12 / 11 / 2010 - Preparation and crunch for Alpha Presentation

The past week has been getting the whole place blocked out, simply UV'ed (for a lightmass / lightmap blockout) and coloured just to get a general quick feel of what finished geometry will look like. Personally I feel that although nothing final has been produced yet a lot of the hard work has been done at this end.

At the current state it needs to be imported in to UDK which I aim to do straight after posting this blog post.Then I can start to get a lighting blockout completed. Each item has been broken down in to modular pieces so lightmaps will have the highest resolution they can get. Lighting I feel is one of if not the most important aspects of a game environment thus in this project I have made it my priorty to get it sorted out first.

The next few days I have allocated towards this project as the past week I have been distracted with other things which wasn't planned, this is why you might not see much progression since the last post. I plan to get the environment into UDK for the final time and then start to blockout the lighting using the movie scene reference as a guide. Emissive is one of the main sources of light in the scene so I'm going to get them in first when I begin the lighting. The computer screens need to be made first (or at least a primitive) as they are a valid source of light that dominates the scene.

Once the lighting is done the main assets will start to get churned out which is the easy part.

I have a slight feeling that what I have done so far might be a little too small so the possibility of expanding out in to the labs is still there. Lets just see how far this 3 day crunch will get me to begin with as I hope to achieve a good 25 -30 hours of work.

Anyway for your enjoyment I will now post a few shots that will give you a better understanding of where I am at and where I am heading to.

[Here are the basic colour blocking materials applied to certain objects, nothing special but important]

[The clean room with a basic colour applied to the walls. The room is rather mono-colour as its meant to be clean sterile environment thus the bright colours (though not seen in thise screen shot well]

[ Here is the link room all blocked out with Colour, lightmaps have been applied so when its inserted in to UDK it should be easier to blockout the lighting]

[Link room again from one of the final perspectives (though a little off from being in Maya)]

Over the next three days I shall be preparing for the Alpha presentation and just cracking on to get as much done to demonstrate the potencial of the environment. Sorting the lighting out is the next task which I hope not to take too long. Next the computer screens will be made as they are the main feature of the level. Once those are complete I will start churning out the assets using high and low poly modelling techiniques while being concious of how much time I have left.


I plan to be taking a look at this Eat3D DVD on lighting this weekend as well to gain a better understanding of lighting inside UDK. (http://eat3d.com/udk_lighting)

Check back in the next few days as I hope to make a lot of progress.

Thanks for reading!