Applied Game Art Production - Broken Rigs - Invasion Project
This will be my personal blog for the AGAP unit in my second semester at University, I am going to treat this quite casually as we are working with another forum/Blog and that is with And G, and the Pixel bullies and I want this to be professional
Week One
the first week of the semester was all about getting into groups and researching and coming up with a theme and location that we where going to build a level for invasion on
we discussed a couple of ideas as a group but the main idea we came up with was to base a level on the grand canyon
the original idea was to start at a military base before the grand canyon, from there you would progress into the grand canyon navigating through a series of twists and turns fighting the Invasion force, However based upon feedback we decided to focus are level upon the grand canyon and the final boss being in some from of mine/ a mining boss at the end.
Research
I started by looking at Bridges, as we had started looking at how are game play would work, we wanted the Enemy AI (the Invaders) to have both foot, turret and Flying enemies.
The bridges would be used by both the human forces to cross and the canyon similar to what we saw happening in the Alpha game play in the level we where given as a demo on the lower level of the arena, as well as layered game play to the level
After looking at bridges i wanted to look at modern human military assets, Even though we have no real timeline for when the game takes place i am assuming it happens within modern day
I was doing the most varied and random research of us all because of the way we had assigned jobs it was my job to research any potential environment assets that could fit into the level
I looked at military assets for the human base, I considered military assets, everything from bunkers, bunker doors, hangars, Barracks, Radar towers, Satellite dishes. I then looked at more human stuff such as bridges and then from here I started looking at more industrial structures such as the dam's - I really wanted to pursue the dam idea and have a tiered level where you go further down into the level as you progress, this would help with the culling and we could still have the curved idea - However I did not voice this idea to the team as I did not see it working
Week Two
Week two for me was a bit of a dead end week, I started modelling assets for block out but there was note enough progress made to be worth posting, We spoke as a team about what we are planning to do and further developer the idea
We decided that Dave would concentrate upon the level design as he had experience doing Level design from some of his personal project, or that was my understanding of it. We also discussed the style of the level, a team we liked the idea of doing something similar to the style of Tf2 or a hand painted style as we thought this would look better than the photo realistic look Andy G was trying to achieve.
Question to be asked?
Can we use Normal maps
Can we Use Specular
Is there a Poly Count
We also wanted to get hold of the level Andy G has said he would provide as other teams had already gained access to this, I thought this to be unfair.
Gantt Chart
I looked at military assets for the human base, I considered military assets, everything from bunkers, bunker doors, hangars, Barracks, Radar towers, Satellite dishes. I then looked at more human stuff such as bridges and then from here I started looking at more industrial structures such as the dam's - I really wanted to pursue the dam idea and have a tiered level where you go further down into the level as you progress, this would help with the culling and we could still have the curved idea - However I did not voice this idea to the team as I did not see it working
Week Two
Week two for me was a bit of a dead end week, I started modelling assets for block out but there was note enough progress made to be worth posting, We spoke as a team about what we are planning to do and further developer the idea
We decided that Dave would concentrate upon the level design as he had experience doing Level design from some of his personal project, or that was my understanding of it. We also discussed the style of the level, a team we liked the idea of doing something similar to the style of Tf2 or a hand painted style as we thought this would look better than the photo realistic look Andy G was trying to achieve.
Question to be asked?
Can we use Normal maps
Can we Use Specular
Is there a Poly Count
We also wanted to get hold of the level Andy G has said he would provide as other teams had already gained access to this, I thought this to be unfair.
Gantt Chart
Above is the Gant sheet, Built By Kyle and agreed upon as a group, This gives us a time frame for the project and how and when everything should be completed by - This was something that Kyle did of his own accord when he was group leader he asked for are feedback and changed it based on this
After having done Three mood boards I decided it was time to move into block out Modelling -
Based upon my mood boards I wanted to create a series of Modular assets for the canyon that could be placed throughout and still make sense - at this point i had not really considered what we would actually need for a military base - This was due to lack of research on my part
For the main base I wanted:-
A Bunker
Heli Pad
Missile Silo - What military base is complete without one - I was also thinking these could be used as a power up that launches a series of Drones/Mini Missiles at enemies directly in front of you
Radar tower - These could also be placed throughout the level and still make sense
Satellites - These could also be placed throughout the level and still make sense
Medic tents -
Air Control Tower - This is the single most important asset - I have modelled this so that the Air control part can be traded out for other assets such as the Radar Tower and Satellite Dish
Week Three - Pitch Presentation and B lockout Finished
Week 3
Week Three was a continuation of modelling, As well as being spent preparing the level and work for Presentation to Andy G adn the presenting the Level
To give an Idea of where we were at block out here is an image of the original level in Maya, We decided although
Above is the basic canyon layout we agreed upon as a team
Week Four and Five
Week four and Five are going to be spent doing two things
Refining my meshes and Idea
Scrapping Ideas
UV'ing current final models
Looking at my Workflow
UV's
I am going to star with mentioning my UV sheets, The main issue i have is not utilising space, Most of my textures will be 256 *256 , With the three UV sheets you can see below you can see where I am wasting allot of important space, That if i had more assets i would like to use for them
I also wish to state that i found a much quicker way to UV - using planar projection and the attribute editor to scale them all univesally, allowing for me to create equal texel density across all my models
The Rader at the end of the projects the UV's where actually the wrong way around
Radar Dish
Week Three was a continuation of modelling, As well as being spent preparing the level and work for Presentation to Andy G adn the presenting the Level
To give an Idea of where we were at block out here is an image of the original level in Maya, We decided although
Above is the basic canyon layout we agreed upon as a team
Week Four and Five
Week four and Five are going to be spent doing two things
Refining my meshes and Idea
Scrapping Ideas
UV'ing current final models
Looking at my Workflow
UV's
I am going to star with mentioning my UV sheets, The main issue i have is not utilising space, Most of my textures will be 256 *256 , With the three UV sheets you can see below you can see where I am wasting allot of important space, That if i had more assets i would like to use for them
I also wish to state that i found a much quicker way to UV - using planar projection and the attribute editor to scale them all univesally, allowing for me to create equal texel density across all my models
The Rader at the end of the projects the UV's where actually the wrong way around
Radar Dish
Bunker
Satellite Dish
Group issues/Scrapped ideas
One of the main issues for me by week four was lack of group Communication within the Team, SO there was not much happening in terms of the overall group work
Week Six- Reading Week
Textures
Military Base Texture
Military Asset Textures
Radar Dish
Week Seven
Week seven was the first week back after reading week, At this point we changed group leader, And I was chosen.
My first position as group leader was to pull the group back together and organise the group more
Rigging
Week seven was spent rigging the items that needed rigging
Daves Walker
Aprils Boss
Aprils Alien Tentacle
Daves Turret
Aprils Boss
The first thing, and potentially the most important item I rigged was the boss - We did eventually scape this again as the rig didn't work in Unity - This was something on my part as I could of researched more thoroughly how to rig for Unity and how this works - I also had to consider that they wanted the boss to have a bob animation and have the legs moving with the rest of the rig
Tentacle Rig
The pruple and Orange joints represent the rig I created for the tentacle's that come out of the side of the Level - In the final version of the level we would not have animations for the tentacles because the way i had rigged them did not work for the way kyle wanted to animate them.
Based on Feedback form Kyle - I Know i need to add Pole vectors to each bone of the Rig, and IK the rig so that each bone has an individual chain - This is something I will do if I have time
Week Eight
Week eight was spent preparing for Alpha presentation, So Finalising stuff in the level. As a group we spent the week going through what needed to be changed and what needed to be amended.
Below is an image to give a comparison of how far we have come from Alpha to Blockout
Here are the
Things that came up
- Emptiness of the Level
-lack of a 'Defined' Start for the player - This i something we had already spoken about as a group and lack of progress and a decision has meant we are stalled here
- The canyon was un-populated with foliage - This is something we spoke about, We had a massive out of scale cactus in are level and we will change this after Alpha
Alpha Presentation
Having been of sick the day before i was essentially going into the alpha presentation blind, I had no idea what the team had been working on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl-tiPl3OAU
during the presentation we where given feedback, It was pretty much expected based upon what i thought would be said, Essentially what i listed above.
Week Nine - Re doing Textures ARGHHH why!!!
More Modelling and Changing Textures - One thing I forgot to account for was Desert/Canyon textures
SO heres the issue, Being a complete Idiot i had already saved and compressed my Texture files down to Taragas, Which meant I did not have the original Layers to go in an edit the textures, However this was not so bad as I had kept the AO and Cavity maps so i did not have to rebake anything
Radar Dish
Im actually really pleased with the final result of this texture, If i had more time i would add more wear and tear to it, However because of the size screen the game is going to be played on having that much fine detail my be irrelevant.
Texture with Ambient Occlusion Masks and Cavity overlay - Although there is no real difference it means I get a good amount of lighting information built into the
Satellite Dish
Military Base
OK so these three textures finalised, Yep I only actually have three models here, finished and done, that is commitment for you, Ill speak about this in my Post Morten but honestly this infuriates me, This is something i have been bringing up in group meetings is a lack of work - And I do not understand why even with the idea of a barren canyon we could not have some more unique assets, Old fences, Run down Houses etc etc
Week Ten - New Assets and Updating 3D-Forum-For-Games
So at the end of week Nine i had already started modelling some new assets, AS Andy G had given feedback that the military would be better suited if it looked like an actual forward operating base in Afghanistan.
Freight Container
Human Barracks
I really struggled with creating a texture for this mesh, I was essentially over thinking what was going on in the level and how much this asset was going to - I had made this asset originally so it had an extremely detailed High Poly mesh asset - I was really over thinking what needed to be done with this mesh
Week Eleven - Rocks Rocks Rocks
The final full week of modelling was spent by the team creating a series of assets to help populate the level, Mine was rocks - Below you can see the three rocks I made, one is highlighted so you can see that they are very low poly.
The final week of the unit is going to be spent writing the Post Mortem and finalising all the assets and issues with my assets for Unity and Final presentation on Thursday
Final Asset List
Below is the final assets list for a level, Overall I think we managed as a team to equally balance the workload by the end of the project after kyle had been picking up the slack initially.
Final Presentation
AS a team we had not really spoken about the final presentation and how it would work and what we would be doing. I came in blind to the presentation.
I was informed that we would not have a live game play demo working for the presentation because the build was not working on the lab computers
That Kyle and April would be speaking in the presnetation and that i would not be speaking.
This was the first time i had seen the final environment and I was really pleased with the result
Below are the final shots of are level taken in real time from the game level,
