Week 8 – Alpha Presentation, Massive Progression

In preparation for my alpha presentation I put all my remaining time and effort into showing my level in a near finished state. By this i don’t mean all the shaders, effects etc and 100% model completition but completed to a point where the audience can easily see the visualisation to the end point of final completition. I really progressed these last few days, biggest change was redoing the whole lighting again with out lightmass like I stated on my last blog entry. This time playing around with the lighting i believe i have progressed, still have a lot of work to do, however I’m still in mid progression to create excusable scenarios for certain lighting to make point. Certain Areas I wish to add Dynamic lighting, lighting that flickers and sparks etc maybe from a broken light, or a glow from a machine that may be half functional from remaining backup battery sources. In preperation for this i have created some large generators that would enhance the belief. What has worked very well since last blog entry is the large area of roof that has been destroyed exposing the environment to outside lighting to a large scale. With this comes the need to trying to fake bouncing lighting to that of radiosity effect.

Ambient occlusion or shadows have played up here simply because I did a tiledshot 10 to capture this, the rest were done in tiledshot 2 format which has better results, have no idea why.

Alpha Presentation

I believe the presentation went half and half, i showed some nice visual stuff but when I finished the presentation i realised had so much more to show and say. Alot of the things I prepared I didn't show like my Gantt Chart to show just how quick i have progressed from my enitial plan. Forgot to talk about my references in creating the props.  In preperation of the presentation I created a powerpoint presentation which was going to be my main part and then i prepared a one and a half minute matinee sequence in unreal. When it came to the actual presentation it was known that the main computer to host the presentations were not working correctly to show the unreal stuff and so had to host this on my own computer. This made me change my mind on the the technique of presenting, last minute i decided to showcase my unreal project as the whole presentation and try and relate areas back to my pre-prepared powerpoint slide show. It probably wasnt the best idea considering how quickly i had to re-prepare just how im going to show this off but i believe it really helped just trying to explain areas of trouble, and techniques like shaders etc. But like i said earlier i missed alot of important points which if i ran my presentation would have reminded me so abit dissapointed about that. Overall seemed to have got a good reaction to the quality of my scene which im pleased about. I think i learnt to a lesson to stick with what you have prepared.

Extension

                My scene has now extended to match my first map design, extension  of a hall way, several vista’s to create a feel of space and adds more to the environment than just straight narrow paths. Although my intention of the level design is to be strongly narrative it still needs some elements to break this up. What seems to be seen in my references is a half reception area, half green house for study of plant life, but its hard to determine considering there is so much exposed to the outside world that plant life has taken over the whole scene. My weakest point at the moment is creating descent looking foliage, its something i haven’t really had to do much but its something im very eager to create at high standards. Next  few days just going to go over some tutorials, I have no problems making descent alphas but my knowledge of referencing plants i don’t know much about. I’ve took some photos myself but can’t really see what is use-able.

To make my environment scene more believable i want to add some extra details like a vent around the pods on the floor. Some of these have broken glass which would have made the water leak all over the floor. I think creating signs of where the water has drained away is just one of those little extras to make something more indepth. Lighting I think will never be truely finished to how i want it to look, it most certainly isn’t easy to pull off.


Thanks To Nathan for the light mass advice, has paid off quite nicely and a lot easier to light up my scene.