Inspired by Pigs :D

I'm setting a task to do at some point between now and Monday. I'm giving so much time because its important that we get as much concepting done as possible in the early stages.

It's a task to see how everyone is with modelling, unwrapping and texturing. I would like you to roughly time yourself when creating the asset you are assigned, so we can calculate how long it will take for assets to be created, and don't give you too many or little tasks to do in the future!

These are all small assets, so I'm setting a limit of 1000tris, but don't go mad, just use what is necessary. I would like 512x512 textures for these objects. Each will need a....

Diffuse map
Specular map
Normal map

and some will need and Emmisive map.

I have the reference for all the objects, which i will give over msn when I see you online!

Sophia:
Cool light button box! this funky object will need an emmisive map! The white pole things that connect it to the wall will be a part of the asset, so build them too!

Tom:
This has a black cable that links to a white box on the wall, which will need to be built as part of the asset :OKian:
I'm not too sure what this is.... but you can make an optional emmisive map in case we want the lights to be on, it has little green lights on it too if you wanna stick those on the emmisive map, build the grey attachment thing too!
Jack:
I wanna see some funky specular work on this Bin!

Alex:
These lights are a really cool feature of the back hallway, give em a nice specular, and i'd like to see an optional emmisive map too!James:
This one may be a bit tricky to texture with all the text, but it will look uber with a nice specular on it!
Ash:
I'd like to see an optional emmisive map for this one too! :D
Get it done before Monday and post it up so we can have a looksee. I'd like to see the texture pages separately as well as applied. I'll give you all the ref, ask any questions if you need to! I will do something too and post it up! :D

an attempt at concepting the stair well as if the grubby bottom and clinical top ha kind of merged in the center.
its not quite the same as the red and white but it shows what i think to be the middle level merging into both bottom and top.

couple of quick screen grabs to show you that the mas part of it is finished. i don't plan on doing much more to it as its only rough. just wanna get it in unreal and see what its like to run around the bare building.

i thought of a list of some assets we could start thinking about. i began by thinking what makes the floors different and went from there.
ground floor:
childrens toys, scraps of litter, make shift beds,medicine bottles, syringes, I.V stands, straight jackets, other clothing, tables and chairs screwed to the ground.

middle floor:
drinks cups, vending machines, litter(maps, tissues, food boxes, sweet wrappers}
signs, notices, banners

top floor:
white doctor coats, coat rack, desks, various desk litter(name plaques, pen and not pad, picture frames. cleaning utilities, electric shock chair

for the ground floor i was thinking of things that make it allot like an asylum and a little less like a fair ground but for the top floor i was thinking more like it was a fair ground or amusement park for assets. trying to litter it with what would make that specific level of the building look the way we wanted. the top floor i was thinking should look as though people work there or used to work there so things that are personal but not to in your face.

as for rooms i was thinking to myself what would someone find on each floor in terms of space and every room had to have something interesting in it to do with our art direction and visual style.

ground floor could have a generator room due to the building requiring power even in power cuts. this could open the way to some audio as well. making the ground floor almost like the heart of the building. also it would have to have a room or multiple rooms for insane people to sleep in. not sure weather they would be in separate rooms or all together like intensive chicken farming. people would die quite often which would probably require an incinerator room. maybe in the same place as the power or generator room.

middle floor could have a small food court with nothing but vending machines and same tables as the insane people but not screwed down and slightly less grubby.

top floor would probably have a nurses station and lab rooms with almost pristine padded cells for electro therapy and other treatments. small offices and maybe a canteen to look as if the people working there would have a better standard of living than the people at the other levels.

just a few idea on what we could have in the level. make it a bit easier to brain storm ideas and such.

Driving me crazy before bed

Here's a quick crazy person concept I did based on myself.Was fun, I was thinking that it'd be funny if we were the crazy people in the posters, lol.

wiki!

www.kiamo.co.uk/wiki

well thats where it is guys :)

Mondays lesson, any other ideas?

Yo, I've got some ideas for Mondays lesson. I'm assuming we will be heading over to the queens building, so here goes. I haven't talked these ideas over with Sophia yet, so i hope you don't mind me just taking the initiative.

Everyone bring cameras, and maybe some watercolours or something, so we can work colour more into our concepts.(Tom suggested this first, I'm just being a messenger of sorts)

I'm going to print out the floor plans for everyone in our group to give them in the morning. These can be used for making notes, or marking on locations of interest. They are not totally accurate, but could be useful to stick into sketchbooks!

I'm printing out extra large plans for Ash, these are to walk round making notes about the structure and changing any aspects to become more accurate. Then he, or one of us, should draw up some new and accurate floor plans that show the areas we want, to scale, with the right information. This will help immensely with blocking out.

I will being taking photos of all the large assets in the areas we will be constructing, I will make a key, and mark the locations on a map. I will also draw up some quick sketches of how i would like those assets to be constructed. I will put these into folders on my pc, so it will be easy to assign different assets to different people. I will also make notes about sections to be repeated and such, and try to make my instructions as clear as possible. I will not be thinking about smaller assets at this stage. After we have concepted more, we will have a greater idea of what other assets we wish to include.

If anyone else has ideas for other useful tasks to do on Monday please comment.

We may not even be going to the Queens building, but I'm pretty sure it will happen...

Horse thing...

Okay this was just a quick 15 mins of doodling and messing about after Tom and I were talking about the possible inclusion of a carousel to go along with the roller coaster and theme park theme so I've ended up with a see through horse thing impaled on a carousel pole with some straps slapped on but I haven't done much so I thought I'd post it up even though we probably wouldn't be allowed to model a character thing like this

SWOT

Strengths:

2D art

I’m okay at 3D stuff

I get along with people

Weaknesses:

I can be a slow worker due to never being pleased with my work

Not very good with lighting

Don’t know much of the technical stuff for 3D work

Opportunities:

Get to know how game engines work

Hopefully to improve my overall work standard

Get to know new people in my team

Threats:

Getting distracted

Working too slowly

Theme Park Concept

Okay sorry about not uploading anything so far guys! I've been stuck with ideas but I've finally gone with trying to bring in a bit more of that theme park idea using a fairground-style red and white colour scheme. I'm not happy with how it's turned out but it's just to bring some more ideas of colour and stuff to the table whilst still sticking to our main plan.

I kinda like this fairground idea mainly because abandoned fairgrounds are pretty scary places to be, especially when the main attraction is dangerous insane people, and also we could include some pretty scary sounds, like faint merry-go-round songs and stuff.

I didn't manage to get across the texture distinction between the three levels on this, it ended up all being dank and grubby so I'll try to get that across in my other bits of work. Again, sorry everyone for not contributing much so far but I'll make up for it!

Reference

I've found these pictures really helpful when it comes to picking colour schemes and such, I think these faded colours are the sorts of things we should be aiming for.







Also, I think the roller coaster could look a little something like the ones posted here, it seems to fit the bill.

Crashed 'Coaster

It's not perfect, being out of perspective and all, but I thought it might be helpful for everyone to get it visualised.



According to Joel, this may not be so hard to model. If we make the front end very high poly then we can put in all the neccesary damage quite easily. The rest of the roller coaster is generally fairly low-poly and extra tris would only be needed for additional damage/arms and such.

Links

I've made a link list >>> add anything interesting to it so we can all have a look, other groups may be able to get some use out of em too!

Playflow and Electricity!

I thought i would write up in a bit more detail how i think the playflow should go, you guys can think about it too and we can have a bigger talk about it on Monday.

The player enters the main common room. There is the electric grid above them, and a dividing possibly electric grid in front of them. The middle are is like a cage that contains 'roller coaster tracks' a cool idea thought up by Sophia and Tom. Through the grid, but inaccessible is something weird/scary/shocking. The player thanks the heavens that they are protected or do not have to pass this thing, which we will have to discuss. Potentially a crashed roller coaster full of corpses or the like.

The player is forced through the room. Green areas representing lockdowns, as this would be a high security facility. They cannot just leave the building.

The only route forward is to double back, but go past the 'shocking thing' that they had been so thankful to avoid earlier. Forcing them into a situation they do not want to be in.

The electric grid above will also create a sense of containment making the large room really enclosed and limiting.

At this point in production, I don't want to be over ambitious. So when the player reaches the other side, they only have access to the staircase that leads to the above walkway. If we later wish to include the funky hallways we can make them the only route to the first floor instead. This is dependent on us sticking to schedule.

So the player heads upstairs and across the walkway. Discovering more weird things about the building with signs such as 'do not feed the inmates' and 'gift shop this way'. I think the lift should be accessible at this point. We want to play on the idea of forcing the player into bad situations, so something undesirable will also be in the lift, but they have no other choice.

This can either lead upwards, or down to the ground floor again, past the lockdown and out of the building. I think we should concentrate on the one area first though, before we think to far ahead.

All we need to think about to start is the main ground floor, and the first floor walkways, potentially a stairwell and a lift area too. This shouldn't be too hard to block out and get to work on. Hopefully we can get these areas completed on schedule! :D
What do you all think of this playflow? there are holes we will have to fill, but i think this layout could make the opening field of vision, and thoughts of the player very exciting. Tell me if theres anything you don't like or things you think we should add too!

Also, today I've been researching shaders a bit more and have started to develop a flickering/moving electricity shader for the grid.

Its not finished yet (not everything is linked up in this image to make it easier to take a screeny) I'm still working on getting the flickering right. Once i get it finished tomorrow I'll apply to a grid mesh i made today and try and make a vid for you to check out before we meet on Monday. I thought it might be cool if other stuff was 'live' because it had somehow linked with the grid, that way we could use the shader on more stuff, maybe even a puddle of some sort???

I also thought that there must be some kind of instability with the power for the grid to be sparking so much. So there is some kind of control area where the different circuits can be shut off. Hence why its dark in the lower areas and lighter the further up you go. We need some dynamic lighting coming through the grid casting shadows on the floor below.

I didn't get everything I wanted to get done today! but I'm not doing to bad I think, since I only started using unreal three days ago! I'm gonna get some sleep nows, I should try and post on my own blog at some point, I'm neglecting it :p

Coaster Concept and Colour Scheme

While talking through a few concepts today, an idea around a roller coaster was formed in order to make the place seem more like an amusement park.
I think a roller coaster could fit in to our ideas quite well, and the tracks could even maybe be seen trough out the building as the player goes through.

here's a revamped colour scheme and the concept for the roller coaster idea...





I've also had an idea of the roller coaster crashed and wrecked either inside or bursting out of the cage it's in. I'm currently researching for crashed 'coasters for reference, so any pictures that anyone can find would be very helpful! Let me know what you think and I'll try to post a concept tomorrow.

Coaster

Read this and thank Jesus...

I spent a while this evening talking to Jesus. He has experience in making mods, and helped me out allot by explaining some important things to me. In my own words i will try to explain what he taught me, and throw in some of my own thoughts too...

An explanation of how the general texturing will work...

The image is showing how you would have a general wall texture, that is repeated. Decals overlap that wall texture to give more variation. These are planes (possibly alpha planes depending on what you were doing) that give more detail an variation. they are used to show things like signs, posters, drips and splodges, scratches stains even vents. They can also be folded around courners to make scratches on the courner of a wall for example.

This same method can be used for Prefabs. A prefab is a prefabricated mesh, e.g a fire extinguisher. This is a mesh and texture that can be repeated throughout the level. But may have different properties according to location, it could be clean or dusty or grimy. Decals can be used here, it may be more efficient to change the texture page sometimes, but this is just an example of possibilities.

This leads onto the fact that there are allot of things in the queens building that can be duplicated. Rather than being built in entirety. e.g hand rails. A list of these things should be compiled. But also general common sense should be applied here!

Another thing we talked about is playflow. Funneling the player through the level.
I have drawn up a mini plan of how i think the ground level could work, I'd like to know what you think. Things like lighting, and interesting features or blocked ways can be used to guide the player. I thought is this plan btw, J didn't help me with this bit :P

The light blue represents a divide. I thought that maybe the electric grid can split the room in half as well as form a roof. The player can see through the grid, and upon entering the room, see something 'shocking' or the like on the other side of the grid. But thinks they don't have to go past it.

Yellow represents field of vision.

the player is forced through the main room, finding the only option is to double back and go past the shocking dark blue blob.

This is only the ground floor plan. I'll see what people think before i do more. Post all your opinions!


Another important thing is that importing surfaces that will be walked on can cause problems, Its much more effective to make those parts in the editor. These problems may not be apparent until much later, to do with lighting and such, so the problem should be avoided early on. But, this is up to the tech leads, if any other tech's are reading this and have any input please go ahead!

Many thanks to Jesus for talking stuff over with me!

My last nights concepts

I was getting really frustrated last night as my "creativity" seemed to have abandoned me along with any artistic skill. But here they are:


This last one is looking up from the ground floor, it's not finished just an idea of simple colours. Now thinking about it though I think perhaps the walls should be red.

New Concept

I've been unhappy with this all night...though others say it's not too bad. I'll try adn come up with some more concepts in the morning.

Grunged up a bit

Cool photo i took in the Queens building...Grunged up material...

this was just a test, so Ive learnt a bit about the process. But the result it really unrealistic, so im not happy with it in that respect. I'll learn more and do more.