The Last Blog

ANM401.LO14

For all our projects I used Google drive to store files for use on multiple computers. I find that it is a great file management system when used in the correct way. For example when I use it for myself I am able to store files and folders in an organized matter however for most of our projects, the drive was used by a group resulting in more folders than needed and a mix of files scattered around everywhere. The only time I would use google drive would be when I'm either working by myself or with few people so that we can keep it organized and not spend ages searching for files. In sort keep it tidy or don't bother using it.

ANM401.LO06

Twice during this trimester as previously mentioned, my 3DS Max program kept crashing due to a bug in windows 8.1 as well as an over-sized poly-ed creature/environment. To resolve the creature and environments crashing I set up a camera in the scene and removed anything that could not be seen in regards to thhe environment. For the creature I just deleted half the model and then retopologized until I had a ow enough poly count then applied a symmetry mod and collapsed to produce the final model of 4000 polys. As for the program, I had to start using my old 3DS Max 13 program while I waited for Auto desk to get back to me. 6 weeks later, roughly 2 weeks before trimester end, I received a free link to download a 3 year license for 3DS Max 2015. No major problems as they were all easily fixed. They were more of an annoying itch.

Pipeline for the Environment

For my independent learning project, I roughly followed this pipeline.

I began obtaining images that showed the landscape, the building design as well as the plant life. Once I had obtained all my images I then went onto Google maps and located the area I was going to model and trimmed it down to a reasonable size. Whilst I was still on Google maps, I swapped between views so I could see the map version of the area as well as the satellite image. In my spare time I looked up the contour lines to see if there were any hills etc in my mapped area.

For the orientation stage I loaded the satellite and map images of Pripyat into 3ds max and placed them on a rectangle shape so that I could safely position my buildings and trees to accurately reflect the real town.

I skipped the 3d point generation stage because I was quickly running out of time to complete this project.

The structuring and modelling stage went by quickly for the buildings because Pripyat was a workers town so all the buildings were similar to housing commission so I made two different buildings and just duplicated them and swapped around textures. The trees were another matter however, they were incredibly difficult and time consuming to make. I followed many various documents and tutorials to get them right. Unfortunately I didn't keep record of them but most of them were from DT. I did however create a Ferris wheel but I ran out of time to merge it with my scene and texture it.

The texturing stage was fairly quick, I browsed Cg Textures to find some seamless HD quality textures. The hardest part was trying to find the right ones that would match the environment. I don't think I obtained the quality of the textures that I wanted.

The final 3d environment was finally finished however my 3ds max kept crashing due to the high amount of poly which came from the trees. As a result I had to remove most of the trees I had in the environment in order for it to run smoothly without any crashes. I then began rendering the environment which was quite difficult. Some how I accidentally added stuff to the renderer which forced the environment to turn white when it finished rendering. I liked this final result so I included it on the blog but I re-did the render and created I finalized product that was acceptable.

In the end I don't like the environment I made. I would of much preferred to create it in Unreal Engine but was unable to. Over the holidays I am planning to look into environmental modelling in much more detail so that I will be ready for next tri.

Critical comment

I tried signing up to Tumblr but it requires me to be following someone for 2 weeks before I can comment. I have commented on other peoples work from this trimester through out Facebook however I was unable to locate it. I have provided more feedback in person but it wasn't documented. I've commented on one of Azam's posts in Facebook as seen in this picture here.

Environment mishap

Here is a glitch when I rendered my environment.

Individual leraning project

So it's the end of the year and I've completed my independent learning project. I decided to look into the process of creating a 3d environment. For my subject I chose Pripyat near Chernobyl. I did not finish the project to the qaulity I wanted it how ever I am pleased to say I have learnt new ways to create environments, assets and also textures. From doing this project I am now a lot more comfortable with creating environments and I now have a better understanding of my skills and weaknesses. In future I will focus on planning ahead and within scope as well as spending more time on certain details and programs so that I can fully bring my work to life. I do not beleive this project was a failure because I learnt how not to make an environment. With more research and more time to tune my skills I will be able to create the environments I see and bring a certain amount of realism to them. Originally I wanted to create my environment through unreal engine 4 but because we weren't able to obtain our licenses from uni I had to create through 3ds max 15. All in all, everyone has to start somewhere with their chosen field and I started in 3ds Max 15 and by the end of next trimester I will have put most of 3ds max aside and started creating environments with Unreal Engine and Nuke.

Tree Assets

Created some trees for my environment. Quite difficult and required a few tutorials in order to get it right. I made four trees in total however cannot find the files for two of them.

CIU Assessment

Just created some environments for our ciu project. The purpose is to show the representation of different music cultures. The environments were just quick works in order to finish

our final product. 

Game Developement over the years

GOLDEN EYE 64

The development team visited the studios of the GoldenEye film to collect photographs and blueprints of the sets used in the movie. Silicon Graphic Onyx workstations and Nintendo's NINGEN development software were used to create the geometry for virtual environments based on this reference material. However, many of the missions were extended or modified to allow the player to participate in sequences which the film's James Bond did not. Hilton explained, "We tried to stick to [the reference material] for authenticity but we weren't afraid of adding to it to help the game design. It was very organic.Initially, the designers' priority was purely on the creation of interesting spaces; level design and balance considerations such as the placement of start and exit points, characters and objectives did not begin until this process was complete

BLACK (PS2)

Criterion intended to "do for shooting what Burnout did for racing - tear it apart with dual emphasis on destructible environments and the handling and behavior of real-world firearms. Bullets that hit buildings, terrain and objects leave visible damage; moreover, the guns are rendered with great detail and accuracy, though some weapons' features are stylized or exaggerated. The emphasis on the appearance, function, and sounds of the weapons led the developer to label the game as "Gun-Porn^" Another notable and original feature is the use of real-time blur while reloading, giving a depth of field and more perspective to the game. Similarly, when the player drops below two bars of health, the screen turns black and white, the sound of the character's heartbeat become the dominant noise and the game goes into slow motion, and the large and small motors in the control pads match the sound of systolic and distolic part of the heartbeat.
The game was not developed with an overarching plot structure in mind and this was implemented as something of an afterthought towards the end of development. The initial idea for relating the plot in-game came from Black's director, Alex Ward, who wanted to have a radio-play-style voice over spoken over a 'black' screen.

Emphasizing the game's action film heritage, sound effects for the weapons in the game were based on various sounds from movies. Whereas, traditionally in a shooter game, each weapon model would be assigned a different sound, Black assigns each enemy their own "voice", similar to the way in which each member of a choir would have their own distinct voice. For example, there are three enemies firing, one would be assigned a low voice, another a medium voice, and the third a high voice. This allows all the weapons being fired in any particular scene to harmonies and deliver a distinct sound for the game. Black '​s sound was nominated for Best Audio at 2006 BAFTA video game awards and won Best Art & Sound jointly with Burnout Revenge at the 2006 develop Industry Excellence Awards.

 THE LAST OF US (PS3)

The Infected, a core concept of the game, were inspired by a segment of the BBC nature documentary Planet Earth (2006), which featured the Cordyceps fungi. These fungi can grow from an ant's head, and take control of the ant's motor functions, forcing it to help cultivate the fungus. The Infected were developed to explore the question: What if a strain of Cordyceps could infect humans? Could the fungus grow from a human head? Could it animate human corpses to shamble about while lacking in intelligence or consciousness?

Naught Dog began work on The Last of Us after completing Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in 2009. For two years, Naughty Dog kept the new intellectual property secret; and for the first time, the company, led by co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Ballestra, split into two teams to work on both projects concurrently. This was a bold move for Naughty Dog, who had never before introduced two new intellectual properties within the same hardware generation. One team developed Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (2011) while the other began work on The Last of Us. The new project was headed by studio game director Bruce Stalley, who brought on Mark Richard Davies, lead designer for Enslaved: Odyssey To The West (2010).


The Last of Us did draw from the Uncharted series, according to creative director Neil Druckmann. In Uncharted 2, protagonist Nathan Drake bonds with the Tibetan guide Tenzin through collaborative gameplay. This proved to be an effective method for storytelling, so the The Last of Us team developed Joel and Ellie with this in mind, using gameplay to build a dynamic and complex bond between the two characters. Although Druckmann and Straley researched post-apocalyptic and dystopian films, books, and television shows, they found historical fiction to be an unparalleled study of humans in quasi-apocalyptic settings. Humanity has been threatened by global epidemics before: The 1918 Spanish Influenza illustrated the depths of self-protection and paranoia that humans are capable of under threat of extinction, whereas the polio epidemic of the 1880s demonstrated the influences of socioeconomic classes when assigning blame in a great disaster. Druckmann realized that The Last of Us would not need a stereotypical villain to provide karmic foil to his protagonists—not when humanity itself was eroding. Finally, Naughty Dog also took cues from video games like Ico and Resident Evil 4, in story development, character building, interaction, tension, and action. Designer Ricky Cambier stated that they wanted to create as realistic a survival game as possible, with clear character motivations and responses.
Druckmann endeavored to create a compelling and rich narrative in The Last of Us, and to raise the bar and the industry whose storytelling has grown lazy.
After learning that the research firm was planning on running focus tests exclusively with male gamers, Naughty Dog requested that focus groups be expanded to include women. Druckmann stated, "My big surprise during this process is that the research group wasn't planning on focus-testing female gamers—it's something we had to specifically request. I hope this is a relic of the past that will soon go away".
The game went gold on May 15, 2013.

 KILLZONE SHADOW FALL (PS4)

Killzone Shadow Fall was seen, by Guerrilla Games, as an opportunity to revitalize the franchise, since it was established early in development that they would be working on a new platform. The main point during development was to give players more options on how to proceed, particularly during the single-player mode. According to Guerrilla Games, the original size of Killzone Shadow Fall was 290GB because the game has no assets designed for lower spec systems.
The demo of Killzone Shadow Fall shown during the PlayStation 4's announcement only used 4GB of memory – not the full 8GB GDDR5 RAM available to developers in the final hardware, Guerrilla has revealed. According to the studio, 3072MB (3GB) of the PS4's 8GB were dedicated to video resources powering the demo, with 1,536MB used for system resources. A further 128MB were shared between the two. Of the 3GB reserved for video memory, 1,321 MB were used by non-streaming textures. According to Guerrilla, the demo featured 8200 physics objects, 500 particle systems and real-time reflections - which include "a lot of Guerrilla secret sauce" Guerrilla's decision to stick with 4GB suggest that the developer may not have been aware of Sony's decision to include 8GB in final retail hardware – something Just Add Water CEO Stewart Gilray told videogame.com had been kept secret from third-party developers until the console's announcement. "We were told [PS4] was 4GB originally and we first knew it had 8GBs when Mark said at the event's stage, 'And it has 8GB of memory.' We'd had kits at that point for a good while

Cell Shading

http://methodj.com/borderlands-style-texture-creation/

I've always been fascinated with the Borderland art style so now since I have some spare time I've started researching into Cell shading and found a few places which I've looted for information. Unfortunately to be able to pull this style off I need to learn how to use Photoshop brushes with pen pressure.

http://celesse.deviantart.com/art/Photoshop-Cel-Shading-Tutorial-9731752

http://karlmac.com/2012/11/simple-cel-shading-with-adjustment-layers-photoshop-tutorial/


Spent most of the day doing this case study on Cell Shading and used this Mecromancer from Borderlands 2. Very interesting to draw with grids in photosop. My replication turned out a lot less like the original but just means more practice.

Scylla

I've completed my Sea Creature for submission. I would like to spend more time on it however I have another two projects that need doing by next week so I am unfortunately not able to allocate anymore time to this project. I now know how to rig basically , texture, diffuse and retopologize.

Creature

Since there appears to be no deadline for the creature I decided to go back and re-skin it as well as add some more detail to the texture. I've learnt to skin and texture better from repeating this process.

Assets for Creature

I've finished the assets for the creature project. I quickly modeled up a sub and sea weed. The quality is bad but the assets are not as important as my independent project which is due in two weeks. Even if there was time to properly complete these assets I still wouldn't focus too much time on them as they are not essential for the project at hand.