Research For My Year 2 FMP

For my year 2 FMP I am going to be designing my own level in Unreal Engine 4 (Similar to last year) but this time around it will be more than a simple shell of a level. I am intending to use all of newfound skills from year 2 and in my free time work towards developing work with AI, etc to create life for my level.

Based upon my research plan, today I have been looking at a YouTube channel called Shesez, namely his series entitled “Boundary Break”. By watching these videos I have learned many techniques developers use within their environments to give them life whilst remaining possible and not as resource intensive, one main method I have studied is LOD (Level Of Detail) this will calculate the distance the player is from an area of the environment and lower the quality of the model/textures to improve performance whilst still looking realistic.

In these images you can see the developers using LOD as past a certain distance the environments become very plain with very little detail and 3D assets, the only ones that are used are for the skyscrapers that are used as a weenie in the skyline. The photo of the actual city itself clearly displays this LOD as if you look closely at the buildings you will see they are stripped of all detail and the streets are free of any wreckage or smaller details as the grounds texture compensates for this to create the illusion that there is stuff there but really it’s the combination of dull colors and small streets. (I sourced these images from Off Camera Secrets | Fallout 4 Boundary Break on YouTube)

I also used google earth to compare Boston Common Park to the real life area,

The park in Fallout 4 is much smaller than the real life equivalent to save on performance but includes many key features such as the famous “Freedom Trail” and the State Building at the end of both roads. I found this method of comparing the video games to the real life counterparts very effective as they allow me for a true direct comparison between the worlds and I can see why any details may have been cut out and get inspiration for my own textures for my map and how the buildings contrast to one another.

I have also been looking at concept art for video games such as Fallout 4 and comparing the difference from the intended design to the finished one.

On the left is the intended design for the character “Mama Murphy”, the reason for the significant downgrade is because the developer believed that there would be the issue of keeping the character close enough to the floor and in eye level of the character. It was also stated to be a distraction. It wasn’t just characters that get changed upon release, but the environments themselves, the reasons for changes such as these is mainly technological limits, if this level of detail was included in the game then it would be at the cost of performance, and as such the environments were dulled down to improve flow of game play and performance.

To study concept art for Fallout 4 I used a combination of my own art book from the game and a YouTube video made by ShoddyCast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_aMWh3uclE) This video displays many changes but explains the reasons behind them, using notes from the developers and artists. The main reason for these changes in a game like fallout is because most of the environment is rendered whilst you are outside, if the intensely detailed environments displayed here were constantly rendered the game would not run as well. Alternatively when we compare the art of The Last Of Us to the physical release we see much more accurate results since the game isn’t constantly being rendered in and out of visibility, most levels are loaded after completing a mission and moving onto the next level, when we combine this with the very linear game play compared to fallout 4, this gives the developers much more room to include smaller details.

Although my project will be based around this theme of level, it would be helpful if I looked at different genres of video games and their level designs to see how they are made to as most arguably the most important part of the game in the well known Mario series, the levels in these games are very iconic and one of the most recognizable features of the series.

This is one of the first levels in Super Mario Bro’s and although it is very simplistic if we look deeper you can see the level conforming to the 3 lane rule even though it does not need to as it is a platformer, the game is famous because of the player choice it offers, you can either try to go around the enemy, collect all of the ? boxes for extra loot or take it the safe way and jump around the enemy on top of the boxes and straight to the pipe. The color theme is also very brightly colored and its pleasant to look at compared to the dull counterpart of Fallout 4 which is mainly focused on washed out, grey colors.

I created a questionnaire to identify the preferred genre/theme of a video game level, these are my results –

Post apocalyptic won the vote, which works well for me as my level will be based around the whole post apocalyptic remains of a city.

 

 

 

Texturing in 3D Coat using a model from Maya.

Today I textured an asset I made in Maya using a new software called 3D Coat.

At the moment my knowledge of this program is very limited and I do not know how to effectively paint yet, you can see this by looking around the edges where the textures go somewhat smudged and doesn’t look as good.

So far though I am enjoying texturing in this program as it allows me to create more detailed pieces that will look better when I import them into my projects in Unreal, this is because the paint has a depth to it and it gives the illusion of wear and ridges when in reality the asset is actually flat.

Game Company Logos

Types Of Mapping

In mapping there are 4 main things:

-Diffuse – Diffuse color is like painting an image on the surface of the object.

-Specular – Defines a surface’s shininess and highlight color

-Normal – Stores a direction at each pixel.

-Opacity – How transparent the object is.

Texturing In Maya Using Gradients

Creating my gradient –

First of all I had to create my gradient which I will use for the colors of my tree. I started by created a canvas 256 x 256 pixels wide and long and using the gradient tool to create a brown and green gradient. The bottom pegs of the gradient menu are to change the color and the top are for opacity. Once done I placed my gradient on my canvas and saved it as a JPEG.

Using my gradient to texture the tree –

To do this I opened the tree file and then selected the object and pressed the “Display Hypershade Window” button which opened the materials of the object, I selected Lambert 1 and then opened the wire map, I added a file to it which was my gradient and then had to connect the file wire to the objects wire map, to do this i dragged the out pin to the color pin of my object.

This gave it the colors but they were not correctly aligned.

To align them I opened my uv map, selected the trunk of the tree and selected planar on the UV tab, this then allowed me to drag the UV map of the trunk into the brown part of the gradient which then made the trunk brown,

I repeated this for each bunch on top of the tree to make them green with the top part being lighter than the others to create the effect of a light source impacting the object.

This is what it looked like when I had finished.

Creating A Custom Health Bar.

Today I created my own health bar which is in the shape of a heart, to do this I used photo shop to create an outline and a fill image of the heart which would gradually go from fill to outline depending on the damage you take, I saved my images as PNG’s with hidden backgrounds so that it is transparent once I imported it to Unreal Engine.

This is my completed health bar in game.

Pixel Art

Pixel Art is digital art which is created using individual pixels, usually in very small canvases (16×16, 32×32, 64×64 etc) which are square. It is usually less detailed compared to other art forms as there is not much room for added details when comparing to  other forms of graphics.

Terraria is a more cartoony take on pixel art as it has thicker black borders around the environment and objects and brighter colors which give a more lighthearted and casual feel to the game.

If we compare this to 3D graphics on Battlefield 1 we can clearly see the difference between the art styles, one being far more realistic and a lot more expensive to create.

Game developers might choose to use pixel art for their games as it is a very unique art style and it is quicker to design and create. It is also a nostalgic art style as many older games used purely pixel art graphics, such as golden axe. It is also cheaper to create than 3D graphics.

Here is an example of a pixel-art heart that I made –

To create this I created a new canvas which is 16 x 16 pixels to create a square. I then created a new layer to create my heart outline. Once this was done I cleared overlapping pixels to give it a thinner look and created a new layer where I colored the heart in red, from here I used different tones of red to give my heart shading.

 

Texturing A House In Maya

  

Today I used Photoshop to create textures for this house in Maya.

Firstly, I started off with a empty UV map which is similar to a blueprint of the house which showed me what I had to texture.

I started off by adding several layers for different sections of my texture so that if i made a mistake I wouldn’t have to redo all of my work. I then used the polygonal lasso tool to select the parts of my house I was going to start with texturing, once I had done this I filled it in with a solid color and then went over it with different shades of the same color to add shadows ad other details such as grass and weeds.

Once I had textured my entire UV map I could then import it into Maya. To do this I selected the entire house and right clicked to display options, with this I pressed “assign new material” where I selected lambert and imported my saved file. My end results are displayed above in my screenshots.

Shading with brushes and tools.

This is my attempt at shading using Photoshop’s tools, I used the polygonal lasso tool for the cube to add the side and top to my rectangle which I then colored in different shades of red to give the illusion of a light source impacting the object.

For the sphere I blended different layers of the same circle to add shading, then I lightened near the top on the lighter section to show where a light source has impacted the object.

Spot Healing Brush Tool

Here I had to use the healing tool to remove this guys acne, I started by selecting the healing brush tool to select a “cover” piece of skin that matches a similar shade to the affected area, I then proceeded to cover all possible acne to give the face a smoother look. This technique can also be used in games to merge textures.