Week 10

This week I did find time while working on other modules like for example my dissertation work. I began reworking over a  few of the base textures that I started for the Alpha deadline. I began doing this a couple of weeks ago however a few smaller assets I didn't get round to. I continued this further with some of the other assets like the fast food bucket and cup. Painting over and adding shading to the assets textures would add depth into the scene and detail to the asset. The figures below show some of the asset texture sheets that were done this week. These will be developed further over the next few weeks.    

 Figure. 1. Jpeg of Happy Meal Box Texture

 Figure. 2. Jpeg of KFC Bucket Texture

Figure. 3 Jpeg of KFC Cup Texture

Figure Reference

Figure. 1. Jpeg of Happy Meal Box Texture

Figure. 2. Jpeg of KFC Bucket Texture

Figure. 3 Jpeg of KFC Cup Texture

Week 9 - Beginning to hand paint textures

Starting last week and continuing this week I've been practising hand painting the textures for the assets in my environment. This is the first time I've properly had to create hand painted textures for a scene. I started with watching tutorial videos from the internet showing a step by step process. Here's one of the videos I watched. The video relates with hand painting brick textures. While watching the video I followed the steps and ended up with this result. More work is needed of course.

Figure. 1. Picture Frame Texture

I began with the picture frames in the scene where they would be used as windows and have curtains in side them. I started with a base image from the web and used that to help me plot the key dark and light areas when painting. The figure below shows a screen shot of my first attempt of painting the picture frame.This will not be used and is no where near the quality I want it to be at.

Figure. 2. Happy Meal Box Texture

Still practising I started with other assets like the happy meal box. This asset is high up in the scene and I started to paint in the shadowing around the model and began to give the model a sense of 3D by high lighting key areas. 

Firgure. 3. Brick Wall Texture

Video References

corderocraft. 2012. Tutorial: Hand painting tileable brick texture in photoshop. [online]. [30th March 2014]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cjgZA_YKCg

   

Week 8 - Alpha Deadline

Week 8 marked the Alpha landmark in the module, this meant all assets had to be in place in the scene and to be all textured to an extent. Also a new cinematic pass should be created improving upon the last on we presented in week 3. My deadline for getting all the assets done was week 6 and I achieved that, however like wrote in my last blog post I did spend a lot of the time last week reworking the UV mapping on all the assets and having to start all over again with the textures. The whole process of going over the UV mapping had to be done and I'm glad to have sorted it out even if it put me a week behind from texturing but this has aloud me to improve the textures. When showing my work to Jon the textures being very basic to the point that they are just one colour in some areas. I do need to move on with the textures quickly. Comments on my last cinematic were that it was really short. In my newer version the cinematic lasts around 55 seconds. However the feedback covered on Monday recommended me that I should cover a high up perspective instead of just giving the audience a rats point of view. I also need to work on the camera movement as my camera angles and the movement looked like the camera was drunk.

Week 7 - Week before Alpha

With 1 week till Alpha started to begin finalising Assets and mock textures for the deadline. By the end of week 6 I had finished all the assets I needed for the scene and I had also pretty much finished all the key UV sets for all the assets too. I did want to go over them again as some bigger assets were sharing space with a lot of assets and some smaller assets had a whole UV set just to themselves. This I am changing to the point where all the big assets like the KFC box and happy meal box now have a separate UV set. Also by the end of week 6 I did apply basic colour textures to all the assets, however for the alpha deadline I do want increase the detail with the textures too. Here's how the scene is looking so far.

Figure. 1. UDK Scene Screen Shot

Figure. 2. UDK Scene Screen Shot

For Alpha I will also need an updated version of my cinematic to present. I did find a website from a past lecturer from CGMA Dave Wilson. I have never had to render a cinematic in UDK before and this webpage contains step by step videos on the process.  http://ubudave.weebly.com/udk-creating-a-video-sequence.html. 

For the last cinematic pass I used the camera system in Maya, this was because the block out I presented was all done in Maya. Working on the camera set up in UDK I'm finding it a lot more complicated than the camera system in Maya. In the end I did figure out how to use the camera tools, however I  have struggled trying to render the scene out. Instead I played the camera animation in my view port and I used Fraps to record the footage. I don't intend to use fraps for the final cinematic. I took notes from my last presentation about my first cinematic. I was told it was short and it needed to be in the length of 1 minute to a minute and a half. My cinematic now fits that time bracket and I've still kept the rat point of view with the camera angles.

Week 6 - Reading Week

Week 6 was a reading week and meant that no lectures were taking place for any modules. This gave us time to catch up on work that we may have been dragging behind on. Last week I had started placing already made assets into the UDK editor and this was to continue this week. With our Alpha deadline in Week 7 this would mean after reaching that landmark no more assets should be added to the scene. As this blog post stands there are a few more assets needing to be made however the scene is starting to take shape in the UDK editor and walking around in the scene in UDK I feel that all the sizes for the assets fit fine and gives you the view of a rat's perspective. For reaching the Alpha deadline I'll also need to add basic textures for all the assets, which I have been UVing as I go along making them.

Website References

Wilson, D. Dave Wilson 3D Artist. [Online]. [Accessed 4th March 2014]. Available from: http://ubudave.weebly.com/udk-creating-a-video-sequence.html