game Progression
6.1.4. License Considerations
6.1.5. Cut Scenes
6.1.5.1. Cut scene #1
6.1.5.1.1. Actors
6.1.5.1.2. Description
6.1.5.1.3. Storyboard
6.1.5.1.4. Script
6.1.5.2. Cut scene #2
6.1.5.3. etc.
6.2. Game World
6.2.1. General look and feel of world
6.2.2. Area #1
6.2.2.1. General Description
6.2.2.2. Physical Characteristics
6.2.2.3. Levels that use area
6.2.2.4. Connections to other areas
6.2.3. Area #2
6.2.3.1. etc.
6.3. Characters
6.3.1. Character #1
6.3.1.1. Back story
6.3.1.2. Personality
6.3.1.3. Look
6.3.1.3.1. Physical characteristics
6.3.1.3.2. Animations
6.3.1.4. Special Abilities
6.3.1.5. Relevance to game story
6.3.1.6. Relationship to other characters
6.3.1.7. Statistics
6.3.2. Character #2
6.3.3. etc.
7. Section IV – Levels
7.1. Level #1
7.1.1. Synopsis
7.1.2. Introductory Material (Cut scene? Mission briefing?)
7.1.3. Objectives
7.1.4. Physical Description
7.1.5. Map
7.1.6. Critical Path
7.1.7. Encounters
7.1.8. Level Walkthrough
7.1.9. Closing Material
7.2. Level #2
7.3. etc.
7.4. Training Level
8. Section V - Interface
8.1. Visual System
8.1.1. HUD - What controls
8.1.2. Menus
8.1.3. Rendering System
8.1.4. Camera
8.1.5. Lighting Models
8.2. Control System – How does the game player control the game? What are the specific commands?
8.3. Audio
8.4. Music
8.5. Sound Effects
8.6. Help System
9. Section VI - Artificial Intelligence
9.1. Opponent AI – The active opponent that plays against the game player and therefore requires strategic decision making (example, Civilization or Chess, how is it to be designed?
9.2. Enemy AI – Villains and Monsters
9.3. Non-combat Characters
9.4. Friendly Characters
9.5. Support AI
9.5.1. Player and Collision Detection
9.5.2. Pathfinding
10. Section VII – Technical – This may be abbreviated with most in the Technical Bible.
10.1. Target Hardware
10.2. Development hardware and software
10.3. Development procedures and standards
10.4. Game Engine
10.5. Network
10.6. Scripting Language
10.7. etc.
11. Section VIII – Game Art - This may be abbreviated with most of the content in an Art Bible.
11.1. Concept Art
11.2. Style Guides
11.3. Characters
11.4. Environments
11.5. Equipment
11.6. Cut scenes
11.7. Miscellaneous
12. Section IX - Secondary Software
12.1. Editor
12.2. Installer
12.3. Update software
13. Section X - Management
13.1. Detailed Schedule
13.2. Budget
13.3. Risk Analysis
13.4. Localization Plan
13.5. Test Plan
14. Appendices
14.1. Asset List
14.1.1. Art
14.1.1.1. Model and Texture List
14.1.1.2. Animation List
14.1.1.3. Effects List
14.1.1.4. Interface Art List
14.1.1.5. Cut scene List
14.1.2. Sound
14.1.2.1. Environmental Sounds
14.1.2.2. Weapon Sounds
14.1.2.3. Interface Sounds
14.1.3. Music
14.1.3.1. Ambient
14.1.3.2. “Action”
14.1.3.3. Victory
14.1.3.4. Defeat
14.1.4. Voice
14.1.4.1. Actor #1 lines
14.1.4.2. Actor #2 lines
14.1.4.3. Etc.