Dissertation Blog 31/03/2013

This is more an update than actual progress as texturing is pushing further on .The different maps are still being produced.

 

Asset Count

Conference Room:          83 total Assets 16-17 Unique Assets

Main Office Room:          172 total Assets 25-27 Unique Assets

Corridor Area:                   65 total Assets 8-9 Unique Assets

Understanding the total count, there is 320 assets including the group assets. As time has gone on more and more has been added and tweaked and while I do intend everything to be included in the final result; time is pressing on. Around 50 assets are unique which spreads between 3 rooms but more over the 170 assets are merely duplicates. Only the 50 assets have undergone the retop and the necessary maps to produce the detail and quality.

 

Dissertation Blog 22/03/2013

It’s been awhile since my last post but texturing is slowly on-going but I want to briefly touch on the retopology hopefully one last time. Not everything is retopped since most of the details will be in the  texture maps. Though the texturing will be explained in more detail; work to re-organize assets before testing in-engine and continuing to receive feedback from polycount/worldofleveldesign.

Among the pictures below is to show the original poly assets to its reduced retopped state.

Bioshock BAFTA Q&A

My best narrative game franchise  this generation!

Production Blog 12/03/2013

Retopology is finally done. Took a week and a bit longer than expected to tweak everything however the last major step before engine work is the unwrapping and texture maps.

*Some of the retopology needs some more work in some areas to really cut down the unnecessary polycount. And to breakdown ngons if anything else.

3D Coat has been a great help quickening the pace though when it came to hard surface retopology; I had to do that by hand through a polydraw technique on Max. Takes a bit longer but the polyflow is more controlled and therefore the topology presents better for texturing. The Auto-Retop is a bit hit and miss but in most cases a rough retop is good enough to be corrected later on in Max. With the ability to paint areas to increase poly density to with-hold shape and draw guidelines to correct polyflow helps most of the time.

Restrict the polys but maintain the same silhouette.

Because there are organic and hard surfaced assets within the scenes; other techniques have been required. (Polydraw – build polys on the surface from the high sculpt to create topology)

The scene below is the office scene and numbered which have gone through the 3D Coat method and 3D Max method.

 

Dissertation Blog 04/03/13

Quick Update

Retopology is taking longer than expected though shouldn’t expect it really. Usually I use the “polydraw” (draw on to surface) technique to do all my retop actions but under the circumstances that there is quite a few areas to retop. To speed things up a bit more; I’m using an external program 3D Coat to rough out a auto retop via voxal modelling by drawing up the guidelines where the polyflow will follow. And any cleaning up to do will be in Max. This has already been extended again and cutting into my next stage (UV Mapping/Texture Maps) which will have to be pushed back until this boring part is done.

Modelling aside; animation has been dumped so there will be no anim sets and matinee sequences within the UDK except for the camera walkthrough.

Since January; the texture research has been quietly growing to be sure everything is referenced and appropriately used for all assets. Some textures used for diffuse maps will also be used for normal maps. This exception is for low poly assets only (not retop assets).