Little Lighting

I didn’t have much time as I would have liked this weekend to work on my level. I created the hall and started planning another room. I also worked on some textures like the floor and blank walls. I still need to do Normal/smoothness mapping for them. I also need to make a roof for my hall.

upcoming work: textures, fireplace lighting, roof

Lighting Test

This weekend I worked on models for the kitchen sub-kit, a metal cabinet and a stove. I still need to finish texturing all of them. I need the outer corner pieces of the well to finish up.

I also constructed the kitchen and storage room for my level.

I also tried testing lights for a candle and the stove.

Unfortunately, I made a huge mistake early on; I used meters instead of centimeters for the models, meaning I made everything way too big. This has been messing up the draw distance for the shadows, and when I tried shrinking everything down the models didn’t align properly and it won’t let me vertex-snap the models back together (you can see this a little bit in the second picture). So, I’ll need to shrink down every model in Maya and recreate the entire scene again.

Rachel Whalen Lighting and Stuff

I made and added torches and a chandelier. I’m afraid that they may be too small for the needed light.

In the scene

The level occurs at dusk, so I altered the Skymap

I also recreated the scene with modular walls and columns and I added several important objects.

A maze in the final tower

And the cage containing the sword. The block is wood and it has a cut in it so the sword can be moved in and out.

Progress Update

This weekend I was working on finishing assets for being moved into my level, and terrain stuff. I started setting up the village area and am figuring out a few more clutter pieces that I could add to make it look more lived-in.

Additionally, i started moving my plant textures into Unity.

The overhead has the larger village area in the bottom right, and a farm area in the bottom left. The top center is going to have the gypsy camp area, and maybe a repurposed tower. (Still deciding if I want to keep that in the town or not) These are the only explorable areas just to make the actual map size a lot smaller than the current; the parts around the water are just for show.

Making a dense forest has been more time-consuming than expected since I’m not a fan of how the auto-placer sets trees.

I also started playing around with fog settings. I think I like this look better, but I might switch to trying to find a particle system that I can repeat to get a more selective fog effect. My biggest issue with the default Unity fog is that it’s too dense in the way it’s dispersed. You can change how far it effects, but as far as I know there isn’t a way to change the actual thickness of the fog itself. I spent all the time making pretty details, so I want to see them!

Otherwise, if I can’t get fog to work the way I want, I’m going to try switching to more of a nighttime setting. I really just want the level to have a more dismal feeling than it does with the sunset skybox. (Unless I change the story, which might happen because bright happy levels are nice too.)

 

ALSO, my Max is pretty close to being done. I’m finishing the rig up today hopefully, but the character is optimized and friendly for games.

Zbrush view.

3DS Max render.

Landscape Progress

Due to the size constraints of the mice, I had initially intended to have the majority of the level take place indoors. However, I have since decided to have the action take place outdoors but still within the castle walls. This allows for the opportunity of creating a much bigger world, although the majority of it will not necessarily be interacted with by the player. To achieve this, I created a mountainous landscape with an island surrounded by a lake.

The castle will be located on the island and will use the lake as a defensive moat.

I really like the way the cattails came out, I think it enhances the atmosphere a lot.

Here’s a view looking out on the landscape from the island itself.

update on environment and texturing

So for my level i dont have much of an environment, just a beach. Im not fully sure how i want the beach to look like yet though, so i made the correct sizing and will add extra details to it later. I want to finish the rest of my level first before i focus on the level

 

 

what i’ve mainly been spending my past few days is learning a new software I was introduced to called substance painter. I want to use substance painter to texture my level, so I used it to finish my detailed model gun as practice. This is how it turned out. I have already just begun the process of texturing my modular level. I really like this new program and it’s ability to create interesting and realistic textures with good normals easily, but it took awhile to get a handle of.

 

Clutter and Terrain

My level is entirely indoors and there are no windows, however there is a hidden cave area where I can create terrain. A lot of it will be walls and a ceiling, so I will need to make meshes for those sections, but I made a terrain section for the floor. It contains a general layout for where I want the walls, a pillar in the center, and is textured with hand-drawn rock and sand.

I worked primarily on making some more models for my kitchen sub-kit and clutter. Right now a lot of the models aren’t properly textured.

Additionally, I start constructing my level. Right now I have the layout for the dining hall, with the kitchen planned to be on the right.