Milestone update
What a pleasure it is to see such a spectacle if you don't mind me saying so myself and now this is over I can once again chill like I did last summer.
Thursday, 25 April 2013
We're Here
Here it is my last post of this blog I would like to say If you've read this throughout the duration of my journey that thanks for your support and I can conclude my final mile update for you...just so this blog feels complete.
Milestone update
Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured
- Game design document complete
- Audio proposal
Friday 15th March - Press pack for Outer Eden
Friday 22nd March - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio
Friday 19th April - Outer Eden level completed
Friday 26th April - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion
Milestone update
Sunday, 21 April 2013
Fourth Milestone
Its quite emotional when things come to an end and I'm really feeling it now as this fourth milestone is welcomed , but before we go into that I would like to say that everything I intended to add to the Outer Eden game level was added such as the animated doors, fan animating, enemy wave system, soundtrack implementation with no issues apart from the doors at first because I've briefly worked in UDK I had made doors open and close before but I had forgotten how to go about this procedure but eventually it struck me and it worked fine. I will only display the kismet behind enemy wave system but other than that the rest will be clear from this final video of the Outer Eden gameplay sequence video experience.
Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured
- Game design document complete
- Audio proposal
Friday 15th March - Press pack for Outer Eden
Friday 22nd March - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio
Friday 19th April - Outer Eden level completed
Milestones Updated
Friday 26th April - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion
Only this here blog to do and that is set to be completed next week once I have fully evaluated my entire journey from beginning to end.
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Easter Festivities
Here we have it quite the big post if you don't mind me saying as this is the post to end all posts I hope been as it showcases a gameplay sequence based on game concept Outer Eden constructed in Unreal Development Kit.
So with 4 weeks until judgement day and my original level design featured in the game design document being far to complex with the amount of time left to finished so with Gears of War Horde mode in mind I began my search for basic wave systems implemented into UDK in order to see if it would be feasible for me to achieve such a gameplay mechanic and as it happens I came across the below link, which contained just the kismet I was looking for.
http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/750961-Help-Spawning-enemy-waves-horde
Moving forwards now I had clarified that the gameplay mechanics I desired was possible to do. Causing me to start looking at building up my game environment because of this new gameplay sequence concept I felt as if it was compulsory for me to have an environment to a fairly detailed standard.
Making my environment was purely scaled and created in 3D Studio max in order to provide me with a layout to work from. Importing wasn't as easy as planned because I had an idea that UDK would allow me to import the scene as one so I wouldn't have to allocate positions for each model but I did have to do that in the end which wasn't a massive issue. Below is a screengrab of scene in 3D Studio Max where everything was modeled and located.
You now see how it's all been made as a scene now below you can see the importation procedure into UDK when exporting models out as FBX's. All models were imported through this procedure and when texture maps are in PNG format they export as a part of the FBX format.
This process of importing models wasn't always successful as a few models refused to display faces as if the normals were flipped but I double checked them but it didn't rectify the problem so a few models didn't make it into the environment.Anyway below is a screengrab taken from UDK and Outer Edens progress displaying models in the engine.
From these images you will be able to see that my engine is processing my environment in a cel shaded visual style and this is because of a package I obtained from the below link.
http://prawnskunk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cel-shading-or-borderlands-style-shader.html
This visual style was mentioned in it's earlier designs but I didn't have it in place because I was expecting it would be a lot harder to achieve but Rob Ward a fellow student pointed me towards that link.
Once all static meshes were in place the fun began with importing custom playable/AI characters and weapons into the Engine.
Firstly before importing weapons in I had my character implemented into the game engine and at this point many issues were crumbling down on me because of the way in which my character was imported into UDK with the biped as it doesn't maintain UDK's default unit scale, so the character's collision was way too tall in comparison to the mesh. This also had the same affect with custom AI, but as far as integrating custom enemies and custom player was concerned I had succeeded with the use of custom scripts that extend the preset unreal script.
Even though I had my character in it wasn't the only stage with character importation as animations had to be assigned and this done through exporting animations baked onto a biped and importing them into an animset which are directly fed into an animtree where the animations are blended together for what ever purpose is required. I had no issues with this part of character importation.Below is a screenshot of the animtree and animset.
Referring back to player collision it was sorted with cylinder collision being assigned in the script files but it isn't very accurate when shooting at enemies as you have to aim at their feet but it was a good enough fix to allow the player to walk inside the building structure
Weapon importation was the next step in this chapter of this journey which was easier than the character, but only because I obtained this piece of software that generated the weapon code for me for its importation call Unreal X-Editor. Which was obtained from the below.
http://unrealxeditor.wordpress.com/downloads/
All I had to do was rig my weapon with bones for later applying sockets for handles to be applied and muzzle flash. Below displays weapon with bones.
When I did originally import my weapon it wasn't showing in 3rd person player perspective in UDK and after desperately searching for the answer I decided to email Games Architecture Tutor Chris Walton regarding the issues and responded mention the WeaponPoint on both the character and weapon which I completely forgot about. Below displays Character and weapon in the Engine.
Next Week
At this stage I felt that little bit more comfortable with that way things were shaping, but I didn't fee complete as doors needed to be animated, enemies spawned utilizing that wave system, fan animated and a soundtrack for that extra kick needed to be embedded, but I felt like it could be left til next week that final week on this project and in fact my fourth milestone...the end is near.
So with 4 weeks until judgement day and my original level design featured in the game design document being far to complex with the amount of time left to finished so with Gears of War Horde mode in mind I began my search for basic wave systems implemented into UDK in order to see if it would be feasible for me to achieve such a gameplay mechanic and as it happens I came across the below link, which contained just the kismet I was looking for.
http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/750961-Help-Spawning-enemy-waves-horde
Moving forwards now I had clarified that the gameplay mechanics I desired was possible to do. Causing me to start looking at building up my game environment because of this new gameplay sequence concept I felt as if it was compulsory for me to have an environment to a fairly detailed standard.
Making my environment was purely scaled and created in 3D Studio max in order to provide me with a layout to work from. Importing wasn't as easy as planned because I had an idea that UDK would allow me to import the scene as one so I wouldn't have to allocate positions for each model but I did have to do that in the end which wasn't a massive issue. Below is a screengrab of scene in 3D Studio Max where everything was modeled and located.
You now see how it's all been made as a scene now below you can see the importation procedure into UDK when exporting models out as FBX's. All models were imported through this procedure and when texture maps are in PNG format they export as a part of the FBX format.
This process of importing models wasn't always successful as a few models refused to display faces as if the normals were flipped but I double checked them but it didn't rectify the problem so a few models didn't make it into the environment.Anyway below is a screengrab taken from UDK and Outer Edens progress displaying models in the engine.
http://prawnskunk.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/cel-shading-or-borderlands-style-shader.html
This visual style was mentioned in it's earlier designs but I didn't have it in place because I was expecting it would be a lot harder to achieve but Rob Ward a fellow student pointed me towards that link.
Once all static meshes were in place the fun began with importing custom playable/AI characters and weapons into the Engine.
Firstly before importing weapons in I had my character implemented into the game engine and at this point many issues were crumbling down on me because of the way in which my character was imported into UDK with the biped as it doesn't maintain UDK's default unit scale, so the character's collision was way too tall in comparison to the mesh. This also had the same affect with custom AI, but as far as integrating custom enemies and custom player was concerned I had succeeded with the use of custom scripts that extend the preset unreal script.
Even though I had my character in it wasn't the only stage with character importation as animations had to be assigned and this done through exporting animations baked onto a biped and importing them into an animset which are directly fed into an animtree where the animations are blended together for what ever purpose is required. I had no issues with this part of character importation.Below is a screenshot of the animtree and animset.
Referring back to player collision it was sorted with cylinder collision being assigned in the script files but it isn't very accurate when shooting at enemies as you have to aim at their feet but it was a good enough fix to allow the player to walk inside the building structure
Weapon importation was the next step in this chapter of this journey which was easier than the character, but only because I obtained this piece of software that generated the weapon code for me for its importation call Unreal X-Editor. Which was obtained from the below.
http://unrealxeditor.wordpress.com/downloads/
All I had to do was rig my weapon with bones for later applying sockets for handles to be applied and muzzle flash. Below displays weapon with bones.
When I did originally import my weapon it wasn't showing in 3rd person player perspective in UDK and after desperately searching for the answer I decided to email Games Architecture Tutor Chris Walton regarding the issues and responded mention the WeaponPoint on both the character and weapon which I completely forgot about. Below displays Character and weapon in the Engine.
Next Week
At this stage I felt that little bit more comfortable with that way things were shaping, but I didn't fee complete as doors needed to be animated, enemies spawned utilizing that wave system, fan animated and a soundtrack for that extra kick needed to be embedded, but I felt like it could be left til next week that final week on this project and in fact my fourth milestone...the end is near.
- Doors
- Fan Animated
- Enemy Wave System
- Lights
Sunday, 24 March 2013
Fourth Milestone
Cinematic has finally been glued together after all this time and in order for me to achieve this I have had to put in double the time in order to be ready to render at least one day prior to the deadline just in case any errors are encountered.
From everything I've mentioned I now had to bring it all together as one cinematic scene including animations, models, lighting and even compose a soundtrack and record dialogue with to be layered on top of the final rendered piece.
Below is a screen grab of my scene and the final rendered cinematic
Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured
- Game design document complete
- Audio proposal
Friday 15th March - Press pack for Outer Eden
Friday 22nd March - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio
From everything I've mentioned I now had to bring it all together as one cinematic scene including animations, models, lighting and even compose a soundtrack and record dialogue with to be layered on top of the final rendered piece.
Below is a screen grab of my scene and the final rendered cinematic
Everything went according to plan as far as rendering is concerned, but when it comes down to my dialogue and soundtrack I feel like I should have put more time into them as the dialogue doesn't quite deliver the right feel for the kind of character Zak is. Where the soundtrack is concerned there isn't anything specific that I dislike about it and it expresses exactly what I was aiming to, but it's because I only got it done this week alone when I've had all this time.
Milestones Updated
Friday 19th April - Outer Eden level completed
Friday 26th April - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion
Next Post
It's come to that time again, another set of holidays, but this time its the Easter holidays and I hope everyone has a good one and relaxes unlike myself as I have the game level still to complete. This time my next post won't be next week it'll fall at the end of the 3 week Easter holidays with all the relevant information about the development procedures that take place.
Sunday, 17 March 2013
Third Milestone
My third milestone is here, how time flies and this milestone is the one focused around the press pack to promote Outer Eden as a product but I will have to tell you this I'm not personally excited about this milestone as I feel I didn't have enough time to commit as I felt as if the cinematic has been taking precedence. Anyway I took some time out of 3D to create a few design ideas for promotional products to push the sale of Outer Eden which feed directly into a press pack. Below are a few designs for various products from T-shirts all the way to posters
When all of these where created I had to shift back into 3D as so far I had compiled enemy character, main character, vehicle and environment. The only thing I was missing in order to transition Outer Eden into being a 3rd person shooter and yes that is of course the weapon model, which is displayed below alongside the texture map I put together for it.
It's design is influenced by that of Halo's assault rifle with inspiration from the Gears of War lancer for the rear end just because it's design heavily suits Outer Edens appeal, but I have made adjustments to its overall design in terms of the energy powered style instead of using bullets as the Gears lancer and Halo assault rifle have.
Overall this week has been productive even is I didn't feel fully satisfied with my press pack milestone it's still been hit according to plan.
Milestone Update
Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured
- Game design document complete
- Audio proposal
Friday 15th March - Press pack for Outer Eden
Next Week
When all of these where created I had to shift back into 3D as so far I had compiled enemy character, main character, vehicle and environment. The only thing I was missing in order to transition Outer Eden into being a 3rd person shooter and yes that is of course the weapon model, which is displayed below alongside the texture map I put together for it.
It's design is influenced by that of Halo's assault rifle with inspiration from the Gears of War lancer for the rear end just because it's design heavily suits Outer Edens appeal, but I have made adjustments to its overall design in terms of the energy powered style instead of using bullets as the Gears lancer and Halo assault rifle have.
Overall this week has been productive even is I didn't feel fully satisfied with my press pack milestone it's still been hit according to plan.
Milestone Update
Friday 22nd March - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio
Friday 19th April - Outer Eden level completed
Friday 26th April - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion
Next Week
- Apply animations
- Render Animation
- Compose Soundtrack
- Milestone
Sunday, 10 March 2013
One Step Forward and Two Steps Back
Last week as you know I was in the process of UV texturing my tank and this week I have decided to revert to using the arch and design presets built into 3D Studio Max alongside the multi-sub object texturing method in order to keep myself on track. I undertook this action half way through the week when I realised that UV texturing the Tank was taking far too long due to poly count as you can see from image below there are far too many UV's to organise with such little time.
The image following this is the method in which reverted to for economical purposes and it took me about 30 minutes and had I done it the other way I may not of finished it by now.
Having finished the tank at the mid week point I was able to progress onto getting my landscape environment together by the way of a height map and skydome which isn't anything particularly fancy but it provides me with that scene I long to build. Below presents both skydome and height map alongside the height maps final result.
Everything in this post so far has been positive in yet my post title invokes a different attitude and this is because I came across problems with how I was going to choreograph my entire set of animations within 3D Studio Max as I'm not yet as that level of experience, so I decided to make it a where the main character looks out to the vast lands to see the patrol marching by. giving me less animations to work with.
Next Week
- Model and Texture Weapon
- Press Pack
- Milestone
Sunday, 3 March 2013
Tank Part 2
Further developments to the Tank model from last week have led me to the final result of it's structure you see below and It's been hard at times thinking about how certain parts of its body shape, but using designs from both Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Transformers:War for Cybertron as heavy influences do benefit because they possess the style in which I want to feature in Outer Eden. An image of a tank from Transformers games is seen below.
All Elements of the tank are grouped accordingly in order to animate them as required for cinematic
Next Week
Next Week
- Environment
- Applying animations to characters
- UV Texture Tank
Sunday, 24 February 2013
Starting to Unload the Big Guns
After all this character business I think a well deserved break from characters is in order, so during this week I planned on starting my tank mesh to animated and implemented into the cinematic. The way in which I've decided to do this is by making one half of it in order to again save time as need I remind you that the milestones are approaching which are below.
Friday 15th March - Press pack for Outer Eden
Friday 22nd March - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio
Friday 19th April - Outer Eden level completed
Friday 26th April - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion
From this I haven't started any production of marketing essentials for Outer Eden's press pack as I've decided to focus on the cinematic as the work parameter seems to be on a larger scale, but time management could be the real restraint here. I am unsure at this stage whether or not I'm on track.
Below is Tanks progressed and as you can see its just half shelled at the moment
Next Week
- Tank modelling completion
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Enemy Skinned
This week all I achieved was that of skiing my enemy character and the reason for what you might see as lacking in these weeks in terms of production is because I am not very strong at skinning characters and it takes time to adjust to. Below is screenshot of enemy skinned and ready to animate.
further explorations have been declared with my cinematic is the additional factor of modelling futuristic energy powered hover tank to include as part of the patrol in order to have something else to flesh out ratio of elements featured within the scene and in my GDD I do mention the tank and it would present further expansion on that front.
Next week
- Start production of tank model
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Problem Shared is a Problem Solved
So last week another issue stunted the growth of this project when myself and Ross Fielding a fellow student came face to face with weighting characters as It completely went over my head and after long determination to figure it out myself and Ross Fielding eventually decided to confide in someone. So we asked Mike White about this issues a tutor at Confetti that works with animation and he provided us with the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-awe14FQBY
Proved to be a valuable asset as I now fully understand weighting and below is an image of the results of my weighting which at this stage aren't professional standard but I believe it to be a decent attempt for a first one .
Pushing on I will cast our minds back into the world of audio as I haven't really digressed into that area of things because I actually haven't produced anything at this point due to being to wrapped up with finalizing the general idea and problem solving with 3D aspects such as weighting
Next Week
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-awe14FQBY
Proved to be a valuable asset as I now fully understand weighting and below is an image of the results of my weighting which at this stage aren't professional standard but I believe it to be a decent attempt for a first one .
Pushing on I will cast our minds back into the world of audio as I haven't really digressed into that area of things because I actually haven't produced anything at this point due to being to wrapped up with finalizing the general idea and problem solving with 3D aspects such as weighting
Next Week
- Move towards rigging and skinning enemy character
Sunday, 3 February 2013
OH DEAR!!!!!
Right I'm back again and this time like a few weeks back I have stumble across a problem or a difficulty as I think it should be addressed. This difficulty is with skinning characters as I really don't understand how it works at all in terms of how its interface as a whole and the colour system and how certain colours affect certain vertices and I've spent most of this week trying to understand but haven't got anywhere with it as of yet.
On an upbeat note I have successfully capture all of the animations for my cinematic and I have even collected animations for the game that follows such as idle, running, etc. In order to kill two birds with one stone .
Next Week
On an upbeat note I have successfully capture all of the animations for my cinematic and I have even collected animations for the game that follows such as idle, running, etc. In order to kill two birds with one stone .
Next Week
- More research into skinning characters
Sunday, 27 January 2013
At Long Last
Hope from last week is here to be delivered this week as I stumbled across my idea for the setting and scenario for my cinematic to display to represent a sequence in my game concept Outer Eden.
Further promoting this concept I would like to say that its places the main character Zak in the desert like outlands of Mars where he survives evading the governments military order that patrol Mars. So in this scene you will first see Zak looking out towards the vast land mass of Mars until his devices alerts him of incoming enemies; urging him to flee. With that in mind Zak hides behind a rock in order to wait for the patrol to pass but one of the soldiers hears movements from the rock in which Zak is hidden, which ignites an action sequence.
I choice this idea because it gets across how the game feels as a whole and it doesn't require me to construct a great deal of assets for the environment and that's not down to laziness its just simply in place to ensure I'm hitting milestones.
Taking in that I now have an idea to work with I felt as if I could move on towards researching environment and rigging characters as character animation protocols are something I have never before encounter, so it's going to be interesting.
For now I can leave you with an image of my main character with all the bones of the biped in 3D Studio Max in place ready for skinning.
Next Week
Further promoting this concept I would like to say that its places the main character Zak in the desert like outlands of Mars where he survives evading the governments military order that patrol Mars. So in this scene you will first see Zak looking out towards the vast land mass of Mars until his devices alerts him of incoming enemies; urging him to flee. With that in mind Zak hides behind a rock in order to wait for the patrol to pass but one of the soldiers hears movements from the rock in which Zak is hidden, which ignites an action sequence.
I choice this idea because it gets across how the game feels as a whole and it doesn't require me to construct a great deal of assets for the environment and that's not down to laziness its just simply in place to ensure I'm hitting milestones.
Taking in that I now have an idea to work with I felt as if I could move on towards researching environment and rigging characters as character animation protocols are something I have never before encounter, so it's going to be interesting.
For now I can leave you with an image of my main character with all the bones of the biped in 3D Studio Max in place ready for skinning.
Next Week
- Fully Skinned Character
- Motion Capture Animations
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Slow and Steady
Unfortunately unlike the past few weeks I cannot bring cheer through work completion as I haven't really developed much this week due to the frustration of not coming up with an idea for my cinematic.
This has had a negative effect with the project as a whole because creating the two characters were definitive elements however the world that surrounds them is yet to be drawn and with not having a world I don't actually have any actions to take place.
Bringing me onto the factor that I have had the opportunity for the first time to witness motion capture in full flight.....but when it came to Outer Eden I didn't have anything to record because of the previous issues.
Anyway I'm going to have to leave it there for now but I really hope next week has more in store.
Next Week
This has had a negative effect with the project as a whole because creating the two characters were definitive elements however the world that surrounds them is yet to be drawn and with not having a world I don't actually have any actions to take place.
Bringing me onto the factor that I have had the opportunity for the first time to witness motion capture in full flight.....but when it came to Outer Eden I didn't have anything to record because of the previous issues.
Anyway I'm going to have to leave it there for now but I really hope next week has more in store.
Next Week
- The drawing board with cinematic plan
Sunday, 13 January 2013
Back to Work
Another steady week for me as I deliver on last weeks aims and a bit extra on the side and what I mean by that is I managed to completely finished my enemy characters. However I will not claim that it was difficult as for my enemies I recycled the armour which was originally going to be solely allocated to the main character by 3D modelling a helmet to sit on it's shoulders instead of my head which has been generated using a piece of software called FaceGen.
This was done in order to save time as I felt at this stage a lot had to be done and some aspects were elements that I'd never looked at ever such as rigging these characters to be animated. So, all in all I wielded my head to the armour mesh, created the enemy helmet to be used with the armour set and in result of this I had to put together two separate texture maps for both characters. All of which are displayed below.
This was done in order to save time as I felt at this stage a lot had to be done and some aspects were elements that I'd never looked at ever such as rigging these characters to be animated. So, all in all I wielded my head to the armour mesh, created the enemy helmet to be used with the armour set and in result of this I had to put together two separate texture maps for both characters. All of which are displayed below.
Next week
- First look at motion capture
- Starting to build environment for cinematic
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Happy New Year
Happy new year everyone who is reading my blog I hope you've all had a great Christmas and received everything you've asked for
Anyhow, been as my last post was last year due to me taking time off over the Christmas holidays I would like to highlight what's in store over the next few weeks leading up towards my second milestone which is the press pack and cinematic segment of Outer Eden. These are in fact two separate milestones but they do fall very close together so subconsciously I consider them to be as one.
Expectations over the weeks leading towards cinematic and press pack
Anyhow, been as my last post was last year due to me taking time off over the Christmas holidays I would like to highlight what's in store over the next few weeks leading up towards my second milestone which is the press pack and cinematic segment of Outer Eden. These are in fact two separate milestones but they do fall very close together so subconsciously I consider them to be as one.
Expectations over the weeks leading towards cinematic and press pack
- Enemy Character Model
- Rigging Characters
- Animating Characters
- Environment
- Other assets for scene
- Press Pack
I must point out that at this stage in development I haven't actually got a fully fledged idea for my cinematic piece as I'm trying to consider all logistics such as time constraint and whether or not my abilities will maintain a specific idea.
Next Weeks plans
- Enemy Character
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