How Virtual Reality is changing gaming?

Is Virtual Reality’s return changing gaming?

I will be researching peoples opinions on virtual reality and how many companies are compatible with VR systems, I want to find out why Virtual Reality is making a strong impact on the gaming world. Virtual reality is where instead of using a mouse and keyboard or a controller to control your movement, you use a headset to control where you look in the game. This means when you turn your head in real life it turns in the game which gives the feeling of you being in the game. The other ways to input information are the handheld joysticks which control grabbing things in game, the final piece of input is the cameras you can place around your room, once you place these cameras it will create a square where you are able to walk around in which syncs to the game to give you the feeling of walking around the in-game room.  Virtual Reality’s last big gaming appearance was in the late ’90s then went dormant for a decade and started to make a comeback in 2012. One of the first VR systems used was to train pilots in the 1920s, VR systems were first used for gaming in 1991 for arcade machines, but the first time you could own a VR system for gaming would be 1993 with the SEGA VR glasses. Now that Virtual Reality is back technology is being improved to become compatible with Virtual Reality systems and the consoles and PC alike are becoming more adaptable for Virtual reality capabilities.

To find the needed information I will be creating my own questionnaire, this questionnaire will let me have the questions orientated towards what I need to be answered which secondary research might not have the answers to, then I will be looking for statistics from other people/organisations. Then after gathering the information I will be using said gathered information to structure my argument for how Virtual Reality is changing modern gaming. Then I will make a summary of the main points that go for and against my argument.

I will be exploring primary and secondary research to get the statistics I need to have a strong argument. The primary research will allow me to ask personalized questions to get the specific information I need to bring my point across to do this I need to create a survey. Secondary research will give me larger statistics, like a small census. however, using secondary research may be outdated which leads to inaccuracies which will make it hard to explain my point, o get this research I will need to look online.

– (442 Words)

My thoughts on how virtual reality is changing gaming; I think from the sudden increase in popularity for virtual reality after the release of the Oculus Rift in 2012 the world of virtual reality has been revived and companies noticed the opportunity they had to make money off of this new fad. An example of this would be Sony’s own virtual reality system. If companies have already developed their own virtual reality systems then they will make their products to be more compatible with virtual reality games, soon we may have virtual reality systems coming with consoles not too unlike to how Xbox consoles used to come with their Kinect system. Also, with the advancements of virtual reality technology, like the Tesla suit, games and consoles will have to adapt to keep up with the technology and their competitors.

The popularity of virtual reality is different because it is quite expensive to buy one of these systems, therefore, limiting the experience for some people with lower budgets. The cheapest virtual reality system is £5.99 for the Google Cardboard, which is a box with lenses where you place your phone inside as the screen, the most expensive system is the HTC Vive Pro full kit for £1,299. However, most of the headsets that are suitable for gaming are usually £100 – £500. The differences between these headsets The questionnaire that I made was able to show this, 7 out of the 9 responded with that they thought that virtual reality systems were too expensive.

Then after this question, I asked the respondents why they thought this,

Respondents said that the technology is too expensive because it is new and so that it stays as a niche. Other people say that it is too expensive for what it’s worth because of the lack of content that comes with it, this means that not many high budget games are on virtual reality systems which make the idea of buying a £300 system to be an add on to another £300 – £1500 system to then not have the ability to play games which look current generation. the only way to combat this would be to adapt the consoles and PCs to be able to run virtual reality to higher standards, maybe even next-generation standards.

Answers that said that virtual reality is not too expensive bring up the points that because this version of virtual reality is quite new it will take a lot of testing to make the virtual reality games run smoothly which will cost the companies quite a bit to conduct so the prices are a way of making a profit to further enhance the experience for their future models. Others say that the other models of the virtual reality systems are better and “are more accessible due to price”. Other answers say that they think that it is too expensive at the moment but they also think that the price will decrease over the years like how the Oculus has already decreased. The general consensus of these answers is that as of now virtual reality systems are too expensive.

The graphs above show that the minority of people have a virtual reality system then in the second graph, after looking at individuals responses, only half of the people who answered no for owning VR equipment want to own a system. The other half have no interest in owning a virtual reality system, this is partly due to the expenses of the systems. 2 of the people who have owned VR equipment answered no to like to own one, where this may be because they had a bad experience with virtual reality or because it was too straining to run for their machine.

The 3 responses above are from 3 people who haven’t owned a VR system but would like to own one, these are the reasons they give for wanting to own a virtual reality system. 2 of the respondents want to immerse themselves within a virtual world, 1 has said the reason virtual reality interests them is a game called Beat Saber. So the reason some people want to try virtual reality is because they want to experience being in a virtual world, I feel like a lot of people would like to try virtual reality for this reason however, wherever they would want to keep the system after this is unknown, since some people experience motion sickness and neck pains due to the weight of the headset which could put them off of using virtual reality systems again in the future.

3 people who answered this question are quite sceptical about virtual reality will fair in the future, this is because how expensive virtual  reality systems are right now and in the future they may become more expensive due to needing more powerful machines to run the system, another reason someone had was “It would depend really: what games would be going on there? Horror games may have actual unintended side effects of psychologically damaging players, and this could even occur in light games if you weren’t expecting something to happen.” A way around this would be for the start of the game to have a warning, or even the box/instructions of the system would have a warning explaining there may be side effects from using the system.

The answers above are evidence of people worrying about the pricing of virtual reality systems. One of the answers above states “everyone always talks about either owning or wishing they owned a VR set.” When everyone is talking about a virtual reality that works as free advertisements for virtual reality systems which end up increasing the number of people buying these systems which lead to the companies making the systems making more money which they will spend further advancing their virtual reality technology. This means that the machines need to stay being compatible with the VR systems which lead to other tech companies furthering their advancement of VR systems to keep up with the other which creates a big cycle of everyone trying to catch up with the other making VR more accessible for more people.

Here I asked the respondents their opinions of virtual reality gaming. Many of the respondents said that virtual reality “needs more work” and is “unrefined”, so they think that as of now virtual reality is too undeveloped to be popular.

“V.R. doesn’t just show you things, it brings you in to the scene, and radically embodies you in the simulation, and that has capacity to not just, let us see things from perspectives we would never have imagined, and put us literally into the shoes of other people, let us see their experiences, or let us see experiences we wouldn’t have thought of.” Virtual reality systems can immerse you into a whole new world making you feel like you are a different person. The quote above shows that when you are using a VR headset it feels like you are in a completely different world, This is a major sell for VR makers because it is a completely unique experience which draws people in.

“Arguably, one of the biggest growth areas of VR tech has been in gaming, where consoles and handhelds alike have been adapting their games for headsets and VR graphics for a while. For many people, it has been forecast that this was the industry that would benefit from virtual reality the most. Gaming is one of the few industries that actually embraces technology and innovation. For example, we’ve just seen the release of 4K-capable consoles such as the Xbox One X and the PS4 Pro; meaning games have been brought to life in terms of how they look and feel more than ever before. What virtual reality can do, though, is take the already raised bar and raise it even further.” Having VR capable console would be good for the companies which create consoles, the gaming industry has already tried VR in the past but didn’t have the technology to be able to have a great experience, now we have the technology to be able to bring VR back to the mainstream consoles. VR will likely be coming with the next generation of consoles in a bundle which makes it convenient for the buyers. This means that more people will have VR so more games companies will have to make games for VR, so in the next generation of consoles, we could be seeing some of the first massive triple-A games for VR.

-(1178 Words)

How is Virtual Reality changing gaming? Some of the main points that were explored are the pricing of VR systems, this was a frequent topic with peoples answers to my questionnaire, It seems that people think that the price of VR systems is too high to be able to become widely popular. Another main point was the peoples’ experience with VR, from the survey, those who had owned VR said that it was uncomfortable, from the weight of the headset, and can make them nauseous or even motion sick, if the VR companies can correct this, that will mean many more people can use VR without worrying about health risks, in turn making the systems popular. In conclusion, I think that the gaming world is changing for VR, I think this especially because VR isn’t at its full potential yet. For VR to get to its full potential home consoles will have to adapt to easily include VR to their systems, the experience will only get more realistic with the upcoming technologies like the Tesla suit so you can feel what happens to you in game and the Augmented Reality footwear Google is working on which allows the user to walk in the spot. Some of the implications I had with my findings are the number of respondents to the survey I had, I would have liked to get a broader spectrum of opinions on VR, this would have helped me determine what is holding Virtual reality back from becoming a widely used system in the modern home.

-(258)

Techspective. January 25th 2018. VR Technology set to change the world of gaming. [ONLINE] https://techspective.net/2018/01/25/vr-technology-set-change-world-gaming/ [ACCESSED 14th March 2019]

MindGamers. 2017. 4 ways virtual reality will change the future (of gaming).        [ONLINE] https://mindgamers.redbull.com/article/12  [ACCESSED 14th March 2019]

Total word count – (1878)

Ekipa: Synoptic Project – Phase 3

28/01/2019

   This is a screenshot of the checklist we use in our team Trello page what we had accomplished in the first week of phase 3. we’re using a checklist like this to help us keep track of what needs to be done. 

As a team we take turns writing up the scrum meeting doc for that week, the first week of phase 3 was my turn to write for the scrum meeting. the scrum meetings help us understand what we need to do for that week, it is also a way of keeping track who is absent.

This screenshot shows the Pre-production sprint which shows what we will need to do and what has been done. -14/02/2019- UPDATE – after getting some feedback on the production sprint the spreadsheet has been cut into 3 different spreadsheets because I had all 3 sprints on the same spreadsheet when they need to be apart so that I can get detail into what we have done as a team.

I need to make a simple block out of the scene so we have an idea of what the medical bay will look like. I made a quick block out while at home on the 4th of Feb because I wasn’t able t get it done in the first week.

We have a drawn storyboard which gives us a general idea of what the room will look like.

I need to create an idea of what the alien will look like in our game.

Last week we came up with the basic idea of our game and then we started to

05/02/2019

The med bay will have a vent on the floor, various kinds of scanners, an operating table in the middle of the room, 4 cryo pods against one wall of the room, a supply closet, and a corridor.

After sending off the basic block out Maya file we noticed that my grid set up on the Maya I use at home was different to what we use at college so as a team we all changed our grid layouts and settings so that they are the same just in case any of us makes a model in our own version of Maya and that it is to scale with the rest of the assets.

Last week we started to create the schedules and the trello page to help keeps us organised. Later I have to change the schedule.

11/02/2019

Today I made an alien college to get ideas for the alien we need to make. So far we have decided on the alien having mandibles. Having this mood-board will help us decide what the alien will look like in our game. We will be able to choose which parts of the aliens we want to get inspiration off.

Last week I created the block out scene to help us get an idea of what the scene may look like, also it would help Bart have a scene to go off while in Unreal.

14/02/2019

This is the updated version of the Pre-Production sprint spreadsheet which tells you who has worked on what, and what the colours mean. On the 4th of Feb, we had a problem with everyone signing the contract because not every member were in that week. We were able to sign the contract and get it signed by a witness after getting feedback on what we had so far for Sprint 1.

Last week we created a mood board of different aliens in fiction to get an idea of what we might want to make for our game.

25/02/2019

This is the production sprint 2. This will be edited over time but it blocks out what we need to do during the main production. A reason why the schedule may change will be if we don’t finish sprint 1 in time and we’ll have to overlap into sprint 2 to get it finished.

This is the narrative for our Synoptic project which Brandon has written, This gives us an idea of what may happen in the game and the ambient settings for the scene. When looking for sound files this will also be useful because it gives us an idea of what we need within the game.

Last week I further updated the sprint 1 schedule to show what needs to be done and what has been done.

12/03/2019

Last week I was off sick so I was unable to do as much work as I needed to do, one of my teammates has started making the models: such as Syringes, med kit and a table for the room.

Here I what he made, he’s asked me to make improvements to the models where I can. This is the med-kit model and I thought that it could use a bit of an update.

The syringe models look very modern but I thought we could include something that looks a bit more high tech.

These are the rest of the models that he made, I have already made a few modifications to the Med table, I extended the railing all the way around and wheels on the bottom.

To get the railing I used a previous asset to get the curve part of the rail then I just extended the other rails to fit then I used the target weld tool to fix them together. For the wheels I looked at trolley wheels to get inspiration. After I made the first wheel I just duplicated it and moved it around which was a bit fiddly when using the snap to grid tool. The way I got around this was by just selecting both of one side and moving them under the trolley leg then doing so again for the width side.

I have found that the scale of the model I quite large, I will need to check the other files to see if anything else needs to be resized.

I have decided to create a new style of med kit to go with the futuristic style. I am going off the design of the other med kit, however, I have added bevels to the box which makes it look way more futuristic.

The extruded parts of the box which wrap around will be either coloured black with a rubber texture or a silver metallic texture. This would add a bit of detail to a simple box. The little bumps on the side of the box are the hinges and case locks which were inspired by a normal briefcase.

This is what I have so far for the new version of the syringe, for this I went for more of a sci-fi style like what you would see on halo or star trek. The top of the syringe will hold a vile as a spare.

Here are the UVs so far, I need to get the proportions right so all the squares are the same size so that the texturing process will be easier for my teammates. This is the UV i got from using the automatic UV map tool.

I had to smooth some of these glass models and add the phong E material just to make them look a bit more natural.

Last week I helped with the media research by saying what to look into like Star Trek and I helped give a basic narrative which Brandon expanded on.

26/03/2019

After our group had a talk with Gareth, he mentioned that it would be easier if our game was just an environment instead so I started to work on modular details like pipes and barrels, I will be making different floor pieces and vents as well. To create these I looked at plastic barrels to get the basic shape of the barrel and for the curvy pipe I took an image off google to help me line up the edges so that the curve looks natural and not jagged.

I have updated the Trello page to communicate with my team since I am off ill. This helped me communicate with my team even though I was not in.

Last week I was sent 3 models and I remade 2 of them to look a bit more futuristic then I added to the last model while UVing the rest.

17/04/2019

This is a tray that Cameron made which I have UVed.

The picture above shows me starting to UV the object that Bart has made so that it can have a texture added onto it.

This is a screenshot f the finished UV map for the cupboard, however I think that I could have increased the size of all of the UV shells so that greater detail can be added to the texture.

This is a block out a TV that I am making just to make sure that the size is right.

UPDATE: This file was lost so I had to remake the TV at a later date.

These screenshots show my progress with the CryoPod. In the first picture it shows me measuring the size of the Pod with the effect asset Human, I have used this process with most of my models to assure the size is correct. The second picture shows what i have made for the top half of the door, I made a separate object to create the glass window.

To make the top half of the door I created a cylinder and cut out most of the faces then extruded the the remaining faces to make it thicker then I moved some of the faces to create that basic shape, I used Ctrl E to create the window outline then added an edge loop to then deleted the faces in-between to create 2 separate objects.

Last week I started on the modular asset pack. Which would be used to add a bit more detail to the scene.

23/04/2019

The glass assets where made by Cameron but I smoothed them out a bit and added the Phong E material to create a glass like effect. The stands were made by me and they also use the Phong E material to create a clean plastic look, this is used to save time on textures since this rack is meant to look like extremely clean plastic.

Here is the wire-frame for the test tube stand, It used quite a few edge loops so that there can be holes in the model without it breaking. This object does not use a UV map because the colour can be set to white and have a shiny overlay to create a plastic effect.

this is the latest version of the cryo pod, the door pieces now have a few more edges to retain them from breaking. The window is now much smoother and now used the PhongE material. Hinges have also been added but need editing. This model would have been troublesome to texture because of the amount of edges it has to keep it from breaking during the smoothing -process so I have reverted to using the low-poly version of the door. Also it was difficult to think of what to do with the model when it was smoothed like this because most of the inspiration I was looking at used hard sharp edges.

This is the scalpel model that I have redone. The button on top is used to eject the blade after it has been used. To make this model I used a cube object then imported a picture of a scalpel to used as an outline while making the model. After I got the model to the right shape, I used the smooth tool to give it its curved look.

This is the vent that the monster will be hiding behind. One mistake that I made while making this is that I didn’t remove the back part to the vent so you couldn’t actually see through it, Bart has already fixed this problem.

Last week I started work on the cryo pod which has been quite difficult to design since we’ve misplaced the concept art for it.

30/04/2019

This is what we will be using for the walls and pillars around the scene. the floors and the corridor walls have been UVed. The walls will be copied and pasted around the room to accommodate for what may be there. I still need to start to make the roof of the med bay but I need to see what Bart has so far in Unreal to get an idea of what would look alright. To make the floor and the pillar pieces I used the cylinder object but reduced the faces to make it more of an octagonal prism shape, for the floors I widened the shape then deleted the unneeded faces then used the extrude tool to create steps down.

This is a newer picture of the pipes and new vent and pipe cap. These pipes will be used in the hallway leading to the med bay to add a bit of extra detail to the scene, they may also be placed inside of the med bay. The floor piece will be used to the hallway because it doesn’t look like it would be in the medical bay.  To create most of the objects in this picture I used the cylinder and then the extrude tool, for some of the objects I used a picture template from Google to get the curvature right and the T section to proportion.

I have remade the table and fridge object that Bart made so that it can be easier to texture because now there are way less faces and small polygons inside of it. I have also started to get the UVs of the faces of the object but I am only halfway through this which is why the proportions are different.

I think that the hardest thing to model will be the Cryo-Pod because we don’t have the concept art of the pod so I have to try to go off memory and other reference pictures, I still need to add hinges that look functional and the wires that feed into the pod. I also need to start modelling the robotic surgical arm but this doesn’t have to be functional like the pod does.

Last week I added up the various glass objects and made a test tube stand which will be in the lab area, I also modified the objects slightly to smooth them out for added detail.

01/05/2019

I have completed the remodelling and the UV map for the table with fridge prop, it is now ready to be sent off to texture. I was going to give the table a bevel but I did not know how it would effect the fridge part of the object because that I wanted to keep the same.

When making this table it was just to reduce the amount of faces and vertexes that Bart’s version of the table had. All I did to make this was create a cube then stretch it into a rectangle then add edge loops near the top, middle and bottom of the cube then extrude the left faces to create the table part of the model.  I repeated this method to create the legs and the fridge door. I the used the bridge tool to create the side panels to connect up the table sections.

The chimney like object on top of the pod is used to suck out CO2 and will be funnelled through the roof of the med bay. The pod has reverted back to it’s low poly version because I have decided not to add any details through sculpting because it would take too much time. However doing this has made it much easier to create a UV so it should also be easier to texture.

I have finally completed the Cryo-Pod object, the doors ad windows are separate to the main object so that they can be animated later or rotated to be left open in the scene to be able to show the inside of the pod. The pod has fin like struts on the sides which are used to keep the pod bolted down to the floor. At the back of the pod and at the side there are 2 ports, one would be used as a life support intake and another would be power. the power will be plugged into the back wall where I have made a big socket. In the scene the life support will be disconnected and laid on the floor.

Today I have also updated the asset list to show who has textured what object. 13/05/19 Update: There are 3 objects left to make but we do not have enough time left to make them so

After looking at the asset list I noticed no one has made or started making the bone saw yet so I have started to make a Sci-Fi bone saw. To make the saw I used a cylinder object and extruded it to then form a light sabre hilt shape, to then make the hand guard I selected some of the faces at the point where the handle widens then extruded them at an angle. To make the saw blade itself I used a cylinder again but left gaps in-between the faces while extruding to create that rigid look then to create the little blades.

I have finished the bone saw and added a UV map to it. The bone saw features a padded handle and it has a slight hand guard. when making the handguard I wanted to make it nearly wrap around the blade to prevent splash back but I realized that it would be hard to maintain precision with a metal slab blocking the view.

This shows that we have ran into a bit of post production time with the main production phase.

Last week I updated the modular assets and started to make the final walls for the scene which were sent off to Cameron to texture.

14/05/19

Today I will be carrying on with the poster creation, I will be making a landscape poster for our game. The poster features a hallway that has been dimmed down to create a horror vibe. I added a slight green overlay to make the hallway look a bit older and abandoned. 

I would like to have the doors open slightly but I doubt that I will be able to do that with my limited experience with photoshop. I want to do this so that it looks like something is inside the end room maybe trying to get out.

I did manage to get the door open in which I have placed a set of glowing eyes peering out. The only problems that I had while doing this was that some of the door was hidden behind some piping so I had to fill out the gaps. In the gap between the doors I also added a smoke effect to add a bit of extra detail instead of having a solid black background. A fog effect was added to the foreground along with the placeholder text.

We finally thought of a name for our game, Intake 5449.

Today I have also updated the Trello page and updated the spreadsheets.

The updates that I have made to Trello are the addition of the new sprint 3 checklist and then adding detail of what needed to be done on a few tabs in the description section. I gave everyone something to do and added green tabs to the projects have been completed.

Last week the final parts of the production phase were getting wrapped up, the last model was made and the cryo pod was finally finished.

15/05/19

I started on the cover art for our game by using the art that Brandon made, However the art that he made was more to the size of a Xbox one game case so to sort this the blur tool was used to make a gradient effect on top and bottom edges. Then I sent this psd to Brandon and he is finishing off the box art. I have given a bit of input in what it should look like on the spine of the case.

This is what Brandon had made so far, when I take away the Undertale themed slides the back it quite bare so I will start to add reviews, blurbs and various pictures that fit with the theme.

I have hidden the Undertale layers and just added some text like reviews and a blurb. I have started to add some of the pictures. I was planning to have 3 pictures on the back of the game case but since members are gone we don’t have enough time to create 2 more pictures.

I added one of the slogans to the top of the case and expanded the hallway picture to fill up space. I also added the game of the week sticker to add detail to the front cover. I made the sticker by just stretching an octagon shape and adding inner glow.

Last week I made the landscape poster for the project, Cameron will be making the portrait poster soon.

21/05/19

These are the different texture maps for the cryo pod. The previous textures that were made by Cameron had the wrong UV map for the door sections so I create another file for them which used a slightly stained metal texture, a grime texture and hazard line textures. After making these realized that the rest of the pod had to be redone as well so it matched. I opened Cameron’s file for the main body texture and used some of the images from that to keep the look similar.  One problem with these textures is that the left door uses the same texture map as the right because they are the same object but flipped, in Maya the texture still works but when imported into Unreal the texture is on the inside of the door instead.

Last week Brandon and I started on the game case cover, He made the initial front of the case which I edited to make it fit the Xbox 360 dimensions then I updated to back of the box.

03/06/19

This is one of the renders that was sent in to be apart of our print board, It features the cryo pod that I made and textured. One of the problems with the model when it was sent into Unreal was that the cylinder on top was too short and did not reach the ceiling, this was easily fixed by dragging the top faces up. As stated above the lower left door texture was inside out even though in Maya it was normal. This also meant that the grime texture that was put onto it didn’t match up. Unfortunately I did not have enough time to fix the problem.

Today I have started to write the final presentation and I am about halfway through. Right now I am just gathering pictures for the slides because I want to get the other members opinions on what we did well and what went wrong.

Last week after looking at Cameron’s texture for the cryo pod I saw that the door section didn’t match the body and it wasn’t scaled right so I remade the texture.

05/06/19

This week the only other member that was in was Brandon so we both updated the presentation, we spoke about each individual sprint in depth and updated some of the slides to be a bit more accurate. 

Last week I started the presentation, I asked the lecturer at what I needed to have on the presentation then I looked that the classroom which had a list of what was needed.

Final Outcome assessment:

During sprint 1 I was tasked with creating the schedules and making the block out of the scene. I have completed all of the schedules however I was quite behind when updating them while working on the other sprints, especially when midway we decided to just have a fly through instead of a fully working level and some things over-spilling into other phases.

In sprint 2 I started to make the cryo pod but I had a few problems with ideas so I started to work on other objects instead. The first few objects I made were quite high poly because I thought that when the object was sent into Unreal it would convert to a smooth object. Later on in the project I remade a few objects and kept the new objects lower poly to speed up the modelling process.  There was meant to be a mechanical surgery arm and a table in the centre of the room but due to time constraints I wasn’t able to start on the arm, if I did it would’ve meant we would have much fewer assets to dot around the scene. Instead of going back to this near the end of the project I decided to re texture the cryo pod because the doors did not match the body.

Sprint 3 I have made a landscape hallway poster which has also been added to the back of the game box cover, helped keep the Trello page organized and helped on the cover art, mostly the back of the box. I have also written quite a large portion of the final presentation due to half of the members not being here.

The presentation didn’t go as well as hoped, it needed much more detail and It was out of order because I forgot to order it. We were told to look over the classroom guide to get an idea of what else the presentation needed. when looking at this guide It did not give great detail about how much of what we needed to show. the blog section of the project for me is a bit messy since I only have 2 blog posts about the Synoptic project, one being the first weeks of the project and the second being this long blog post. I have looked online about how I can sort this post out but most of the videos and sites said to use features which I don’t have, like the appearance or category sections. It would be too time-consuming to cut this post up to smaller posts and try to get them into one page, I have made a new page but I still have no idea how to get the posts onto that page even after looking online for a solution.

Our final project was very different from what our original idea was but this was mostly due to time constraints and the difficulty of some of the tasks. One example would be the alien, no one in our group had proper 3D sculpting experience so we realized that it would take too long for one of us to learn how to sculpt and then create an alien.

Modular Design.

I started by making sure the walls would be to scale, to do this I spawned the human model from effects and made sure the walls were taller than it. Then I blocked out the door and window pieces while also making sure they were to scale.

Later I resized the door frames so it wasn’t so wide which makes it look like an actual door frame, I also have made a corner piece. However, since the tutorial was on Max it took me a while to try to find a tool that was like the one used in the Max tutorial so I resorted to using edge loops to create the corner. This had led to the measurements being wrong since I used the snap to grid tool to speed up the process.

I have made a modular asset building in Level 3 Year 1 and in college, I have a 2.0 version of the building which I was going to use for this project but forgot to upload it to Google Drive so I could work on it at home. Unfortunately, I am unable to import my Maya file into Unreal.

2019 Class Blog

15/01/19 – Professional Practice.

Today we went over a few basics of Maya. Saving in directories and setting projects for scenes which allows you to work on a project and it will be automatically saved to the certain directory which reduces clutter. The save preferences and other preference settings like measurements. Also, what lossy and lossless files are and different file types for Maya.

 

 

Phase 1

-Idea 1- Robot Invasion game

• Theme: Sci-Fi/Horror
• Demographic: 16-18 rated
• Narrative: Don’t get killed by the robots
• A&V Style: Realistic style
• Job Roles: Modelers/Animator/Unity programmer/Concept and texture artist

My chosen job role will be a modeller. I will need 4 people on the team.

• Project Scale: Short trailer

Have a short trailer showing off the environment and the robots.

Have the character walk through a hallway while the robots are walking around searching. Have it done in one shot.

This sets an end goal for the project.

-Idea 2- Medieval Fantasy game

• Theme: Fantasy
• Demographic: 18 rated
• Narrative: Unite the Celtic clans against the Anglo invaders
• A&V Style: Realistic
• Job Roles: Modelers/Animator/Texture Artist.

My chosen job role will be a modeller and maybe animator. I will need 3 or 4 people on the team.

• Project Scale: Short trailer

Have the trailer show the protagonist watch as the Anglo-Saxons land on the shores.

Have a 10-second long trailer with 2 or 3 shots, one showing the protagonist, one showing the landing and the final one showing the army of Celts.

-Idea 3- Cartoon Style Puzzle game

• Theme: Puzzle game
• Demographic: All ages

This game should have levels easy enough for younger audiences to be able to complete but then have advanced levels for older audiences.

• Narrative: Solve puzzles to find a cool hat
• A&V Style: Cartoon style
• Job Roles: Artist/Modeler/Unity Programmer
• Project Scale: Small level

The level will be a simple puzzle which involves cube placement and light reflecting aspects.  

The reason why I chose Idea 1.

I chose Idea 1 because I have already done a few projects which are from the medieval and classical periods and I want to try to make something new. Also, I want to work on Sci-Fi projects in the future and this would be great practice. This will also give me a chance to work on my animation skills while making the trailer.

I think making a horror game would be a great chance to make an interesting environment where I could create a destroyed section of a city to create the feeling that hope is lost and your objective is to survive instead of fight the robots because they have already won.

The third reason why I chose this Idea is that I would like to experiment with sound design and maybe use some skills that I picked up in music to create a hopeless atmosphere for the trailer.

Idea 1 in greater detail. 

Idea 1 is about a robot invasion, this will be the back end of the invasion where the robots have already wiped out most of humanity and most of the world has been decimated. The goal for the player is to avoid the robots that are searching for survivors. To do this the player will have to avoid searchlight coming from drones and the scout robots which patrol the area.

The backstory is that the AI controlling all the police robots was hacked and became corrupted which led to the AI spreading the corruption to the police robots first then spreading to other types of robots which leads to most of the emergency services and armed forces to be killed first which led to widespread panic.

Started the research for my chosen pitch.

For the research, I have to look up 2-3 movies or games, or a bit of both, which are the same genre as the idea that I have. For this I have chosen to do some research about; 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Terminator and I Robot. I need to give a brief blurb about each movie’s narrative. Also, I need to describe the visuals and sounds of the movies with the movie’s ratings at the end.

After I have completed the research then I give an explanation of my idea. This explanation should be set out like how I have set out the research so I have a brief blurb about the plot, give details about the level design and visual style of the level. Also, need to explain my ideas for the sound design for the game. Then give a brief explanation of the mechanics of the game.

Idea Explanation.

Idea 1- An AI which controls the police robots has been corrupted and has set the robots out onto the world to destroy all the inefficient humans. After 4 brutal years all of humanities governments have given up or been destroys which leaves people to fend for themselves. It is the player’s job to find sanctity by escaping the robot patrols. The environment is a destroyed city so the scene only has spread out fires for a light source, old neon signs from old shops and the lights that the robots have. Everything is drab rubble and a dust cloud covers the city limiting the player’s visibility. The game will feature dietetic sounds coming from the robots like the sounds of hydraulic movement of the joints. Also, it will sirens and explosions in the background to convey that the robots are destroying the inner parts of the city.

The player is able to hide in nearby objects, lean around corners to scout out, throw objects to distract the robots and damage the robot in a QTE, quick time event when the robot is about to catch them.

The art style will be realistic because I want realism to help the horror aspect. The audio style will also be realistic and I will be using a hydraulic noise for the robots and sirens for background noise.  

Here is the storyboard I have made for the game trailer, I had to use Paint to create this which is why it is so low quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Portfolio Research.

I am going to be looking at different portfolios done by various people in the game industry. this will help me get an idea of what needs to go into my portfolio and how it needs to look.

http://www.davidshaver.net/index.html

The first portfolio I will be looking at Naughty Dog employee David shaver’s portfolio.

His portfolio gives a brief introduction and his home screen has links via images so which take you to a more in depth look at that project. This makes his home screen look extremely clean because the images contain all the information needed to know what it is.

http://www.arashshirazi.co.uk/

The next portfolio I will be looking at is Ary shirazi’s portfolio, they are one of the developers for beyond two souls. This portfolio is very similar to the last however, It look more professional compared to the last. It also gives more information through the images giving a brief explanation of the game.

http://www.jayvanhutten.com/

The last portfolio I will be looking at is by Jay van Hutten, who has worked on level design in movies like Maze Runner. This portfolio is different in the last two with the layout, by having quick access to all the pages at the bottom of the page. However, when talking about the past projects he’s worked on he doesn’t go into greater detail like the past portfolios, he keeps the explanations brief and lists what he did on the project.

 

While looking at these portfolios I have learnt that making information access able quickly is important. Also having a brief overview appear while hovering over an image will help people get an idea of what I will be going into greater detail about and if they want to read more about the project. When making my portfolio I need to have a brief introduction talking about myself then have assigned projects in one subcategory and have personal projects in another and have different categories separate like games, models and art will be different categories.

 

 

 

Unreal Testing

 

Testing level building.

 

I had a problem with this particular jump. Because the platform has a hole in it you are able to fall down but the platform was too low to escape to restart the level.

Shooting range game progress.

09/10/18

23/10/18

20/11/2018

27/11/2018

04/12/2018

 

 

Corinthian Helmet Workflow

This blog is to show my progress while making the Corinthian helmet. I have taken some inspiration from the movie 300 also which isn’t completely historically accurate.

I have started to model the low poly version of my Corinthian helmet. To get an idea of how to model this I imported an image of a helmet facing forward so that I would be able to make the nose and cheek plates for the helmet. To get the general shape of the helmet I created a ball object, cut it in half and shaped it to the image until I got to the eye holes of the helmet. When I reached this point I had to shape the balls front and back parts separately.

The picture above shows what I had after I made the model after the 2D image I’ve imported while adding the start of the back neck protection. If I stopped modelling here I would still look a lot like a Corinthian helmet however, I wanted to add extra details like the forehead triangle plate and the plume.

The image above shows that I have added a roughly modelled plume and a rough version of the triangle plate on the forehead. With this version of the helmet the ear cut outs stick out of the head a bit too much and are a it too wide. The plume ended up having a bump at the back which I had to correct later on.

Here is the smooth version of the helmet with added detail to the plume. Also, I have added more edges to the top of the forehead to the tip of the nose plate so it has a defined edge like most Corinthian helmets. The cheek plates have been pulled out further and the bottom of the plates have been pulled out further than the rest to give a defined curve. I added a flat part to the back neck protection to make the helmet look more realistic.

After some mild editing I have reduced the height of the triangle plate and gave it some more curve near the top. I have also reduced the width of the ear holes and stuck them further into the helmet to stop the curving. On this stage of the helmet build I concentrated on the plume making it look less soft and giving it a slightly chunkier bottom.

After a few minor changes like making the eye slots smaller and straightening the forehead plate, I made a UV map of the helmet ready for texturing. Another addition I made was making the lead up to the triangle smoother.

I also made a spear of Greek design to place next to my helmet when making the environment. For the environment the helmet will be on a small pillar with the weapons scattered around.

The image above shows the helmet imported into mudbox. The only changes I made to the helmet at this point was smoothed some of the edges down. The reason why the helmet has been imported into mudbox is so that I can add extra details quickly like battle scars and engravings.

After I duplicated the model and added more subdivisions, this left me with a high poly version of the model. The model ended up looking weird after this. However, this can be fixed in mudbox.

This image shows the helmet after I have done a lot of sculpting to add detail. By using the sculpt tool on Mudbox I added the edging around the nose to cheek plates, I used the knife tool to create the scratches and plume engravings. Also, I used the smoothing tool with the flatten tool to smooth down the edges of the helmet. One problem that I had while sculpting was towards the bottom of the helmet at the cheek plates, which is that the sculpting near that area is rather rough which has prevented me from carrying on the scratches from above the eye to the cheek plates. A way to fix this would be to add edge loops to the cheek plates however, I don’t think I am able to do this without restarting the whole sculpting process.

I was tasked to create an environment for the helmet. I took me a while to decide what I want the environment to look like, I opted to include some Greek style columns. First I was going to go with a Corinthian design but the design is complicated and would be too time consuming to firstly create it, then UV it and then texture it so I have created a simpler style, the Doric style. To get the shape of the pillar I created a cylinder then kept extruding it and added more edge loops so I could create the stacked column look.

This is the finished normal map for the helmet, when applied this will add the effect of scratches and bumps to the helmet while keeping it low poly. With being able to edit the normal map in Photoshop I have been able the make some parts of the helmet look better, now the scratches at the eyes carry on down to the cheek plates.

An image of the low poly helmet with the normal map applied.

A side by side comparison of the high poly helmet (left) and the low poly helmet with the normal map added (right).

This is the environment I created for the helmet and the spear. I made this in my own time at home.

This is what I have so far for the texture for the helmet. The yellow colour is meant to create a bronze effect, the darker parts on the plume are to make the engraving stand out. The silver parts of the texture are there to represent scars from Iron weapons clashing with the helmet. The specs are there to represent the dirt collected when in a battle.

This is an example of the helmet and the spear with the texture map applied to it.

A picture of the shield with the texture applied. Some parts of the texture needs brushing up, like the black rings so they look smoother.

this picture shows the objects together placed inside of the Greek building, I changed the materials of the helmet and the shield from Lambert to Phong E which adds a shine to the models w=giving them a more metallic look.

Here is a wider angle of the scene which shows off the full building with the textures applied to it. However, the texture that was previously applied to the terrain was removed when transferring the file from google drive.

A close up picture of the helmet using the Phong E material to show off the light bouncing off the normal map.

Pre-1950’s Props: Corinthian Spartan Helmet.

On this course so far I have made a scythe, other various weapons and a medieval style house. Other achievements that I have done are animation projects.  Throughout the course, I have learnt many modelling techniques that have helped me bring greater detail to my models. I have also gotten better at unwrapping model but I still need to get better at fitting everything into a single UV map. In the future, I want to be able to make a wide range of models from Corinthian helmets to Halo inspired armours. Doing this project will give me experience in making helmets which will help me in the future when I wont to make futuristic armours that may be inspired by certain points in history. This model will also let me practice with baking and sculpting which is a vital part of being a modeller because it would help me add much more detail to my models.

 

I have chosen the pre-1950’s so I could experiment with historical designs. I’m working towards making an ancient Greek Corinthian helmet, hopefully, I can make a decent looking helmet with my own designs on it to add detail. The history behind the Corinthian helmet is that it was a helmet made out of bronze which covered the wearer’s face, neck and the rest of their head. I will need to research the history behind the helmet and when it was used, how the helmet came to be designed and why it became popular during the time period. Other research that I will have to carry out will be the actual look of the helmet and if different regions used slightly different variations of the helmet, the region I will have to concentrate on will be the area of Sparta.

To create the helmet itself I would need to use the extrude tool to create the neck protection, nose protection and the triangle near the forehead. After I make the basic low poly version of the helmet in Maya I will make a duplicate of it and then more subdivisions then ship it to Mud-box so that I can add engravings to the helmet than to bake them onto the low poly and render it using the Arnold renderer. The resources that I will need for the project will be the programs like Maya and Mud-box so I am able to create the helmet. I may need an external hard drive to put copies of the helmet in case the file gets corrupted or accidentally deleted. I will need to gather different material textures like bronze for the base of the helmet and maybe other types of metals for the details.

I will evaluate myself by taking screenshots of my work at various intervals of the project. This will help me see how much progress I am making each day. I will compare my helmet to other peoples work and even professionals work to see if mine has enough detail, the right shape and even the right sized proportions. I will show people my work to see if they think that it is good enough.