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.

Arrggggh! Abandon ship, mateys!

This is more just news then actual progress, but I am giving up on the source engine. Lately, I've been going back and forth between giving it another try or just learning another engine. Over the past few days, processes would work, then randomly not work for no reason. So, despite my desire to make content for Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead, I've decided that the headache required to succeed in that is no longer worth the trouble. I have no idea how Valve could have given us such an unintuitive way to create maps with a good conscience, but I will no longer try to make it work. So what am I using now? The unreal engine. I wanted to wait until I was absolutely sure that the process it uses is what I want in a workflow before I said anything to anybody. So here I am, feeling much like I learned to get around on a unicycle when I could have been using a bike the whole time. Silly me. Importing models is retardedly simple, navigation in the level editor is workable, and things actually work. No random errors, tons of programs I need to install, or lack of documentation. At least so far.....we'll see.

Also, my computer has frequently decided to randomly restart itself as of late. I'm working with my computer whiz friend to get it straightened out, though it doesn't affect my ability to work too much. More like a pain in the ass than anything really.

Some new projects might be in the works as well. Lately, I've been thinking about what to do after Chernobyl gets done. I've wanted to take someone's conceptual drawing of a complex object and translate it to 3D as a way to show off my modeling skills. I originally was going to approach someone on a forum and ask them to let me use one of their drawings, but Jake, the guy that was going to help me on the TF2 map awhile back, offered to oblige his drawing talent. We also talked about maybe doing a full level sometime in the future, but for now the focus is on the single object. Everything has been verbal so far, except for some preliminary drawings he's been doing. We literally started this last night.

What about Civil Protection? It's been put on hold for now, due to Ross moving to LA. He'll let me know when things are back on track, but I've got all my stuff completed that he originally gave me. When things get rolling again, I'll post something. Here's a link that explains his situation if you are interested: www.accursedfarms.com

Confused about what the hell I'm doing now? Here's a rundown:


Chernobyl: Currently learning workflows, programs, etc. Once things are figured out, I'll start cranking it out.

Civil Protection: Currently on hold.

Complex Object w/ Jake: Drawings are being made, talks are being had. Mostly preliminary stuff. The stuff I'm learning for Chernobyl will be applied to this as well as future projects.

Future level project w/ Jake: Mentioned, and that's it. Will be a future project.

That's all kids! DISMISSED!

New things in the mix

Hello all, I have some great news for you! I've on board for a new project that I'm very excited about. Barely any of you have seen this I bet, but I'll be contributing some content for a machinima entitled "Civil Protection". For those of you who don't know what a machinima is, it's basically when someone takes an existing video game's tools and content to make their own original movies. Ross Scott is the guy that creates Civil Protection as well as another machinima, "Freeman's Mind". His stuff is extremely funny, so I recommend that you check it out if you like anything associated with Half Life. He's at: www.accursedfarms.com. I think one of his videos got 500,000 hits on youtube, so my stuff will be seen by alot of people. Very cool.

So what am I contributing? I can't get into specifics until it's out, but I'll be contributing custom models as well as some custom character skins. Skins are basically the textures used for characters and models within the game engine. I'm not entirely sure when it'll be out, but let's just say that he's stepping up his game for this one, so who knows. I'll definitely let you know when it's nearing completion.

And what about Chernobyl? It won't take long to shell out the stuff for Civil Protection, and so I'll get back on track with it soon enough. I've got the base coloring for the textures done, and the normal maps for the models and environment have been planned out.I've learned a great deal about Zbrush 3, which has taken up the most time overall over the past month. There's still more to learn, but I can operate it on a level necessary to get stuff done for this project. Once I get my new 3 GB of ram installed, zbrush will be purring quite nice, as well as maya and photoshop.

Modeling progress

Alright, i've got all of the props for the room modeled and UV'd. It feels good to be getting back into the flow of maya and things seem to be going even more smoothly than I first thought it would. I've provided an updated playblast of the room, and also have three objects that I have decided to share and breakdown with you all.
The gurney is the starting point of this project. As you read in former posts, my first challenge was deciding what kind of an environment the gurney could exist in. I picked a reference and stayed pretty close to it throughout, as I wanted it to be immediately recognizable through silouette. (Thanks Valve!) I think it's leagues above what the old one from my reel was. Now you can look at it and know what the heck it is. The poly count is higher on it, which I don't sweat too much, as it is the centerpiece of the scene. I chose to have the seat tilted up, the wheels slanted, and to have the object's position slanted in general, to help break it up and make it more interesting to look at.
The radiator was taken from a reference picture I came across while researching abandoned buildings. It makes things look a bit more vintage-ey, but not too much. Since the room was built in the mid 80's, it would not look modern, yet not anchient at the same time. Objects like this fit just right. A lot of faces were deleted on this one, as you will never see any faces facing the wall. This cut the poly count down substantially. Once again, it is simple in design, but you can definitely spot what it is within a first glance. The faucet and piping at the bottom is extremely low poly, but it's so tiny that the player would very likely not notice it at all.
And lastly, the medical lamp. It was the same with the gurney as in sticking close to reference, while dumbing it down for poly sakes. The actual lenses on the round part will be normal mapped in, as will some details on the other parts. It's hard to judge such objects so soon, because normal maps, accompanied by great lighting, can make or break their believability. The light is meant to swivel on a rail attached to the ceiling, which is barely visible in the final shots. Getting the smoothness of the round parts to an acceptable level of quality and efficiency for the engine was tricky, but I like how it turned out.

So now, I'm gonna finally do something I've been itching to do for quite some time. I'm going to get my feet wet with normal mapping. I had bad experiences doing it in Mudbox awhile back, so I hope Z Brush is more forgiving. I'll post some pics of progress, but I'm unsure of how fast I'll get through this as I'm entering unfamiliar territory with this program. Once I get through this, it'll be smooth sailing for the most part. *crosses fingers*

General Layout

So, here's a rough layout of the room. So far the only things I've been focusing on are shot framing, shot timing, and getting the scale of the objects right. The first movie is of the intro shot, and the second is the last, finalized shot. Like I said, these shots are just rough layout and framing studies. They will likely change in the end, but not much.

Next, I'll start modeling out the objects, as well as laying out the uvs. Pics still to come.