Game Engine Report (70.1/.2)- Maya Files

Game Engine Report (70.1/.2) is on the HARD-DRIVE along with the Maya Scenes

Game Engines and Digital Graphics

Games Design and Digital Graphics

Modelling

Autodesk Maya provides all the tools for an artist to create the best of the best 3d models, animations, particles and a lot of other magnificent things. To model in Maya to create my game I used a lot of box modelling basically starting from a square which is a Maya primitive. Using this I made all of my models unless the model was a pipe which I used a cylinder for. Customising the amount of edges in the primitive at start than making modifications to the edges etc is the way I like to model. Maya provides the tools for a base shape of an object it’s not preferable for adding little details like scratches etc.

Rigging and Animating

I had to find a way to rig the custom characters we made in Maya and Zbrush, the character were made using Maya a base mesh which is from Zbrush because we didn't have a lot of time. I used the UTMale rig which is free from unreal's website, detaching that skin from the unreal's character and then adjusting some of the joints and than binding it to my character was the way I did it. My animating and rigging skills are very basic so the rig and the animations are very basic; the gangdum style animation at the end was downloaded and applied to my rig. The other animations are made by me and my brother using key frame.

UV’s

Once I make an object I than focus on getting the UV’s made for the object so it doesn't cause a lot of problems later which I have experienced numerous times with modelling. Creating the UV’s for the object is a challenge to optimize UV space and not overlap anything. 

Textures

After I modelled the base mesh and created the UV’s than I have to make the textures for the model, the easiest way to do this is to go in Photoshop and make the textures using a UV snapshot from Maya. The other way I textured models was by using Zbrush which can be sometimes faster to make the textures and the quality is also better because the textures are hand painted. After making the textures in Zbrush I have to bake the textures/normal maps to the UV’s, then export it as an OBJ into Maya. For final quick checks then exporting it as a FBX. The textures have to also be exported into Photoshop so I can export them as a tga. 

Export

The last part of the process is to export the object and I prefer to export the textures separately into UDK instead of embedding the media within the FBX export. The reason for this is that it makes it easier to identify which textures are making a good impact on the overall object. This leaves the option to use crazybump for a cleaner normal map or to use the one Zbrush generates. 

Import

Importing the object as a static mesh in UDK is easy but than to make it look the right way by using the material editor can be a real pain. UDK lets you use the same material for a pacific polygon count on a model. Doing this some of the objects did not need a texture map, so we just auto mapped the UV’s and then sending that object to 3Ds max and setting up material ids on the polygons which will have a different texture element.

Evaluation

Level Design Project- Scary Game

This project was a very engaging yet very challenging. Luckily it went to plan, good thing we got the project finished on time and to a good standard too. We met the specifications for our brief and the game worked on the TV fine without any complications. During this experience I learnt a lot of vital skills needed for a good game artist. The biggest challenge was to make the animations work within UDK, we had to rig, texture and animate the two characters. 

The game turned out very good and we received a lot of appreciation from the people in year one and the IT science students. There was times when the game didn't scare anyone when we expected it to and sometimes it scared people on moments we expected it not to. There was surely some problems even on the day of showcasing the game, but they were minor like on the house level in our game we forgot to hide the girl which is supposed to disappear when the player walks through the first door but people decided to jump of the staircase and come from the other rooms which we didn't want, this way the girl stayed unhidden. Other minor problems were fixed in the morning before the students arrived.  

My team was just me and my brother our designer wasn't working at all and to overcome this problem we had to do the designers work as an artist. Our designer Daniel Henry did not load UDK until the last week. We had given him a lot of instructions on a number of stages throughout the project but it was no use. Daniel didn't even map out the level using BSP’s and just waited until we spoon feed everything to him like walls etc. This can be easily created in Unreal.  Daniel could have started working on a numerous things such as getting the size of the level right or using place-holders but instead he just wasted time. So we gave him all of our assets which we made for our game three weeks before the deadline and then we started to work on our game which only I and my brother Azam worked on. We split work and Azam made the intro, the house and the outro.  I would not work with Daniel after this experience.

There was a lot of polishing needed for the levels but there was no time for them, we focused on getting the level to a standard where it will compensate for some of the visual for the assets. Some of the assets and materials that were created turned out differently in UDK and some had a lot better quality than others which was a little sad. A lot of the people from the other groups said we like your characters and the animations because it was very different from the other levels in the class. Another downside was that not all of the assets that we created ended up in the final game due to different reasons.

The students from the other groups gave us very good feedback, which we expected because we worked very hard but the unexpected aspect of the feedback was that everyone like most of the scares we had which was very good to hear.

This is the game-play video of the whole game. It wasn't the most updated version of the map, some of the problems which were there like the scary-girl on the floor was fixed in the version shown to students today which i forgot to copy :(. We had to ghost to get to the wooden doors because of the chair, this was also fixed. Very small problems.

Week 8- Last WeeK!

This is the last of the project and this week I focused on getting everything done and add everything I can to make the game look better. Azam finished his level before mine so he helped me with some of the sequences, while working at the Intro and Outro of the level. In the starting of the week I got some sounds together from freesound.org which supplies random horror sounds, some worked out nice and some of them just didn't work out at all. My kismet is very messy sometimes even I don't know where some things are. I tried to sort it with using comments it helped a lot but not enough.

I set-up a moving footstep sound which would move when the player touches the door, the sound would make it look like as if someone is walking with the player. But for some reason it didn't look like the sound was moving at all.So I left it there and moved on. To make the sound work I added a sound-cue movable which is made in unreal by using a wav format audio. For a lot of the sounds this has to be done, unless it is a ambient sound.

Yes the cheapest scare, using these pictures that are set up behind the map which obviously the player cannot see. As the player touches any of the four triggers on the map it would play a matinee sequence which is for split second. The player cannot move for that split second like a cinematic. But it is so fast that it's impossible to identify it. I also increased the play rate in kismet to x2 what it is in matinee because it wasn't fast enough. Very cheap and easy to make. :) 

In this week i also made a very basic iphone model, which acts as a torch which Azam has in his map but I wanted it to look different. To make the light work Azam told me to attach it the player with the light this would give a good impression of a moving light source. 

The best cinematic we have in our map although it has no context, I just wanted to make it. I wanted to break the glass at the front door. So using a impulse from the actor section in the content browser and setting it so it fractures gave a good outcome. There was some settings that I changed from default in the fracture and the impulse. Making the impulse toggle with a lot of other things like lights etc.When the trigger is touched  it breaks the glass, and adding sounds and the scary girl there was a good outcome. Also to make the chairs fly was very basic, replacing the chairs with a rigid body automatically made them fly. Also the cloth had to be set up so it reacts with game-play physics, because the flat cloth was made in Maya within one minute. When the game starts the cloth automatically falls on the white draw with convincing look. Enabling game-play physics also made it move when the impulse in activated. 

Above is the way I made the game show some text, adding delays to the logs with a string displayed the messages  Some of the messages only trigger after using a object like the lift or walking over a touch trigger.

Now to make the lift only open when the player has the scalpel was very hard so Azam helped me with this because he had this feature in his first room. Once the player use's the lift (by pressing e) a message would tell him "I need something sharp to open it" after that 2 other messages would hint the location of the scalpel. Now so that if a player that opens the last cupboard before using the lift would not be able to see the scalpel although he can pick it up. To stop this I made the scalpel hidden and it's only unhidden once the player uses the lift. 

After the player has picked up the scalpel a remote event is played basically it doesn't have a touch or a use trigger, after a set time (using delay) it automatically starts playing. So after 5 secs of picking up the scalpel the cinematic of "You Shall Not Pass" plays. I don't know what I was thinking when I made this instead of slowing or "stopping" the player the ghost seems to make his walk shorter. (very bad) Apart from that the cinematic would toggle 3 particles which I tried syncing with the thunder in the sound. To make it look like as if the player was thrown back by the impact was pretty fail because the camera was just zig zagging up and down which was pretty bad. :(

Making the chair fall was pretty easy. I set a physics of the chair to a rigid body when the trigger is touched. The matinee sequence basically guides the chair where to fall, just using 2 key frames of the chair moving down, got this to work nicely.

This is the sequence for the last scene, a lot of work was gone into this scene but not much of it is noticeable. 3 lights flicker, the character moving with the animation, also the camera falling with the fades (blinking). It was very hard but it was done by me. the sound was pretty bad. I wish I could of found a lot better sounds.

This is all the kismet in my map. 

Week 7- Opening Cinematic Done!!!

First I blocked the view of the player from seeing what's outside of the level that way the level looks more realistic and it also doesn't require us to make the rest of the floor which we didn't have time for. Using the rocks from the Unreal's library, I stacked up the rocks to make it look like as if the rest of the building has collapsed. I think I achieved that very well but reorientating the rocks on the back and front produced a nice quality rubble like feel. Although I didn't want to use any of the unreal's library meshes, there was just not enough time for it. 

Azam helped me put up a good post process effect on the map which gave it a very spooky and realistic look. Also the outside of the map which are BSP's like the roof and the side walls have their light consumption reduced to 4096 which works the other way round for anything besides BSP's in unreal. So the lower the resoulation the higher the quality of the lighting of the BSP. On the inside the BSP's are set to 32 which produces very good effect on the lighting.  

During this week I focused on making the lift workable too, when the player opens the lift as he touches the trigger volume (green box) the lift doors would close. It wasn't that complicated to make but I was very proud of it. 

Because it was near the end of the project I made sure every door can be opened and closed by using a switch in the kismet. This was very easy but a time consuming step. Making the doors work was like a massive accomplishment which i felt at the start but i wanted to do more. More complex and dramatic scenes.

Using the Matinee in unreal I made a simple animation for the doors opening and closing which play as the player interacts with them.

Above is a screenshot of the kismet and matinee sequence used to make the opening cinematic for my map, I tried to make the scary-girl teleport as the player opens and closes his eyes. To get this effect I used a fade track in Matinee and using the curve editor to make the fades like as if the player is blinking. Sadly the girl didn't seem to work in the same matinee sequence so I made the teleporting in another sequence which did take a lot of time to sync with the fades as I could not see both of them at the same time, so I had to start the game every-time to check how it went. 

This is the girl teleporting sequence, using a visibility track with a movement track gave the illusion of the girl teleporting from place to place. I like this effect and i might use in a different place because it's very effective and it gives a very good impression on the player of the game. I like working with the engine because it makes something in my head possible for someone to play.

Week 6- Lets Do This!

First thing I  tried to do in this week is to give Dan the package which had all of the models which I used to create the room so he doesn't have anything to complain about. But sadly he has still not found anything that can hold 300 MB + of data. After this I just carried on making the map look like how we need it to look like. 

I imported the tables and the chair which Azam textured. Using these I placed them in positions which I think will suit the position, some of the objects I imported still need a texture but a simple material always does the trick.

Above are two materials which Azam helped me create, the first one is for pipes which reflect a little bit of light and on the right is the same material with the specular detail off. I used This material in a lot of places like the circle things on top of the roof and some of the other objects too. Azam also helped me make a lot of the other materials. 

I also started to work on the outside of the level too, using the same materials on the inside I textured the outside as well. There was surely some detail missing but it doesn't matter too much. For the posters if I get time I could take a picture of and than place it in the material which would look very good. 

At the starting of the week there was no kismet which I wanted to leave for later.Once I finish texturing everything then i am going to start on it. Azam made a material for the chrome which he gave to me, but for some reason that material is like reflecting light too brightly as you can see easily from this picture. So I must find a way to decrease the brightness so it looks more realistic. The roof texture is a material I found in UDK which slightly matches the roof material we have in our college so without wasting any time I used it.

The main aim for this week was to finish texturing everything and have something that the players can play as it is the last week. So I completed the lighting first than focused on some kismet and making the doors work at least otherwise the player can't do much by sticking in the first room.

 Also collision was a great problem which I had to counter be creating custom collision using the builder brush to create a blocking volume which will not allow the players to get through it. This helped me a lot because I didn't want to reimport the walls separately and than go through the hassle of placing them in the right positions. I got the blinds in the game too but not the ones which would move randomly because it was causing a lot of FPS issues so I decided to leave that out.

This is an image of the room in unlit mode showing all the roof details which unfortunately the player cannot  see :(. A lot of effort and time was taken to make the room look like the real deal. Which was kind of not needed because we could of got away with just the main details in place.

To make Ram we used a base zbrush model like how we did for the girl, but this time using a male base mesh of course. To make the coat I had to use zbrush topology tools which I learnt using during the last project on a character. Then after making the adaptive skin I took it into Maya, by using the geometry sculpting tool in Maya I moved some things around then mirror the object. To texture the model I went back into Zbrush and just made the skin colour and the coat colour only. Then in Photoshop I added the super-dry logo on the shoulder and the wrist. Using reference images that Ram let us take. The animations worked for this model because I used the same rig from the UTmale. It also had the same bone names, I didn't know that it would work, it saved us a lot of time.

This is a screenshot of me making the coat for Ram in zbrush. This did take a long time I was considering doing it in Maya but I felt it was faster in Zbrush. In Maya I also made the long collar of the character because it was giving me some issues in Zbrush.

I also made the coat for the girl starting in Zbrush then taking it in Maya to make the rest of the coat like the bottom part which I couldn't make in Zbrush because it was keep going to the surface of the leg which I didn't want.  

Week 5- Taking matter in my hands!

Dan just keep denying to do any work, now he has lost his hard-drive, and now I just can't cope with him. Me and my brother have decided to make the game work in UDK as well as a artist because we don't want a failure game that everyone would look at and laugh. My brother is going to make another level for our map which is going to be a house and this will expand our level's playtime, making the game better. We don't have much experience with UDK but we can learn and make a good game as a artist without our so called designer. I don't know what's wrong with Dan through out last year and this year when ever it's a group project he produces no work, and this is proved from the first project we did this year where he was in Jack Walls group and the rest of the group had to do all the work while he just trolls for a month. I can't believe we forgot about that when taking him in -_-. 

I made the material id's for this glass door which is going to be used about 6 times, and for it to open properly I had to have the objects combined and the pivot on the side so when rotated it reacts like a door. The glass is a plane so it looks more realistic and doesn't cause any problems later on. 

I made the blinds in the room which look very close to the real thing in class. But I wanted the wind to react with the blinds and make it move so it looks a lot more realistic. to do that I researched and found out the blind has to be rigged, where there is a cloth joint where all the vertices are attached to that will move, and the rest are to be attached to the last or first joint which is the stationary part of the cloth. Simon helped me a lot with this part. 

In this week i concentrated on exporting and importing most of the meshes into UDK, I had some issues with the size and using the UTmale I sized the room so it looks realistic. I also used basic materials to texture the room so I can get a better a understanding of the room. Also Azam had completed a lot of the outside part so i also imported that. The light that you can see in the middle of the room is the key to importing the objects into the right position as they're in Maya. Placing the object in the middle of the light makes the light position in the world space because it is the 0,0,0 space. So when i combine the objects that are similar in Maya like all of the pipes as one object and then not centring the pivot on the object lets me place them easily using this method which I discovered my self.