First Asset, First Problem
For the Presentation last week I displayed a brief render of my first asset created. Its purpose was to show the direction of art style I have chosen and and the power that unreal can pull it off. I created a very improvised look of a dinosaur cloning pod that can be seen throughout my chosen scene. Its an important prop because there are several of these in a massive row though out the level design. Problem with creating this asset was references, there wasn't actually any reference of the Pod in full, just its bottom half. I wasn't completely pleased with the end result it seemed it was just to compact and didn't really look interesting.
The importance of its creation was to highlight the problems I will be facing. From previous experience in Unreal I have had trouble with Alpha's and there effects towards lighting. In this case if you can't tell from the image the alpha is actually glowing. If I created a very dark scene the green from the alpha will not be affected it will really stand out. The machine does not work so there should not be any light emitting from this. So the water and alpha glowing cannot be ignored.
The scene will be full of alpha's due to all the foliage, glass, and large windows so this problem must be sorted for me to proceed.
Asset Correction
After much research i found some enlighting references. After searching for the creative director I found that Rick Bulm has opened an istitute full of the original props and sets he designed and made. Because of this I found the correct design of the dinosaur cloning pods. Some changes had to be made mostly to the extension of the top. They do as well look alot more interesting instead of my improvisation that seemed to just cap the top off. I completly re-textured this model because i wasn’t to pleased about the colours i had chosen. I can see from the film that these pods are metallic silver with mould running down unlike my last set which seemed to look more like a concreate and tar effect. The other pods will however still be used in my Vista Scenes i shall create. It could be that each style of Pod holds different species of dinosaur. To save Polys the broken glass have been created within the Alpha’s.
Alpha's have now been improved but not completely fixed. Now they do react to the light, but are invisible when there is low light. That means the mould on the windows will disappear in low light and loose its effect. The broken glass made with alphas will also be invisible. The water material is still no reactive to light, to try and stop the glow of the alpha I created a murky dark texture to try and diffuse the glow. It has worked surprisingly well. I cannot change the water material blend or opacity state, it has to be created with an unlit material. The poly count has gone up to nearly 1500 more triangles due to this modification, that is including the water mesh. It hasn't been full checked for optimisation so I maybe able to lower the count.
Dino Egg Incubators
These Incubators were the second Assets I created. This and the pods will fill the entire scene. You can see in the film shot that there are rows and rows of these throughout the lab. So it was an important descision to create these. Now the main props that will fill the scene are created I can move onto the blockout of the level. The fact that they are already textured and Unreal ready the blockout will give a clear vision of what the final production could look like. Inside these incubators there will be some hatched dinosaur eggs. Most of these incubators will be very green and broken, this one however is working. I think i could have a few open and working just to give the player some interaction in the scene.
Tileable Stairs & Platforms
This Stairs and Platfroms are the last of my asset creation until i have created a blockout of the level. Another important asset because they are seen throughout the scene shots in the film. This also will allow me to plan the second floor of the level.
Please click image to see Unreal Material Reference....
The Material I have created for the stairs have been made to give the illusion that there is something behind the metal grid flooring like pipes with out me having to model them. It has worked very successfully and does work surprisingly well.
Material Creation
The Metal grid needs an alpha texture to show the second texture underneath the grid. The red colour of the alpha connects to all 3 Lerps.
Lerps are used to combine more than one texture together, this can also be used to make a whole new texture combining two textures together.
The Underylay texture connects to both Diffuse and Specular Lerp so the colour of the texture is seen but also its effect from the light hitting it.
This texture needs a bumpoffset connected to it to create the depth, to do this I used a constant connected to the height. The TexCoord is used to tell the material editor that the underlay texture can only be tiled once because it isnt a full 1024 tileable texture. Other case tileable textures can be tiled as much as you want.
Both normals off both textures are connected through the lerp and are powered by a constant4Vector, The power of the colour channels in this control how much depth of the normal can be seen, abit of playing about can create all sorts of results.
Asset Creation Scene & Alpha Lighting Tests
Jurassic Park 3 Asset Creation. A small Scene hosting the most important assets that make up my influential scene of choice, Ingens, Abadoned Laboratory. This screen shot contains several Egg Incubators, Complete set of tileable stairs and platforms, Dinosaur cloning pods (background). Several Styles broken, filled with preservative liquid and containing a life form itself.
The Alpha’s have now become more reactive to the lighting surrounding them. Its still a troubled process however. Now the alpha’s only show when there is lighting to effect it. In a dark scene this may become a problem. On top of this the water material is still none reactive because it has been built under an Unlit Material. At the moment the effect works well, but again this may also pose a problem. Glowing alpha’s have completly gone.
Asset Scale Checking
Its ok building from Maya using Unreals Template Character Model but there are however a couple of checks that need to be taken care off. First off when you import an asset to unreal which you believe is to scale the actual Gameplay in Unreal creates a camera near to the chest of the character. As it is an FPS, this can be deceiving and your scale may be to large or to small. However in this situation my scale seems to be spot on. Have been scaling models just below the neck of the template character and so far have not needed to make any changes. Both first person and third person seem pretty much perfect to scale.
Plan of action next week
- Start and finish primary block out.
- Research into Alpha's
- Create Small Poly Props
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