Off to Map: The final week

This week had been going great up until this weekend; We have been making good progress and are well on our way to finishing up the level. However! I have managed to leave the UE4 file at labs over a 3 day weekend! 

Even though I saved it to my hard drive it seems that it didn't copy over; which isn't the best thing when we have a deadline on the 8th. Never the less I can still get some things done on Monday but I will not be able to show you any screenshots of what we have been working on this week.

Anyway the level has changed a lot this week; lots of things have been updated and changed. First of all my destructible logs; at first I thought this was going to be easy however after a few problems like uncapped breaks and weird collisions I had to resort to doing some problem solving. I ended up making the logs separate and making twigs with leaves to attach in engine, I also had to fix the collision issue by placing a static mesh in the exact same place as the destructible one but hide it in game; I also set the destructible mesh to a rag-doll so that it doesn't use a collision and set the twigs up as their own destructible meshes. In the blueprints it deletes the static meshes when the damage is applied to all of the destructible ones so that Alice falls down as if she had just jumped and broken some logs.

Practice logs in engine.

Braden and myself have also been working on implementing different cameras so that they zoom in at certain areas and track the character in others. Braden messed around with this a bit more and got them working, however there are still a few issues which will need to be fixed next week.

At last Alice is also in level with just a simple rig; Dan is working on getting a cloth modifier to work on her dress but for now she looks pretty good; she does need to have a coloured dress though because she gets lost at the beginning of the level, we are thinking a blue or mint green as this compliments the oranges in the level well. Sarah also helped us put her in level too, here is a link to her blog and a post on how to import a character into UE4: www.pushingsomerocks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/week-25-part-1-off-map-recap.html?spref=fb

We have also fixed up our leaf particle effects and they work better within the level now; de-spawning at the right time and moving the way we want them too. We have also made a "leaf poof" as we call it, which is basically where leaves fly up out of the pile whilst you are walking though it.

We have also fixed up the lighting a bit and added ambient lights to the bottom of the level, including some water reflections that Denzil made; so it looks like the pond is reflecting the light onto its surroundings.

So what's left to do?
basically whatever is left on this table:

I need to animate the rabbit using matinees, put in the finished Alice, have Alice start on a book, place the rest of the planes in the level, fix the cameras, put in the Caterpillar and tweek everything.
However because I have left the level at labs I am working on doing some roughness and normal maps for some assets and the I'm going to make a glittery particle effect for the pick ups to make them stand out a little bit more.

Overall I think we should be back on track by Wednesday and ready to submit on Friday; wish us luck.
Before I finish here is some of the best life drawing I've done this year:

I feel that I have improved an amazing amount since last year and will only get better next year.
That's everything for now; Will update you with the final OTM post mortem at the end of next week.
Cheerio for now.

References:
Roy IT crowd face palm .gif: http://replygif.net/792
Sarah Wright (2015): http://pushingsomerocks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/week-25-part-1-off-map-recap.html?spref=fb
Dog leaf pile .gif: http://gifrific.com/dog-pops-up-out-of-pile-of-leaves/