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.

First Floor Interiors

Some pictures of the interiors of the first floor.

Constructing the estate

This last week, there was a change I decided to change my original plans, so as to make the Asylum complex more authentic as a estate in the country side which was later transformed.

So the first step I did was look on google to try and find what estates in Peru look like, and found one very interesting one called the Hacienda San Jose, an old hacienda from the 16th century.

Using that as a starting point, I drew up some new plans. The idea now was to make a single large building complex, that would encompass and close off the south part of the map so as to create a proper courtyard in the middle. I decided there should also be a patio in the center of the building itself, and that the building should have two floors, with open balconies on both floor. I even raised the church up to be on the same level as the estate, to add some height and make the layout of the scene more interesting.

So this estate essentially became a merger of the previous estate building, and the theater house. But by removing the theater house, all of a sudden there was no longer the large room with the high ceiling. So as many old houses formerly owned by a noble family, I added in a ballroom which would span both floors of the building.

With these new plans, i decided to experiment some more with how I actually was creating the buildings. As this building was going to have a lot of useable rooms inside, the idea came up to emulate how a building would actually be constructed.

So first, a shape was created which would in real life have been the foundations of the building. From there, lines of the walls were traced out, and the walls extruded up on the ground. At the same time as this was being done, i was also already creating the textures for the various rooms and applying them, as without a ceiling it was much easier to work on the rooms at this stage.

Then, the places where the doors and windows were to be were carved out. For the doors and windows themselves, I went all the way and made actual door frames to be installed with them. The frames and the doors and window were then fitted into the alcoves carved out from them.

Then came the job of adding the second floor. Check the next few posts to see the progress on that.

Sp Dev. Diary #17 - March. 23-27, 2009

• Found some references for the ISS rack system, to use for building the living essentials.
• Modeling continues, as I modeled the toilet, shower, and a 'Hygiene station'
  

Sp Dev. Diary #16 - March. 16-20, 2009

• Continued modeling work. Beds and tables and things.
  

Sp Dev. Diary #15 - March. 9-13, 2009

• Made a table with chairs
• Made basic textures for the walls and floors
  

Sp Dev. Diary #14 - March. 2-6, 2009

• Continued work on the meshes. Blocked out all the rooms, and connected all access shafts and rooms together. Add some panelling to the exterior walls, as well as some block out props.
• Nailed down the zero-g to something that is passable. Still not ideal, but it works. it feels more like swimming still, but at least you don't sink! This is the level in unreal at the moment
• Concepts for props!
  

Creative Portfolio Dev work update

Been concentrating on my Creative portfolio dev work, and this week I finished the church and the basic meshes for the two houses. Only need to texture the interiors now, and add some props. That will come at a later stage, once all the other principal meshes are done.

Tried two different construction methods. The houses are a more simple method, were I just block out the mass and add textures and details to a single mesh. This is simpler geometry, but more textures (more than ten).

The church is made up of various higher detail "modules" that can be linked together, and uses only 5 textures. 1 for the roof, 2 for the facade, 1 for the bell towers, and 1 for the rest of the church.

Here is the gallery of the current WIP

Sp Dev. Diary #13 - Feb. 23-27, 2009

• Looked at sci-fi games that use the unreal engine to see how they do things.
• Did some more work on current layout. Not very happy with the way supports looks yet.
  
• Chris's idea about zero-g got me thinking. Remembered some of the unreal 3 levels have different gravity in them. Googled it, and found out it is possible to change gravity in the levels as a special builder brush. Issue with this is there is no way to move around in zero-g, as you can't push yourself off walls-only floors. it becomes too much about timing when you jump.
  
• Started playing around with other volumes, such as space and water. This might make movement easier and more interesting
  
• With zero-g working, decided to slightly alter the level. The previous layout was good, but now with the ability to do zero-g it might be interesting to do a vertical layout. The idea with computers is that we can do things we wouldn't in real life. I've always been against games looking too much like TV or movies, so I thinking make something more realistic - by using the 3rd dimension in space (Which is something movies and TV Shows can't do due to budget reasons.)
  
• Found a website called Atomic Rockets. This is about making realistic space-craft for sci-fi stories. Gives good ideas about layouts, and what rooms and decks a real space ship would have.
  

Critical Analysis Feb. 26

Commercial Area:

• Commercially, this would be a product for the games industry
• More specifically, it would be for an indie game. So relatively low budget, and without an engine as powerful as most mainstream games.

link to works

Other Practitioners:

• Stefan Morell: Excellent lighting, great geometry, excellent texture detail, great normal mpas, specular, etc. Some of the texures have tiling issues though. Using a very powerful engine.
• Pathologic: Unified color palette, nice fog and atmosphere. Tiling issue, very low poly geometry, very sparse environment.
• Stalker: Good level of geometry, great textures with lots of detail. Visually interesting scene, with a lot going on and good lighting and atmosphere. Some of the building details could use a few more polys and smoothing groups, building in the distance looks a bit low res.

Criteria for Success:

• Composition: Things are layed out in an interesting way, that feels "real"
• Lighting: The mood and atmosphere created by good lighting and other atmospheric effects.
• Technical: Good use of geometry and textures. Detailed geometry and textures as well.

My own work:

• Alright use of geometry. Still lacking in detail in some places.
  
• Textures are good, put could perhaps use more fine detail.
• Havn't tried lighting this piece yet. Previous one looked fine.
  

Sp Dev. Diary #12 - Feb. 14-20, 2009

• Decided to restart the project, this time doing the layout in unreal. A good idea, as it only took two days to get everything layed out.
• Did some more concept art, trying to find a new look which is easier to model.
• Found more reference images. This time of the International Space Station, and of other battleships and aircraft carriers. Very interesting stuff including onboard dentists, barbers, surgery rooms, laundry rooms, etc. Also looked at websites where people design space ship layouts for Star Wars pen and Paper RPG's. Some interesting layout out, and sci fi bits and bobs.
• Started collecting reference images for use in texturing. Found a good new website for textures, called environment-textures.com
  

Sp Dev. Diary #11 - Feb. 2-13, 2009

• Due to car crash, animex, and a football match have gotten very little done
• Decided to use Unreal Ed to build to interior layout. This will save time in the long run, especially since it will give less lighting issues, and will be easier to set up.
• All the details and bits and bobs will still be modeled in 3Ds Max, and then imported in and placed in Unreal.
  

Sp Dev. Diary #10 - Jan. 25-29, 2009

• Started modeling the rooms.
• Made some basic textures for the rooms. They are still lacking lots of detail
• Current plan is to finish off the rooms, then improve on the textures.
• Not quite sure about all the textures yet. Not sure if they will match up with the hallways.
  

Started modeling the environment

This is WIP shot of the church. Most of the textures are done, and am now proceeding to add mesh detail to catch the lighting. Some textures need to be dirtied up a bit more still though, such as the textures for the mouldings.

Sp Dev. Diary #9 - Jan. 19-23, 2009

• Finally got the UT3 editor working, and spent some time re learning the editor, and spent most of the time testing a section of corridor in the engine. Found some issues with how I made the sections of corridors.
• The principal issue is how I textured it. To have multiple materials display on one mesh in UT3, they need to be all in one multi-sub object material in MAX. This means I will have to take time out to rearrange the materials for the corridors before I import the materials into unreal. This means I'm going to have to go back and fix things.
• Will also need to unpack a second set of UV's so that light maps will work correctly in UT3.
• A last issue is to do with scale. After doing some research, I found the height of a UT3 character to be 80 units, so I will need to go in and rescale the parts i've modeled accordingly, to minimize having to rescale inside the editor itself, and to keep things more uniform.
• Also started on new textures for the walls of the starship rooms.
  

Game Environment Mockup

This week a mockup of the game environment was produced, using the model sheets themselves as place holder textures. This mockup is mainly to get an idea of what the environment would look like in 3D, and the scale and distance between things. It'll be shown to the rest of the team, so they can suggest changes. One suggestion already is to put different buildings on different levels, which is definetly something to consider.

Sp Dev. Diary #8 - Jan. 12-16, 2009

- Made some good progress this week. Managed to finish all the corridor sets. Still need to model the rooms and the props
- Next week I'll be getting the Unreal editor as well, so I can test out what it looks like in the engine.

New Website!

Hey,

got a new website up for my portfolio. Check it out! The site links to this blog.

It's not done yet either. Adding new stuff to it all of this week.

Sp Dev. Diary #7 - Jan. 5-9, 2009

• Had a hand in this week, so I didn't have much time to work on it. Needless to say I didn't do much work over christmas.
• Only work I did this week is remodel the hallway arches.
• This means I am slightly behind schedule, and need to catch up over the weekend.
• Also, it turns out I uninstalled the Unreal Tournament 3 editor over summer. Which means I need to find it again.