29/02/2016 - Asset List

Week 08

Asset List (props to support narrative)

I have put the assets in red and I have also included the full narrative to give them context.

Cave Story: Story Beats – Paintings Description

Child is born to chieftain of a small tribe

-          Baby on floor, chieftain and wife standing over with tribe in celebration

Son comes of age

-          Protagonist being handed a weapon (shows the responsibility handed to him by father)

Tribe are full of celebration (possibly big celebration for the coming of age)

-          Tribe party, protagonist in middle with weapon (this is where I establish a piece of clothing that will be identified with the protagonist for the duration of the narrative)

Gets married

-          Protagonist with wife side by side…some sort of over the top head dress to show marriage – father looking on

Son hunts with dad (the chieftain) (all is good) (Horn/Antler trinket)

-          Protagonist and father crouched while hunting an animal

Father is murdered (Dagger)

-          Father getting stabbed in sleep along with mother…..next shows protagonist standing over body…finding murderer and killing him

Son takes over

-          Protagonist standing in front of knelt tribe…receiving a ceremonial club

There is war (weapons, spears and clubs)

-          Protagonist rallying troops for a battle…battle scene

His wife can’t give birth (show her pregnant then show lots of blood underneath her to show the distress)

-          Wife is pregnant…but with blood underneath showing miscarriage

More war

-          Another battle

New chieftain gets more powerful (jewellery)

-          Pile of dead rivals and him sitting on a seat at the top (powerful pose)

Wife miscarriages again

-          Wife miscarries again…protagonist hits her in frustration

Chieftain is going insane – kills loads of game – big pile of dead animals (lots of horns/antlers)

-          Walks away….kills lots of animals…he is sitting on top of it but with a more depleted pose

His wife dies giving birth and the child lives

-          Wife pregnant….giving birth on back…..child in protagonist arms…wife dead

In his rage he throws the child off a cliff

-          Protagonist walks off with baby…throws him off a cliff in his rage

He is holding dead child and crying

-          On knees at top of cliff….runs to bottom and holds baby while screaming and crying

Self-imposed exile – puts his crown on floor of village

-          Confronts tribe and lays his ceremonial club in front of them

Leaves

-          Walks away

Show him getting older – taking out anger on an animals – he is killing them with his hands (antlers and stuff again, bones?)

-          Walking while getting older….he is hunting animals with bare hands

Finds shelter in a cave

-          Finds entrance to a cave (over shoulder shot)

Trail of paint smudges down towards where his body is (pot for the paint)

-          Trail of paint smudges down to where he died

He has some sort of defining piece of clothing which is at the back of the cave where the story ends and the paintings trail leads to

                

Final Asset List

Inside Cave

- Jewellery

- Antler (broken)

- Horn (Chipped)

- Bone (damaged)

- Daggers

- Club

- Spear

- Empty Pot of Paint

- Mystery Protagonist Item (still to be decided) 

Cave

- Modular Wall

- Modular Rock

- Modular Floor

- Torch (with flame)

Audio

- General Ambiance (frog/wind type noises)

- Dying screams

- Crying Baby

- Crying Woman

- SOund of spear hitting animal

Minimal Viable Product

Art

Cave with all cave paintings in with a torch that the user can move around the cave to reveal the cave paintings to themselves.

Audio

Ambient music with one sound to show that I can set audio triggers.

Game Mechanics

- Torch moving with cursor
- Audio Triggers

29/02/2016 - Rock Moodboard

Week 08

Rock Moodboards

The following two moodbaords are in response to my need for big rocks to go inside my cave to allow me to create corners and add more depth to the overall cave.

Rocks In Reality

I do not own these images or hold the copyright for them, they have been purely put together in this moodboard for educational purposes.

I have compiled this moodboard to help inspire my own rock models to give them a natural shape. 

3D Modelled Rocks

I do not own these images or hold the copyright for them, they have been purely put together in this moodboard for educational purposes.

These are rocks that have been made in 3D packages, again, these are to inspire my own process when it comes to making rocks of my own.

The next stage of my rocks is to start modelling some variations to see how viable it is for me to spend the time on them.

29/02/2016 - Demo Feedback

Week 08

Demo Feedback

Today I have shown off screenshots of my previs cave and the progress I have made with my tilable cave wall piece and with the fire. This post is discussing my feedback from today.

Fire

I can try and find a free fire element from the Unreal store page or online to use in my environment, this will save me a lot of stress from trying to make one myself as this is a very technical aspect to my project. This means I can focus more on creating my assets. 

Rocks

I am going to create big rock pieces to use for the corners of my cave and other areas to add more depth to the overall structure to my cave. This will involve creating a moodboard, watching tutorials on what software I should use for modelling them and actually modelling them. In terms of the software, I could model them in Maya, but, to get natural rock formations I might be best using Mudbox to achieve this. This will be something I look into this week.

Light Maps

The lecturer mentioned light maps today, These are basically a second set of UV's that are used to bake lights onto in Unreal. 

I have already read the page about light maps on the Unreal documentation, although not 100% clear...its a starting point. 

https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Types/StaticMeshes/LightmapUnwrapping/index.html

Checklist

Look in Unreal community store for possible torches/fire

Watch tutorials on light maps

Rock Moodboard

Model Test Rocks

Get audio triggers in previs cave

Asset list created for inside cave

Cave Painting Tests

Cave Texture Tests

24/02/2016 - Fire Test

Week 07

Fire Test

Today I have been trying to get a torch working inside Unreal. It has been some what successful...but I don't know what I'm doing. Below are my images of the key windows inside Unreal relating to my work today. 

 Fire Materials

This is the material window for my fire, I don't understand what is going on here but after following several tutorials  I have managed to get to this point...but I don't think will be keeping this fire and I will have to find a more comprehensive tutorial.

Fire Particles

This is the fire in the particle window. Again, I';m not sure what is going on here so I can't really say anything here.

Fire In Engine

This is the fire in the engine. Nothing spectacular but it's there.

Summary

Today I created fire...but I need to retry another time. I didn't truly understand what I was doing during this process.

23/02/2016 - Narrative

Week 07

Narrative

Below is my story beats for my narrative, below each story beat I have put a brief outline of what sort of paintings would be associated with the beat.

Cave Story: Story Beats – Paintings Description

Child is born to chieftain of a small tribe

Baby on floor, chieftain and wife standing over with tribe in celebration

Son comes of age

Protagonist being handed a weapon (shows the responsibility handed to him by father)

Tribe are full of celebration (possibly big celebration for the coming of age)

Tribe party, protagonist in middle with weapon (this is where I establish a piece of clothing that will be identified with the protagonist for the duration of the narrative)

Gets married

Protagonist with wife side by side…some sort of over the top head dress to show marriage – father looking on

Son hunts with dad (the chieftain) (all is good)

Protagonist and father crouched while hunting an animal

Father is murdered

Father getting stabbed in sleep along with mother…..next shows protagonist standing over body…finding murderer and killing him

Son takes over

Protagonist standing in front of knelt tribe…receiving a ceremonial club

There is war

Protagonist rallying troops for a battle…battle scene

His wife can’t give birth (show her pregnant then show lots of blood underneath her to show the distress)

Wife is pregnant…but with blood underneath showing miscarriage

More war

Another battle...small tribe battle

New chieftain gets more powerful

Pile of dead rivals and him sitting on a seat at the top (powerful pose)

Wife miscarriages again

Wife miscarries again…protagonist hits her in frustration

Chieftain is going insane – kills loads of game – big pile of dead animals

Walks away….kills lots of animals…he is sitting on top of it but with a more depleted pose

His wife dies giving birth and the child lives

Wife pregnant….giving birth on back…..child in protagonist arms…wife dead

In his rage he throws the child off a cliff

Protagonist walks off with baby…throws him off a cliff in his rage

He is holding dead child and crying

On knees at top of cliff….runs to bottom and holds baby while screaming and crying

Self-imposed exile – puts his crown on floor of village

Confronts tribe and lays his ceremonial club in front of them

Leaves

Walks away

Show him getting older – taking out anger on an animals – he is killing it with his hands

Walking while getting older….he is hunting animals with bare hands

Finds shelter in a cave

Finds entrance to a cave (over shoulder shot)

Trail of paint smudges down towards where his body is.

Trail of paint smudges down to where he died

He has some sort of defining piece of clothing which is at the back of the cave where the story ends and the paintings trail leads to

             

23/02/2016 - Cave Painting Analyses

Week 07

Cave Painting Analyses 

Here I have taken my cave paintings moodboard and traced over some of the more inspiring images. I found this extremity useful as I found my self really picking up on a style. One thing I realized was that many of the paintings would have several iterations of the same drawing, and it is easy to identify an improvement with each iteration showing their ability to study and improve on their work. I believe that for me to really make these cave paintings in my cave look real I will need to add mistakes and make them not perfect. 

Some of the animals are surprisingly detailed and well painted where as others are very exaggerated. The exaggerated horn on the rhinoceros family member could have been a way for the cave person who painted it to show how deadly this animal was. This aspect is something else I will experiment with when painting my story.

22/02/2016 - Experiments

Week 07

Experiments

Today I have been experimenting with how I am going to create my cave, I wasn't sure if I should go for a modular approach or try building it all in one. The downside to building it all in one is that its not really efficient inside Unreal, doing modular though means I have more control over the collisions. My plan after all my experiments is to basically make modular pieces and place them together in Maya so that when I export them all then the whole cave will import into Unreal but still leaving me the flexibility of editing each modular piece on its own. below I will go through all my screenshots for the days work...

Boulder

My intention with this approach was to make various rock faces like this and then possibly place them together to create my cave (I wasn't too hopeful for this approach)

Soft Selection

To model the boulder I used soft selection to get my random bumps on the surface.

Textured

The texture for this rock came from (http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b17danmarsh004.jpg)

I'm not focusing on the texturing at this point but rather the modelling, I have just put a texture on to give it some context. 

Unreal Test

Here are the lovely boulders in Unreal. As you can probably tell, this approach hasn't really worked that well...moving on.

Rock Panel Modelling

After the above approach, I thought about have modulated piece of rock walls.....so a panel rather than a boulder. Below is my first attempt. Again, I used soft selection in Maya to get the random bumps. I deleted half of the model then change the left side of it then mirrored it over...this means that theoretically it can be copied multiple times with not modelling seam. 

Rock Panel Texture

This is the panel with the same texture as the boulder.

Rock Panel Unreal

And this is it in Unreal. I have used the exact same process really for the panel that I used with the boulder.

Rock Panel Duplicated

Here I have duplicated it inside Unreal, which I wont be doing for my final environment. close up you can see where the seam is. This has only happened because I didn't use the snap to grid feature in Maya meaning that I couldn't place them exactly next to each other without some sort of gap or overlap.

Rock Panel Seam

This is that seam. It would be more noticeable if repeated down a cave wall. I have already addressed this issue though and I just need to build the cave in Maya first.

Boulder hide Seam?

This was me attempting to use the boulder to cover up seams/make the walls more interesting....this was not successful. You can clearly see where the boulder intersects with the panel.

Boulder Shadow

This was me trying to add some sort of shadow to the edge of the boulder but of course that didn't work to cover up the intersection, That would only work if the shadow could be put on the panel in that exact place but then I have myself way too much work to get that right.

Irrelevant Model 

This was me remodeling the boulder...which I haven't used now.

New Seamless Panel

This panel has been created like the first one I created (seen behind with the texture). I have halved the model then edited the left edge then mirrored it over, giving me a complete panel that should be repeatable. My plan with this is that I can repeat this several times in a row, then I can edit each individual panel in the middle portion to quickly create a more interesting cave system with minimal repeating elements.

Seamless Workflow

The polygons below are the ones I can edit...if I edit the ones not selected then the edges will be altered and won't match up to the next panel. The results of editing these forbidden polygons can be seen in the image below.

Seam

This is the result of moving those polygons.

Seamless!

Panel duplicated once...

More Seamless!

Panel duplicated four times!

Full Process

This image below shows my rough full process in a short segment, Here I have duplicated the original panel from above four times...this leaves me with the image above...I then edited the polygons in each of the four panels to quickly generate a wall with no seam...next is the textures.

Summary

Today I have managed to get down my process for actually modelling my cave...I will move onto texture in the coming week, I also aim to do a moodboard and some concept art for the style of my textures.

22/02/2016 - Feedback

Week 07

Feedback

one piece of feedback given was about the width of the cave at certain points, it was pointed out that perhaps it was too narrow at particular points and that is something I can play about with when I make more progress on my actual cave.

After the feedback I have also come to the conclusion that I will make the entrance on a cliff side. 

Several methods were suggested to me for the cave modelling and also the cave paintings, I am going to experiment quickly with several methods to see what results I can achieve. 

18/02/2016 - Previs Update

Week 06

Previs Update

In the past few hours since my last post, I have fixed my previs so it is more stable. I can now go inside of it and the scale of it seems fine, the only thing I might tweak is the height, but that will be more influenced when I have some modular cave assets to put in.

My next stage is to follow a few tutorials to get sound to trigger at a certain point and to also begin modeling assets. 

18/02/2016 - Scale Update

Week 06

Scale Update

After some playing about, I have come to the conclusion that it is best for my workflow to model my assets in Maya using centimetres and also exporting in centimetres and when I import them into Unreal I need to scale them up by a factor of 10, this means that every centimetre of my Maya assets will be imported into Unreal as a metre. The problem I was having was that I was modeling in metres and exporting using centimentres and stuff in general just broke, I have not quite grasped what was going wrong my I definitely have the solution.

-Model using centimetres 

- Export using metres 

- Scale by 10 in Unreal. I don't know exactly why this works, but it does....finally. 

After just testing an export using centimeters as an export setting it seems to come in huge...and even if I leave the scale to 1.0...it still comes in too big, but I have it working.

This makes no sense to me.

18/02/2016 - Previs

Week 06

Pre-Viz

In the past week I have been prevising my cave with the layout that I set out in Photoshop. This has been largely successful.

This first image is showing that I have managed to import modular pieces of a previs cave into Unreal successfully, The only problem I had was the scale, even though I changed the settings in Maya to metres, the models were still extremely small when imported into Unreal. I have managed to solve this problem though, I had been under the impression (from Professional Projects) that we had to model in metres because that is the unit of measurements that Unreal uses...this is wrong. I need to model in metres in Maya, export with the scale set to centimetres and it should all import into Unreal just fine, where as before Unreal registered ever metre from Maya as one centimetre. 

I have made a bit of a mistake though, Even though I exported my mesh as a centimetres it turns out that I hadn't been working in metres in Maya, I had been building everything according to centimetres so it obviously came into Unreal small anyway...but not nearly as small as it did for my Assets for Professional projects. So this means that next time I model assets (in metres) I will be able to import them into Unreal with the scale intended. 

Here is my model that I managed to import from Maya. The geometry is awful but for the purpose of laying out my cave plan in 3D, it has proven extremely useful. I can now walk through my previs cave and examine the height and width and plan out my cave paintings more accurately. I believe that I should now re-do this previs cave as I believe that I will be able to get batter results with less stress.

Collisions

These images are showing my collision learning. The pic above is where I just clicked on auto-collision and kept the settings, I found that this made my computer run extremely slow by the time I got to the 5th or 6th piece of cave. It seemed as if the 5th piece was going to take a few hours to complete where as the first ones only took a few minutes. obviously this was a problem. The settings for the auto-collision can be seen on the bottom right of the image below. I did some digging around and based on a couple of forums, I changed the, "Collision Complexity" to, "Use Complex Collisions As Simple". I presume that this setting makes the complicated collision box above into a simple one, this greatly improved the speed of adding collisions and I was able to manage this no problem.

 This image below is my new collision detection, for some reason the actual box that represents the collision isn't here and this is the same for all my assets. It doesn't seem to be a problem though...but only time will tell.

15/02/2016 - Cave Designs in Other Media

Week 06

Cave Designs in Other Media

Today I have been looking at caves in different media, so far I have been looking into real caves but now I am looking into caves systems of games and film, and if possible, how they were made. I will also look into how caves are naturally created in reality and educate myself in this to further inspire my own creation. 

Cave Story (2013)

I do not own this image or hold the copyright for it, it has been purely put together for educational purposes.

This is a nice side view of a cave system. It as shown me how the caves height will fluctuate even if the ground isn't. This is something I will factor into my early concepts.

Fary Cry3 Map Editor (2012)

I do not own this image or hold the copyright for it, it has been purely put together for educational purposes.

 This is a screen grab from the Far Cry  Map editor. I have put this image here because it is showing a 3D modeled cave entrance which is relevant to me. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)

I do not own this image or hold the copyright for it, it has been purely put together for educational purposes.

All these images are from the latest Tomb Raider game, There are rocks littered across the floor which is something I hadn't really thought about. They definitely stand out more in a game where the lighting is manipulated compared to the moodboards I have of real caves where it is more difficult to see the sides of the caves. Also, the lighting is coming from a torch(glow stick), this is one avenue I can go down to allow the player to see the cave paintings, This would also immerse the player that little bit more and make them feel like they are revealing the story as they move along. There are also plants growing up from the floor in this particular cave system, This is another thing I need to consider for my own cave. 

Sarah Quek

I do not own this image or hold the copyright for it, it has been purely put together for educational purposes.

http://rahzy.com/concept-art/page/2/

This is a piece of concept art by Sarah Quek, the lighting is really strong here, there is a strong light coming from the entrance. I am going to get some quick concept art done of my cave and also I will get an asset list done for the assets a long with some pre-viz stuff for week 07.

15/02/2016 - Cave Floor Plan

Week 06

Cave Floor Plan

Below is my rough final plan for the layout of my cave, I haven't added a side view of the cave but I am not planning on changing the elevation much and is something I would be more comfortable experimenting with in Maya.

Final Cave Plan

This design is subject to change as I see fit when it comes to the modelling in Maya. I am happy with the general layout though, my intention is to have some of the main story points (or the most striking) on the corners of the cave where the character turns, this will make the player move towards it in theory.

Below are my rejected designs

 Alternative Floor Plan 01

  Alternative Floor Plan 02

  Alternative Floor Plan 03

  Alternative Floor Plan 04

  Alternative Floor Plan 05

I can't quite explain why I have rejected other than my artistic eye drifted towards the one I chose.