Christopher Dai's Visual Diary

Contributions

Concluding on this computer game modeling project. I will run through brieftly my contributions to this project. The concept of the game is to have 3 different main farm heroes and 3 different animals with each member of the group modeling 1 character and 1 model each. My characters are a chinese farmboy and the evil chicken. The following are my initiate ideas.

Modeling

When the basic concept design has been finalized, we began to allocate our roles. I undertook the role of the primary modeler. As such, i undertook the task of modeling most of the elements in our scene. Besides my main character, the first 2 major assets were the farmhouse and the tractor. I actually went on to design these assest first as I felt it would take much lesser time to do. The initiate models I made were based on the early designs. The focus at that time was to create a really low model, however as it turn out the lowest triangles weren't the prettiest. I went on to add a reasonable amount of triangles to shape the model further in my second attempt. I felt that I could push the design further without adding too much triangles. I was quite satisfied with the final result I ended up with.

I actually assigned a basic colour scheme to these 2 assets. Unfortunately, the colour schemes became the final look as I couldn't finish apply texturing them in time. It was quite a shame.
When I am done with the two assets, I moved on to model my own character. I had a plan in mind to possibly explore some relatively new game models techniques used a lot recently called Normal Mapping. I did some test before I embark on this process to see if it will work. The test result came out fine.

As such, I started building my model on the high side before eventually reducing it down to a game level model. It was quite a time consuming process, which I soon found out because I had much more vertices to handle with during the modeling and UV laying process that I need to do before I extract the normal map.

The result for my model didn't turn out quite like the test. The lo - res model could not display the normal map. I believed it was the UV layout for the lo - res model that caused this problem.

Since it was an experimental process, I didn't want to spend too much time fixing the problem.
After my main character was completed, I went on to model the evil chicken, the game environment and the props in the environment.

The overall models for our entire game were quite efficient as we manage to keep it under the 10,000 triangle budget.

Texturing

As for texturing, I supervised the team in the unwrapping process for all the models in our game. We had quite a number of prop in our game so I thought of creating a workflow that would make that process more flexible. I found that the Reference editor of Maya is quite a great way to work with because that would allow us to work independently while still building towards the finished project. All the props, terrain and characters were first created in their own master file before I called them in as references as I put together our level design.

In this way, the rest of the group could still work on the textures in the master file, while I put together the scene and layout the elements in a reference file.

Problems / Conclusion

As with most projects, time management is extremely important. I think our game had quite a good concept, which allowed us to create many different characters and prop. That was also the bane of our project because that would mean more elements to manage. I think we would have been able to create a much better final product if we had better planning during the pre-production stages. As for myself, although my normal mapping process didn’t work, the process was quite enriching as it allowed me to understand the technique better. Despite all the hiccups, I think we did manage to get a final product that quite match what we wanted to have in our concept.

Sascha's Clay model characters!

FARMBOY_final!

Conclusion from Sascha Fournel's

This has been one of the best group projects....well best project non-stop really, that I have had the best experience from. I have never learnt so much in my life in a short span of time, I have never been more interested to want to learn more about something and see what I can do, more than anyother time in my life.

2 Big things that stand out for me doing this project...

Alot...I mean alot of time inside on the computer which means no or next to no exercise for the time working on project. which = a fat ass!

So this leads me to number 2 - even though I felt we had planned and re-planned and reviewed our time budget etc...we still ran out of time in the end...so Time in Animation is important in more ways than one.

I think its fair to say though...that the 3 of us each had varying levels of what we knew in Maya which set us back in a few ways that and we each had different ways of handling our time.

IN THE BEGINNING

Chris, Leon and I were so lucky to have fallen in this group as right from the first class we immediatly came up with an idea simply from me seeing some quirky image on the net that leon was scrolling through...and it just rolled on from there. The guys said I was able to visualise the concept more freely and therefore decided to go with it as I seemed so excited about Alien eggs and zombie farm animals. And from that very first meeting we decided we would meet every Monday for the next 6 weeks until the project was complete.

From the very 1st meeting we all agreed on our goal beginning to create a corny game concept - and how more cornier can you get than a bunch of farmers anihilating alien eggs and then capturing the zombie herds to turn back to good animals?! As I came up with my character the same day, we decided to go with her feel...a very rolly poly, eye candy, highly saturated world.

The guys then came up with a few character designs...these initial ones were all way too different to the one we had signed off on...and the second time round we decided to have a bit of diversity as there was too much time being spent on their designs. The idea was that if we coloured similarly then it wouldn't differentiate too much.

But otherwise Leon went nuts with all the concept design and we got some awesome starting points for all our assets and colour palette...their was alot of drawing and research done by Leon to get the designs started and all from that initial meeting where we were just mucking around and jokin haha!

Whos doin What?

We all wanted to design and model a character so we all did our own farmer. When it came to who would do the rest of the modelling, Chris let us know that he felt fairly comfortable with this and could get them done quickly...and that he did! But after a review we decided our barnyard and tractor wasn't quirky or cartoony enough and seemed a bit too realistic for our fantasy world...so Chris went away and tweaked it a bit further and came up with some beatiful designs. I also felt comforable modelling and decided to do the remaining characters and level design bar Leons and chris's farmer of course. Half way through doing hte level though, Chris had finished his modelling and took over the environment modelling.

It was fairly obvious from the work of the concept designs by Leon that his strengths would probably be in the texturing...however it didn't really pan out that way. Leon had alot of dilemma with his character which set him back a few weeks in the group compared to where we were at...but managed to finish the pig fairly straight away which got our first arch nemisis on the stage! Leon also contributed to the promotional packaging of our game which is pretty cool!

So that left me and Chris to divy up the models and texture them.

I enjoyed working with Chris as somebody new! He was such a help and nothing was too much to ask of him. I know Ill be sitting at a computer one day working on some industry project and Ill always remember the number of things he taught me through this project. The most important one being that if you don't know it, find it out no matter what the lengths. Chris heard someone say they could use a 2D texture map but apply some sort of 3D file to it and it would like 3D at certain angles even though it was 2D...it took him about an hour or so...but he figured out how to do and even though we couldn't use that sort of texturing for our game, I will remember that time as one of the highlights through this project.

MY CONTRIBUTION

I Modelled and textured Bailey, Fudge and her weapon and the Alien Egg. I also textured the skydome and tree planes, hills and grass, Leon's pig and Chris' chicken. I am fairly happy with Bailey and her sickle and hills and grass...the rest though were sort of plonked on me at the last minute and I felt I had to rush them a bit. But all in all I think the overall look and feel of the scene is really fun and inviting.

IN CONCLUSION

• Lots of fun and lots learnt
• I enjoy working in group projects
• Maybe we had too many models to work with and therefore too much to texture...although if all of us shared the even amount of work I think it could have been possible
• SO possibly if we would have stuck to having some sort of director who was comfortable in stating what needed to be done etc...
• I regret running out of time to put the characters in a pose...
• I regret running out of time to finish the texturing properly on some assets...i hate a half finished job...but what can you do *shrugs*
• Overall I think our scene looks really catchy and fun...would be an interesting story line and fun environment to travel around in.
• My goals were achieved...I wanted to try something of everything and learn new things and i definately learnt my fair share of things!

Its all character builiding and a learning curve hopefully we'll take this across to the next project!

BOOm….boom, boom from the sky alien eggs have invaded earth, transforming farm animals into killing zombies. It is up to a few good farmers to change the fate of earth. They must fix the animals and defeat the invaders. Thus begins the epic journey from ideas to screen.

In the beginning …there was an idea. Sascha, Chris and I discussed at length the story and characters. One story was of an unexploded nuke that lands near a farm. The leaking radiation mutates the animal with the farmers fighting for their lives.

We were all very positive about this project and soon we came up with some concept drawings. We started this project straight away. Every Monday we would have a 2-hour meeting looking at each other’s drawings and sharing ideas. Our goals for this project was to make a fun looking epic adventure game for children between the ages of 10 to 15 years.

Research: We did a lot of searching for idea for types of farms and farm equipment. We decided to go towards an American barn style. We did a fare amount of concept art to get the feel of the style and look of the game. We decided early on that we would make three main characters based on loosely on ourselves. Chris did a great job putting the assets together and the level design and his CGI character looked great. There was not much that Chris could not do. He was a constant help in the process to both Sascha and I.

Sascha had great ideas and her farmer character became the bases for my farmer character and the game design in general. Sascha worked hard on her CGI models and also worked on the level design. I got some more help form watching training videos from Gnomon Workshops on UV mapping. When modeling my character I came across a few problems. One of them was the points. They look like one point from a distance but closer inspection showed multiple points. I had to check every point to make sure that there were no double ups.

Another problem was the extrude tool every time I used it I was getting a double edges. This was frustrating to have to go back and delete the unwanted edges. I was actually clicking to many times on extrude tool. I also go some weird things happen to the model.

When I was in the UV texture editor I had a problem with it unfolding properly. In the end I had to zoom in and spread the points out manually.

Overall I think its worked really well team wise. Not bad for a first go!

The evolution of Fudge

So far I think doing this character is the success of this project for me...I was worried I couldn't model fast enough and I managed to finish this dude in a night...so about 5 hours on and off. I had a few issues in the topology trying to get rid of triangles and the mouth issue again...but this time I even sorted it out myself.

One thing that keeps getting mentioned is the fact that for animating purposes that the short stumpy characters I have designed will be very difficult...which is something I will need to consider in the future, but in my mind I didn't have these characters walking naturally. I envision both Bailey and Fudge to be running so fast that they almost only take a few steps and jump. She's not much older than 5 or 6 and has been asked to battle these alien eggs...she is pumped with adrenalin and fear so she runs around crazy!!!




Darren had a look at all our work today and he just mentioned that I could lose some geometry at the back of the character and if it triangulates out in spots its ok in necessary cases. He also explained how to define where you should put your geometry for elbow bends etc. Because he has suck chunky arms...I need to space my geometry out alot more, general rule is to space it out left and right to create a square with the thickness of the arm! I also need to add geometry in the ears for rigging.

From the occulsion renders I realised taht there is some funny stuff happening around the tail which shouldn't be so Ill be going back in to fix that up.

UPDATE ON BAILEY

Bailey is now completed and in full technicolour...yay! Texturing is a biatch when you only get one lesson on it...I don't know what was not sinking in...but it took a week and a half of trial and error and then finally after a few pointers repeatedly from Chris and Andrew...and I don't know what happened...but the penny finally dropped...and this is what i have...

UV Map of Face UV Map of Body

Painted Texture in Photoshop Face Body

Final Render in Maya

My Conclusion

Im rather happy with it considering the time frame I had to actually paint it due to taking so long to get the map layed out. The issue was that I had duplicate faces in the piggy tales, which was really bizarre cause i had used the clean up function and then Chris also did it himself and it still happened...must have just been some weird bug in maya. The second issue was me just not understanding what the aim was for the mapping. The third issue was it was realised that nobody had modelled the egg yet and so I had opted to do it seeing as I was the only one who had completed my designated modelling thus far...

EXTRA MODELLING UPDATE

The Alien Egg

Bailey, her weapon the Sickle and Fudge her sidekick dog.

The egg was pretty easy to model up but the friggin texturing for it wasn't so easy...to get something that wasn't going to clash with the rest of our scene was tricky. From the orginal concept designs and colour pallette that Leon mocked up I initally loved the green spotted one which is why ive done that for now...however the purple may have to be the next choice. Our scene is going to be very saturated with colour, like a very intense cartoon world!! So there a very lush greens, vibrant reds, penetrating purples and sky blues...very eye candy. So the egg is the villian we want him to look mean...but to get a colour that doesn't clash or doesn't meld too much with the background will be tricky. But this is what we've decided on thus far.

3d Assets Update

The following images are renders of the 3d assets we have in our game design so far.

I distorted the shape of the barn because I thought the initial one looked too symetrical. The same goes for the tractor. I added the gripping claws and the dosage gun infront because part of our game concept is to capture and heal the animals!