10th may

today i managed to import my character into my level and get it to animate when the player gets close to it.

I have also imported in some of my final assets including the hall cabinet which i decided to include since simon sudgested that my hall looked a bit bare and because it is a long corridor it made it look even longer because it was empty.

even this small cabinet breaks up this area making it looks smaller.

Year 3

Technically, for myself, this year has been quite weird, as in the fact that if i think back even to as little time ago as the rooftop project I cant help but think that it was really quite a poor project as most of the problems I had during were easily remidied.
And then i think of all the things I have learned even as recently as the last week:
the cloth modifier
little max tools which make life so much easier
that a lighting map is the difference between a flat texture and something more realistic
Alot of unreal tools-matinee, kismet, different material techniques and interactive meshes.

If i could go back to the start of this year even the start of the course I would have tried harder to not stick to my ways and be more open to different techniques.

previous screenshots

 

This was a previous shot of the living room. I altered this area of my level by desaturating the wallpaper and making it a more deeper colour by going back to a darker blue.
i also z-brushed the blue ottoman as in this image above it looks very box like and without any defining chair like qualities
I also changed the material of the chair and settee to a softer and smoother material and darkened the wood on the chair.
Along the walls i added the wooden panels mentioned in the earlier blog.

This image is a good example of the over saturated issue.
I have desaturated everything in this room.
I have improved the cabinet on the top left of the image and made it look more stately as opposed to the light coloured quite boring cupboard i previously have in
i also changed the fireplace as visually it was quite ugly, i have replaced it with a much more impressive and more intricately designed fireplace.
I also added sun beams to some of the windows as it made the level look like there was something outside of the house instead of just being the interior to a house. To accentuate the light i added a plane with an extreme emmisive applied to it so that it would shine out between the blinds and create a sunny day effect.

Attic

To make this area of my level more closed in as throughout this project size has been a big issue, i decided to make it more shadowed and also mentioned in my sketchbook this also made it more atmospheric and as this is an area of the level my character is hiding out in it seemed that it would be quite a dark area.
I also found that when i dimmed the lights that quite a few of my assets were being wasted in the shadows so i then had to bring them out into the light this also helped with the sizing issue as it made the area seem smaller.

The hall

The hall was more an issue that the other areas as this area in particular seemed overly big so to try to combat this i also added the wooden panels from the living room to the hall as well this had the desired effect, in that it enclosed it more and made the space feel tighter. i will continue to improve tis area till the end. By making pictures for the walls, and various other things to hang up.
The top of the stairs was another area I had problems with but in this area the problem was the lighting as the area was too dark. It seemed to be that the only was to make it lighter was to put the light on at the top of the stairs which would not be right as the level is set in the day and would look odd so i put in a window and a small sky dome just outside to make it look as if there is an outside to my level, I still have yet to create the texture for this but I don't anticipate this taking too long.

Interactive elements

Since the last presentation I have added a few interactive elements including

Another opening door from the attic to the landing
and various Light switches to lighten the more darker areas if the player needs it.

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21st april

well as the end is near this is where I am and what i have been doing within the last few weeks

Since the last tutorial, heather and Chris suggested that i make my level less saturated i.e take the colour levels down a bit as it didn't really reflect the genre the books are from and instead of making the level less Gothic as Chris suggested I have in fact gone too far away from it, which is something i agree with and have since altered.
I have also, to make my level less static, added dust particle effects in the attic, and steam particles from the cup on the coffee table.
I have 'gothed up' some of the furniture as well as it was all a bit too modern and typical American.
In the attic to make it more attic like i have included cobweb decals and planes overlay ed with dust decals which gives it a more attic like look instead of being too clean which i felt that it was previously.
I also felt that some of my level was still too open and spacious I tried to solve this problem by adding dark wooden panels along some of the walls in the living room and the hall of the house this also gave the level more of a Gothic and expensive feel which is also something i was looking to achieve.

Where the character is concerned i have almost finished textureing and am considering how to import her into the unreal file. I may have her laying down on the mattress as replacing the main character which her seems almost impossible at this stage with such short space of time left.

Outso character test brief

This is my submission for the Outso Internship

DGDS (the programming thing)

Here are more of the assets i have created for the programmers society:

FMP -character render

This is my FMP character I have yet to:

Refine the textures i.e add more detail to the clothes, skin, hair

Rig it (this however wont take long)

FMP

I am well into the fmp now and am near the end of completing the character as well as most of my assets. here are some of the designs for my character:

Id upload a render but I'm at my local library, as for my level that is going quite well I am however having a sizing issue (my level looks overly spacious which i think is a problem with the bsp attempting to fix this issue has meant that i have had to re size most of the bsp which is a massive irritation but on the other hand it looks alot better now especially the living room of the level. Surprisingly I have based some of the living room area on my own living room the (shape/ size)I found doing this made not only the living room look more believable but it also made it look much more attractive.
I am now working on the bottom of the stairs/entry of the house which is largely unfinished due to it being less important than the attic and the living room, that however wont stop it looking worse than the rest of the house.

wot i descovered?

well recently I've been thinking to myself  'i used to do alot more work at college' and i wanted to do this project right because its my last one so i sat and thought why. and i discovered that im still doing the same amount of work but its easy to misplace work when you dont know where it is as i used to print out all of my research drawings and renders and keep them all in a sketch book so i could look through and annotate which enables me to keep track of thing so that is why for this project i will do the same mainly for the research and sketches and ideas.

the programming thing

Well for the past few weeks i have been attending the programming group, club, social thing, and iv got to say it has been interesting. When i first went along I had my doubts and i still do with there still being no animators present (with them deciding whether they want to come or not) we don't actually look at this point if we will finish at all.
However i am pleased to say that I (probably because I'm the only third year there) have managed to get to model one of the main characters. Here he is:

(Ive got to say at this point I'm really happy with him and that rarely happens)

Iv also had the chance to make some other really attractive assets which i normally would not make. So personally even though it may still fail and we might not finish I have had the opportunity to make some good looking assets and I can also say I have worked as a group made up of more than just game artists which has enabled me to see how we all factor into to the process which is I suppose is worth it.

The programming society thing

Well not only did i attend, Im also a rep for the game art students, yay.
So where do I begin, well i think il start with their overly large and powerful computors, wtf how much memory does a bit of code take up?
I mean while were up here trying to figure out which computors a) actually run unreal and b) will it actually build your work, while theyre over there complaining that the log in time for there monster machines is five minutes (boo hoo).
Also why is it necessary for them to have space invader carpets and pac man walls surely that could buy something more productive.
And do they really need that 3d projector????

They also didnt seem to understand what we do (play games and draw was their understanding) so we spent a while explaining a number of times explaining that we do more than that.

Apart from these obvious flaws the night wasnt that bad, and im sure if we keep going every thursday we'l learn something about working with programmers and how things work.

FMP

So i have chosen to create a house from the books. It is at an important part of the book and although it doesnt feature too heavily, the description is enough for me to create it.
I will not however be creating all of the house only the parts mentioned in the third book in this particulaer scene these areas include:
The attic
The stairs from the attic
The landing
The stairs to downstairs
And the living room

I will also be creating a character I think at this point it will probrably be the main female character Elena as it is her the book follows at this point.