This week has been a long one, nothing seemed to get done until Friday; even though everyone was on track and working.
Monday for me was a day of Admin; I started timetabling what everyone should be doing and sorted out how things will be textured. This was then postponed due to an injured Freddy. Luckily on the Tuesday I was back on track and finished all of my admin. Hopefully having these timetables in place will free me up some more time; so that I am not checking up on everyone to make sure they are working on the right thing. After getting this finished I rewarded myself with a bit of modelling and texturing to get myself out of engine and text documents.
Sign made by me.
This week Denzil had been working on perfecting his water material and has also worked out how to make the waterfall in UE4; unfortunately I do not have and screen shot of these but they should be in the level soon, so keep your eyes out for that. Denzil has now moved on to working on our Cheshire Cat, that hides on a vine above the mushroom lair; our cat is heavily inspired by forest Maine coons because they are the most adorable cats ever! Denzil is now modelling and should hopefully finish this over the holiday.
Maine coon for reference.
Luke has continued working in engine and after Emma's feedback added text to our light beams (sun rays) and they look fab! Here is an older shot of what the fog for the mushroom lair looks like:
Luke's fog effect.
Dan has continued working on Alice and did some more research on what type of dress she should have; here's what she looks like so far:
Dan's Alice model.
I can't wait till it's fully rigged and in engine! She's going to look adorable.
This week Braden has moved onto texturing the houses but first he finished the start menu's design;
This will look amazing when it's fully animated and on the master UE4 file; but for now Braden has more important things to work on so I will have to wait until he has finished it over the holiday.
After a couple days of rest Freddy was back in and ready to work; she managed to get a weeks worth of texturing done in a day. This means that all of the books are now up to date and looking lovely after I finished doing the roughness and normal maps for them. Here's what our level looks like so far.
On Thursday and Friday I pushed myself to get the level in a playable way. As you can tell there is still a lot to finish and fix. The lighting is my next priority as well as modelling the rest of the environment. To finish here is a play through of it so far:
Now I just need to make sure I don't let everything pile up and have to rush things for the DMU hand in after Easter.
This week has been a stressful one, lets just say a lot of work happened but it doesn't necessarily show. Me, Denzil and Braden have spent the entire week trying to work on engine things; lets just say this was all of our faces at one point this week...
Denzil continued working on his water for the rest of this week and it has not been easy; after many issues, errors and a crash he has finally got it working. It still needs a few tweaks but it is almost perfect and he is ready to move on the waterfall; that Freddy has already done the texture sheets for. On Friday Denzil also went down to London for another Library visit, and he has brought back a lot more reference and texture photos which will be brilliant for some of the new books Freddy and myself have been working on. Whilst he was there he talked to the judges and showed them what we have been working on; they seemed enthusiastic and excited about to see our outcome, hopefully they will like the end result.
New book texture reference (Taken by Denzil)
New book texture reference (Taken by Denzil)
Braden has also been continuing with his UI; however the majority of the week has been spent trying to get the HUD to only be visible in certain areas; this week has been a real strain on mine and Braden's blueprinting knowledge and capability. At least it looks pretty and the start screen and pause pages work. Hopefully next week Braden can start working on some finished designs to polish up the UI.
HUD preview
This week for me has been helping other people, for example making sure Freddy is on track with her texturing, helping Braden with blueprinting and helping fix Luke's scaling issues. I have also been messing around in Engine making sure everything fits and making material instances for the books so that the turn from sepia tones to colour throughout the level. I have also helped Freddy by doing the normal, roughness and emissive maps for all of the books. Next week hopefully I will be able to model the rest of the environment; so that the level won't look as sparse. Freddy has been working on texturing books, a titleable waterfall for Denzil, a sunflower, sun, clouds, tree and grass for the background planes. If all goes well me and Freddy will be working on a modular titleable texture for the rocky areas next week. By this I mean a texture the tiles side ways or up and down, it also has a corner piece so that everything fits together seamlessly. This should hopefully help us with the large areas we have to cover with planes; for depth and detail. I will also set up the material in engine so that the hue and saturation can be edited so that it can be used throughout the entire level.
End of the level; show casing Freddy's texturing.
Luke has be working on making lots of assets and has now moved on to working on particle effects for the level. He wants to create a light beam/sun rays effect and a smoke/fog for the mushroom area at the end. Dan has been busy sculpting our Alice; and I have to say she looks amazing. I am really impressed with the detail Dan has managed to get on the model and I can't wait till she's finished.
Dan's sculpts.
At the end of this week I have felt stressed with everything; I have to manage my time and other peoples, therefore I am a little on the angry side. Hopefully next week I can get some timetables made of when exactly I need everything done by; just to keep myself and everyone on track.
How I feel at the end of each week.
Finally here is a quick run though of our level at the moment;
This week has been mostly behind the scenes work; by this I mean working on unwrapping, light mapping, engine work and texturing. Denzil has been working on getting a waterfall to work by using a panner node, which has been easier than expected, now all we need to do is combine lots of different torn paper textures together to create a layer waterfall effect. He has also been working on getting rippled water for the pond near the end of the level. This is proving quite difficult by Denzil is smart enough to get the job done.
Testing out different types of water effects in engine.
Freddy and I also went to the library and scanned a lot of old books for our textures, hopefully this will help our level look like it has realistic elements. When it came to the unwrapping of the book models we ran it to a few problems; originally I gave each book a 512 x 512 texture sheet but after starting to texture we soon realised that they were too low res for something that is close to the screen. So Freddy juggled the sheets around but ended up getting confused so the two of us spent the day fixing the unwraps but nevertheless the sheets are fixed! We separated the spines, overlapped the covers and gave the loose paper its own texture sheet; now book 1 & 2 are on their own sheet, as are 3&4 and 5&6; all at 1024 x 1024 so we should have no issues with things looking blurry or pixelated. At the beginning of the week I also decided to research the images that the library gave us for reference. It turns out they are flash photography photos of men working in a Cornish mine. The images are originally for a book called "Mongst Mines and Miners: Underground Scenes by Flash-Light" by "JC Burrows" we will hopefully be using this for one of the books in our level. Thanks to this blog: http://wchildblog.com/2014/05/24/photo-story-rare-early-flash-photography-images-of-cornish-miners/ I have found out a lot more about the mining in the Victorian era and we are now trying to incorporate this into the level more. We also found out that the miners tended to just use candles; stuck to their hats and to the walls; the miners had to buy these themselves therefore many of them didn't have the money to buy lanterns for work. The images are truly inspiring and I hope that we can get some of these elements to show in our game.
The book that the images given to us came from.
Braden has been busy unwrapping and working on UI; He did a quick concept of what the pause screen will look like:
He has the pause and resume working at the moment but needs to hook up the checkpoint and restart to Denzil's blueprints. The finished screen is coming along nicely and I am very exited to see it when it's finished. Dan has also been sulpting Alice's body and is perfecting it so that it will look beautiful when finished. Here's a quick work in progress shot;
WIP shot of Alice.
This week I have mainly been working in Engine; I have fixed alot of blueprinting issues and have fixed a lot of sizing issues, due to me making a mistake with the level block out. One thing we do want to incorporate is dynamic cameras; cameras that will zoom in and pan at certain parts of the level. This was discussed after I put up this image;
We decided as a group that at the rabbits house we need to zoom in so that you can see all of the little details; such as the drink me bottle, therefore I will be working on this mechanic next week.
Here's a quick video showing what I have been working on; (the sounds a temporary until we find or record some better ones)
Finally here are some screenshots from the rest of the level.
Lighting still needs to be worked on and the postprocessing will be put in after a basic texture pass has been made. We are well on our way to finishing this project, the only problem is finding the motivation to finish.
Just a quick update on what everyone has been up to this week;
Stating off from last time we have progressed a lot, we have almost finished modelling there is only a few little assets and some main environment left to do and we finally have nailed down a style.
After Denzil copying the art style of Ink Quest we decided that this was not the way to go forward, mainly because we want to do something new and colourful. However this test was very beneficial and we are incorporating some of this style into the beginning of the level.
Denzil's Ink Quest inspired environment.
Ink Quest
As I have already mentioned we are very close to finishing modelling; just a few bits mainly for me to fix with the overall environment, so that all of the assets will fit together in engine. We made a shared spreadsheet to help us keep track of what everyone is doing and what is left to do; this includes whether it is unwrapped, textured, its tricount. Here's a few of the models made this week.
One of the floating houses made by Braden.
Lily pads made by Luke.
Book stacks for the environment made by me.
We have also decided to use more of the images that were given to us after Freddy spoke to the judges in London. We have now made our level more underground and have started to add mining tools to the level.
Mine cart made by Denzil.
One of the images given to us by the British Library.
Whilst modelling a lot of the assets I have found lots of little tweaks that need to be made to the block out, such as extension of certain parts of the level.
Error with the block-out compared to the concept.
I am slowly trying to get everything to fit but this might be better to fix when we have built everything in engine so that they can be sized perfectly.
Level block-out compared to the designs and concepts.
I have come to conclusion that I will just have to tweak it continuously whilst working on the environment to make sure that it is to scale with Alice and her mechanics. Speaking of mechanics, I spent Monday morning working on a few little things that needed editing such as getting the logs to break when big Alice jumps on them and making Alice float down the rabbit hole. So far I have managed to do these basically but I am unsure whether there might be a better way to do these later on. But on the the good stuff here is Freddy's final paint-over of the entire level;
Final level paint-over.
This clearly shows the transition of paper sepia tones to stylised saturated models. I am really happy with how this has turned out and I really hope that we can replicate this overall. Here is what the mushroom section is looking like at the moment;
Dan has also started blocking out his Alice model and I think we have almost decided on a final design; number 4 shown below.
So leading off from last week we have come quite far and we are beginning to see our ideas become a reality. To start off here is Braden's finished concept for the "Eat Me" room,
This was the basis from which we worked on to design the rest of the level. I really love the sense of depth and paper feel to this but it still needs something else. So at the beginning of the week me and Denzil decided to swap jobs and he has been working on UE4 mechanics and has managed to get a re-spawn and checkpoint system working, which I would have never have been able to do.
However whilst Denzil has been working in engine I did a block out of the level and tested it in UE4 to make sure that it plays well and that there was no issues with scale and proportion. After testing it I did some quick renders and we have started to do paint overs of them to get some finalised concepts on the go. We had some issues with deciding how much colour to use and ended up doing paint-overs of other peoples work to make it seem more cohesive. At the moment we have decided to go quite colourful but keep the bookesque feel with the paper textures and try to incorporate books themselves into the level. Here are the concepts we have so far;
Rabbit hole, "Drink Me" and "Eat Me" room
The book path
Extended book path
Extended book path repainted
Lily pad jump
The Caterpillars lair
As you can see we have changed our look quite drastically. We are aware that it might not work too well with the overall book style so we are keeping our minds open to change. At the moment I am working on doing a final model of The Caterpillars lair so that we can texture it and see the best style to go for. Dan has also been working on Alice and I am over the moon with his concepts;
I ablsoloutely love number 11 and I feel like we are going the right way in terms of us doing an Alice based on Alice Liddell (The girl that inspired Lewis Carroll).
Alice Liddel.
Denzil has also been working on card characters if we manage to do the second level of our game these will be used for that:
I love number 7 and 8, they have a unique feel to them but still refer to Carroll's original illustrations.
Lewis Carroll's original card character illustrations.
And finally Braden has also managed to get some UI to work in the level here is a quick work in progress shot;
obviously the graphics have not been designed or made yet but me and Freddy feel that having something like this as the background;
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