Week 4- Finishing the whole room

The big dilemma now is that how am i going to import these objects in the exact same positions they're in Maya, I cant export the object as one because then I won't be able to materialise or create proper collision for the room. Which will fail the game. This is a problem to come but the current problem is getting the window and other objects to the correct scale so it looks realistic and not like as if the room is too small or too big which is a problem at the moment.

With the grid adjusted and most of the models placed in the right positions, I just made final checks some of the stationery objects, the objects which are to be left like how the real room is. Placing the sockets and other objects in the right position according to how it really is took a lot of time and also was a great pain.

Using the big objects like the pillars and the walls I placed the objects according to the position it is,estimating the size of the placements by marking and checking where something touches or meets another object in the scene i made the whole room to a very distinctive level.

These are the orthographic views of the room which shows the room detail in the top view and side view very nicely, i am very proud of the outcome of the room and it's detail taught me a lot about modelling.

The big concern now is that the room looks to high poly; 500k+ polygons for just the first room was really worrying me because it might lag  the game, I tried my best to reduce the poly-count on a lot of the objects like the pipes and the heaters but I don't think it's enough. It was 700k+ but reducing some of the polygon-count on the sockets, pipes etc did help a lot.

Week 3- Trying to Finish and Start

Week 3- Still nothing created in UDK by Dan, same excuse but now a new twist which is that the objects don't even load in Maya which is the same program I created them in :'[. Dan still not doing anything, I wish we could just change designers with someone who would actually work instead of just trolling all day. Dan at the start of the project when we all were selecting our teams he was like I know UDK inside out I will work day and night. Pffff. Putting that aside me and Azam are thinking of starting to create our map ourself without Dan's help. This week I made a lot of small objects and also focused on getting the room to a good near finished level. Because time is closing in on us we only have 3 weeks left to make out whole game from the kismet, materials, assets and everything else. Me and Azam decided to split a lot of the work by me modelling the first room and Azam to start working on the other room by using the models and creating some of his own to make the room look very good and realistic.

Above is fake switch which can use to fake that there is some sort of a switch on the roof or any other place where the player can't access but can only see from a distance. This fake switch is on the pillars and also on the roof of the college in various places.

A switch which is at the start of the room and controls the lighting in the room, if we can; we might make the light switch work and this would let the player interact with the switches and make the light switch on and off as he/she pleases. 

This object is in the college room near the roof, to make this object I made the first section of it and then mirror it a lot of times so it reaches the end of the room. Because this object is neither going to be seen and he also doesn't have any other material property apart from a black colour, I made a auto map of the UV's and it's ready for export. 

I made the side-walls and duplicated it so it fits with the length of the room and it does't look out of place. I also placed the heaters and made the white plastic box that runs from the start to the end of the room. A lot objects are just duplicated and little variation here and there makes it all look very real. I also made the pipe that runs below the heaters and some modification was done to the heater so it looks legit and flows.

Here the pillars are placed perfectly sized to do this I had to export this model into UDK and than reimport it into Maya so I can get the scale for the room. The grid was very small towards the grid in UDK which I found out after a while of researching that it can be modified to match the scale in UDK. To do this I had to configure the settings in UDK to this

The back and front walls are finished and placed with the rest of the models, I created layers in Maya so it can make it easier for me to organise and also to visualise better by only selecting the layer which I need to see. 

I also added the lights in this week with the wires, some of the lights i could not see so i just guessed where it would be placed in the college, but around 90% of them are correctly placed. A little off course lights can not be easily spotted with so many in the right places. The light is composed of 4 and above objects combined because that way the poly-count stays low.

The keyboard was quite hard to make because of the different sizes and placement, also I had to keep the polycount low, to do this i made the keys and the keyboard base separate objects and like how a real keyboard has holes for the keys to go in i couldn't have this because it would increase the poly-count hugely. To make the texture for this object could be a nightmare so I might just leave it as one or two material; due to time issues.

This is a light in the room which I hardly notice the presence of but I still have to make it, it was a very simple model but it is in some weird and hidden places and it also has pipes which connect to it. So I have to consider this and make the pipes as well as getting the placement right. 

Week 2- So much done already, More to do!

Week 2-Still nothing in UDK

We have seriously speed this process up because materialising and texturing objects can consume a lot of vital time. Daniel still didn't do anything in UDK apart from complaining it keeps crashing which I think is a very bad excuse for not working. He can't even block out anything using place-holders or any of the UDK meshes so when we give him the textured and finished model he can easily replace it. I wanted to model everything first then texture it all that way it makes the process a lot faster. 

Because our idea for the game is right in front of us modelling the college got easier by taking pictures for the reference. I focused on getting the small things in the room first which are repeated all over the college. Above is a picture of the wire clips in the room you can see there are so many in my scene. This is because I always take the back seat in the room because it has the best place to look at the room from, I can see everything in the room from that row. Using some images and live reference I created the clips in the exact places which most of them are. Some of the clips are put because I couldn't see that particular part of the roof. So I made it up by guessing where it could be. 

I made the pipes to very close to how they are in college, we need the room looking exactly like how it is in reality. So again using pictures and compiling the room using some of the meshes Azam has provided me with I created the roof of the room because I already have the main walls in the room done.Some of the pipes gave me a lot of problems like the pipe on top of the projector. Which has a very unusual bend, so looking at the pictures and in college i made the exact same replica of the pipe, although I skipped modelling the projector because it's very complex so instead of not including it I made it look like as if it dropped or got robbed. By leaving out some random wires.

Azam gave me the file for the pillar so using that i moved forward and using the pillars i made the correct length of the room because there is only 5 pillars in the room so stacking them correctly i rectified the sizes and some of the other objects. I still don't know if all of this hard-work and detail will be visible to the player because it's a horror themed game now we can't have the whole roof lit just because of the detail. It would blow the game and take away most of the horror feeling.

The plugs were too high res in poly-count for a plug. So i fixed and took away a lot of the extra vertices which didn't add any detail, but one problem this would create in the future when in game is that the model creates some light bleeding errors. So instead of doing a automatic mapping on the plug I decided to create proper uv's for the plug so it doesn't mess up that much.

One thing i already knew about unreal is that anything which doesn't require different colours on a section of a mesh doesn't have to have proper uv's neither a proper texture map. Unreal can texture a lot of models with just using the material editor and nothing else. But to do this the object requires proper material ID's which I don't know how to create in Maya so I researched a lot about this and found out that 3Ds Max can create material ID's very easily without much hassle, so after i create and finish a object and i create the UV's for the mesh by using a automatic UV mapping function within Maya; then I send it to 3Ds Max and by selecting the faces which will have another type of material or colour in the mesh I set the material ID's. This way it saves a lot of time for creating proper UV's than texturing it. 

I did this with a lot of objects such as the chair below and a lot of other objects. To do this i first send a object to Max and than by selecting the faces of the object i click on assign selection with material, to this i first have to create a multi/sub material node in the material editor. The worse thing about this is that when a object has its edges softened from Maya, 3Ds Max seems to undo this process, this makes another long procedure of reimporting into Maya and softening the edges again.

Luckily there is a good option created from autodesk to send the connected object back and forth from Maya and Max. This eased this problem a lot. 

I didn't know how to create windows in Unreal so instead of waiting to find out; very simple boxes within maya corresponding with the length and width of the windows. There was some minor sizing problems involved but it wasn't long before I overcame them.

This is a wire created from the CV curve tool in Maya because it makes life a lot easier when creating wire like objects like how i have just below. I created the curve first than positioned it how I needed it; then by making a cylinder and lowering its sub-divisions I extruded the top face while selecting the curve and increasing the sub-divisions of the extrude to make it look realistic.

More tables and Samsung Screen!

Above is the sumsung monitor in the room which I made fairly quick.

Above is the table that is everywhere in our room the uvs for this model are very easy to make.

This is another model in the class, we wanted some variations in the room.

Sockets and Stuff!

This is a very bad mouse that I made I need to revisit that.

These are the pegs in the room still missing two nails on both ends.

This is a socket which I have made the uv's for but I think its way too high resolution for this object because it will be used a lot in the college.

This is the single socket which i made using the double socket, it needs to be brought down in resolution too.

More draws and Lights!

 This is the laptop draw which looks very good without sacrificing a lot of resolution.

Above is the light that is used in two of the rooms in the floor, the media and games room. 

This light is in the middle of our room and it can be used in the other rooms as well.

Heater and Internet Socket!

Above is the heater in the room which is used a lot all over the college, I need to texture this and i still need to make it a lot lower res. Because its very high for a object.

This is the image I used to make the heater.

 Above and below are very simple objects, its probably hard to see but its a internet socket port which is used a lot in our room it has a four port and a two port version so I made them both. This will create variation in the room.

Another Draw! Fire Signs

 This is the draw that is at the front of the room and , this didn't take that long to make but i still have to texture and uv it.

 Above is a fire button which we can use all over the college it still needs texturing.

I made the fire sign in our room this is used in various places over the floor so its good to have that.

Computer Screen and Draw

This is the computer model which I made with the uv's so its ready to go into zbrush.

This is the other draw which on top of the one I made in the previous post. The handles and keyhole are separate objects, this way I can save a lot of polygons. I still need to make uv's for this too. :(

Draws

Above is the bottom draw which i modelled using the below reference image. I still need to create the uv's for this model.

This is the clock in our class I forgot to add the clock handles.