Well in the end I'm rather happy with how my proposal turned out, I think I put across a good deal of context for my study, and some good arguments about the importance of light and colour in environments. Despite my earlier reluctance to start the proposal I actually found myself start to enjoy it as I got more into it. I'm quite hopeful of getting a B, or at least a high C for it.
Now that the proposal is out the way, I can focus on the concept art side of things which I've been putting aside in favor of research for too long. However I'm heading home for the holidays today, which worries me because in the past I never seem to get much work done around this time of year. I tend to get caught up with visiting friends and family, Christmas shopping etc, and I guess just the mentality of being on holiday. Nonetheless I will still try like every other year to get at least some work done during the holidays, and hey I might even surprise myself!
Merry Christmas to all!
Friday, 14 December 2012
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Ideas Come When You Least Expect Them
Its interesting how ideas can suddenly spring to mind as soon as you stop thinking about something, first day into dedicating all my time on this research proposal and suddenly my mind starts coming up with some great thoughts on my project artifact. This will just be a short post with a bunch of the ideas that sprung to mind.
Keeping in with the symbolism of a journey through life, I could make the rooms gradually seem older as the player progresses through them, to show the passage of time. This one was sort-of unintentional, as I was simply thinking of how I envisage the rooms, and it struck me that the bell tower is very run down, which contrasts a lot with the elegance of the entrance hall. So why not simply create a gradual decline through the intermediate rooms.
Using chromatic adaptation to create a mood shift, or help Fraser trick visual perception in the end jump. This one came as I was reading over my notes on colour, it is a phenomenon whereby the brightness of the ambient light causes two different colours to reverse in brightness. I noticed an example within my flat, where my flatmate has a red Hell-Boy hand he made for a costume, sitting next to the white wood that makes up the window frame. During the day the white wood is clearly the brighter of the two, but come night time when the lights are off, the red stands out much more vividly. The opposite of this scenario is colour constancy, which is far more common. That is the way in which humans can perceive whether an object is all the same colour, despite things like shadows and coloured lights influencing it.
Keeping in with the symbolism of a journey through life, I could make the rooms gradually seem older as the player progresses through them, to show the passage of time. This one was sort-of unintentional, as I was simply thinking of how I envisage the rooms, and it struck me that the bell tower is very run down, which contrasts a lot with the elegance of the entrance hall. So why not simply create a gradual decline through the intermediate rooms.
Using chromatic adaptation to create a mood shift, or help Fraser trick visual perception in the end jump. This one came as I was reading over my notes on colour, it is a phenomenon whereby the brightness of the ambient light causes two different colours to reverse in brightness. I noticed an example within my flat, where my flatmate has a red Hell-Boy hand he made for a costume, sitting next to the white wood that makes up the window frame. During the day the white wood is clearly the brighter of the two, but come night time when the lights are off, the red stands out much more vividly. The opposite of this scenario is colour constancy, which is far more common. That is the way in which humans can perceive whether an object is all the same colour, despite things like shadows and coloured lights influencing it.
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Colour and Pipeline Tests
Taking the first initial UDK mock-up, I started to paint over it in order to get a better representation of the colours and lights I imagine using. For the entrance as i stated before I wanted it to be open, inviting and natural, so I used lots of earthy colours like the yellow-browns for the walls and floor, as well as green plants. I also choose orange for the half-back sofa to help add some warmth. I feel like the colour is a bit too bright in this particular image, but it was a fairly quick test and I plan to take the concept further.
I also decided to test out the pipeline for importing models to UDK and adding collision meshes. I modelled a quick Cypress Tree and attempted to import it, and add a texture. Quite quickly I realised the benefits of doing this test before starting on making my project, as a number of problems arose due to my lack of practice. I had forgotten a number of little things such as not to use spaces when naming the exported model, and also that in order to apply a texture I first needed to create a new material. I found a tutorial almost immediately just to help me brush up on this pipeline, and things went smoothly from there.
Something else I had forgotten would need attention is the scaling factor between maya and UDK. A quick test showed a cubic meter in maya, is equivalent to only one unit of measurement in UDK, which is absolutely tiny for some reason. Online tutorials state that a character of about 2 meters is around 100 units in height, so 1 meter is around 50. This means that either in maya or UDK I must scale my models by an extra 50x. Past experience has taught me to be very glad I have sorted out this particular bit of information, as scaling troubles can certainly take a lot of time to figure out.
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Refining the Project Idea
I had an interesting thought about the overall "story" im trying to convey in the environment. It struck me that the beginning and the end could be interpreted as being symbolic of a journey through life, from birth to death. The symbolism of the garden is that of life, while the end jump is clearly death (Or is it? Things could get quite spiritual here, with returning to the garden making the level a full circle, and therefor broaching the possibility of reincarnation). I feel like this would be a good idea to incorporate into the rest of the design, probably coming up with specific events in the characters life to try and evoke the feelings of in the middle rooms.
I brought this idea up with Fraser and he seems quite happy to let me follow it. We began to refine our ideas for the entrance room. Keeping with my symbolic appraoch, I now consider this room to be representative of entering adulthood. And Fraser's ideas for the architecture complimented this quite nicely in my opinion. For the entrance he wants the bottom half to be like Art Nouveau, with lots of plants and natural, flowing designs visible on the lower level, and then for it to stop after the stairs, in order to signify the end of the calm, inviting environment. This transition also seems like a good way to symbolise leaving behind childhood, so I was quick to agree on the idea.
I brought this idea up with Fraser and he seems quite happy to let me follow it. We began to refine our ideas for the entrance room. Keeping with my symbolic appraoch, I now consider this room to be representative of entering adulthood. And Fraser's ideas for the architecture complimented this quite nicely in my opinion. For the entrance he wants the bottom half to be like Art Nouveau, with lots of plants and natural, flowing designs visible on the lower level, and then for it to stop after the stairs, in order to signify the end of the calm, inviting environment. This transition also seems like a good way to symbolise leaving behind childhood, so I was quick to agree on the idea.
Friday, 23 November 2012
Concepts at last!
Over the course of the last few weeks, I've found that I've fallen into the trap of focusing too closely on the research aspect of honours, and less on the concept development. I think this is partly due to my still widening understanding of how to implement the lighting techniques, colour associations and such that I have been looking into, in order to achieve my aims, as well as more fundamentally to what mine and Fraser's project will actually look like. However I have been meeting a lot more regularly with Fraser since crit week to discuss the creative artifact and what we want in it. I have begun to feel quite happy that we have the foundations for a solid idea, and I finally began concepting some ideas!
In collaboration with Fraser we quickly created this environment in UDK using the BSP brushes and some default models/textures, in order to get a rough feel of the entrance room to the villa. His contribution was the purely that of the level design, whereas mine was aimed at the light (including window placement) and to an extent the colour, but using existing UDK textures for quickness limited this somewhat. (The image outside the windows was quickly added in photoshop just to avoid a black backdrop). Doing this gave me the importunity to see the lighting tools in UDK, which appear to consist of mainly just point lights, ambient light and directional light. I suppose this makes sense as light travels in all directions, so spotlights like those in maya are only logical if there is an actual model capable of creating such a light with its shape and a light placed inside.
It is a very rough representation, there is still a lot of work needed on the lighting (generally making the room appear brighter), as well as changing the colours to suit the mood (open, inviting, natural). I plan to take the image into photoshop to continue it from there, but this UDK scene should come in handy for a base to work from when implementing the models.
The next step is to do the same for each of the room ideas I have.
We also spent some time playing around with Speed-Tree in UDK, deciding that to save a lot of time we should probably use that to create the organic assets used in the garden. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a screenshot of any of our tests, because I'm silly at times.
In collaboration with Fraser we quickly created this environment in UDK using the BSP brushes and some default models/textures, in order to get a rough feel of the entrance room to the villa. His contribution was the purely that of the level design, whereas mine was aimed at the light (including window placement) and to an extent the colour, but using existing UDK textures for quickness limited this somewhat. (The image outside the windows was quickly added in photoshop just to avoid a black backdrop). Doing this gave me the importunity to see the lighting tools in UDK, which appear to consist of mainly just point lights, ambient light and directional light. I suppose this makes sense as light travels in all directions, so spotlights like those in maya are only logical if there is an actual model capable of creating such a light with its shape and a light placed inside.
The next step is to do the same for each of the room ideas I have.
We also spent some time playing around with Speed-Tree in UDK, deciding that to save a lot of time we should probably use that to create the organic assets used in the garden. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a screenshot of any of our tests, because I'm silly at times.
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Meeting with Fraser
I met up with Fraser this week so we could develop the ideas we had for our project artifact, and decide upon a solid idea to take forward. As previously stated on here our original idea for the environment was a tower consisting of different rooms the player travels through, moving up, before reaching the top where the player is made to jump. After some discussion, we still want that aspect in the design, but we've decided to change the environment to be more like a house/villa in a Mediterranean setting like the South of France or Italy, where there is quite a lot of similarity in the countryside housing styles. This idea suits me nicely as one of my original ideas was to recreate my Grandfathers house in the south of France, so the style is very well known to me, at least in terms of exterior, and surrounding countryside. The interiors can be just about any style however.
We discussed more of the level design, and swapped bits of research that could be of interest to the other. For the environment design, we've been thinking it would be good to start in a nice, warm, open garden, with plenty of light - a very tranquil start to make the player feel like exploring. From there the plan is to move into a conservatory/entrance hall, which will look quite elegant, but not too ostentatious. As for lighting in this room I'm thinking it should be fairly well lit overall, shade instead of shadows, to evoke that sense of mystery and exploration described before. We want this room to feature a spiral staircase taking the player to the upper levels of the house, so i think focusing the direct light from the windows on this would be a good way of bringing the players focus in the correct direction.
From the entrance we want a couple more rooms, but are unsure about them just yet, other than they should slowly lead towards a darker, gloomier final room in an abandoned bell-tower, where the player will experience the jump. Strong contrasting light and shadow would be best used here I think, as it adds drama to the scene, so things like god rays poking through small windows in the sides of the tower. Im also thinking very de-saturated colours, with a lot more grays present.
We discussed more of the level design, and swapped bits of research that could be of interest to the other. For the environment design, we've been thinking it would be good to start in a nice, warm, open garden, with plenty of light - a very tranquil start to make the player feel like exploring. From there the plan is to move into a conservatory/entrance hall, which will look quite elegant, but not too ostentatious. As for lighting in this room I'm thinking it should be fairly well lit overall, shade instead of shadows, to evoke that sense of mystery and exploration described before. We want this room to feature a spiral staircase taking the player to the upper levels of the house, so i think focusing the direct light from the windows on this would be a good way of bringing the players focus in the correct direction.
From the entrance we want a couple more rooms, but are unsure about them just yet, other than they should slowly lead towards a darker, gloomier final room in an abandoned bell-tower, where the player will experience the jump. Strong contrasting light and shadow would be best used here I think, as it adds drama to the scene, so things like god rays poking through small windows in the sides of the tower. Im also thinking very de-saturated colours, with a lot more grays present.
Monday, 12 November 2012
Crit Week Review
Crit week has come and gone, and I think it went about as well as my pitch did, which is to say not bad, save for a bit of nervousness causing me to waffle and explain things in a weird way. Having to stop and ask for water half way because of an insanely dry throat certainly didn't help that. Generally the feedback was positive, but not without areas of concern. I tried to be honest about the fact that I'm still struggling with getting the momentum going with self-directed study, and that being Ill the last couple weeks hindered my motivation quite a bit. But I am confident I can break out of this slump when I start to get really into my project.
I also mentioned how I had let this blog slide for a little while now, but with this post I am taking action towards making more regular updates. This post will be a bit longer as I need to explain the new aspects of my project as well as the feedback recieved.
My latest iteration of the project aim is "Investigating how light within scenes can be used to influence environmental storytelling in an interactive 3D environment." I also wrote my objectives, and tried to make them as clear as possible:
- Conduct case studies of films and games, compare the use of realistic and stylised lighting approaches
- Critically analyse the works of other artists, identify and evaluate their use of lighting techniques
- Develop lighting tests to determine the effect of colour to influence player mood
- Create an interactive environment to demonstrate environmental storytelling through the use of lighting.
In terms of the idea development, I think something I did not fully understand during my pitch presentation, was Frasers intentions for the architectural style. We met up soon afterwards to discuss our project, and it became clear to me that he does not intend to pick one or two styles to use, but instead to study a variety, and the feelings and thoughts evoked by key elements of these, to then incorporate them into our design.
The overall environment idea is still generally the same, using light to guide a player through a level. The feedback was pretty positive for this part, everyone thought my objectives seemed fine at the moment.
As for the time setting of my artifact, I'm still unsure exactly when we want it to be set, but as Fraser wants to incorporate elements of Art Nouveau, I think late 1800's sounds like a reasonable estimate. This means electric lighting is out the picture but candle-light and gas-lamps should make for interesting atmospheres.
The main area of concern for me is that unfortunately I think I've spent too much of my time researching, and kind of left the concepting and pre-production stage till late. I plan to be meeting up with Fraser on a much more regular basis so we can discuss the actual content of our project, and what we want to make. Concepts will begin as soon as we decide more clearly on these aspects. The same goes for the pre-production, however I have attempted a few media tests, but with little success, I sort of forgot about the god-ray test, and when i found it again I still couldn't get it to work, but i did get some nice effects using global illumination in maya. The model is just a quick tower room with archer holes I threw together.
Another test Iv been working on is subsurface scattering
Though my attempts to apply it to a simple curtain model have so far been uneventful. I think this is another one I may need to bring into UDK to attempt properly.
Ryan gave an approving nod when i said that I no longer planned to take part in the Epic Games UDK Competition, as it was going to take far too much time out of Honours. For now our team has decided to focus only on the Samsung Developer Challenge and Honours, though theres rumblings in the group suggesting we may drop out of the competition to complete our game independently at a later date. I'm a bit torn as to which I would prefer, as I would like to continue it, but Honours is a big undertaking and I want to create the best environment piece I can.
I also mentioned how I had let this blog slide for a little while now, but with this post I am taking action towards making more regular updates. This post will be a bit longer as I need to explain the new aspects of my project as well as the feedback recieved.
My latest iteration of the project aim is "Investigating how light within scenes can be used to influence environmental storytelling in an interactive 3D environment." I also wrote my objectives, and tried to make them as clear as possible:
- Conduct case studies of films and games, compare the use of realistic and stylised lighting approaches
- Critically analyse the works of other artists, identify and evaluate their use of lighting techniques
- Develop lighting tests to determine the effect of colour to influence player mood
- Create an interactive environment to demonstrate environmental storytelling through the use of lighting.
In terms of the idea development, I think something I did not fully understand during my pitch presentation, was Frasers intentions for the architectural style. We met up soon afterwards to discuss our project, and it became clear to me that he does not intend to pick one or two styles to use, but instead to study a variety, and the feelings and thoughts evoked by key elements of these, to then incorporate them into our design.
The overall environment idea is still generally the same, using light to guide a player through a level. The feedback was pretty positive for this part, everyone thought my objectives seemed fine at the moment.
As for the time setting of my artifact, I'm still unsure exactly when we want it to be set, but as Fraser wants to incorporate elements of Art Nouveau, I think late 1800's sounds like a reasonable estimate. This means electric lighting is out the picture but candle-light and gas-lamps should make for interesting atmospheres.
The main area of concern for me is that unfortunately I think I've spent too much of my time researching, and kind of left the concepting and pre-production stage till late. I plan to be meeting up with Fraser on a much more regular basis so we can discuss the actual content of our project, and what we want to make. Concepts will begin as soon as we decide more clearly on these aspects. The same goes for the pre-production, however I have attempted a few media tests, but with little success, I sort of forgot about the god-ray test, and when i found it again I still couldn't get it to work, but i did get some nice effects using global illumination in maya. The model is just a quick tower room with archer holes I threw together.
Though my attempts to apply it to a simple curtain model have so far been uneventful. I think this is another one I may need to bring into UDK to attempt properly.
Ryan gave an approving nod when i said that I no longer planned to take part in the Epic Games UDK Competition, as it was going to take far too much time out of Honours. For now our team has decided to focus only on the Samsung Developer Challenge and Honours, though theres rumblings in the group suggesting we may drop out of the competition to complete our game independently at a later date. I'm a bit torn as to which I would prefer, as I would like to continue it, but Honours is a big undertaking and I want to create the best environment piece I can.
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