Desert Eagle Finished!

Desert Eagle Finished!

The complex contraption project in 3d class has been interesting and pain in the you know where at the same time.

I never realized how hard modeling a gun will be. This was chosen in order to save my car design for the future project. However, this project has been quite difficult. Nevertheless, I did have fun modeling and texturing. This time I was actually able to get in depth with Substance Designer 3. This program allowed me to create "modular" materials that are applied throughout the whole gun.

the gun has tri count of 3500 and about 1300 for the flash light. The silencer was just a cylinder, so it only has 170 tris. The whole texture spaces available for the project was 2048 square map. 

Scary Environment

Scary Environment

My DFA concept

Color Studies for the environment that I will be drawing and eventually making in UDK.

Since it is only brainstorming and stuff, I've treated it more like a collage with the pictures that I've copy&pasted from internet. When the concept is 100% finalized, I will be drawing everything and texturing them.

Feasible DFA concept idea

Feasible Environment Idea

The environment in which I am doing in DFA demands a complex material making when brought into UDK. The idea is that wherever the light hits, a clean looking material will be applied. However, where the lights don't hit, a grunge and dirty material will be applied. 

Drawing it in 2d form will be quite easy. However, material making for UDK will cost time and effort. 

HOWEVER! I've got it semi-working at the moment.

The picture represent how the lit area shows one material and unlit area shows another material. I've just used UDK textures, but that's only to start the experiment with.

I'll need to fine tune the material so that I can create a master material for the environment that I will most likely be working on in DFA.

Desert Eagle modeling

Complex Contraption 

Hard surface modeling project

For this assignment, I am modeling a handgun

Desert Eagle to be more exact.

Right now, the high poly has been created in Maya.

Currently working on lowpoly so that I can bake the detail.

Primer Machina Mini Cooper Finished

Primer Machina Mini Cooper Finished

10-06-2013

The final render for the Primer Machina (DFA) is finally finished.

This vehicle is made to travel on the train tracks instead of asphalt roads.

The environment theme was the Russian metro system in the game Metro: Last Light.

Wheel Clean v. Dirty

Wheel Clean v. Dirty

Video demonstrating different textures of the material.

Beautiful Biome Finished

Beautiful Biome Finished

Beautiful Biome project update

The lighting has been dramatically changed from the previous version.

Also, the waterfall has been deleted. It did not have enough realism to fit the environment in my opinion. Instead, I've added crepuscular rays.

Beauty shots:

Mini Cooper

Mini Cooper WIP

DFA Primer Machina project.

This project is very closely related to industrial designing. 

This mini cooper is tweaked and modified to fit in the Metro Last Light environment.

Metro Last Light takes place in Russian metro system. People survive underground because the outside is too radioactive and mutant creatures roam the streets killing any living creatures. 

The car is modified to be able to be driven in a rail system.

Beautiful Biome Project

Beautiful Biome

    

Beautiful Biome Project for 3D class

Design Lab DFA

Design Lab

DFA class

7 character designs

2 derived from random silhouettes

2 derived from random lines

1 was force fit (Snow fox + Airbus + conscientious)

1 derived from classmate's silhouette

The Toy -obstacle-

The Toy -obstacle-

This is the layout of my map. 

Each parts are labeled and briefly described. 

The goal of the map is to escape.

Part 1

* The intended tone: Serious, Horror
* You are a treasure hunter
* You were locked/ trapped in a dungeon while searching for the treasure. In order to escape, you need to solve the problem ancient civilization has created
* You’ll have to solve the problem or you’ll starve to death
* The conflict is that there are traps that will release you from the torturous pain in a short moment. A trap that will kill you
* The twist is that the you will be attracted to the traps like moth to a flame. You’ll eventually kill yourself involuntarily




* The dungeon is located deep underground in an unmarked island 15 miles away from edge of Argentina
* It is mid winter
* It is afternoon nearing dusk. However, you are so deep underground that sunlight never enters the room.
* The architecture is very hard to understand. Most of the details are lost due to years of inactivity and natural corrosion. As a result, it feels like large cave with some structure
* Ancient human race used to occupy the space for their religious rituals
* The environment was quiet and untouched for 2 millenniums. But as the player enters the environment, the environment feels the new life form. Although everything is the same, the hidden traps now have another chance to perform the task it was created for.
* The player, a treasure hunter, read about a myth in a book. This particular space was mentioned in the novel. Out of curiosity, he came to steal the golden sphere that will, as myth states, bring infinite power. However, during the search, he was tripped by a trap and fell into this dungeon. He was knocked out for several hours. When he woke up, he was in this closed off space.
* The player makes a torch light with his lighter and clothes. As he wanders in the unknown place, he finds that there are torches on the walls that still seems functional. He’ll just need to light it once again just by touching it with his flame.

Wheel

Wheel

Before and After project done in 3D class

 
This is the wheel in the clean state.

This is the wheel in dirty state. The material is being created. As a result, what is being presented is work in progress.

The dirt can be painted onto the mesh directly via vertex painting.
There are total of 2 channels for the rubber part of the wheel which  controls the dry mud and wet mud. However, on the wheel, there are three channels which controls dry dirt, wet dirt, and scratches.

Tri count: 1750

The Toy

The Toy

-concept statement + brief setting-

All alone in a dark,very dark dungeon in search of a long lost golden spheres that were thought to be nothing more than urban legend. You are so close to obtain the golden sphere. You can almost hear the shimmering gold calling your name. But in order to get to it, obstacles stand before you. You must successfully make your way around the obstacles that will test your knowledge and patience. In the end, the golden reward will be worth it.

-brief back story-

You, a treasure hunter, are on a journey to find the golden spheres that were only thought to be a myth. These golden sphere are told to bring life to death and bring death to the living as the owner desires. After a long journey, you fell into a trap and became unconscious for couple of minutes. You open your eyes, and you are in a unknown dark gloomy room. It is your job to get your self out safely.

 

-obstacle idea (rough)-

The obstacles I can make for the puzzle could be...

• When you are trying to interact with the trigger, there could be enemies that shoot at you
• When if the trigger is set to a wrong position, it could possibly spawn things that will negatively affect the player
• The player has to go to different parts of the map to successfully finish all the puzzle

The obstacles I can make for the laser could be...

• The lasers are not static. As a result, they can move around and damaging everything that touches it
• The lasers have different affects. Different color lasers could affect the player positively or negatively

 

The obstacles for the fog could be...

• Different color fogs can damage the player or heal the character.
• The player will be damaged if the player doesn't hold the device that will drive the fog away

-sketches of map layout-

I was brainstorming what would be a interesting yet difficult map layout for the mechanics that I have come up with. For all the maps, I wanted to incorporate deadly laser, puzzle system, and the foggy room.

-map [video]-
****the laser particle cannot be fixed in the video. In actual gameplay, it is stable. However, recording made the particle system unstable and made it pass through static objects****

Mechanic Room -refined-

Mechanic Room -refined-

 

The first problem that I encountered was that the puzzle system was not behaving correctly. It was supposedly programmed so that when the numbers are set to 425, the laser wall become divided.

However, it was opening the laser wall even when the numbers were wrong. I realized that the reason why it did that was because the Bool system was wrong. I've set two of the numbers to False, while I accidentally set one to True. As a result, it was behaving not as intended.

 

The first part of the room is a puzzle. I've got several advises on making the math easier. Because finding pattern is easier than regular math equation, I've made a little problem where the player has to find the pattern in the numbers. The player can interact with the number panel by pressing E.

 

When the number puzzle is successfully solved, the laser wall which will kill you divides in half by a barrier. Here, I wanted to show off the laser particle and how it will bounce off of the walls in the right angle.

 

As the wall is divided and the player can leave, there's another puzzle the player has to solve.

There will be two different rooms which are filled with smoke and not lit. Without a light source, the player will not be able to navigate in there. WILL NOT be able to navigate!

 

At first, the players were automatically attached with the light source as the player was entering the room. However, that gave the player no adversities.

 

 As a result, I've made picking up a light source optional. If a person can find the gold in the smoke without the light, bravo!

 

Since in the room, there are no light, nothing is visible. However, with light the player will notice that each room is colored.

The first room is red

The second room is yellow.

The player has to find the gold in one of the rooms to complete the map.



Mechanic #3 Smokey Room

Mechanic #3: Smokey Room

 

There is a room with very dense fog. Normally the player won't be able to navigate inside the room without being completely lost.

However, with the help of the geometric shape mesh you see on the left of the top image, the player can navigate the foggy room. That mesh will "push" the fog away from itself thus guiding the player.

The smoke is created solely inside Cascade, Unreal Particle System. The particle was created so that it will gradually become opaque and slow fade away. It doesn't have a definite direction of velocity, but it uniformly disperse outward from its spawn point.

The particle system is changed into a PhysX Sprite. In the Content Browser, one needs to create another system in order to tweak the system even more. The PhysX particle will allow the sprite data to become interactive with the forces that are put in the world.

As you can see on the image above, there's a trigger, force actor, and the mesh. When the player touches the trigger, it attaches the force and the mesh to the player. As a result, the player gets an illusion that the mesh is moving the fog instead of the force actor. The actor's strength may be tweaked to push the fog further or shorter. And the falloff can be adjusted as well.

 

 



Mechanic #1: skyrim-esque puzzle system

Mechanic #1: skyrim-esque puzzle system

The 3 mechanics that were incorporated in this mini map were:

1. skyrim style puzzle

2. laser that kills you when in contact

3. A "lantern" that brightens the area and pushes away fog

The puzzles works as follows:

There is a laser wall that will kill the player when the player touches it.

 In order to disable the laser, the player has to arrange the sphere in a way that all the spheres are lit and are floating. That is the only way the laser will be disabled.

This mechanic was able to be achieved in Kismet. The sphere have triggers attached to them. When the player uses the trigger, the kismet will use switch node to count when the sphere should be lifted. All the three sphere have the same nodes attached to them. 

How the system knows when all three spheres are lifted is depended on Bool system.

The bool is a "yes" and "no" system, so when the player successfully reaches the swtich link that is connected to the bool, it will turn numberic value of 0 to 1. In other words, 0, which means no, will become 1 which means yes. 

And when all three bools become yes, it will trigger an event which will disable the lasers. Thus allowing the player to leave the area. 

Mechanic#2 Laser Bounce

Mechanic #2: Laser Bounce

One of the mechanics that I am working with is making a laser that gets reflected on a surface.

The laser is going to be reflected from the surfaces and the player must guide the laser to a certain destination.

This is the sample of what my particle system looks like. The first 3 particles are the lasers. The first streak will start off the line of laser. Then when the system detects a collision of the first particle, the second particle will start from the location of the collision. Then when the second particle detects a collision, it will start off the third particle from the location of the collision. But when the system detects the collision of the third particle, it will start the 2nd particle system on the colliding location of the third location and that "rule" is repeated. As a result, the laser will end up bouncing infinite times.

Procedural Building in UDK

Procedural Building in UDK

 

 

The rectangular building has 2 proc building brushes.

As the viewers can see the awning that is built on the ground floor can't be found in the top portion of the building. That is because there's a variation node in the rule set which allows the user to choose whether to have or not have awnings.

The different variations are better visible on the octagonal shaped building. All the three visible sides are constructed with different variations, which the users have control over.

 

-modular kit (tessellated)-

The buildings are made up of 9 to 12 pieces. There are two variations for each of the 3 frieze meshes(straight, 3-sided, large).

The uses has the freedom to make their buildings with only one of the 2 variations or both.

The big appeal for this assets are the snow effect on top of the meshes.

In order to give the snow more body, I've applied tessellation which adapt to the camera position. 

-proc building ruleset-

This represents roughly what my ruleset looks like. It is just matter of time before the ruleset gets many for variations and become extremely versatile.  

 

 

 

End notes:

The Proc Building system is a rather powerful system which allows the users to create buildings instantly. The buildings are instance of each other meaning it will use less performance power than as if the buildings were created individually by pieces. One "annoying" aspect of the proc building is that the numbers has to be precise. Otherwise, there will be lights visible between the cracks of the meshes, or there will be annoying z fighting.

 

This knowledge of making proc building will pay off when making a whole city environment such as Rockstar's GTA series or other open world games for that matter.

 

This project was a good project for me to learn new techniques. This particular project gave me opportunities to learn about procedural building system, tessellation, and substance designer 3.5.

Substance Designer 3.5 allows an artist to create textures from node based work flow. The pros and cons of Substance Designer is debatable because it is essentially UDK's material editor, but in another software.

But in my experience, it is easier to use and I had to freedom to just drag in another texture (which they call it Filter) to my current project and create cohesive materials for an asset. In addition, the normal, spec, curvature, world normal, etc. maps can be created in the software by importing a custom mesh. As a result, the artist may create individual, precise textures for the mesh. Not the mention, the user has the ability to paint straight on to the mesh which is not available in UDK.

The project create in Substance Designer 3.5 can be published, meaning saved so it is compatible in UDK, and bring it straight into UDK and be able to tweak numbers instantly like material instance.

 

The total hours spent on the project adds up to be approximately 50 hours. The total hours include modeling, texturing, proc building ruleset creation, tessellation, and brainstorming.

brainstorming 20 game mechanic ideas

Brainstorming 20 game mechanic ideas

1. A gas mask that needs to have its filter replaced after certain amount of time
• In the game Metro:Last Light, the player is required to wear a mask when going outside. The mask uses filter so that the character can breathe. However, the filter needs to be replaced after 5 minutes or so. Otherwise, the player will die from suffocation.
2. Particle effect that can be controlled by the player 
3. Player being stunned
• During gameplays, there are times when a player is shot by a stungun which stuns the character for several seconds. In the game, Pay Day 2, the players are sometimes shot by the cops with a stun gun. As a result, the player involuntarily shoots the gun continuously for several seconds. And the player is immobilized for couple of seconds. 
4. healing self or other player
• The mechanic of healing a player is frequently implemented in games. Some games only allows the playerA to heal playerB when player B has fallen on the ground from excessive damage. But some games allow players to heal each other whenever and where ever. 
5. interaction that requires time to complete
• Interaction with object in games are often seen in games. However, sometimes that interaction takes more time. For example, in the game Pay Day 2, the player must set up a drill on the safe to crack open the safe. However, during the time when the player is setting up the drill (interacting with an object), the player has to continuously press E and cannot move or shoot. The only thing they can do is look around. But when the interaction is interrupted by no longer pressing E, the player is again mobilized. However, restarting interaction will restart the process.
6. drawing attention via sound
• Sound plays a big role in games for both ambiance and strategy. In some games, the player can turn on a radio in the environment to draw attention to near by enemies. Also, the player can throw items like a can to draw attention to that place. 
7. drawing attention via light
• The light can also draw enemies' attention. In certain games, the enemies are drawn to the lights and when the lights flicker, they get alerted assuming someone's there.
8. over charging weaponry or power
• In the game Metro Last Light, there a weapon which shoots darts by air pressure. There's a gauge that displays the current pressure in the tank. However, the player can pump the gun more to over charge the gun thus dealing more damage.
9. melee attacks
• In most fps games these days have a dedicated button for melee attacks. The player needs to be in a fairly close range from the enemy to successfully implement the attack. This attack is rather powerful compared to other attacks.
10. invisibility for certain period of time
• In WoW, the players of certain jobs are able to become invisible for several seconds by using an available skill. This skill allows the player to be invisible. However, when the enemy becomes too close to the player, the player will become visible to the opposing player. However, the opacity will still remain low so that the player is still partially transparent.
11. "energy" shield
• In Pay Day 2 series, the player has a "energy" shield that protects the player from the police to a certain degree. When this hasn't been depleted, the damage recieved from the police will be significantly less. However, when the shield is depleted, it will quickly kill the player. 
12. burning flame lasting certain period of time
• In a lot of games, the element of fire will often come up. And when the player step into the fire or the player is set on a fire, the fire will damage the player. And even when the player steps off from the fire or until the fire is extinguished, the player will continue to recieve damage from the burn.
13. ice effect that slows down the player significantly
• In many games, there are ice attacks that will whether freeze the player or slow down the player significantly and last couple of seconds to minutes.
14. blocking attacks
• In Skyrim, the player has the option to equip a shield. The shield will allow the player to block the enemies' attacks thus allowing the player to survive and fight strategically.
15. telekinesis
• In Diablo series, the Sorceress class has a skill called Telekinesis. This skill will allow the player to interact with objects from a further distance and pickup light objects like money from a long distance. 
16. deploying and disarming bomb or mine on a surface
• In a korean FPS game, Sudden Attack, there is a match where two teams fight to defend or destroy an environment. The terrorist team must deploy the bombs in the designated places and blow it up in order to win. The other team must either kill all the terrorists or disarm the bombs in time to win. 
17. flash light that can be toggled by the player
• In the game, Metro Last Light, there is a level where the player has to go through a really dark environment. Without flashlight, the player cannot see and the monsters will attack the player. The monsters in that area is invincible to rifle firepower, however vulnerable to light. So the player can toggle on and off the flash light to draw in the monster to kill them with light.
18. smoke grenade that blinds the player
• In almost all fps games, smoke grenade are available for players to use. When used, it will create thick smoke in the area and blind the players.
19. flash bang grenade that blinds the player briefly
• The flash bang grenade in Call of Duty game series is very useful when killing juggernauts. The light will stun the enemy for a brief moment which will give the player chance to kill the enemy strategically.
20. hacking a computer in the game
• In the game Fallout3, the players often encounter computer system in which they can be hacked and used for player's good. The hacking is like a mini game within the game itself. When hacked successfully, it will open up a secret passage or save time to go to a certain location.
21. fixing a broken object so that player can interact with it
• In the game, I Am Alive, the player is asked to fetch a jerrycan with oil in it to restart the elevator. The elevator won't work without power. And the power generator need fuel. So it is the player's job to find and bring the fuel for generator to restart so that the player can take the elevator to the higher floor.
22. puzzles that needs to be correctly matched 
• In Skyrim, the puzzle system is quite interesting and necessary. The players must solve the puzzle in order to battle the boss so that they can acquire better items which can only be obtained from the specific boss.