Town Progress

Progress has been going well. The level is slowly being transformed from simple BSPs to modular buildings. The level looks a little bare at the moment but once I've created a few props, it'll start looking better.

Slowly building the buildings.

I'm slowly building up the level. I've been doing a lot of colour correction to the assets so that the colour scheme fits well. I've till Wednesday to finish up texturing the modular assets, there aren't many left to do now, so I will manage to complete the milestone by Wednesday. Once August kicks off, it will be prop creation, decals, tileable textures and any other effects to be used.

Building test

I put together a quick building and so far I am quite pleased with the result.

Modular wall texturing

I've been focusing on creating textures for the wall. I managed to get the first texture style done, though I'm editing it to make it look more worn as it looks a little too clean right now. Once this is done, I will need to make this texture for the other wall panels as well.

I'm expecting to have 4-5 wall textures -

- Light-brown (shown below)
- White
- Saturated Brown
- Brick
- Desaturated Brown

Building boundaries.

 Aside from texturing the modular assets, I began building the boundaries for the alleyway, one of the small areas that the player can explore to scavenge for supplies or weapons.

Modular Assets texturing stage.

I began texturing the modular building assets. Once these assets are completed, I will begin with some props and any extra interior modular assets needed.

When the modular building assets are done, I can begin building the houses using the assets. After careful calculations done in 3DS Max, they should work well to create a whole building without visual errors.

Completed level blockout exterior.

I've managed to block out the level (interior block out still needs to be done). There will be assets blocking the open streets to create a boundary.

 Did a little test on lighting, though it can't really be judged too early since I'm using BSPs and terrain. With no light maps on them, the quality won't be there. I will need to wait till I add the assets

The red lines indicate the debris or barricades where the assets will be placed. I'm thinking of a mix of debris and corpse pile with spike barricades trying to stop zombies from entering.

Blocking out level in UDK.

I began blocking out the level in UDK today. I'm prioritising this first because this will help me edit the way the level will look. I'm using BSPs to block out the level as a guide for the assets that I will be bringing in. Once the level is blocked out and finalised, assets will start being placed (modular assets to create the buildings, props and decals to decorate the streets).

 ________________________________________________________________________________

I thought of implementing my pre-production town concept for the main street and using the York Shambles references for the small side street in which the level is focused on. With the York Shambles level map and the concept art below, I can visualise the level easily in UDK. The level blockout is expected to finish before the end of the month so that asset placement and further asset creation can be done to piece the level together.

I am also considering creating a few low poly distant buildings to add depth to the background. Smoke and fire is being decided for the background and the streets themselves too.

Modular Roofing

Today I've worked on the modular roofing for the building set. I studied the roofs of the references I gathered and noticed the older ones tend to have a thin rectangular horizontal tile pattern.

  

Below shows the modular roof duplicated once to show the modularity of the asset.

 

 But having the roof straight and clean may not make it look appealing, so I tried angling it to make it look less dull.

I also tried out different shapes for the roof to make sure it's solid enough to be used in multiple ways. Good news is that the roof is good enough to pass as a modular asset. I'm now ready to move on to sculpting detail and texturing the modular assets. They should be done before the end of the month.

Modular Assets

Today I've been creating some modular pieces for the buildings. Making sure that they fit together well so that in UDK there will be little to no problems with it.

I imported the building template test into UDK to get a sample of what it would look like.

Once the pieces have been textured and shaders fixed, it should look pretty cool. It's still the early stage of modular asset creation, so it'll come together soon enough.

Asset Creation List

As of now, the list contains the modular assets needed to create the buildings and the road. Once these are done, I can focus on smaller detail such as the interior, debris,rubble, props and tileable textures. I intend to texture as I go so I will be able to speed up the process. I'm expected to finish the modular assets by the end of July so that I can begin composing them into UDK to shape the level.

Now that I have done some research on the medieval architecture and the York Shambles street, I will look into the atmosphere of different horror games and films so that I can apply it to the level later on. I will also look at different texturing techniques and how I can implement that to my texturing style.

Visit to York and the York Shambles Level Plan

Went to York a few weeks back to take some reference photos of the York Shambles and the medieval buildings. It has given me some insight as to how the street looks with it's narrow roads and buildings squashing together. The medieval buildings have some fascinating architecture styles. There are a variety of them which I've taken photos of.

With these references, I can dissect the buildings into pieces in which I can create to make modular assets for the buildings. It will allow me to create different buildings, avoiding the street from having too many similar looking buildings. I noticed certain buildings have different wall colours as well as roofing and wooden beams. This can be easily achieved by just creating different textures for the modular assets.


This is the plan for the level. This will be the guideline for creating the level in the UDK. The idea of it was to have a small street coming off from the main street with small alleyways that are good for ambushes. The main street will be blocked off by crates, broken wheelcarts, barrels etc. This small street that connects to the main street will be the primary focus of the level. The idea of it is to cut the player off from comfortable large environments and force them into small, claustrophobic spaces with unexpected surprises.

3DS Max render tests with crate and barrel

Just trying to see how the props look together.

Crate prop

So after the success I had with the wooden barrel, I created a crate using the same methods. I wanted to make the crate a little more stylish to keep it within the art style that was set.

Art Test - Wooden Barrel

I've given myself an art test by creating one of the assets that will be used in the level - the wooden barrel.
Along with jogging my memory in asset creation pipeline, I wanted to get a sort of style out of the asset.
I want to follow a similar art style as Bioshock Infinite as the game's texturing and lighting really makes the game a masterpiece to look at.

I still follow the basic asset creation pipeline as I did in my Asset Creation group project.
I first create the base mesh, then export it to Zbrush for sculpting. Once that's done, I use xnormals to bake normal maps, ambient occlusion and cavity maps. I then compose these in Photoshop and start painting in the textures, finishing off with a subtle overlay of a photo texture of a wood (acquired from cgtextures.com).

Specular maps are a bit of an after thought. I will polish it up towards the end if it doesn't look good in the level.