FMX and Stuttgart

Hey everyone, it's been a week or so since my last post and that is because I have been in Germany for the FMX festival in Stuttgart. It was an amazing trip, a great laugh and really interesting, hopefully I will be able to make it again next year, money permitting, and I will be able to show my work off to industry professionals.

There was some really interesting talks I went to see, and many that I didn't get to make, the highlights included Building Creatures at Weta, the many John Carter talks about creatures and environments, Animating Reptiles presented by Stuart Sumida and the Mass Effect 3 Tech Art.

Manning the University of Glamorgan stall was also fun, I got to meet some really interesting people from many backgrounds and had a good few conversations with people, and while I wasn't talking to people I was either talking to other people manning the stall with me or spending it looking up information on unity for next years project.

But back to major project...I didn't get any work done over the FMX week as I didn't take it with me, I thought it would be too much hassle taking it there and back and I wasn't going to get much work done anyway, but that obviously adds much more stress on this final week, and I have plenty to do for the Friday submittal.

Since the last post I fixed the problem with the club mesh flashing, I only had to make a physics asset for some unknown reason but trying to find a solution to this took quite a while, but I made it and then wrote some script to reference the physics asset so that works now.

I have also been working on the textures for lots of the models after the 1st submittal feedback, I have pretty much started the club and crossbow textures from scratch, in some cases I think this worked but in other cases it has made it quite awkward to work such as changing the firing mechanism of the crossbow from wood to metal.

No pretty pictures this time I'm afraid, no time to work on that, but will be posting some of my turnarounds and screencaps on here as I create them for submittal

Almost 1st submittal time...

So tomorrow I have the first submittal deadline at 6:30pm so I have been rendering turnarounds like nobody's business...there are a LOT of turnarounds...

But as for work it's gone quite well over the last few days, I got the crossbow to face the right way now. It wasn't to do with the coding which would explain why I couldn't see it, it was just one of the settings on the skeletal mesh editor that told it to rotate at 90 degrees for some reason.

I've also scaled the crossbow up and the club down so it is more realistic. I tried doing this before but couldn't get the sizes so change, apparently you have to rescale and then re-skin in Max before exporting again. So I just created a used a Scale variable in the code to save me time.

I got the arrow flying more realistically, although sometimes it would mess up... either travelling very slowly or seemingly not appearing. But I went back on to the net and found a different piece of code for programming projectile static meshes and customised that one to fit the crossbow and arrow. This has worked much better now and I even have it so that the arrows stick into walls and objects! It goes wrong when you kill a player as the arrow floats where it hit the player but there is a chance I wont be able to fix that in time as I wouldn't really know where to start.

Here's a video of the crossbow working correctly and the arrows sticking into the walls:

I've also set up some sound cues for the firing of the crossbow, the impact of the arrow and attacking with the club (although the club hit is really annoying and needs to be changed). I then linked them through the code so that they play at the times specified and hey presto!

I've also used kismet for the first time in this project to change the starting weapons of the characters...but this has been met with limited success so far. I tried to get it so that when a player spawns it removes the existing weapon (the link gun) and replaces it with a custom weapon (the club) but at the moment it removes everyone's weapons and only gives them a club every time a player spawns, which is annoying when your trying to use a crossbow. I'll have to look into this more but for now I'm making it so the player keeps the link gun but also gets the club, for testing it's fine as the AI prefer the club and it never runs out of ammo so they don't use the link gun, but that will need to change.

Here's a screenshot of the simple kismet I have set up:

Joe did find an error earlier with getting his code and my code to run in game, as his code is run before my code due to its placement in the config folder but it references my packages. We cannot load my packages first though as they all expand on the default UDK code.

Hopefully this wont be too much of a problem come the final submission but we may not have it working in time for the 1st submittal which is a shame, but for the first deadline I don't think we've done too badly.

3 day post streak!

This is now the 3rd day in a row where I believe I have enough work to warrant another blog post, which is great. Although I really don't think I'll be able to keep this up much longer, I'm starting to hit roadblocks now and works beginning to slow down.

Today I managed to update the flag texture somewhat. I added a bit of normal detail to the golden part as was my first intention, I did this by finding an image and then using it as a Mudbox stencil. I also wanted to add lots of cloth folds to the flag...but I didn't think it through when I upwrapped it and lay all of the flag pieces on top of each other meaning Mudbox cant render it out...ah well... lesson learned I guess.

Here's the flag now:

Its far from finished...but well...you get the picture.

I now have the crossbow firing arrows semi-correctly. The arrow mesh now points in the direction you are looking, so the arrow no longer comes out sideways, and it now travels at a more normal speed. I also rescaled the arrow so that it is more realistic compared to the crossbow and players. The problem at the moment is it has a wierd bug while flying through the air and I'm not entirely sure what's causing it. Either the mesh emitter is firing more than one mesh and it's confusing it or something is going wrong while rendering it and it's not showing correctly. I'm going to try and take a closer look at this soon by getting the AI to fire some arrows and trying to observe it from a different angle.

I would post a screenshot of the arrow going wrong but I could be here all day trying to get the timing right.

Another thing I have managed to figure out is the weird shadows being cast on the main tent. This was, as suspected, a lightmass unwrap issue. I just had to go back in and take the lightmass unwrap to more extremes and it seemed to do the trick. It took some time testing it every time I tweaked it though, as I had to rebuild the lighting in UDK which currently takes around 5 minutes.

And last but certainly not least...I managed to playtest it today, with bots running round and managed to make it a proper capture the flag game that the bots join in and play, which is great. I would love to have seen the smile on my face for the first 10 minutes of playing it until I realised I should probably actually be working. I screen recorded a video of the bots all running round playing capture the flag, the quality may not be particularly good on here but I'll be doing a better render sometime before Monday's deadline anyway.

There are no Ogres or Mongolians running around at the moment as I haven't added Joe's script files or USk packages into my UDK setup yet, but that will be easy enough to sort out, I'm just waiting for them to be completed. The weapons are not running yet either although I have re-done the script for the club now and the AI can use the weapons. (They can use the crossbow anyway, I'm yet to test the club but it's using almost identical code) I decided to leave the weapons out as they are currently firing lasers to determine impact and the club is long ranged and problems like that so I thought for the viewing it would just be better to use the UT3 weapons.

Tomorrow I will probably use most of my time trying to get the weapon scripts working how I want them too, just so I have some kind of working weapons for Monday's first submittal, but if I find I'm getting nowhere with it I'll get on with some texturing as a lot fo that still needs completing.

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 :)

More Ogres and Crossbows

Just a quick update on where the models are, not a huge difference as I have been working on my critical studies and visual forms but slowly battling through the work

Once the Ogre is done I can hand that over to Joe Hornsby to rig and get it into UDK and then him and Matt Watson can animate it.

Then when I have that and the crossbow done I can start looking at weapon set ups in UDK which look fairly complex so I want to get that done earlier on in the assignment to make sure I can do it.

Finally I have been playing with the UDK and the landscape tool which is a great tool used to easily make outdoor environments that seems quite easy to use.

Here's the most recent Ogre turnaround...

And I finished modelling and have just started texturing the crossbows, although the texturing is still in a very early state...

Ogres and Crossbows

So I haven't updated in a while so here goes...

I knew I wouldn't get a full weeks worth of work done of reading week with everything going on and well...I want to enjoy myself and see family and friends I haven't seen in a while, but I did get some work done

This is the ogre model so far , I did the majority of this work in the first week of major project...

Then over reading week I have modelled the crossbow which only needs a few final tweaks...

And also started the main tent for the Mongolian camp last night...

I'm going to start texturing some of these models when I get back to uni, I'm not doing it now because...well...I cant be bothered at the moment. But the modelling seems to be going smoothly so I'm getting a fair amount done at home...

That being said I'm beginning to see the mountain of work I have to climb before the end of the project...and the top of it is in the clouds somewhere, so I do hope that things continue to go smoothly for the majority of the project.

Once I've modelled and textured the crossbow I might try getting it in to UDK to try to set up the parameters and settings of it to get it working in game and even begin setting up the environment as these are things I haven't done before and will most likely need some help with it along the way so best to start it early and hit all the stumbling blocks now rather than at the end.