Wednesday 19 March 2014

Roofing and general modelling update






Hey everyone, upon designing and making the roof for my models I have discovered something incredible, some genius on the internet has designed and made custom Lego pieces of ancient Chinese roof tiles and are selling them online. It uses very simple pieces which allows a Lego master builder to make any Chinese building roof style they want. The blog post can be found here:

http://thebrickblogger.com/2012/06/custom-lego-roof-tiles-by-bricktw/



This just goes to show how a complex roof system can be split down into small significant chunks, to become even modular of course.


Although this proves that the roof system can be made simply modular, the amount of pieces it would create for the people using my model kit could be quite large in the number of items needed, but it's definitely an option. I also have to point out that the roof style is that of a religious building or even a building of importance, not that of a residential dwelling.

There is also pieces that can be used to make large pagoda like rooftops, these are all well and good and effectively can create a modular system for the Lego building play set, but they don't seem to take into account the complex building structure beneath it, the Dou Gong that I am interested in replicating.


And to finish off, I want to show you my progress towards my own models. Here I have completed the segments of roofing that are required for the large building.



I based the roof structure off of my latest blog post and quick mock up I made in photoshop, he is a small comparison so you can see it quickly: 

Model structure


Model design

Another object I've been working on but forgot to show in my previous blog posts was the walls I've designed for the structures of this size. Here you can see 2 sets of door frames which can go between the middle of two extender sections or in the middle of an extension and an end cap section. There are also basic wall sections for the same sizes and for one other instance of two small sections. I would like to hopefully work on these wall pieces with normal maps as their basic flat texture will look very odd as the player would be running past them all the time.


 Here is a small image of the sort of building I want to be able to achieve at the end of the dissertation with all the different pieces, I hope.


Thursday 13 March 2014

My timeline and why it needs rearrangement

My timeline has become so back dated that it's desperately in need of rearrangement so I plan to now do this as it will help me over the next coming 2 months of this dissertation. It has become so out of date and I've gotten so far behind due to other modules that it is slowing my progress with irrelevant dates and progress milestones. Here below is my current timeline: 
Current Timeline

                                                                                                                                  
17th February – Continue modelling if needed and start UVW unwrapping on each asset ready for texturing. (May take longer as not as experienced in UVW unwrapping, although research into quicker uvw mapping will be undertaken over the course of the project.)

10th March – Experiment with Mudbox/Zbrush and the NvidiaNormal filter in Photoshop in texturing the assets with diffuse specular and Normals.
                                                                                                                                  
24th March – Import and construct the Village within UDK with textures and assets.

7th April – touch up and add more details to models where needed or where some models issue are found. If no issues are found or are ironed out and total polygon count allows (45k polygons). Create a couple more assets to add a more realistic atmosphere to the scene such as trees, pots and tiles.

 7th April - 15th May – Work on finalising dissertation

 17th May – 16th May to be the absolute deadline of handing in dissertation.


I'm currently just over 4 weeks behind on my personal milestones, which isn't good on my half. The yellow line is where I should be at this current point and the green line is where I currently am. I'm still in the process of creating my 3D assets. One one set of buildings are done, i'm hoping I should easily be able to replicate these models and just adjust them to create the rest of the other models on the asset list. But because the timeline is so out of date i'm going to propose a new timeline for myself to keep to as due to the other modules and workload of the 3rd year, I just simply couldn't cope with it all and so it needs to be changed to help manage my time left effectively. This new timeline will be the date in which the object must be completed before.

New Timeline

20th March - Finish all of the models needed for the construction of the buildings.

3rd April - UVW unwrap all models that have been created and get them prepared for diffuse mapping.

17th April - Create and supply all textures with a diffuse texture, Normal maps will need to be made for the roof and if time is spare start creation of Normal maps on the woodwork and walls.

1st May - Import and construct the Village within UDK with textures and assets. Test and arrange houses similar to some of the previous designs.

1st-15th May - I will be keeping this time for any overhanging production for models and objectives. I will also leave this time for myself to create more blog posts as to describe how the dissertation is going and also to organise my models and the final environment, adding in some environment effects and even organise my level pack in a organise manner ready to be shown to people.

Although I am many weeks behind, I still have made a lot of progress overall. Other modules have been getting on top of me especially my Design masterclass, Our group has even volunteered to help my other colleague with Dare to be Digital to help him with his grades although we wont be getting marked on it. I know this is only small amounts of work, but it all seems to add up pretty quickly as I've recently seen.

But as a general catch up to my 3D modelling work state, the first main building is nearing completion, all that is needed to be constructed is the roof and the corner strut to create the corner. When this is complete I can take this structure and simply copy how it's created and apply the same principles to the other models.


Friday 7 March 2014

Making progress

It's been a while since i've been blog posting, but I have made some progress on a personal scale. I've been confused with the way in which I can model the walls of my structures whilst still keeping the structure architecture fully visible and not covered up by the external walls. I've also been trying to figure out how to keep the models modular whilst minimising or getting rid of all mesh clipping. This is when two planes of a model are on or are very close to the same position and the shader has a hard time choosing which face to render and instead it renders both polys and shows an odd jaggered texture. This isn't good when modelling, especially on a part of the model that can be seen by the player, I needed to avoid this at all costs to have a decent looking final product. Here is an example of mesh clipping.


So for the last few days i've been working on wall that will fit in with the columns, the walls need to be of a variety of size length ways to counter for nearly every situation that the level designer needs to offer. Here you can see different size of wall being used to make up the modular components. It also shows off the structural composition which is a big goal of this dissertation. 


I have also begun work on the end caps for the structure to aid me with my wall construction, they are not at their final stage yet but i'm debating whether to cut them up into separate segments to aid more so with the modularity of the kit.

So this is what i'm currently working on and should be finished with it soon, once these are complete the hard task of UV unwrapping each piece begins, a hard an grueling task, but a task that I look forward to starting so that I can be one step closer to completion of this modular kit and experimenting can then begin.