30/03/2016 - General Update

Week 12

General Update

Today I have been cave building, I used my original pre-viz cave as a template and duplicated the same "modular" wall along the inside to create my cave. That can be seen below.

Cave Building

Cave Layout

This is my cave layout. I have had more problems with seams...or rather an important choice to make, These arose from the problem of my seamless wall not being able to turn corners...but also, there are varying degrees of angles of which the corners are made up of. So my first possible solution to this is to now model extra pieces of Wall to allow me to seamlessly blend around corners...but this seems like it could be extremely problematic for me and would just add too much work than I can afford to waste right now. The other possible solution is to leave it like it is (even with the wall intersections on its neighbouring wall) and model some big rocks/boulders to cover up some seams and make the overall cave more random looking. I'ts this second option that I am going to go ahead with.

Floor and Ceiling 

My cave is in this dark slot, I had to create a floor (obviously) a roof and walls to stop any light from coming through gaps in my cave structure. My main focus for doing this was to allow me to go into the cave with my torch to get a proper feel for it.

The Cave is in the Darkness

Seam

These are the seams that have naturally occurred since I have just roughly placed my wall segments together, the snap feature in Maya hasn't helped at all really, but, my solution is to create boulders to cover these up.

Seam

This is a seam on a corner now, again, this can be made to look somewhat more natural with a few rocks and boulders there.

Refined Narrative

I have had a fairly drastic change of heart with my story,

1: A baby is born.

2: He is handed a weapon by his father (coming of age).

3: Celebration.

4: Protagonist gets married.

5: Protagonist goes hunting with his father.

6: They kill something.

7: His father drags the animals corpse behind him as they leave for the village.

8:His father gets murdered.

9: Mourning.

10: Protagonist becomes new chief of village.

11: Romantic moment with wife.

12: Pregnant wife.

13: Birth doesn't go well...

14: The baby hasn't made it.

15: Protagonist comforts his wife.

16: Protagonist is angry, wife is sad.

17: He goes out and kills a bunch of animals.

18: Wife is pregnant but the protagonist doesn't want to get attached to the thought of having a child after the last one.

19: Wife consoling protagonist.

20: Wife is giving birth.

21: Wife gives birth.

22: Protagonist holds the baby.

23: Tries to help up wife but she has died.

24: Protagonist walks away with the baby. 

25: He puts the baby in a basket.

26: ...and walks away.

27: He leaves the village behind.

28: He grows old and gets his frustration out in the wilderness. (the babies show his thoughts are with his family).

29: Fights a bear...with his bare hands. This is to show his attitude towards danger.

30: Sees a cave in the distance...

31: Enter the cave...

This is when the player would hopefully follow a trail of red paint (blood) leading to the end of the cave.

When it came to the cave paintings, I decided to add lots of little specks of paint to give it a painterly quality and to add more character to it. All I need to do now is add the hint of texture to them and they will be pretty much done.

22/03/2016 - Texturing

Week 11

Texturing

Today I have been somewhat texturing my assets to be put inside the cave. I have used textures from http://www.textures.com/, all the textures I have used are royalty free. I would have liked to have tried making my own textures but I didn't get very far when I tried that for another project. So based on that and the fact that I am struggling with Unreal for this project, I decided to take my textures from a free online source and edit them to my needs to show that I am not just simply using someone else's textures but I am editing them to fit into my environment based on my own style and preferences. 

Dagger Blade

UV Template

Below are my UVs for the blade of my dagger, the reason I have split up the blade from the handle is because They are two separate materials altogether and I thought it would be easier having their UVs split. This unwrapping may not be the prettiest but I prefer to unwrap using mainly planar mapping so at least the texture won't be stretched, I then think about how I can place the asset in such a way that it hides any seams. In this case, there really isn't a seam and it definitely wouldn't be noticeable under the cave lighting conditions. 

Base Texture

This base texture was simply placed over my UVs in Photoshop.

Colour Overlay

I placed a layer on top then made it an overlay with a dark colour as my base colour, this darkened the overall original texture giving me the results below. This mimics the refined stones often found with stone age tools more.

Base Texture - Rope

This is the base texture for the rope now, The stone is attached to the handle using some rope.

Colour Overlay

I have used another overlay to get a better age to it to make it look more used and functional. 

 Dagger Handle

UV Template

I decided to make the UV's for the handle separate since I would be using a different material altogether from the blade.

Base Texture

This is my base texture, it is a bit too light as it is...

Colour Overlay

...so I applied an overlay to it to give it a more aged look.

Textures Applied

I could perhaps change the length of the handle, it feels too long.

My intention is to add more age to my models by adding scruffs to the textures. I am going to do this for all my assets to add age but to also to try and put in the effort so I haven't just used someone else's texture, I want to make it my own as much as possible and only use it as the foundation for my texture.

Horn

UV Template

I used cylindrical mapping for this horn. Pretty basic but effective. My way around the seams is to simply place the objects in my scene with the seam facing away from the player. These assets won't be able to move so the seam will forever be hidden.

Base Texture

My simple base texture.

Colour Overlay

Yellow overlay...

Detail

Here I added some finer detail using a textured brush, this was to try and create a more worn out look.

For the final asset I would like to add more age to it by adding some cracks, I'm not sure if i can achieve this with a normal map or not.

Paint Pot

UV Template

UVs all set out and looking beautiful...I think, I suppose it's subjective.

Base Texture

Base Texture...

Colour Overlay

Overlay to change the type of rock it is.

Im not too fussed about this, it is going to be really dark, so in terms of the final environment it lack of finesse is that bad. I would rather focus my attentions on building the cave to the best of my abilities. I also need to add some paint/blood to the texture since this is the paint pot used to make the cave paintings (but the paint on the walls is actually blood remember).

Spear

UV Template

Base Texture

Simple Base texture...

Colour Overlay

This is another overlay. 

Detail

A Bloody Mess...Here I have added some blood stains to add more history to this spear.

Waste of time?

It's going to be really dark, I don't want to add much more detail to these assets because of the lighting conditions they will actually be seen under. 

Summary

I am not going to spend much time on these assets so I can focus more on getting my actual cave complete with the cave painting decals.