3D Art Production - Wagon

Monday 30th November 2015

Wagon

In this Tutorial we learn how to correctly unwrap a UV and sew each of the pieces together properly so it is ready to be textured. I found it difficult to figure out which bits are sewn together but I'm beginning to understand it more now. We were given textures to use and I used the wood textures but sourced my own metal texture. I will be using this technique in my battle arena so that I can texture each part easily.

3D Art Production - Mushroom

Thursday 26th October 2015

Mushroom

Today we followed a guide on making a mushroom. We learnt how to use the soft selection tool to turn a sphere into the top of the mushroom and then how to turn a curve into the stem of the mushroom, a curved long cylindrical shape. We also learn a small amount about how to sew UV meshes together in the UV editor to help us texture the models easier. After more practice it's becoming easier to do this part.

I found textures online and applied them to the model and then duplicated the model a couple of times for effect.

Gameplay and Interactivity - Bug Fixes and Improvements

Wednesday 9th December 2015

Bug Fixes and Improvements

Along the journey of making this game I've come across various bugs or things I could Improve on; both from having people test my game and relay their feedback and by playing the game myself and coming up with ideas to make it clearer for the player or more interesting for them or just to fix problems that arose.

Some of the major issues I experienced during the process were:


- Finding out how to put the correct mesh colliders on each of the objects I imported. I found out that everything needed to be named in the Maya outliner before it was imported into Unity so that it could find the colliders itself.

- Resizing models in Unity because the scale was off compared to the character. I did this either in Unity with individual models or reimporting resized models from Maya again, it took a long time and in the future I will pay more attention to the sizing of my models before finalizing on them.

- Getting my doors to rotate open the right way. To get past this problem I needed to change the pivot point back in Maya so that it was where I wanted my door to rotate from and then re-export it out. I also needed to change a line of code from
'finalRot = (new Vector3 (0f, -targetRot, 0f));' to 'finalRot = (new Vector3 (0f, targetRot, 0f));'
or vice versa where necessary.

- Later in the process Something happened to my files that made the game bug out when I tried to add text to a door and the above solution would not work, I tried various other ideas but nothing, to this point, would work so I had to leave it as it was as at least it worked in some manner and was usable.

- As mentioned above, something in my game is possibly corrupted or something in Unity on the computers at the university is messed up as my game files are not opening correctly and I'm unaware of how to fix this. I believe it has something to do with the text GUI in the game and when re adding a text script it fixes itself briefly but when closed and opened back up the file continues to stay broken/ break itself again. The files open perfectly fine on my PC at home though, which is peculiar to say the least.

- There were some bugs with sound that I was also unable to fix, for instance when I tried to make a sound occur when the player moused over an object, it worked before the 'text bug' mentioned above happened but I could not get it to work after that. I settled with no sound as I was running out of time and options of how to fix it.

- I wanted to add more of a creepy/ spooky atmosphere at the end of my game so I managed to create animated flashing lights, that changed colour to red from their original colour and I also found a 'camera shake' script online (http://unitytipsandtricks.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/camera-shake.html) that worked in my game with very few adjustments, I tweaked it until it was suitable for my players.

- When people tried my game out I found them getting slightly confused about where they had to go and what rooms they had to visit in which order, so to solve this I added text and coloured materials to signify various important parts of the game, I also thought about the placement of certain objects in relevance to items that progress the player through the story.

- To solve the problem of the player possibly not realising they were dead and it was their body in the basement of the Asylum, I decided to add in various hints along the way and made it clear at the end it was them laying on the operating chair with their head missing.

Gameplay and Interactivity - Test Feedback

Sunday 6th December 2015

Feedback And Improvements

I got four of my housemates to test my game as they were of mixed genders and varied in age between that of the audience I aimed my game at. I did this to make the feedback I received as fair as possible and useful to making improvements on my game.

I noticed that people were getting stuck and were unclear on what to do in some areas so I decided to find ways to get around that. For instance I noticed a lot of people not looking around one of the areas and therefore weren't finding notes that further the story set in the game, so I locked the doors to the next part of the game until the player found all the notes in the room. I also added text on the doors that told the player what they had to do to progress through the level.

There was a bug with one of the doors in my level, that made it so the player could not click and enter without standing in a certain position - After looking into the problem I found it was happening because of the colliders from other doors overlapping with that of the broken door. I managed to fix the problem by making the overlapping doors ignore raycast from the player when they clicked on the door.

Also the testers for my game found the screen shaking at the end of my game a little too rigorous so I turned it down alittle to make it more bearable, especially when reading text.

Life Drawing - Session 06

Wednesday 28th October 2015

Life Drawing Session 6

Another new model this week and we started with 5 3 minute drawings; her poses were difficult to capture is such a short period of time. We then used the technique of drawing with both hands at the same time creating the same marks on the paper with each hand. We used two different materials to do this task and I found it difficult to capture proportions correctly, however my second attempt was alot more successful than the first.

We then went on to do 2 long drawings of the model. One in pencil and the other in Charcoal. I think I managed to accurately capture the figures pose in my charcoal drawing and I worked hard on adjusting and making sure it was as close as it could be to the actual model. For the pencil drawing we were asked to capture the light and shade projected onto the model, using no harsh outlines for the shape of the drawing. I found it difficult to correctly draw the model (Mostly the arm) and attempted to show the edges of the model, where the light was bright, with a black background. I am however happy with how the light/ shading turned out of the chest and neck of the drawing.

Visual Design - Tentacles

Monday 2nd November 2015

Tentacles

For this task we had to sketch out three ideas for something with tentacles. I looked into sea creatures at first trying to generate ideas for a sea monster/ mermaid that I could integrate tentacles onto; I decided to go with a different idea though of tentacles that come out of the floor. I based them around water, earth and fire. I used techniques to colour the images that we've learned over the last few weeks. My favourite out of the three is the earth/ plant tentacle as it is well shaded and has some detail. If I had more time to complete this task I'd add that detail to each of the others but it has taken me a long time to produce what I have as I'm still getting used to using Photoshop and a drawing tablet.

Visual Design - Zombie

Monday 26th October 2015

Zombie Texture

I started by creating a moodboard from images I gathered from online. I chose to look at zombie wounds details for clothing and any kind of splattered blood. To change the textures we added a new colour and material to the jacket the model was wearing, added in a new face and then added in a new logo to the jacket. I used a grunge/ grime texture to overlay on the skin of the woman and then added in blood splats and changed the layer type to something I thought suitable. I changed the hair colour of the woman and also added in a new colour and rips in the jeans she was wearing. We refreshed the texture on the model in maya to produce the final designed model.

Life Drawing - Session 05

Wednesday 21st October 2015

Life Drawing Session 5

We started with 5, 3 minute drawings which I think I'm improving at as the weeks go by. We had a different model this week with a different bodyshape to the previous models and I tried to draw my short sketches at a larger scale than I have before with this task. We then moved on to drawing the moving model again, I found this task very difficult again as I'm not great at capturing shape when its changing at a fast rate. This being said I think I managed to capture some movement and shape in the drawing I did get down.

Once this was complete we chose two media we felt comfortable with using, I chose felt pen and a ballpoint pen. I think my felt tip pen drawing was better because of the shape and detail; captured, however the style is very similar in both drawings. Finally to end the session we drew a large square of black in the center of our paper in chalk and used rubbers to block in any light we could see, cleaning the rubber meant we could getting a lighter shade of grey/ white and therefore we ended up with multi-tones of grey, black and white, to create an almost silhouette like piece. I think my second drawing worked better than the first as my proportions and light reflections were better. This technique is useful to understand how light and shadows are cast around and on the body and how they can be portrayed on the page in different ways.

Gameplay and Interactivity - Greybox in Unity

Friday 16th October 2015

Asylum Greybox

I created my greybox in Maya and then used the Unity asset store to download the Standard assets package So I could use the camera and character from one of the sample scenes. I exported out my Maya project and placed it into my new unity project and then adjusted the sizing where necessary. I'm not entirely sure how to  properly add a mesh collider to the entire asset yet, however I manually added box colliders to each wall, ceiling and floor in my scene for this test.

Visual Design - Lava Character

 Monday 19th October 2015

Lava Characters

In Class we were given the task of adding lava into the cracks of a clay rock monster image. to do this we learn various techniques using contrast between light and dark, image adjustments and styles. for my rock monster I first deleted the background and added a black one instead I changed the contrast of the image and then began adding in yellow to the cracks that were biggest in the clay model (Using a hard edge brush). When I was happy I then added in the style that our teacher had already created and then added in a background and changed the contrast again. I also added in a lava image to the mouth and lava dripping from its hand but I think looking at it now I prefer the black background as it looks to busy with a cave background.

For our homework we were assigned to create our own lava based monster. I started by looking at reference images and made a mood board I then sketched out three ideas and chose my final idea to paint in Photoshop. I chose to do a fiery female lava demon, Starting with the tornado I blended colours together to look as fiery as possible I then drew my figure outline from a scan of the drawing and coloured that adding shadows and using the style from before to add in lava. Finally I cut out my character and added in a background that suited the picture better than my classwork. 

Life Drawing - Session 04

Wednesday the 14th October 2015

Life Drawing Session 4

Today we had a new model of a slightly different body shape to the previous two models, his poses were also alot bolder than theirs too. This made for a more challenging session; we started with five, three minute drawings of the model in some adventurous poses and then moved onto attempting to draw the model in motion. I found this task very difficult and only managed to capture a few shapes created during his slow walking movement.

After this we were given three different materials to draw with, I had a pencil, a felt tip and a ballpoint pen. My pencil work was my least favourite of the three as it was very hard to create any shading or shape to the model in the time we were given. However, I like the shading created with the ballpoint pen and the shape created with the felt tip.

for our last task we had to draw the model in the media we used last (In my case it was the green felt tip) and then move onto the easel next to ours and add to the new drawing. The shape of mine stayed mostly the same apart from a leg position, but shading and a face was added with what looks like charcoal or pencil. I think these exercises help a lot to see where our shaping is going wrong or right, as sometimes its hard to see on your own work.

Visual Design - Pixel Art

Monday 12th October 2015

Angled Pixel Art

We used a guide at the start of the lesson to learn how to make pixel art in this style and learnt that we need to turn any anti-aliasing off of the tools we used and make sure we are using the pencil tools instead of brushes; we produced a cube and a cylinder using the guide and then used those objects to make retro toys. I started this project by researching retro toys and decided to make a couple pieces of pixel art to fill the scene we were given.