Color mapping is done!

So, I just finally hit that huge milestone where the diffuse color is done for everything. Now, I just need to learn a bunch about lighting in Unreal(Where are you, book?), and then apply the normal and specular maps. Here is the pic that I've been waiting to post for quite awhile, the finalized color mapping:


Things to excuse for now:

1) The lighting is crap. Hence, me waiting for that damn book thingy.

2) The anti-aliasing, or "jagged edges". This is a screen grab from the work window in the program. It's not from in-game. When everything is done, all the stuff you will see will be in game, complete with pretty, clean edges.

3) There are some objects that aren't technically done as far as color goes. These are special cases where the normal map needs to be completed first.

4) For those who nitpick like me, you can see a hard edge where the tiling is broken on the floor. I'm fairly certain that this is a lighting issue as well.

You may also notice that the Russian propaganda poster is gone. This is another example of having to let go of one of your babies that you love so much. Yes, I wasted a good day's worth of work to make it look good, but the medical poster you see in its place looks better. This change came about when I had my mom look at the room. This is what I like to do when I need that non-artist opinion on my work, which is just, if not more valuable. I told her to name what kind of building the room was in within 5 seconds, and she couldn't. This is a HUGE problem, because I want the viewer to know that they are in an abandoned hospital. She said that the propaganda poster looked out of place, and that they wouldn't have it in a hospital. This was something I knew before, but ignored as I thought that establishing the location as Russian was more important at the time. She suggested to replace it with a medical poster. DING DING DING DING! She had it. So I tried it, and it worked. It was that last piece needed to sell the place as a hospital. Hey, it was a bad feeling getting rid of the other, but nowhere near the feeling of abandoning CTF_Platform (the TF2 map).

So, right now I'm taking the time to relax and gather my sanity. After some Chipotle and Team Fortress 2, I'll resume work and update again whenever the lighting looks good along with the normal maps.

Greetings, comrade.

This post is just a couple snippits of what I've been doing over the past day or two. I've decided that online documentation regarding lighting in the Unreal level editor is pretty much nonexistent, minus just telling you how to place a light and adjust the brightness of it. So, I decided to buy a book on it. "Mastering Unreal Technology Volume 1", is its name, and it looks promising for 32.99. So, while I'm waiting on that to get here, I decided to finally crank out that Russian propaganda poster mentioned earlier. And I must say, I'm happy with it:

What I basically did was make the poster as if it were brand new, and then roughed out the edges and added some dirt and paper overlays that gave it its worn out look. The original design:


(The writing is Russian for "nuclear power"). Creative, I know. Also, I added the transparency map to the window glass and placed an image behind it of the infamous abandoned ferris wheel found in Pripyat. (The city that had to be evacuated due to the Chernobyl disaster, where this scene is set).



This, along with the poster, hints at the setting without shoving it down the viewer's throat too much. I guess if you don't know by the title "Chernobyl" what it's about, then these won't matter. If you do however, it shows that I've done my homework. :D The tricky part of finding a good background image for the window was all in the perspective. It had to look as if you were seeing it by looking straight at the window, and also had to be something that gave you enough of a hint at the setting. If the angle of the image would be off even slightly, it would look weird as the camera pans right.

So, hopefully when I get my book, It'll help my lighting to not look like crap. Meanwhile, I'll be working on getting some random clutter on the ground, and finishing the color mapping. I'll have this whole thing done sometime in October. That's all I know for now.

Taking Shape

Hello all. Have you ever been in the early stages of a project and had those old, nagging thoughts that you have no idea what you're doing? Well, this is how almost all my projects go. Eventually though, I get to a point where all the pieces fall into place and I start to become happy with what I see. I have hit that point. Not to say that it's looking phenomenal yet or anything, but I think that the final product will be something to be proud of. I guess I'll shut up and show you what I mean:


As you can see, the color mapping for the room is complete. Now when I say room, that's not including any prop work, obviously. I like the way the whole color scheme is looking, as it is not too colorful for such a setting, but not too washed out also. So many games today are guilty of hiding their ability to use color effectively by desaturating everything to a muddy brown, which is something I tried to steer away from. Fallout 3 for example, has been a great reference for me as far as detailing goes, but I think they really could have played with color more. So also, you can see that everything is successfully in the engine and in real time. I have tested all aspects of the work flow required to get what I want, and everything is possible to do without too much of a headache. It's really just a matter of plugging in the remaining texture maps, adding some more decals and props to fill in space, fixing up the lighting, and viola! It's done! I'm not concerned too much with making a rigorous schedule for this, but I hope to have it done at the end of September.

As far as civil protection goes, Ross posted on his site saying that he's all moved into LA. So, hopefully in a week or so, we'll get it up and running again. I guess we'll just wait and see.