Negotiated Study Week11:Castle Game Environment

The project is complete but not without disappointment as i feel i could have accomplished more and now that i can look back there is alot i would do different, listen to the tutors feedback, texture size, animations, character design and the quantity that i expected, although i am okay with the outcome i am disappointed in not achieving what i set out for.

Unity Web Player - Ifraz Mohammed Castle Game Environment Web Player

Created with Unity »

Negotiated Study Week11:Last Minute Touches

I didn't want to focus too much on sounds for my character but wanted to mainly have sounds to set the mood and also wanted to involve some sort of background music specifically dramatic as the gamers character is storylined to be returning to an empty castle. So i found that the main source of sound i would have would be for the water and involve sound that represents their are waves and generally set the light mood. For the general background music i found two pieces of orchestral music which would fit prefectly with the game environment mood that i had been going for but decided on the final sound displayed below which i felt was dramatic enough to set the mood and general notion of the game.

I had left my animations till last as they weren't huge tasks to do and so i was able to get my character into my game environment and get the animations working and reacting after having trouble with baking the animations as the animations themselves hadn't appeared within the Unity assets but all became resolved. The animations of the character had gotten set and the next bit of animations had been the drawbridge which i had the animations connected and working until i had the problem of the drawbridge opening and closing in a weird fashion to which i later realised that it had been because of the mesh collider box which was set as the trigger for the aniamtion to be played and once that had been set right i was able have a respawn point to allow any drop offs from the castle to go back to the beginning of the game environment.

Negotiated Study Week10:Extras

I have completed the setting of the game environment and re-texturing and decided to being to fill in more of a certain area of the castle. Deciding to fill in the ground floor area i started to model bits and pieces of background objects such as cloth for the walls, pots, shields, cups and candle holders. I started to focus on the ground floor and tried to introduce more objects to give a presence of living, modelling a large medieval pot to take up much of the spacing within the castle and modelling the pot had been simple because i used a tool which had been introduced to me from the very first year of the course, the CV curve tool which allows the user to create a outline of half the image to which will then be rotated and formed to a 3D mesh.

The next model that i had created was the chalice, very basic and using the same technique as the medieval pot process and using a basic texture, with a sample of shine and also i wanted to add a sign of living so added a model of spilt wine. After modelling the medieval pot and chalice i started to model a long draping cloth which i felt the castle needed to allow the cloth to cover the disappointing texture of the castle walls. I used a light crimson colour and applied a cloth texture to seem like the cloth is wrapped in places and placed the vertexes of the cloth so it would seem more like a cloth.

The final model that i could develop within the time that i had available was the candle holder which i developed as a basic model, thin  which wouldn't take up much room and look like its placed upon the wall. After completing various models to add in the ground floor i started to bring them within Unity and place them around such as the cloth on the walls, shield and cup on the floor to seem like a sign of trouble and the medieval pot in places which the character shouldn't be able to access.

I placed the candle holders on areas of the wall which seem like suitable areas that would cover the area with light because i used the Unity standard assets of fire and placed the fire along with the candle holder which gave a more accepting idea that light is coming from the candles as well as the sun light. Also i added the drawbridge animation which worked fine until i went back into game mode and triggered the animation which started to be jittery and the drawbridge went backwards and forwards so i was shown that the trigger box had been too small and that the trigger had stopped once the gamer was out of the area, so i had solved the problem by expanding the trigger box.

From Dust Tech Demo

Negotiated Study Week9:Re-Touching Textures

Now that i have completed the overall positioning and development of the game environment i started to go back to the texture of the castle and begin to re-texture the texture by adding a much simpler depth of the bump mapping and also add detail to the textures. The first two images are showing how disappointing the texture had been done with the bulky depth that showed how the game will come across as unrealistic. Also you can see how the textures are showing various stages of contrast which make the castle stand out to the point in which it seems fake and out of place.

So as you can see from the last two images i had re-done the textures to the point where the textures contrast is similar and not seem out of place by changing the contrast and brightness to match the surrounding textures. Another piece of the overall castle texture that i had re-done was the brick layout as from the before texture of the castle had been scaled differently and needed to match the brick layout as the surrounding layout.

Creative Industries Level 5:Craig Shoji Thor Concept Artist

After checking through my feed on Twitter i saw that there one of the accounts i am following @ConceptArtWorld had an article on the Thor movie concept artist and from seeing the film and liking the art direction as well as seeing images of the concept art from the film i checked the article out and the artwork was amazing so i checked his website out and sent him a message and asked him for feedback on my castle concept art and this is his reply:

hey ifraz,
 
i'm a bit busy at the moment but feel free to send me any work you'd 
like me to look at and i'll do my best to give you some comments in a 
timely manner. best of luck with your studies!
 
cheers-
 
craig
 
On 5/11/2011 7:07 PM, Squarespace Services wrote:
> This email was transmitted via pensketch.com.
>
> Submitted from address 88-104-182-98.dynamic.dsl.as9105.com/88.104.182.98.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> Your Name: Ifraz Mohammed
> Your Email: Iffy_02@hotmail.com
> Subject: Concep art
> Message: Hi Craig Shoji
>
> I am ifraz and currently studying digital films games and animations at Leeds college of art in the U.K.. and was wondering if you could possibly help me with taking a look at my concept for my game environment of a castle and tell me what I could do to improve this or work on or anything that can help me in becoming a concept artist.
>
> Thank you
> Ifraz Mohammed
>

Link to the article: http://conceptartworld.com/?p=7285

Negotiated Study Week8:Game Testing

After placing many mesh colliders within the castle game environment i was able to play the game or better yet move around the area to get an understanding of what could be improved. During the game play i noticed how within certain distance the texture is stretched much further than expected but i plan to rectify the situation by re-texturing once the overall game has been completed. Another problem i found was the height of the main stairs as i tried to climb up but had the trouble of hitting the roof so i had gone back into Maya and lowered the height.

After sorting out the main aspect of the game i went along with the process of creating the surrounding of the game environment by using terrain tools to set up the cliff settings for the castle to be place upon. I realised that i had a large based castle environment after using the terrain tool and trying to change the height to the level of the castle, that i had reached the limit of the height that the terrain can reach so i had to raise the terrain much higher and flattening down the area of the terrain to be the same level as the castle.

I went on to further develop the surrounding of the castle by adding a water a water setting below the castle which didn't really go well with the contrast of the castle so i had changed my approach and placed the night time water near the lower area of the terrain and changed a couple of the settings. The next thing i did was to add a backdrop which would set the mood, so i had added a fog and had the density of that fog to a very minimum as to allow a general overview of the environment and enough fog to cover the spacious are that is visible in the distance.

Negotiated Study Week7:Export to Unity

Before bringing the model into Unity i had to convert the mesh to normals so that i was able to see within the certain area i wouldn't be seeing right through, so i converted the whole mesh into normals and reversed the anomalies. After the normals process had been completed i brought the mesh into Unity via FBX format and started to re-attach the bump maps that had become unattached and started to re-adjust the settings for the castle game environment mesh such as the specular and shading of colours to better suit the overall perspective.

After normals, re-connecting the bump maps had been done i was eager to see how the game environment would look if i were to move freely within it but that would have to wait as i would have to first start to create mesh colliders for the floors and walls to be able to move around but as that was a basic mesh process i felt i should just go ahead and continue so i assigned mesh colliders to the whole of the castle. The addition of multiple mesh colliders was a long process in getting positions right enough to allow access to areas but limit thm at the same time.

Negotiated Study Week6:Castle Texturing Complete

As you can see i completed my texturing of my castle game environment and got the overall contrast done but what was a disappointment was the mount of depth that i had allowed the bump map to take up. I have finished texturing the castle overall and once i have completed the exporting process of the game environment and completing the whole objectives of the game environment i will be going back into texturing the game environment.

Negotiated Study Week6:Castle Texturing

I completed my textures of my model as i took most of the colours and contrast from the concept art and as you can see i started with various main pieces of the model as oppose to doing main big areas of the castle such as the walls. I started to doing individual parts of the model to get small contrasts of the textures to which will benefit the overall visuals of the game environment.

Negotiated Study Week6:Texture Testing

I started to do some testing of adding textures and bump mapping as in previous projects i wasn't too familiar with the process so i went into Unity and created a cube to start testing textures on. So i created a basic cube and used a basic texture taken from the Internet and placed it upon the cube and created a duplicate of the texture in the form of a bump map and placed it upon the cube. I went through various options  and found the right settings that i will use and tested them with a lighting in place to show how the bump map affects the texture on the cube and found that doing this test and finding the settings that i will use helps in overall process when i start to do my castle textures, bump maps and the settings.

Negotiated Study Week6:Epic Citadel Screenshots

After mentioning Epic Citadel by Chris Rhodes and being told it would help with seeing how a castle looks, feels and just the overall game play i tried the application out and took a few screenshots which i though would go well in my blog and the fact that i had researched and found that this helps in understanding the level of detail that has gone into this app which was simply made for the iPad. Knowing that i could have accomplished more with the concept of a castle i would have done more in terms of modelling and  texturing but knowing how much time i have i am not willing to rick that time in redoing major things such as modelling and texturing but will allow the feedback from Epic Citadel to have some influence on my game environment.