NEW BLOG

Hi there, if anyone wants to view my new blog here's the address -

http://lowrybear.blogspot.co.uk/ 

I've started a new one for my second year so things don't get jumbled
plus that annoying cricket sound is doing my head in now

:)

Through the holidays - Nottingham and Disney

In the 4 months we have left i will be working on my own projects i set myself. I've also applied for GameCity to help with running and things in Nottingham i'm also working on my own things so i can apply for the disney internship in march next year its a while a way so im going to enter and hopefully get good feedback, something to work for.

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE

Splinter Cell Series

Unity

I had a few problems getting maya in unity at first so matt helped me thank god. I forgot to delete my history and delete objects i didn't need in my outliner, also i didn't freeze transform everything so after everything was cleared up and neater my level was ready to go into unity and here it is :)

adding in the final touches - skybox lights etc....

screenshots of the finished thing :)

Unity Web Player | web version - game level

« created with Unity »

Adding Sound

I'm ready to add my sound now i've found quite a few good cricket noises for in the background which i'm going to play on a loop, i'm also going to add a ding button for the lift and a drop button for the vending machine. I may also add a fire particle and sound to the ship. 

heres the website i got my sounds from, i also looked at the sound FX library but there was nothing on there that would fit into my environment this time - 

I may also place a few collision boxes so sounds get louder and quitter as you walk closer and further away.

my flowers look too lumpy and out of place - what a waste of time

I had a feeling that this would happen after looking at them compared to my environment and i've decided now that I'm not going to use them and tomorrow i will use the images of two flowers i found on the internet and in unity import them and spread them all around to give a more natural feel to the placement of them and obviously they will look much nicer, if this doesn't work i think my floor looks ok without them anyway so no biggy, i'll see what will happen tomorrow.

Here's a screenshot of my test that i did for the flowers 

shame they didn't fit in well, took a while on them :(

Here's some images i gathered from the net for the unity flower thing

think i'm gonna pick the white one 

i may use this branch to attach to my ship brach like exterior

and the orange one

Finishing touches before importing into unity

I realised that my ship was just kinda sat there and had not 'crashed' so i put some rubble underneath it to make it look more convincing, i also finished off some texturing, light switches etc and put in my vending machine all done and dusted :D Oh yeah i also added in my lighting and here's what my finished environment looks like just before I'm about to cover it in floor flowers and add some fire or a waterfall particle to the ship. Oh and also scripting and sound! Can't forget those.........

oh crap after inserting this picture i just thought to myself i haven't textured my damn ship have i

:/

silly me

adding in more detail

I wanted my ship to blend in like camouflage, i found it very difficult to uv map it and have definitely done it wrong but to be honest i kind of like what it came out like. Obvs could have been better but it doesn't look bad and blends in just great 

I made sure all the metal wear was textured correctly and i like the bliss tool i used instead of lam beret to give it that extra shine worked well

This is one of the picture i took from downstairs, because it was a smaller asset it didn't stretch which worked out great, which the others wouldn't have stretched, they would have looked as good as this

Akira style - adding vines and moss to my environment

So after finishing my basic texturing i moved onto adding my moss textures to my number of hanging moss designs that i'd made. I wanted the environment to look as if it had been taken over like the ship had landed and weaved it's way into everything around it. Almost as if it had malfested itself into everything else. I dunno if malfested is a real word or its a Soul Calibur word but it seemed like the appropriate one to explain my environment. So in Akira you'll know if you've seen it, it's quite a messed up film, his body separating into mass murdering tentacle whip like things that shoot through anything and everything. I wanted my vine to look similar, very thin and lots of them, like they have a mind of there own or something. So i pretty much duplicated them loads and placed them wherever i saw fit trying to wrap them around beams and through doors etc. I hope i didn't go too over the top with them as i went through and deleted a lot of them thinking this was the case. Anywho i'm quite pleased with my outcome at the moment i just hope my textures don't let me down too much :/

Here's some images i researched from Akira first 

and then here's some i took of my environment and vines- 

Alex Galuzin - environment designer and level designer

I came across this environment artist called Alex Galuzin and some of his work is amazing, one of my favourite pieces to look at was his house in Menorca is what all very architectural so it was great reference for my work for the college. I noticed how all his work must have been drawn and measured and re-drawn and measured a dozen times so everything fit together like a jigsaw puzzle like houses would do in real life.
Here's some images of the house in Menorca-

Another interesting one to look at was his Arch Viz environment - here the image below

Again it shows how he's combined architecture, interior design and by architectural renderings to create a great and beautiful piece. 
On his blog he states that - 

I’ve always been fascinated by architecture, interior design and by architectural renderings. I have dozens of books on drawing architectural plans, how to render architectural drawings and architecture history . I think it is one of the reasons I love level design and interactive 3d worlds in games.

The following is a model and a render I worked on in Maya. I am very happy with the results.

Everything was modeled in Maya and rendered using Global Illumination and Final Gather.

I've always been interested in architecture too and love beautiful grand buildings, maybe this is something to follow up on and learn more about? :)