I forgot to include my latest iteration of my water shader which I've uploaded to YouTube.
Saturday, 6 February 2010
Friday, 5 February 2010
VIVA LA STEAMPUNK
Out with the Gothic, in with the Steampunk. I just need to spend time making them dirty and give them the right feel. They really stand out but some of them stand out too much against my current scenes. Also GoW is playing up, hope I can fix that tomorrow.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
UDK! FINALLY!
UDK
Jesus, coming back from the GoW engine to the UDK engine is such a massive relief. It just functions....properly. No worrying about crashing if you want to create a material, no waiting around for sub-applications to open, lightmass!
Unwrap No more!
One thing I was worried about was unwrapping and texturing. Fortunately, I've been reading up on vertex blending with textures, and I think I may have found my way out while at the same time learning a feature which I can see myself using, a lot. All I have to do is unwrap my model, that's still the tricky part, but then I can just import it into UDK and use vertex blending with a bunch of metal textures and create some awesome materials. Another big plus is I can use the same materials on a lot of different assets, this is a great memory saver allowing me to bump up my lightmaps.
Here is my start, doesn't look like much...well, anything atm, but I just wanted to get scaling sorted out and have a go at vertex blending. It worked out great, my textures were a bit stretched though, but that was just lazy unwrapping on my part...1 button, done.
I'm still not sure on the setting of the map. In the reference picture, the artist has gone for a midday colour scheme, but I'm tempted to go for dawn. Luckily that can be decided near the end if I want.
Jesus, coming back from the GoW engine to the UDK engine is such a massive relief. It just functions....properly. No worrying about crashing if you want to create a material, no waiting around for sub-applications to open, lightmass!
Unwrap No more!
One thing I was worried about was unwrapping and texturing. Fortunately, I've been reading up on vertex blending with textures, and I think I may have found my way out while at the same time learning a feature which I can see myself using, a lot. All I have to do is unwrap my model, that's still the tricky part, but then I can just import it into UDK and use vertex blending with a bunch of metal textures and create some awesome materials. Another big plus is I can use the same materials on a lot of different assets, this is a great memory saver allowing me to bump up my lightmaps.
Here is my start, doesn't look like much...well, anything atm, but I just wanted to get scaling sorted out and have a go at vertex blending. It worked out great, my textures were a bit stretched though, but that was just lazy unwrapping on my part...1 button, done.
I'm still not sure on the setting of the map. In the reference picture, the artist has gone for a midday colour scheme, but I'm tempted to go for dawn. Luckily that can be decided near the end if I want.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
1/2 way there!
Ok, this is where my game starts. I won't go into the story again but you start on a train coming back from another city and the train crashes, you hit your head - bam, amnesia. Cheesy but that can be worked on.
Anyway, I created the background for the title in Photoshop and then created the image for the Seed (the red glowing circle) in the material editor. This is my first time using interactive menus in UI scene, but they are pretty easy to do, especially after having worked in flash for so long.
It then goes into a scene where you hear the train come into the station. I used this matinee sequence, which lasts 13 seconds, to load in all the levels. In fact, The game only appears to take 0.1 seconds to load (using stat levels), on my PC by using level streaming. There is also no slowdown or lag as it's basically a blank screen with a verse from O'Fortuna on which I thought was fitting, all the loading happens without the player realizing.
Monday, 25 January 2010
Coffee, Nescafe, Hot.
That was a reference to Picard asking for Earl Grey....obviously. Anywhooo, this has been a very productive and busy week for me. I didn't think it was possible to work 19 hours a day for seven days, but with the help of an amount of coffee that would kill a small elephant, I've produced a great show piece for todays presentation. Mix that in with the 3D work I've been doing plus my materials in UDK and I think today should go down great. When I get back I'll upload some screenshots, maybe some videos and write up on what I've done.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
It's all soooo quiet
I've decided not to post any screenshots of my work up until the presentation this coming Monday. I'm really busy atm, working from 11 in the morning till 5 in the morning (Yeah, 17 hour days....) on this project and I'm loving how it's coming along. So I don't want to post any screenies until I have it just right, with lighting etc.
Edit: A couple of things I will say, first, lightning. Doing it with 4 dynamic lights was a bad idea, I had a look at my lighting complexity and everything was red, I was wondering why it was so laggy. Anyway I deleted them and ta daaaaa, it's all fast again. Secondly, I got GoW working on my laptop, loads of things wrong with it which comes down to bad porting from Epic and M$. Anyway, I published my map to see what it would run like on my laptop for my presentation, and even the old version, with SUPER RED lighting complexity was running smoothly at 60+ fps. So I think next Monday should go just as smooth.
Edit: A couple of things I will say, first, lightning. Doing it with 4 dynamic lights was a bad idea, I had a look at my lighting complexity and everything was red, I was wondering why it was so laggy. Anyway I deleted them and ta daaaaa, it's all fast again. Secondly, I got GoW working on my laptop, loads of things wrong with it which comes down to bad porting from Epic and M$. Anyway, I published my map to see what it would run like on my laptop for my presentation, and even the old version, with SUPER RED lighting complexity was running smoothly at 60+ fps. So I think next Monday should go just as smooth.
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Full Steam Ahead (Part 2)
OK, Client brief out the way, thank god. Now all I have left is my dissertation then I can put 110% effort into my FMP.
4+ Hours to make a light...
I had a couple of days break after I handed in my Client Project, but the other day I started working on my FMP again and I was wondering why the GoW editor didn't have very good lighting. It looks ok, but I remember the lighting on the XBox version being miles better. So I had a read about and I found some screenshots of peoples levels that had a lot better lighting. So I tried to get some dynamic lighting going when the player kicks a door down but it just wasn't working. I spent well over 4 hours trying to figure the problem out, writing on forums asking for help, trawling through the UDN. I managed to get the lighting working in both UT3 and UDK, but GoW was being a stubbern git...
So I decided I would look around the games files to see if I could find a problem, and sure enough, looking through the games .ini file, the dynamic and composite shadows we're turned off, as well as the bloom... No idea why. Anyway, after I fixed that I had a masssssive moral boost. I went on a frenzy last night and today creating some matinee and interactive scripted sequences and I also imported my railroad and built the train and train station.
MOAR Writing
I really need to concentrate on more of my games aspects and ideas. I want to be a level designer, so I'm pretty much spending all my time on the level, but this project will also be marked on the actual game concept etc. So, I've made a list of things I need to do, such as write down weapons, what they do, what they look like and a brief outline of the weapon. I also need to write up about the characters in the game, both major and minor. There's a ton of other aspects I need to write about as well, such as how the level design is to pan out, the pacing of the level, sequences and other interactive scenes I want to include and also the conversations the player will have in the game.
Screen Shot Heaven/Hell
I decided to take a lottttttt of screen shots to bring anyone reading the blog up to speed. I added the lights to get a feel but I'll be getting rid of them once I've uploaded the pictures. It looks nice, but it's not worth the build times until I get to the lighting stage.
4+ Hours to make a light...
I had a couple of days break after I handed in my Client Project, but the other day I started working on my FMP again and I was wondering why the GoW editor didn't have very good lighting. It looks ok, but I remember the lighting on the XBox version being miles better. So I had a read about and I found some screenshots of peoples levels that had a lot better lighting. So I tried to get some dynamic lighting going when the player kicks a door down but it just wasn't working. I spent well over 4 hours trying to figure the problem out, writing on forums asking for help, trawling through the UDN. I managed to get the lighting working in both UT3 and UDK, but GoW was being a stubbern git...
So I decided I would look around the games files to see if I could find a problem, and sure enough, looking through the games .ini file, the dynamic and composite shadows we're turned off, as well as the bloom... No idea why. Anyway, after I fixed that I had a masssssive moral boost. I went on a frenzy last night and today creating some matinee and interactive scripted sequences and I also imported my railroad and built the train and train station.
MOAR Writing
I really need to concentrate on more of my games aspects and ideas. I want to be a level designer, so I'm pretty much spending all my time on the level, but this project will also be marked on the actual game concept etc. So, I've made a list of things I need to do, such as write down weapons, what they do, what they look like and a brief outline of the weapon. I also need to write up about the characters in the game, both major and minor. There's a ton of other aspects I need to write about as well, such as how the level design is to pan out, the pacing of the level, sequences and other interactive scenes I want to include and also the conversations the player will have in the game.
Screen Shot Heaven/Hell
I decided to take a lottttttt of screen shots to bring anyone reading the blog up to speed. I added the lights to get a feel but I'll be getting rid of them once I've uploaded the pictures. It looks nice, but it's not worth the build times until I get to the lighting stage.
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