week 12

This was the final week so I spent the majority of it making my scene, which I found rather difficult at first as I struggled with UDK, but once I learnt the basics such as properly applying materials, placing the objects, adding lights and collision I was fine. I spent a number of attempts doing this just practising loading up my packages and creating the scene until I was confident enough to do it properly.

Once all my assets were in the scene I first added collision to it, so I could walk through my scene and be stopped from falling through the floor, or walking though the vehicle and diorama. One problem however was that the collision stopped me from being able to walk through the door frame, however this wasn't too big of an issue as I would not need to walk through there at this stage. If it ever came to the point which this may be used in a real level then I may go in and try and sort the problem out, but as it stands I do not think I need to worry about this.

After this I placed lighting in, I first placed a sky light in to light the entire scene, I then added a spot light that would allow for shadow. After playing around with it for a while and deciding what time of day to make it, I decided to keep it around mid day so there was a fair bit of light to light the entire scene and to still cast shadows.



Here is one layout for my textures applied to one mesh.

Here is the collection of assets all in seperate folders. I have a folder for the materials, meshes and the textures. I feel this helps organise everything and not make this space to cluttered. 

Here is a screen shot of what my scene looks like, you can see the lights involved as well as the player spawn point. I also added in fog to hopefully try and add a darker mood to the scene. Instead it added more of a gradient to the background, but I think this still works better than having a black background or one with a random sky that doesn't fit into the scene properly/.

Here is an in game shot of my model, I am standing inbetween the building and vehicle with collision turned on.

Here is a screenshot from in Maya with the wire frame turned on, poly count showing and the outline showing. 

Here is the final beauty shot for my scene in game in UDK.

I'm very happy with this and feel the end result turned out well.

During the summer I will practice in UDK more as I enjoyed using it once I understood the basics. 

week 11

During this week I have been working on the light maps, and starting to get my scene into UDK and having a go at placing the lights and getting to know the software better, as I found it quite difficult to move around in at first, but soon got used to it, also learning how to place textures together and applying to the models.

These are my light maps for my vehicle and diorama. I did these by layering out every face, changing the grid to the appropriate size and then laying it out again, but ensuring each part was two squares away from everything else.

During this I made an annoying mistake. I first laid out the light map for my vehicle which took possibly 2 hours because when I was originally uv unwrapping my model I struggled with unwrapping the cage that protects the lights on the front and back of the vehicle. I struggled because its such an awkward shape to lay out, so I decided to lay each face on top of each other because it was going to have such a simple texture it wouldn't really matter. But when I came to do the light map because they weren't attached I had to place each face individually which took an annoying amount of time. But that wasn't the main problem I faced, the problem was once I completed it, I forgot to save. So I got to spend the night laying it out again.

laying out the UVs for the diorama was faily simple and only one I had to spend some time with was the building as it had the most in.

This week I also completed the textures for my Diorama.


I'm quite pleased with the end result and feel the whole Diorama works well now.

Here are the 4 512x512 diffuse maps for my diorama.































Here are the normal maps for my Diorama and Vehicle,apart from the Vehicle I created these in Photoshop by using Xnormals on my diffuse.
With the Vehicle I created the high poly wheel, baked it and then over lapped it on the diffuse for the rest of the map.

Here are the AO maps for my vehicle and Diorama, I created these through xNormals 

Here are the specular maps I created for my scene. I only decided to create them for the vehicle and building, as I thought for the base and debris there was no real need for it. I create these by desaturating my diffuse map, then changing the brightness levels so the windows and post were brighter so they would shine when light passes over it, and I kept parts such as the bricks and Hessian dark as they would not have a shine in real life. 

week 10 cont.

Continuing on from the last blog I have also unwrapped the Diorama as well as gathered textures for it.

I have divided my diorama into 4 different sections for the texture layout to be able to optimise the quality I cant get from them.
I divided it so the building, wall and lamp post were on one sheet. The base on one its own, the wood and broken brick on one of its own. And finally all the base debris on its own map.

I originally had them as 1024x1024 maps to be able to get in all the final detail but once I was done I scaled it down to 512x512 so they would all add up to one 1024x1024 map.




























for all the textures used in the Diorama I gathered them myself by going out and taking the pictures. I was fortunate in the fact that all the textures I needed were down my street so I didn't have to venture far to find them.
With the majority of the textures I would take them into Photoshop and then manipulate it to fit the UV layout, then I would would change the brightness, saturations and colour levels until looks well.

During this week I went back and edited my Diorama as I was told it was too large and having the wall on the other side stopped the vehicle being seen from all sides. So I made the base much smaller, got rid of the planes along the top and moved the wall and post to the same side as the building. I feel this does work much better as it puts more emphasis on the vehicle.

week 10

This week I have textured the vehicle, unwrapped the Diorama and started gathering textures for it.

Here is the Diffuse map for my vehicle, I decided to try and keep it close to the original, but found that the colours were coming out too desaturated. So I boosted the colours to a stronger green but made sure it didn't become too cartoony. 
When creating the textures I made them all by using various techniques in Photoshop, for example with the main metal texture, In my colour pallet I got the green and a rust brown, then went into Filter - Stylise - Torn edges, then change the settings. This created the basic green and then added brown tears randomly to the texture. This gave the appearance of wear and tear and I feel it worked quite well.

For the back of the truck I used a two different shades of green, then I used the filter - stylise - Half tone Pattern. Which created Hessian look to it which I was going for. 

For the majority of the rest of the textures I used close to the same technique as the main metal to the vehicle.

For the rust/mud I found a brush though Photoshop and went over the areas that would be most likely to receive environmental damage. 

For the wheel, I applied a tire tread  texture I got from the trip from week 2. I turned it into a tillable texture and had it going up the tread. I kept the wheel grey as there was no real need to add detail as when I apply the normal map it adds the detail in from the high poly map. 

Here are a 3 screenshots of the texture applied to my vehicle.

week 9

This week I created the Diorama for my Model, I decided to have it placed in an abandoned town. with one side of the diorama being a section of a broken down building with debris and parts of broken wall and wood scattered around. one the other side I had a broken wall with a lamp placed next to the wall. Along the top of the building I had to planes I was going to use as rope and have flags hanging down. I wanted to  give the impression there may have been some sort of street fair along that road before it was destroyed, with them still hanging there to give it quite an unsettling feelings. 

I used this image as reference for the building and the wall as well as the debris around the building. I may also use the same sort of colour scheme with the various shades of grey as it looks quite allot like a broken down street that's been under allot of damage.  

I was thinking for the base I could have it almost like a trophy stand, so once the diorama and model have been placed it will look like its been mounted on this stand like a small model with a velvet base.

 Here is the Diorama I have created, along the middle I shall have the vehicle placed on the road.










Im fairly happy with the building, I think it came out well and looks quite damaged with is the looks I was going for.
Same with the wall and the post, I think they cam out well and once I got the textures on I think they will be looking pretty good.

week 8 cont.

During this week I also created the high poly wheel. Im rather impressed with the poly count coming in at almost 5 times the amount of polys Im allowed to use for both the vehicle and diorama, with it coming in at 52,188.

One part Im not happy about are the treads for the tires, they are too plain. So I may go back in and edit it at a later date 

week 8

This week I was doing the UV unwrapping, as well as beginning my high poly wheel.


I started by applying this checkered texture to my entire vehicle so I could see if I was unwrapping properly.

I began by splitting the two main parts on my truck in half so I only needed to uv unwrap on half so I could then duplicate the model and mirror it with the Uvs already unwrapped

Once that was done I textured the rest of my model. With many parts of it I was able to do the same as I did earlier by which I would texture one object and then duplicate it and then mirror it into its right place. This saved a lot of time as it meant I was able to UV unwrap almost half of it.

 This is the final UV lay out of my model, I feel I managed to use all the space capable and haven't left many empty areas. It took a number of attempts to lay this out properly as before I would have parts that wouldnt fit properly.
I feel I kept alot of it to a good size, meaning the parts you will see the most have more space so I am able to  add more detail to it when creating the Diffure map.