Fall Week 8- Last Week of Modeling

I got a lot done this week in terms of finishing up all the main models for the scene. Added in all the doors and different trims, and got the ground pieces separated out. Trying to decide how I wanted to do the ground took me more time than I would've liked and kind of felt like I was going around in circles for a lot of it. I'm still a little on the fence about it, but I'm hoping that putting it in UDK this week will help me figure out how to do it.
Once I got everything I absolutely needed modeled, I had a little bit of time left over to add in some small assets. I'm really hoping that I can get a Thesis assist next quarter to make some more for me while I work on the textures because the scene just feels really bare right now. Part of that is due to the fact that there aren't any textures, but I'd really like to get a lot of smaller simpler assets done for the scene to help it feel more finished.

I just did some quick AO passes.  I know some of the details I have now will need to be baked down to normals which hopefully wont be too difficult since I still have copies of models when they were lower res. But that is something that will have to wait until next quarter since I will be focusing on setting up the scene in UDK, UVs, and my presentation for finals week for the rest of fall. Hopefully the import and set up in UDK will go smoothly as I took a little long than I initially wanted on the modeling. I'm also hoping to have everything for my final done early so I can knock out as many UVs as possible before the end of the quarter.

Luckily I am very familiar with the UV process (both new and old methods) so I'm not worried about that, it's just getting them all done as efficiently and as quickly as possible. The nice thing about having modular pieces is that I only have to UV each part once and then get to duplicate it as many times as I need instead of having to do the whole building in one set.

Time Tracking:
2h 00m Modeling
4h 00m Modeling
5h 00m Modeling
7h 00m Modeling
2h 30m Modeling
0h 45m Rendering
0h 25m Blog Post

21h 40m Total

Fall Week 5: Proposals, Doubt, and Resilence

Proposals

This week I presented my project proposal. Of course, now that I had officially pitched my project and was actually building it, I was noticing things that I needed to change all over the place. The day before pitched my project I was going over my design document one last time, when I realized I was trying to do too much. I had already eliminated my initial list of "wants" from my project, but I hadn't gotten rid of any of my needs. I wasn't leaving any room for cutting- and while I wanted to tell myself I could do everything, I knew that not allowing for scaling down if I need to was going to be a huge mistake. 

Doubt

Anyone who has ever worked on a huge project that they have invested a large amount of time into knows that there are always moments of panic, doubt, and fear. This was one of those moments.

Suddenly I felt overwhelmed, it was the day before my proposal was due and I didn't know if I would be allowed to make changes. How would I even make changes? I had done so much planning and things felt as though they were already permanently set in stone. I had already scaled down my idea three times, and I here I was realizing it was still too big. 

I spent the next day in a slump. Proposing my project to my class felt like watching myself dig my own grave. This was my thesis, everything I had been working towards at school was all leading me to this moment, and there I was setting myself up for what was surely going to be failure. 

Resilience

I walked home from the computer lab the night after I proposed my thesis, and spent the entire walk trying to  find a reason to have hope. I kept telling myself, "I can do this," but being more of a realist I knew there was no way I could realistically get everything I had proposed to do done, while keeping both my jobs, passing my other classes, and have it not look like trash.

But I felt stuck, and no matter how many times I went over the situation in my head I couldn't figure a way out. We get in trouble if we don't finish our thesis and in the past I have seen dedicated and hard working students be told that they can't cut(these were small things that did not jeopardize the overall project-as I have seen other students try and change their thesis entire in the middle of it which should not be allowed for obvious reasons) from their thesis at all and that they just have to work harder. In my mind not being able to make cuts is bad project management- but as students who are graded for our projects we also have to adhere to the decisions of our professors.

In the end I decided to do what I have always done in these situations, I decided to go down fighting no matter what. Maybe it was hopeless, but if that's my only option then it is the one I am going to take. so I picked myself up and jumped into modeling. 

Whitebox

I don't know if it's possible to be a realist and an optimist, but even though I felt the opposite I told myself I was going to figure this out.

My fake optimism paid off, because while I was blocking out my white box I suddenly conceptualized a solution. I say conceptualized because it was the same as the first time I pictured the scene except I had a knew idea. 

I realized that if I made the train tracks part of a tunnel way below further below the shops, I could not only eliminate some of the more worrisome parts of my thesis, but that I could easily cut them out all together if push came to shove and things needed to be done. Rather than being a train station it would simply become a subway/metro which was something I was initially considering at the start of my project anyway. The train tracks would not be visible because they are underground. I will easily be able to make a floor model for a central courtyard should the track need to be removed.

 I got to keep the basic layout of my scene which I was already dedicated to as well as trim off several assets that were required simply because I was going to have the station on a higher level. In terms of project management it was a perfect solution because it did not damage the overall outcome I was trying to achieve and did not require any massive changes to my plans. 

UDK

Once I had that finished, I was ready to bring it into UDK to test out the proportions. I was a little nervous about opening up UDK for the first time in almost 2 years, and spent a little bit of time just playing around with the interface before I even attempted to bring my model in. I was surprised to find that even though I was missing a lot of the more specific details about using the editor, I was still familiar enough to pick them back up rather quickly. Although, I will admit I was able to ask one of my friends for help whenever I got stuck on something so that made things a lot easier.

Things do not go entirely smooth either, as I immediately ran into an issue with my white box model when I brought it into UDK. When testing out the door size I had chosen to see if it worked, I discovered that the character in UDK was two grid sizes taller than what I gotten from my research. 

I was at a complete loss. I had looked at multiple resources on the web when determining that the character was 6uu(UDK Units) tall during my research. All of them had given me the exact same data for character height and grid set up, but there I was in UDK with a character that was very clearly 8uu tall.

At first I didn't believe it and double checked my maya files to make sure I had the right dimensions there, which I did. I double checked to make sure my geometry was translating to being the same grid size in UDK, which it was.  I made sure that I had UDK set to its default settings, and still nothing had changed.  I even went back to the resources I had gotten my information from and none of them said anything about why this might be happening or even mentioned that it possible would. All the numbers they said to use were the exact same as what I had used.

It looked as though I would have to adjust all of my scene's measurements, which I was prepared for since that was the whole point of checking in the first place but I had hoped that my research had been solid enough to prevent the need. But before I could do that I had to figure out just how tall the character was.

With the help of my friend, Ben, we made a mock character out of barrel assets and attached it to character in the game(the character it self would not show up even though Ben was  sure he had the right settings for it) and set up a camera to record it during game play so we could figure out exactly how tall the character was. From this we were able to determine that the character was set to exactly 8uu tall.

I was slightly distraught over the situation and the fact that I had apparently messed something up, and decided that there had to be something else I could do. So I did the only thing some one in my situation could, I turned to the internet. And as luck would have it I very quickly found my answer.

It turns out that the character is not set to the UDK default character setting of 6uu by default. Something which none of the websites I had gone to for research had bothered to mention. Luckily I found a blog that not only explained it, but told me how to fix it.

 All I had to do was go into the world properties and set the game type to UT game. Which was of course the obvious thing to do once I read it. 

I am so glad I decided to look into it further, because it saved me hours of work in terms of refiguring out the scale of my level.

And now that my character and world was set to the scale I had planned for, I was relieved to find that many of the dimensions I had chosen worked. However, I also found that there were a number of things I had also gotten wrong. 

The walkways I had made were far too narrow and completely unrealistic for the city scene I was planning. The height of the bridge as well as the depth of the train tracks was not deep enough. I also found that because the train station was now on the same level as the Lux and the Mc Quinn Outlets that it did not stand out as much as I wanted it to. So I decided to make it's structure larger overall. 

The image on the right is the whitebox model after I adjusted the different proportions. I brough the new model into UDK and found that it was a vast improvement. 

Silhouette Pass

I had actually planned for the majority of my time this week to be spent of trying to figure things out in UDK, but I got the hang of it so quickly that I was done after several hours. I don't like to waste time, so I got a head start on my silhouette models for the scene. Things are going really well now that I

Things are going really well now that I've managed to get back on my feet and I'm looking forward to keeping up the work!

Time Tracking:
1hr 00m: Whitebox modeling
2hr 00m: Whitebox modeling
2hr 00m: Whitebox modeling
0hr 30m: UDK Refresher
1hr 30m: UDK-Whitebox testing
2hr 00m: Whitebox adjustments
0hr 20m: Whitebox adjustments
0hr 13m: Checking adjusted whitebox in UDK
4hr 05m: Silhouette Modeling
2hr 035m: Silhouette Modeling

4hr 32m: Silhouette Modeling

1hr 49m: Blog Post

21hr 14m Total

Fall Week 2: Conceptualizing, Planning and Research

Concepts:

The majority of my time this week was spent on continuing to conceptualize the different buildings in the scene. Trying to draw and map them out was taking too long since I just don't have enough experience drawing architecture in general, so I decided to just do quick block out models of them instead. It ended up going way faster than trying to draw and gave me a really good sense of the form and space for the different buildings. 

Conceptual block out of the train station.

Conceptual block out of building 3.

Documentation:

I organized my files into a nice little folder set-up so that I can hopefully keep everything neat. Didn't take too much time, but I have had to deal with disorganized project folders before, and the time and frustration is just not worth it so I wanted to make sure I got this done and soon.

I also spent a good bit of time working on the documentation and actual production to-do list. I won't post the whole list, but here's a snippet of what I did:

Production:

UDK:

Test out different Heights for Doors and Windows in UDK

Import Base Meshes to UDK

Block out scene in UDK with Base Meshes

Import Collision Meshes

Test Collision Meshes

Replace Base Meshes with Final Meshes in UDK

Regularly test Proportions and models in UDK

Set up Lighting

Import Textures to UDK

Set up Materials in UDK

Test Materials in UDK

                Set Up Animations in UDK

                                -Train Matinee

                Beta Comments

Assets:

                Train Station

                                Base Meshes

                                Uv’s

                                Textures:

                                                Diffuse

                                                Specular

                                                Normal

                                                AO

                                                Transparency (if needed)

                                Collision Mesh

                                Retopologized meshes (if needed)

                                Final Mesh

                                Rendering:

Asset Break down Sheet

                                                Wireframes

                                                Still Render in UDK

Final Products:

                Capture Footage of UDK Walkthrough of Level

                Still Renders in UDK

                Asset Break down Sheets

                Wireframe Renders

                Process Break-Down Video

                Design Doc

It's still very far from being perfect, but a lot of what I have left to determine will be based on the results of my research so I can't plan it out until that is done.  I don't want to do too much planning before my research is done because a lot of the workflows and over processes I will use are going to be based on what I learn from it. In fact, I began researching today and it is already obvious that I will have to make some major adjustments to the to-do list I put together earlier this week. 

I also managed to write-up a preliminary version of the abstract for the time being. 

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis project is to create a Stand-Alone Game Environment  using modular building techniques that meet and or exceed current industry standard. As a Stand-Alone Game Environment, the final product does not need to include any playable mechanics or require participation from the player. Rather, it is created with the purpose of being an explorable environment that showcases the overall art and assets that make up the environment itself.

The environment itself will be of a worn down train station and boarding zone set in the heart of a once buzzing commerce district of a now aging city. The barely functioning train station is surrounded by decaying apartments and barely-in-business shops.  The shops and apartments are separated by the train tracks which lead from a tunnel into the train station itself.  Above the tracks just outside of the train station is a bridge that civilians may use to cross over the tracks safely from one side to another. The lower level by the tracks and the upper level bridge are connected by special elevators that civilians may use to traverse the scene.

Other visual elements that the environment will feature are detailed textures with normal, diffuse, specular, glow/ambient, and reflection maps. Models will be low poly to allow for optimization in engine, and in some cases sculpted and retopologized. Some interactive elements may include an elevator taking the player to different sections of the map and possibly a matinee Sequence involving a train coming into or leaving the station.

Overall players can expect to experience a well thought out and stylized custom Game Environment that takes place in a unique urban setting.

I expect it to change over time as I flesh out more and more of the design doc and well as continue my research.

Research:

I spent a little bit of time playing around with Trello.com's project planning tools, but in the end I found that it lacked a lot of features that I just felt like without them it wouldn't really be an effective tool for me. I didn't like how you couldn't have a main board showing all your other boards. You could lable them all to be under the same project, but not being able to seem them all at once was a major problem if you wanted to break down the areas of your project into seperate boards. I tried to do something similar in a board where I just broken down the project into notes, but you are extremely limited in how much you can do with a note. I wanted to be able to take a note and break it down into different sections, but again there really just wasn't a way to do it. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how I could organize it so that it would work, before I decided it just wasn't going to be something I could use effectively.

I watched an incredibly helpful video that my professor showed me on the Autodesk Area website by Sandra Tournmille called, "Insider Tips and Tricks for Creating Game Environment Assets." I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in creating game environments and assets. I'm going to be replanning my overall workflow for this project now because of it.

What was nice about the video was that it was all concepts I had heard of before, but she really goes through and explains what they mean, why they are, and where they play into the production process. Although it was more of a walkthrough to the concepts than an actual tutorial, I found it was really helpful because when watching actual tutorials about the same stuff they don't usually take the time to break things down and explain what they are doing things that way when in relation to everything else that would be going on in a studio. A lot of times in a tutorial, you'll hear "this is important, so do it this way," while the way Sandra does it is, "this is important because the person you pass it onto needs to be able to figure out this from it- which is why it is done this way."

I took about 6 pages of notes from the video, but even so I expect I will be re-watching a lot of it because it really just is that helpful.

I also went over some of my notes from my research on modular building and scale for UDK and updated my standard scale guide for my level.  I'm not always reliable when it comes to math and calculating numbers, so to help me save time and move a little quicker, I realized having a chart of general sizes would really be beneficial.

Of course, because I have yet to actually test things out in the engine this is going to be another one of those things that may very well be subject to change. 

Time Tracking: 
5h 00m: Conceptual Modeling
5h 00m: Conceptual Modeling
1h 00m: Conceptual Modeling

1h 15m: Conceptual Modeling
0h 15m: Rendering
1h 00m: Trello
0h 45m: Production To-Do List
3h 00m: Conceptual Modeling
1h 00m: File Organization
1h 00m: Abstract Write-up
0h 23m: Scale Guide Up-date
1h 00m: Blog Write-up

Total: 20h 38m

Fall Week 1: Conceptualizing and Organizing

I've been working relatively non-stop on my thesis all week. And I've managed to get quite a lot done. I'm going to try and break it down into general sections in terms of what part of the preproduction everything falls under. I'm a big believer in the time saving power of good documentation so I'm doing everything I can to make sure I do a thorough job.

Preproduction To-Do List:

This is my general to-do list in terms of everything I need to get done for my preproduction.

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Design Doc:

                  Abstract

                  Full/Precise Project Description

    Start Bibliography

                  Gather Links for sites already used for research over the summer

     Organize Images into Style Sheet

                  Organize Images into Inspiration Sheet

                  Wants and Needs Lists

                  Production Timeline/Gantt Chart

File Organization

Come up with Naming Convention

Concepts:

Train Station/ Building 2 Concept Art

Building 3 Concept Art

Building 4 Concept Art

Asset List

Texture List

Everything List

To-Scale-Top-Down-Map

To-Scale Asset Break Down Sheets:

                  Train Station

                  Building 2

                  Building 3

                  Building 4

                  Bridge

                  Train Tracks

                  Train Tunnel

                  Elevators

Research:

Research Modular Building

Research Mudbox and Normal Mapping Environment assets                 

Test out Mudbox and Normal Mapping on a small asset

Research Texturing workflows and techniques for Games

Test out Texturing workflows on a small asset

Find notes on UDK

Practice Workflow from Maya to UDK

Research Materials in UDK

Practice making a Material in UDK

Block out Scene in Maya

Design Doc:
Here's what I have so far in terms of the design doc and just general project guidelines. Nothing is written in stone obviously, but it's a start.

Stand-Alone Game Environment

A Stand-Alone Game Environment may not include any playable mechanics and may not require player participation. Stand-alone game environments may created for a portfolio piece, a beauty scene or simply an environment to explore and showcase.

Game Engine

Unreal Engine and Unreal Development Kit

Idea Description

A worn down train station and boarding zone set in the heart of a once buzzing commerce district of a now aging city. The barely functioning train station is surrounded by decaying apartments and barely-in-business shops.  The shops and appartments are separated by the train tracks which lead from a tunnel into the train station itself.  Above the tracks just outside of the train station is a bridge that civialians may use to cross over the tracks safely from one side to another. The lower level by the tracks and the upper level bridge are connected by special stairwell buildings on either side. Building materials should be metals, bricks, and concrete.

Environment Setting

A general location where the environment takes place.

City/Urban

Metropolitan

Location

Subway/Metro/Train boarding point in the heart of the busy city district, a main point for transportation.

Train Tracks

Apartments

Storefronts

Themes

Metropolitan

Traffic

Federal Style turned Technological

Worn-Down

Mobility

Commerce

Project Purpose

What is the Reason I am Creating this Environment?
Develop an industry standard stand-alone game environment using UDK, Maya, Photoshop, and Z-Brush that is set in an Urban and grungy train station with a metropolitan city setting for my senior thesis.

What I want to learn/Improve

Modular Building techniques for creating game environments

Modeling workflow for game asset and environment creation

Texturing and surfacing techniques for games using Photoshop and Z-brush

Development process for game environments and props

Hard surface Modeling

What I want the player to Experience

Custom Game Environment

Unique Urban Setting

Stylized setting

Inspiration:

I spent a lot of time searching through images over the summer looking for something that would inspire me interms of the type of style I wanted to use for my thesis and just in general for creating ideas. The problem is I am so used to conceptualizing on my own that I had already formed an idea of the style I wanted in my head, but I was having difficulty putting it down onto paper. Mostly because I knew how I wanted to stylize it, but I didn't know what I wanted my scene to be. 

After running around in circles for what seemed like weeks, I stumbled apon the work of Oscar Cafaro and in particular his environment work that he posted here (the 6th image down is the one that particularly struck me).  Not only did it have the exact feel I want to go for, but it immediately caused me to visualize a scene for my thesis. This was the first big break through I had in terms of figuring out the visual development for my scene and I consider it the biggest source of inspiration so far.

I also spent quite a bit of time looking up various train stations to fit the concept that was forming in my head. In the end I found Hauptbanhof, which was almost a perfect fit.

Style:

Obviously, I don't want to copy off of Oscar Cafaro, so I began doing some sketches of my own to help me develop my own visual style. I even blocked an entire environment to help me get the feeling of the types of forms I want to include. 

(Note: The bridge in the render on the left is an old version, I decided that visually it was too big and ended up changing it quite a bit)

I eventually determined that my original scene was far too over scoped in terms of the amount of time  have for this project, but I believe that keeping it as a reference is still a good use for it.

I ended up changing the style towards something a little more industrial(in my mind at least), but combined with some of the same futuristic looking features. 

It took me a while to put my finger on a good example exactly what I was looking for, when I realized I was drawng from my favorite video game with out even knowing it. My favorite game is Final Fantasy VII, I've been in love with it ever since my brother's brought it home back in 1997. I did a quick search around the web and found a fantastic site with tons of pictures of the in game environment.

Color Palette: 

This is just my rough color palette. I've been adding to and adjusting the colors when needed.

Concepts:

And now for my favorite part of the preproduction process, concepts!

I've been building ideas for small assets over time.  I went ahead and quickly sketched a few of them out.

 I did a quick concept to put at the top of the blog, but also to help me sketch out some ideas for the buildings.

Then I began working on a more detailed concept drawing of the train station, bridge, and building 2 to help me in terms of figuring out my assets. Here's what I have so far:

Unfortunately I'm hoping to finish blocking out the remaining details tomorrow so that I can start coloring it.

Time Tracking: That's about the majority of the work I've gotten done so far this week. I'm require for class to keep track of the time I am spending on my thesis so I'll end each blog with the hours.

3h 00m:   Image Search

2h 00m:   Concept Art

1h 00m:   Class

0h 30m:   Image Search

1h 00m:   Concept Art

0h 00m:   FFVII Image collection

1h 30m:   Blog Banner/ Concept Art

1h 00m:   Blog Set up

2h 00m:   Documentation and write-up

4h 30m:   Concept Art

0h 16m:   Scanning Sketches

1h 00m:   Small Asset Sketches

1h 00m:   To-do list type up

1h 45m:   Blog write up

Total: 21h 01m