Third year

for this years project i am in a group of seven my part of the team is environment artist. specifically the city and outpost modeler. the process i am going to use is by staring off with an extremely simple grey box just to block out paths. once this is done i will go on to build basic designed smaller structures which are in the city or out posts. (such as stalls, carts and tents.) moving onto the larger buildings then to the small items such as props and weapons.

after that the process would then move onto texturing but at this stage that is still on the back burner until i have the large buildings done.

Witches Domain

This project focus more on what i want to make and improving my skills in Maya. At the start of this project i knew that i wanted to do something focusing around Gothic architecture and play with the idea of fantasy. This leaded to the idea of a witches house but in a way didn't really seem that challenging. Once begun to look at references of what Gothic architecture was like. This idea that the witch herself was not poor but was wealthy but did lead a secluded life.

The images above are what have influenced my work the most looking at how detailed most Gothic architecture is. As i thought about what i want to produce as my final piece the designs. the windows take the softer side of gothic design as to show that this is the good witch and not the bad witches

i clearly knew what i wanted the place to be set in a large mushroom forest where the building would be hidden deep in the forest. Focusing on what the shape could possibly be, the sketches below started to bring my idea to life more the one on the right didn't appeal to me shape wise but the left one stood out so i developed a basic sketch over it.

i took the roof of the left one as i liked that feature the most and expanded on it. as i know i want the witch herself to be good i wanted to make the building itself to look more uninviting as it would have an wary feel to it.

the first is a front view of the left hand concept, i placed it in its environment where the building itself could possibly be on a large mushroom. the middle image didn't really stand out to me as it seemed to simple and even though as an isometric design felt to much out of place with my idea. the last on on the right though has more of the vibe i want where its high up limited access and says yes a witch live here more than the first two.

i moved on to colour choices as that helps define the area and what i could possible produce. the blues are more to add a hint of colour and fantasy to the environment and contrasts the purple ascetic that i wanted to go with my building. the first of the images below seems 

the final grey box of the tower. i changed the style a slight amount as to give the tower needs a better silhouette. 

the tower in progress of being made

the bottom of the house is supported but a series of planks. i could make the house large planks of wood i could use Zbrush to create a highly detailed board of the planks. but it may not be they way i want it go.

the house its two stories high the and inside would have more planks and metal supports. the roof curves as to give a moor eerie effect. the door is no longer a normal door i thought the a circular door would have a nicer effect. the images below are parts that are details of the building and the area. 

the entrance of the house now i feel as if i use the influence of Asian culture. and i may extend the bottom step as to give more of the a landing space i may have it as stone or wood. the supports are made of wood, and would also have a small shoe rack or a place to put her broom.

the human entrance is up a series of mushrooms and through a gap in the stones. on the inside there would be a spiral stair case. and a plank leading out as to show a way to actually get in. there are also stone supports to hold up the building.

i needed to make a area and as i looked at my references for the area that i want the surrounding environment to be fully represented. so i knew i wanted to have large mushrooms. i also needed to come up with ideas of items that could go on the hanging porch. the images below are ideas that i can up up with. 

i went with the first drawing that i did as i felt it went with my environment the most. below after i modeled it by using the curve tool to get the wrap around effect that i wanted. after i made the model i used turtle to create an ambient occlusion. this was shown to me by Phil. i then experiment with colour choices. this is shown below.

i then i made all my other object, UV unwrapped them, and began to texture them.

 after finding and sorting all the texture i then began to place everything in unity, as to start creating my scene. 

i move around the light as to get a feel of the colours and the idea of what i want the light to be. the shapes of the trees really add an effect to the whole environment. as well as the colours that i finally chose add a small amount of colour. next is applying all the textures and fixing the camera. to follow a set path.

after finishing the camera movement all that was left was the lighting and creating the build. the lighting did cause some concern as i didn't have enough time to do it properly. i used point lights and directional light to create the effect that i somewhat wanted.

Aztech Project

At first when I formed with my group we didn't have a clear way that we wanted to go. But as we started throwing ideas around we started to gain a clear direction that we wanted to go in. we listed words and genres to see what we liked but didn't really want to do again. After a while we came up with a seemingly complex idea but was pretty much simpler than on paper.

We started with the word tribal, thinking about ancient cultures such as; Aztec, Inca and Egyptian. But not wanting to conform entirely to a specific culture we knew we needed to add something more. As we were listing the Genres that we liked, some of the genres didn't quite fit what we are trying to achieve but in the end we decided on Science Fiction. Now that we had the basics, the next stage was to form the concepts of how we played, the level and what the story would be like.

For this project I am the environment artist and my team gained an impression for what we wanted the area to be like and that would be that the player is placed in a cave. And as you travel deeper into the cave the more science fiction is brought out. I stared by designing the entrances to the cave and with Aztec culture in mind as at the beginning of the game is more tribal themed.

Mind map caves;

These images help set up the general aspect of what environment should be like even though the style that we are going for is possibly going to be more stylized. 

Sketches;

They are only simple and not that well detailed. The concept has become fully formed as to what are area is like. It is a simple area that as the character gets further down towards the centre of the earth the more machinery and sci fi is brought out. Over all the planet itself is actually a space craft that has formed a gravitational pull with other planets, and formed life on the outer side of the ship.

Maps 1,2,3

The starting idea too small for the idea

The second idea too large for time frame

This map is the one that is most open to our idea where I could build the environment around how the game is played.

What I have done to the maps are creating a system to show which level you are on;

0: Below ground

1: Ground level

2: Second level

3: Third level

This show the platform aspect to the game.

Progress of the Grey box;

The images below show the prepossession of the level being built as the character controls are being built in another stage at the moment.

 

The images above show the mas and design of the whole level at two viewpoints in smoothed mode to show it in a higher poly.

The viewpoints where character would be the lower images though are showing the higher poly on the left and the lower poly on the right.

The cave size is quite large as certain areas needed to be enlarged.

The image below is of the cave fully finished a few more areas need to be upped in the poly-count as to create a more smooth finish in some areas.

 These are some of the viewpoints within the cave. They give a sense of the size of the area in a way.

What the area below will contain is a tree, the platforms and now with the idea of making the game completely stealth based bridges will be added as well. Next stage is to make the tree. I have to think more about the area that we are in as well as the story states the cave and world is technology based. So I have to think about the structure of all the rest of the environment. 

This is the Cave without the ground so that you could no longer wall run across the level.

The images below are the environment in different stages.

The Platforms;

I wanted to keep these as simple as possible that way they only need to have few textures;

 These are basics elements of all the platforms, they all make up bridges, platforms and moving elements in the game. But only have these with the same UV mapping I can duplicate them and make many types of platforms.

This is the basic platform as these are what move and make up the whole level in a way.

The bridge is made up of the same rock where only the size of the smaller rocks are changes. Flipping the smaller stone bits I created a barrier as to not fall off that would link to the bar.

 The ones I would move around to make smaller and moving platforms.

The Rock tree;

 The Rock tree is the centre of the map around it will be a series of platforms that reach a certain point as what it will do is reach up to an area where the key to unlock a door would be. It’s a series of three rocks with a tree at the top and orbs in the middle as they are what support everything in the game. What the rock tree dose is supports the idea that beneath all this there is technology. The orbs will be made in unity as that would give a larger effect.

 The walls;

  The wall are simple if a path that the character needs to follow the rock walls would aid in that effect. They are simple and easy way to make a path.

Spikes;

 The design I wanted to keep simple as they are hardly seen. I only change the angle of some of them as well as the height as to create verity, so that they don't all look the same/

The Level;

The images below are the level at the point without the platforms in side;

Outside;

Inside the cave;

These images are the grey-boxing of the level out with platforms;

All are still simple at this stage.

With the layout finally done, it is mainly putting the final touches into the design.

I am the environment artist, but i have done no texturing, my contribution was towards the design, layout of the level and lighting. The texturing was done by Matt.

Sorting out the layout was to mainly focus on the two main parts the fire and the platforming. The image below was the staring of the layout for the platforming section.

After the texture were added lighting was the next stage, all of the layout for the level is done and all the models are in place.

 Placing the lighting was difficult as we are in a natural environment there is no are light, I had to use spotlights and on those I added an effect shown to me by a classmate that adds beams of light. Sun shafts - a beam of light that get broken up by objects. To light the cave more was use those spotlights and make it so that the rebounding on the lights were a certain distance as to make it brighter.

The orbs were all supposed to have a glow, we added bloom to the camera first but found that it effected all the lights. Which is what we didn't want. it made the spot lights to bright and created a negative effect.so what i did was on the orbs in the prefabs I added an area light as to make them all have a slight glow.

The only problem is that for what we wanted it became rather expensive on the lighting. As there are now many sources of light in our game.

But in the end it gave the effect that we wanted for the game. The orbs are what guide the player to the next are so I wanted to get it right.

The images below are final looks of the game without our character in the game yet. Clear views of the layouts. The only issues are the UV maps on the rock tree and a certain are in the cave. But for unknown reasons to me they are UV mapped but they won’t change in unity. For the tree I am going to re-import it after I have fixed the UV maps in unity.

The last stage was fixing the rock tree and last night was long as certain aspects made me confused and stressed. But after adding all the leaves, and sorting out my UV's.

next was placing it in unity and figuring out what texture was best.

the bark texture is what we choose in the end as it is what looked the best.