2 weeks to go....

And only one week of work time left...

Scary thought...

So the deadline is now 13 days away, and about 6 of them days are taken up with my FMX trip to Germany, so realistically I have 7 days left of work left on the project that I feel like I've been working on for years

The project is nearing an end (both in terms of the deadline and the production process) and I feel we've come quite far in the last 13 weeks, but I don't want to mess it up at the end so working hats on for double crunch time

Since the last post I had my feedback for the 1st submittal and while most of my work was not viewable due to an error with the video (most likely my fault during the rendering) I was able to get some really good, in depth feedback on my work, a lot of which was done over Easter which none of the tutors have seen yet. So it was nice to get a fresh view from them and it has opened my eyes to the errors of my work.

The feedback mostly consisted of my models being modelled too perfectly, with too many straight lines and everything looking like it was made in a factory, which is a very good point now I look at it as these are items made by Mongolian warriors and Ogres...

To remedy this I have gone back and edited a few of the models by only shifting around points so that I dont destroy the UV unwraps. This limits me a bit to the changes I can make but it also saves a lot of time, and time is something we don't have much of at this stage.

Here is the reworked campfire and weapon pickup points:

I also edited the UV unwraps and re-textured and viewport canvased it to get rid of the huge horrible seams it had on it.

And I have made the post on which the banner stands less straight, although I could not do too much with this as there were only a few edge loops on that part of the model:

It's a small change but I think it helps.

Another recurring theme in my feedback was that the colours were very flat, they sometimes had lighter and darker areas but they were all the same hue. This is another thing that I never noticed until it was pointed out to me, then it became obvious. So that is the other major change I am going to make over the next couple of weeks.

I have also added some more war paint to the Ogre. I was going to leave the paint as it was so it was more subtle than overpowering but because we can no longer make the teams into Mongolians and Ogres (due to me and Joe not fully understanding how to achieve this while also getting it to load my scripts) we are using the war paint as a team signifier. So Ogres on the red team have red war paint, and Ogres on the blue team have blue war paint.

On the same note the green cloth of the male Mongolian I modelled has now be changed to red and blue respectively. It is not the ideal scenario but as a quick and easy solution at the end of the assignment I think it works quite well.

Overall thought the feedback was good, I was told I had everything finished more or less, so I had nothing too big to worry about from now on, I just need to edit textures and models to make them look better and score extra marks, so that was encouraging to hear. And in terms of scripting and the like, I think I only need to find a way to remove the link gun on spawn and I will have finished messing with it and will leave it so I don't monumentally break everything in the last few days

On a side note, I just compiled my digital sketchbook for my Visual Forms hand it which is not until the 8th (or something near there) but I have had to complete it early as I will be in Germany then. I would have handed it in but the tutors still haven't put up a digital dropbox for them so I have handed them to Jess and she has agreed to submit them for me :)

It's starting to come together!

Been just over a week since the last update, kept meaning to do it but I never had the time. But I do now!

So where to start...lets have a screenshot of the environment so far

Its looking pretty good now... If I do say so myself... better than I could see it being a few weeks ago anyway. The biggest change since last time must be the cave, it's only a model at the moment and its in the stage of unwrapping (which is being a pain) but I will hopefully have that mudboxed and textured soon.

As the landscaping tools I used in UDK are still in their infancy it does not yet have the ability it but holes in it for the cave, so I have made a second landscape over the top of it, although this comes with a few problems...firstly the shadows seem to be messing up on the hills, not entirely sure why. Secondly when stood underneath the 2nd landscape all bullets seem to disappear...

The trees and rocks that have been added are just UDK base meshes that I'm using as I don't have the time to model all of the rocks and foliage as well as everything else. I did have to make a collision mesh for one of the trees and all the rocks but they only took a short amount of time.

There's banners outside the Mongol camp and the Ogre cave now. I didn't intend to make them in pre production but I was getting a lot of feedback saying the environment needed more colour so it seemed like a fun way to add a bit of variety.

There is also some torches in the scene now, although they have only been very basically textured. They have the same fire effect as the campfire that have just been scaled down slightly.

Anyway, enough of the text, more pictures are needed! This is a picture of the banner that's outside the Mongol camp, it is a skeletal mesh meaning it can be animated, and its using cloth physics on the flag, I was going to record a video of it flapping in the wind but it's not screen recording very well...either way it works...

And here is the one outside the Ogre cave:

As a side note the textures have been updated since these screenshots and I have used an opacity map to give it a frayed and damaged look.

Up next is the torch:

Like I said, the cave and the torches are not properly textured yet, but you get the point. The firs is above the torches and a separate light just in front of the mesh gives the cave its lighting. When I tried to add some of the lights on the torches in the Mongol camp it broke the world lighting so I will probably leave them as unlit torches, but the ones in the cave work and they are the important ones.

Next... some puddles...

I've added a plane of water to the environment but placed it so it only leaves puddles rather than swim-able water. There are multiple puddles in the cave (you might struggle to see them but once the cave is textured they will stand out more) and a large puddle outside the cave.

Finally, and least impressively...
I gave the Ogre a bit of war paint, more to come...

But it feels like a good amount of work for a week and a half-ish and I'm still getting lots of free time while I'm home! Now I just need to start finallising everything so it looks more polished and write my critical studies essay...but it's looking good so far!

/optimism 

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 :)

A Small Update

Not a huge amount to report on this time round, work seems to be slowing down and I need to try and get into the swing of things again. The texturing of the Ogre has been something I have been working on for quite a while but I don't seem to be getting very far with it, so I'm going to leave it for a moment and come back to it later with a fresh mind.

Here is the latest update of the Ogre:

I've gotten the basic map blocked out in UDK and managed to set up the texture painting so I can easily replace any textures I need to, such as the grass being clearly tiled.

The only other work I've got done since the last update has been more drawings. I'm going to be updating with drawings every time I post because I'm doing it every day and it should keep me motivated to keep drawing to update here.

But here's the most recent drawings:

Orge Textures and Drawings

I've just been chipping away at the mountain of work over the past few days, I think I'm slightly behind my schedule, but that was to be expected really and I have Easter as a contingency to make sure I can get everything completed.

I have finished the Ogre model, I have unwrapped it and begun texturing it, the skinning has been left to Joe Hornsby and should be done quite soon, meaning he can be animated and put into UDK (fingers crossed)

Here's the most recent turnaround

I've also been doing a lot of drawing recently as it's something I've needed to improve on for a while now but after the mid term tutorials with Gareth I've had more motivation to really get good at it, so I've been doing an average of about 1 hour of drawing a day and I'm pretty pleased with the results so far, here's some more of my drawings...

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.