I'm losing track on what's new now...

Its been around a week and a half since my last post... how bad of me...

Anyway, a few of the days of were spent on getting my essay done for contextual studies, I wrote it on the difference between Western and Eastern game titles and why they differ. It was quite a fun essay to write and research but I had some trouble getting quotes for it...I was pretty pleased with what I managed in the end though...probably one of my better essays...hopefully...

As the title suggests, I'm flicking between bits of work all over the place at the moment, trying to get everything finished of at least in a workable state before the 1st submittal this Friday... I highly doubt everything will be working as I want by then, as the weapon script is proving more difficult than I anticipated...but hopefully by the time the final submittal roles round they should be working...

I'm saying hopefully a lot, that probably isn't good...

But on to work!

I've solved the wall lighting issue where a seam would appear about 3/4 of the way up the mesh and it didn't seem to show on any texture maps. It was just a smoothing groups issue...the amount of times that catches me out... but that's all sorted now, and I even went back and made a slight improvements to the wall while I was there.

I got around the issue of not being able to fire inside the cave as I was using 2 landscapes to make the holes for the cave, as you cant make holes in the landscape as its still in early development. To get around this I just made a quick mesh in 3DS Max and then stole the UDK texture I was using on the other cliffs. It's by no means ideal and it still needs work, but it proved to be a fairly simple, quick fix so I'm not complaining.

I have rescripted the crossbow weapon using the UT3 shock rifle files and adjusting the code. I'm not going to post it all here because it is really long and in 5 or so separate files. But basically I have the weapon in UDK and you can fire it. Although at the moment the crossbow is held sideways, it shoots giant arrows that don't face the right way and lasers shoot out of it and explode people...so yeah, not finalised yet. But I know how to solve most of them problems, or can at least work it out, the only thing I'm unsure about it the mesh emitter which is used to fire the arrows...but if worst comes to worst I can just use a particle emitter and try to make it look like a fast arrow.

Here's the crossbow being held wrong:

Here's the arrow not flying correctly:

As an added weapon bonus, I have the club pickup working, kinda... It's rotating above the pickup point fine, but I think the scale is too big and the pivot is just too high so when he holds it you can only make out the bottom of the handle, but that should be an easy change now that I have it working in game.

I've also made a flag tonight, working from since I left Uni and went shopping, I have managed to model, unwrap and skin a flag that will replace the default UT3 flag. It is 1144 polys, so that works out at 2288 tris in UDK. I have only got base textures on the flag at the moment, but I have a red and blue flag made on the same texture map so the team colours will work. I have not yet set up the physics and cloth on the flag yet so it is only static, but it should flow like the banners do on my environment.

I've made the game a Capture the Flag game mode now...but that only involves changing the prefix to the map name, but I have the flag capture points in now, so it's a playable CTF game!

Hmm, other things I have done...I have tweaked little bits of textures here and there, adding a few spots of mud or rips to the materials. But nothing too major there. Oh, and I made some blocking volumes to keep players for getting out of the level, it is a bit of a cheap way of keeping them in, but it saves no end of time play testing all the ways someone could escape from the map and then tweaking the map again so I'm not complaining.

An interesting error I have come across, which is almost 100% a user error not a program error, is that I have seemed to hide all of the textures and materials as well as deleting and not showing new actor classes. I have tried flicking it though all the different viewing modes but cant seem to figure it out, which is interesting...Luckily it's not just my map, the base UDK ones are like it too and the textures load when you play it, so I hopefully haven't horribly destroyed it a few days before 1st submission...

Makes it look snowy which is cool, but if anyone knows what has caused this could you just drop me a message with a fix? I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough but any time saved on this project is a massive help. Maybe I only need a computer restart or something...but hopefully it wont stick around and be a problem...

I just managed to get no errors or warnings while compiling the UDK scripts...so that's a nice little personal victory for me

I was writing this blog as I was working on my other screen and I'm just gob smacked at how fast I'm working at the moment, I cant keep up blogging with everything that's getting done, and that's a really good feeling

/Superlongblogpost

UDK Extravaganza

Been a while since the last update and a lot has changed since then. I've moved back home for the next 3 weeks over Easter, which is nice because I get to see all my family and friends and it hasn't had an impact on my work so far...instead the opposite has happened, I've been getting more work done.

For a start I have modelled and textured 2 new assets over the last 2 days, well I kinda made 2... It more one that I have cut up to make 2 to save on asset creation time. They are a campfire and a weapon pickup point, they are simple but the plan was always to keep most of the props quick and simple so I can get more assets in. They both have diffuse maps but not specular or normal maps yet, I would leave them without normal maps to save on memory but they are using the same texture file as the walls and that already has a normal map, turns out using 1 map for many objects is actually quite rewarding.

Here is the campfire with fire particle effects (stolen from UDK)

And then the weapon pickup point is simply the campfire without the wood burning.

I need to look at the script a bit more but I should be able to set it so the weapons hover above the custom pickup point as they do in UDK. While on the subject I've managed to get the weapons into the engine so you can pick them up, took a while but it turns out you need a separate package for the weapons rather than a separate group like I was using.

Here's a screenshot of the crossbow hovering over the pickup point, they still need lots of work but it's a great first step.

I have added the barrels from the minor project assignment as they fit the theme of it quite well and its a free asset to add to the project without wasting much time, and every extra prop I add will increase the effectiveness of the overall feel of it.

These barrels also have physics materials attached to them and can be knocked over and fired around, the collision mesh has also been made in a way that means it will hit the tap and stop rolling in a realistic way without having an over the top collision mesh which is great.

Also I have remade the terrain as it was much larger than I needed it to be and it was having a negative impact on the performance. It also plays better now as it doesn't take so long to walk from one end to the other. The 3rd bonus to the smaller environment is that I have less space to fill with objects which also helps the performance as there's less meshes everywhere.

Finally I have the shadows working on the landscape better, turns out there is a setting for the quality of shadows in the landscapes properties that I changed from 1 to 10 and now it has pretty pretty shadows everywhere.

Also I have been improving the ogre texture and that is almost complete now as well as beginning a model for a banner that will be in front of the Mongol camp and in front of the Ogre cave...once that has been made.

So there's plenty more to do but I it has gone very well over the past week and if this keeps up I should have everything I need working with some extras if I am lucky :)

Textures and Grades

Hi everyone, sorry its been a long time since my last post, didn't have the internet at all over reading week, then I was busy handing in my texturing assignment for uni, then....well I just forgot...

But anyway to start with I got my first marks of the 2nd year and the first marks that count towards my final uni grade... the project was the modelling texturing and skinning of a hand (which is on this blog) luckily I managed to do well with a 2:1 at 68%, so only 2% off a first which is great for my first art project, it was a really confidence booster :)

Now on to more recent stuff, I finished the texturing project on Monday and was pretty pleased with the results, texturing was always the bit I was most concerned with when I switched to art and I've had some decent feedback off peers so it should go well

First off here's the Beer Keg turnaround...

Then the Shipping Container...

Now the deodorant bottle...

And finally the jewellery box...

Overall I'm pleased with what I produced, but there are a few problems such as the smoothing groups on the deodorant bottle and the jewellery box wasn't great in the end, but i did have quite a few problems when transfer mapping and generating ambient occlusion maps towards the end of the project.

I'm also working on a side project at the moment while the the work load isn't too much, I'm quite excited about it personally although it's not really a big thing, ill post an update showing it over the next few days.

So a fairly successful start to the year! Bring on the rest of it!

Art, Crates, Skulls and Tings

Hi, all been a while since I updated my blog so I thought I would give everyone an update on whats been happening.

First things first, I've decided to take the plunge and swap over to the art side of the course...I'll be completing the art assignment for this years minor project and at the end I can either stick with art or switch back to animation if I find I don't like it, so that's reassuring.

So for this years minor project (which is 4 weeks long) I have to create 2 barrels and 2 boxes which have diffuse, specular and bump maps on them. I point of this project is to do as little modelling as possible and rely entirely on the textures to carry the project so it will be a good test to see if I enjoy it enough to follow it through for the rest of the course.

Today we had a quick lecture on texturing and got given some photos to work into our texture, so I made this crate in an hour or two...

In other news I have been trying to improve my drawing by doing an hour or two every night. So far I have been working on anatomy and trying to get character proportions right, but today I decided to try something different and used Photoshop to sketch some skulls to try and help me with facial proportions and also to work on my sketching in Photoshop using a tablet as its something I've never really tried before.

It's not great, but then that's the point of practising, so if I keep it up I'll hopefully see an improvement *crosses fingers*