Pitch Feedback

In general I thought my pitch session went quite well, though the overall feedback was that I am perhaps trying to do too much in my given time frame - Applying to both honours and extra projects like the Samsung Challenge and the Epic Games Competition. It was felt that I should choose to do only one of the two extra projects, however I am unsure which to choose, or even if I can still somehow find the time to manage all 3 at no cost to my honours project. I still feel these would be very useful to me, but I can understand how the time management may be an issue.

In terms of Honours my research and project ideas were fairly well received, however I believe there was a little confusion as to the exact nature of my creative project. This was probably partly due to getting nervous during presentations, but more so I feel Fraser and I should meet soon for a more in-depth discussion about what each of us is doing, and what we want our final outcome for the project to be. I think when I tried to describe the environment as mysterious, it came across more like i was wanting to make a puzzle game, which is not my aim.

I was told that I had done a good level of research so far, but that I should look to narrow my areas of focus further, and define my aims and objectives more clearly. While i agree with this, I got the impression Iain and Ryan thought my list of current and future research topics was a list of things I want to write about, rather than a list of areas I have been looking into in order to ascertain which areas to focus on. Again I feel this was maybe partly a miscommunication on my part, though a more minor one at least.

Ryan thought it would be good to focus more on Indie games like Dear Esther than the triple-A games I mentioned before about possibly looking at, as these will be more along the lines of what i can feasibly achieve. While this is true I think there is still a lot I can learn from the bigger games, perhaps I can do one of each.

They were concerned slightly by the number of skill gaps I said I wished to address, mainly the big ones such as learning to sculpt in mudbox, which i feel is fair enough, as it is a large undertaking.

In the end like I feared, I did not manage to get the god-rays media test to render out, but they were sympathetic to software issues and felt I was still in a good position in terms of my idea development. I still dont know what the problem with it is, and worry that i might just need to scrap this particular test and try it again in UDK instead. This is probably a more fitting choice anyway, as the final lighting will be done in the engine.

Presentation Ready!

Well the presentation is ready, and I'm pretty confident it will be ok, though im always nervous about having to stand up and talk in front of people. In the process of making it I did realise that theres still a fair amount i failed to talk about on here, concerning things such as areas of my research iv been exploring, identifying my skills gaps and what games/films etc I plan to study as lighting examples. So here is a quick overview of the parts of my presentation I feel should be documented here.

Identifying Skill Gaps

Lighting - This is the main one, being that I'm planning a project on lighting, yet I've never been very happy with the way iv tackled lighting in the past. But hopefully by putting a years efforts towards improving on it, I can come out the end of this year with much more skill in this area. My current understanding of lighting comes from my 2D traditional drawing background, and I'm sure with some practice I will be able to transfer this into my 3D work.

UDK - While I did get some practice in my 3rd year for Advanced Interaction, it was mainly only pipeline stuff, importing models and applying textures. All the lighting was default, so I need to get a better look at the lighting tools available to me. I have some inclination as to the quality of lighting I can expect, from looking at games created with UDK, which was part of the decision to use this engine.

Zbrush/Mudbox, Normal Maps - If I want to make a truly stunning environment, then high poly models  normal mapped onto lower poly version will probably be the way to go. Iv had limited experience with Mudbox, mainly just a bit of playing around to understand the tools and such, but I've never sat down and sculpted a finished piece yet. As for normal maps, I have done them in the past to some extent, but not for a while, so I feel I need to brush up on these, as well as others such as ambient occlusion and some that I have not tried like specular maps

Sky-Domes - The sky will play a crucial role in this project, at least for the beginning and end when the player is outside. Iv never created a sky dome, but i understand how its done. This is more a case of me trying out something new which I know I can accomplish.

Organic Modelling - This is another big one I want to address, which is making plants with the use of planes and alpha maps. Another area I understand the process behind, but just need to give a try. I think these will play a fairly big part in the project if we keep the environment looking old and run down, as well as for the beginning location outside the tower.

Self-Directed Study - As mentioned before, I've realised that I find it quite difficult to decide on a project when im given no direction but my own, as well as build up the motivation to create it. My success at the end of this year will be determined by my ability to push myself to do work rather than being told what to do.

Research

This is a list of the areas of research I have been undertaking so far, in order to get a better idea of where i want to narrow my focus even further:

- Lighting in Horror (technically research undertaken last year, but it should prove useful this year for at least a selection of the emotions and atmospheres I want to create)

- Colour Theory and Lighting Theory

- Gestalt Principles, Visual Perception Psychology

- History of Architectural Styles

- Using light to create moods

- Environmental Storytelling

- How light and shadow can be used to influence player actions

I plan to go into these in more depth in later posts, as I dont want this one to be too big. I also have a list of future areas of research which will also be discussed later.

- Cinematography

- Stage/Set Lighting

- Lighting in Games

- Industry Magazine/Articles

- Colour symbolism and associations

Ideas for media to possibly study

Games - Dishonored, Half-Life 2, Skyrim, War of the Roses, Dear Esther

Films - Barry Lyndon, Sin City, How to Train Your Dragon.

I choose all of these because I consider them to have effective lighting set-ups and wish to examine them more critically in order to understand how to emulate them in my own project. 

I also mention at the end of my presentation that I plan to enter the Samsung Student Developer Challenge and the Epic Games competition. I think doing these projects will help me to build the work momentum i need to immerse myself in the honours project, as well as help give me valuable modelling practice and address most of the skill gaps mentioned above.

Project Changes

Well, my project idea has undergone quite a bit of change since my last post. I am now in the process of working out the logistics of doing a group project with Fraser, a GDPM (Game Design Production Management) student I have worked with previously. We both met up with Robin separately to discuss our project, and he gave us the go ahead, and seems quite keen to see what we can accomplish.

My plan is to still focus on environmental lighting, and Robin gave me a few ideas of things to research and test out (to be posted up here very soon hopefully). One of these I have already begun to examine is the film Barry Lyndon by Stanley Kubrick, in which Kubrick's main goal was to achieve as realistic a lighting set-up as possible, quite often using only candlelight.

Our current idea for the project is an environment which will attempt to make the player feel a range of emotions as they progress up a tower seperated into rooms. Each emotion will be specific to the room, and created with a combination of Frasers research into architecture and mine on lighting. I threw together a new mood board since the previous ones were no longer relatable.  

We're thinking quite run down and abandoned, overgrown with plants. We want an air of mystery to it, so lots of shade, rather than dark shadows, in order to make the player explore further. As to a time period we're still undecided - The content would make it easy enough to simply keep it old, possibly medieval, but It could just as easily be set in the present/future, with some nice modern lighting effects next to traditional fire-light. Another aspect of the idea is more Fraser's design than my own, where he wants to use perspective tricks from the top of the tower to create a message that can only be seen by looking down at the start location, telling the player to jump. I really like the idea, and I'm pretty sure i can come up with some ways to use lighting to help this along. The idea is still in its early infancy, so there is a lot that me and Fraser need to discuss over the next few weeks to refine it into something good.

We're now into pitch week, so iv been preparing my presentation and working on some media tests in maya. Unfortunately my attempts to render god rays have been unsuccessful for some reason, I either end up with a black render image, or it fails to render entirely. Worst case scenario, I wont have a render to show for the presentation, but I do have a nice amount of progress I think for it to be a fairly minor issue.

The Steep Incline Up The Honours Mountain

After some thought on the matter, I have decided the sci-fi idea is the one to go for. It provides me a lot of creative freedom, both artistically and for the research question - I believe I can make it fit whichever path my research goes down, whereas the other ideas I had seemed to always be putting limitations in front of me (at least in my eyes). It's also a chance for me to expand my breadth of artistic styles, as I've never really gone down the futuristic route, and would really like to try it out. That is possibly a risky approach to take for my final year, but I seem to like my risky projects.

I had wanted to use this weekend to come up with a few concepts for the sci-fi idea, but almost immediately I stepped right into some artist's block, and my mind was drawing a blank on anything I tried. So instead it became a search for inspiration. After reading through some of my friends blogs it seems a good number of them are in a similar situation as myself, which is kind of reassuring.

I began a list of all the sci-fi work I love and that inspires me, which should be useful for the literature review I will need to undertake. But in the short term I hope re-visiting some of these will give me inspiration for concepts.

I began by watching the series of Firefly and its follow up film, Serenity, which has an interesting mix of a futuristic style with old western and Asian influences. In Serenity I made an interesting observation about the use of back-lighting, and how it can cause entirely different effects based on certain variables. In a previous project of mine, within the horror genre, I read into the use of back-lighting to create an unsettling mood, however in serenity, the same technique is used to provide an almost angelic aura around one character in a particular scene. I think some of the aspects which would alter this effect are the intensity of the light (affecting the general lighting in the rest of the scene), and the subject matter being silhouetted. For example, a flock of sheep back lit by the sun would be far less intimidating than a graveyard back-lit by moonlight. I plan to research further into back-lighting and silhouettes.

Lighting definitely seems to be of great interest to me, however I feel like I could incorporate the environmental storytelling idea into it somehow(The different styles idea, not so much). Still finding it difficult to put these ideas into suitable question form...

How can light be used in a 3D game environment to influence the players actions?

How does lighting affect the mood of a 3D game environment, and how can this impact on the story of the surroundings?

Let The Honours.... BEGIN!

Well this is it, I'm onto the final year of my university course - Honours Year!

 So, for those who don't know, 3D environments is what I aspire to do for a living, it's my bread and butter, so it comes as no surprise that I would choose to do this for my Honours Project. However it's a very broad subject area, and narrowing down what I want to do is the first of many problems I must surpass in the coming year.

I've had a few weeks to think about this since my first meeting with Lynn to discuss honours, and in that time I've managed to identify a number of areas that interest me (and thought of projects to suit the research). So here are my current ideas of what to focus my research on:

Environmental Lighting
-Currently my main idea as it's the one I have had longest. It is something I have identified as one of my weaknesses when it comes to environment creation, purely for the reason I've rarely put enough time and effort into this part. But at the same time it is one of my favourite aspects in my 2D work and the work of others.
I have had 3 ideas for this so far:

1. A re-visiting of an old concept of mine, with a temple situated in some mountains, in the center of which is a garden illuminated by the sky outside.

This particular aspect I didn't get a chance to model, as I had nowhere close to the skill needed at the time, which is why i would like to re-visit it. Organic modelling is crucial to the concept, another facet of environments I have yet to delve into, which i would like to explore as part of this year. With the light interacting with the plants i feel there is more than sufficient technical challenge as well as a lot to explore and talk about in terms of lighting, such as sub-surface scattering, and animated shadows

2. A house in the south of France, specifically the house built by my grandfather which unfortunately no longer exists.

I am very keen on this idea, as it holds a place close to my heart, which I feel is something i can use to ensure that I put maximum effort into my project. It was a beautiful house, with much of my grandfathers ceramic artwork incorporated into the design. The drawback to this idea is that I'm not sure it would provide enough for aspects of the coursework such as concept development. Would painting various angles of the house from photographs count as development?

3. A sci-fi landscape. This is a genre I love, yet have never really explored. The idea came to mind when I was told to look toward the artists that inspire me for ideas. Coming at the very front of the list is Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier), a concept artist who does (among other things) stunning sci-fi paintings. All of which I find have amazing lighting.

I would love to create something along these lines but in 3D, and I feel this idea has the most potential for lighting and overall creative freedom.

Photo-Realism Vs Stylisation
This is my most recent idea, suggested by Brian after I told him I was torn between which to choose for my project. My thoughts are that perhaps I could create a group of similar environments, each with varying degrees of stylisation, going from photo-realistic, to something like toon-shaded (definitely not set in stone that part). I think a minimum of 3 styles would be nice, and I could talk about the merits of each, and the history behind the evolution of artistic styles.
This would probably be a great project for my showreel, as it shows a breadth of artistic styles, and if I can get the photo-realism good, that is apparently looked on extremely favourably by employers.

Environmental Storytelling (for games)
This is something I have always been interested in, and try to incorporate to some extent into all my models. I love to think about the stories behind environments, and specifically how they guide the player through the world you've created. This is probably my most interactive idea, as I would want to actually have a player navigating my environment. Doing what, or discovering what, is where my mind has so far drawn a blank, but perhaps some of the ideas above would be perfect for it

Of course most of these ideas could be altered to fit into whichever area I decide to focus on, which is great, and quite possibly could be called for.

So that's it for the introduction to my honours ideas, my next task is to do some concepts for these ideas, and try to find more potential areas of interest.