First Unity Build!

So to test out if the mesh was working alright, I went through the whole process of putting it into Unity and putting it online. It went perfectly smoothly! Here it is, for you guys to walk around in if you want:

http://www.abfoglia.com/Test_build01.html (Not sure how to embed it in the blog yet :P)

New Project! - Fort Genericum

I just started a new 3D project!

I'm going to try something new and blog about it, to try and keep myself focused. Every week there is going to be an update on the project, where I will be explaining the thought, and the process of making a 3D environment. I will also talk about any problems in the making of it, and how I managed to overcome those problems - or which compromises I had to make.

The main aim of this project is to test Unity as a visualization platform for 3D environments. Unity is a 3D game engine which can be run inside a browser, as a free standing program, or even on an iPhone or iPad. Plus, as well as Windows, it can also run on Mac.

These are tremendous benefits for a visualization tool. Most people would be able to access it, and straight from their browser as well. More importantly, you can explore any built environment from any angle, or even walk around it if you choose to...all in realtime! This gives a sense of space, dimension, and layout that a 2D image or a short video clip never could.

So to test this out, I've decided to build a fictitious Roman fort. Archaeology is a field which defintley needs better visualization techniques...but that is a rant for another post!






The Roman fort of Genericum was built sometime between the 1st-3rd century AD, somewhere on the northeren frontier of Roman Britain. Currently, it is manned by the IXth Cohort of Normalii, an auxiliary unit of about 5oo men (a cohors quingenariae).

The fort layout is fairly generic. It is more or less square, with rounded off edges, surrounded by a ditch. Like most Roman forts, the headquarters building (principia) is located in the center of the fort, at the point where the North-South Via Praetoria bisects the East-West Via Principalis. To the right of the principia there are a pair of granaries (horrea) and a building which functions as a sick bay and a place to stay for any people travelling through the fort. To the left of the principia is the praetorium, the house of the unit commander.

The other buildings are 6 barracks (centuria), each centuria housing a century. The barracks are split up into 10 contubernium, rooms where the 8 men of a contubernium sleep, with a suite for the centurion at one end.

The rest of the buildings contain the mess hall, kitchens, the officer's club, stables for the Cohort's animals (Mules, Donkeys, Horses, Oxen), cart houses, sleeping quarters for army slaves and servants (calones) and a variety of store rooms and workshops (fabricae).

Outside the fort to the east is a small civilian settlement (vicus), where camp followers (common law wives, prostitutes, merchants, etc.) and other civilians live. There are workshops, stores and taverns here, and this is where off duty soldiers would spend their time.

To the west there is a military bath house, and some other small buildings (Barns, local farms, smaller workshops).


All of the environment will be constructed in 3ds Max, and imported as a single asset into the Unity engine. Props, such as minor vegetation, pots, carts, etc. will be imported as seperate objects and placed in the environment via the unity editor.

The technical specifications and goals for the project are as follows. These are trying to take in to account that this is a low-polygon environment, for a browser based game engine.

• Polygon count of less than 100,000 for major scene elements. Props do not count towards this limit. Trees do, and will be counted as part of the scene. This is for lighting reasons.
  
• Textures no greater than 512x512, in .dds format. This allows for mip-mapping, and specular in the alpha channel.
  
• Normal maps for all textures
• Lighting baked in to the scene. This will be done in 3ds Max...If I can figure out how! It is possible, but I've never pulled it off yet. This will allow for shadows and Ambient Occlusion, neither of which are available in the free version of Unity.
• Getting blend textures to work with vertex paint, and importing to Unity. Very useful for making paths on terrain, and for breaking up tiling.
• Vegetation. Make my own trees and bushes. See if there is an economic way to make grass.
  

The project will be divided into various stages, each of about a week. I have no deadline and other compromises though, so each stage can take as long as I need:

• Stage 1: Fort layout and preliminary Unity tests - Creating the basic meshes for all the buildings in the fort, and importing it into Unity to see how it works. As of this post, i've already finished this. Last night I imported it into Unity AND IT WORKED RIGHT AWAY. WOOO!! This is why I love Unity. :) I still have to do some preliminary tests in trying to get the baked lighting working, and do some tests with blend textures before I move to the next stage though.
• Stage 2: Fort 1st detail pass and texturing - This is where I'll add some large "details" to the fort, and start creating the textures for, and texturing the fort itself. Large details will include things like the roads, the fort drainage system, steps up to the walls and fancy archways and doors for the Gatehouses. Add some wobble to the roofs and walls of buildings, so things don't look to perfect.
• Stage 3: Vicus - The basic meshes for the extramural vicus
• Stage 4: Vicus Texturing
• Stage 5: Other extramural buildings - Military baths, tombs, shrines, cisterns, other randomn buildings.
• Stage 6: Texturing the other extramural buildings
• Stage 7: Landscaping - Giving form to the landscape, adding in trees.
• Stage 8: General Detail Pass - See what other details can be added with the leftover polycount
• Stage 9: Props - Making props. Carts, amphorae, bushes, fences, hedges and other small objects.
• Stage 10: Unify it all in Unity!
  

Sp Dev. Diary #19 - May 4-7, 2009

• Finished the cockpit in max
• Generated normal maps with crazy bump
• Imported whole thing into Unreal 3. Had some import issues, where the geometry imported incorrectly. Also, some of the geometry wasn't lighting correctly.
  
• Had to divide the model into smaller chunks, so everything would import correctly. Cost me a lot of time having to re-create all the materials in Unreal, and having to re apply them again to various meshes.
• Did some lighting - was able to fix the original lighting issues (By importing the whole model in smaller chunks, the issue was bypassed), but wasn't able to get proper lightmaps working.
• The end result was fairly good. Not too happy with the chair model though, and the textures are to varied, they kind of clash.
  

Sp Dev. Diary #18 - March. 30 - May 1st, 2009

• Continued on modelling work. Made some more racks to use on the interiors.
  
• Over Easter Break, visited the Space Expo at the European Space Agency offices in Holland. Here they have a full scale replica of part of the ISS. Took various reference images.
• Upon return from easter break, had to put project on hold to finish assignments which I was behind schedule on.
• With not much time left, decided that cylindrical vertical spaceship should be cut down. Started work on using only the racks, in an attempt to make the interior look more modular like that of the international space station.
• Had difficulties unwrapping the racks properly.
  
• Decided to ditch the untextured racks, and concentrate on building a cockpit up to the level of detail I wanted to achieve for the whole ship.
  

From max to Irrlicht

This post is just to explain the process for getting the scene from 3DS Max into a format which can be loaded up into the game engine. It must be noted however, getting it working in the game engine and being able to run around in the environment in the actual game are two different things.

Before we can actually get it running in our game, we need to set up the cameras and all the triggers to activate the various different cameras as the character moves through the world.

The process begins by exporting the scene out from 3Ds Max in various chunks. They are exported in the the DirectX .X format, which is easily imported into the gile[s] lighting editor. gile[s] is quite a simple, put very powerful editor, which does some splendid Global Illumination (A lighting process which makes things look soft and 'realistic')

What can be seen above is a screengrab from the gile[s] editor. Its use in this project was for the rendering out of the lightmaps for the scene. These are large texture maps which store all the light and shadow information.

In practical terms, this means the game engine itself won't have to render any lighting or shadows, which is a load off the processing power. It also allows for forms of lighting which wouldn't be possible otherwise, such as the aforementioned Global Illumination, to be simulated in less powerful, and less capable engines for no extra processing cost.

And the results look great!

From gile[s] the scene is then exported as a .b3d so it can be read with all its light maps intact by irrEdit, a special world editor for the irrLicht engine. You can see the results above. In irrEdit is where I added the skybox in for the scene. This is really the final stage. At a later point, special markers will be added to the scene to be used as reference points for loading in the computer characters for the quests.

All that needs to be done after this, is the scene needs to be saved as a .irr or a .xml file. These files types can be opened directly by the engine.

For the purposes of this project, they were loaded into the tool which we used to place cameras in the world. the results can be seen underneath, and also in this gallery!

Finished! At least in 3DS max...

Finished modeling the environment on 3Ds Max. Below are a selection of some of the nicer renders.

To see screen shots of every phase of construction in 3DS Max, check out this web gallery.

Second floor construction

Before the second floor was constructed, cross beams were added to the first floor to "support" the second floor. The structure to support the second floor balcony around the patio were also added at this point.

After this, the second floor was constructed the same way as the ground floor. The foundations in this case were the wooden planks which would be the floor of the second floor, and the ceiling of the first floor. The process was a lot faster this time though, as all the textures and all the doors and windows had already been created, so all that had to be done was place everything in the correct spot.

The second floor is not entirely complete yet, even though there is already a roof up in this picture. The ceiling beams still needed to be added, as do the support beams for the various balconies. The windows on the outside of the building still need exterior frames as well.