Finished Whitebox

 

I decided I should probably finish my whitebox before anything else, which proved more tiresome than I thought. It mainly just came down to positioning the same few boxes over and over, but I'm glad it's done now, as it means once my modulars are complete I can just place them in more or less the same locations. The next step is putting it in CryEngine so that I can walk about and get a feel for the level, but for now I'm pleased with the layout. I did change a few things about it from my initial plan and had to think about structuring certain areas (the tram ride makes a lot of geometry become more visible than it would have been, meaning the whole city basically needs to be modeled rather than just what's visible). One area I changed was changing the exit in the circular platform from being completely opposite to being on the left of the entrance bridge. This was because Dan mentioned to me that it looked too straight beforehand and didn't feel that natural for a typical city construction. It also started to build way too much to the right so rotating it brought it back to the centre.

  
Here I start to place in something from one of my earlier concepts; where there is a plaza much higher up in the city. I feel this is what really helps the city feel more vertical as it's more than just tall buildings, it's an entire other shopping area above traditional level. Getting the player here using just stairs would mean I would have to model an awful lot of alleys, so I started to plan out where the tram route would go from here for a quick but scenic route to the top. Below is the rough path for the player to take. I may make some more split paths to make it a bit more dynamic, but as the genre I have chosen is MMORPG, and this acts as a hub for the player, a linear path will be fine for the time being.

Time to do some paint-overs at last! Going to focus on concepting some more this week, as I do want some nice 2D final pieces alongside my finished level when this is done. As mentioned before, I'm going to London on Saturday to visit Chinatown and just generally get some more textures and whatnot to use. I'll begin my modulars next week and will probably take a fair while making them as perfect as possible, as they will obviously compose around 85% of my level. I keep worrying myself that I've made it too big, but hopefully finishing the modulars and placing them in will quell those worries.

I've also been reading up on CryEngine 3 when I've had time, basically just trying to learn a few tips and tricks, such as learning about the supplied CryTools, which automatically create and name proxies for you, something I'm sure will come in handy when considering CryEngines very long and awkward export process.

FMP Inspirations - Studio Ghibli (specifically Spirited Away)

For my final blog on FMP Inspirations (not including my general reference which will be more of a photo-reference blog), I'm going to be talking about the art of Studio Ghibli, but more specifically Spirited Away. Spirited Away was the first Ghibli film I saw, and probably one of the first anime movie's I'd ever seen too, if you don't count things like the Pokemon, Digimon and Yu-Gi-Oh! movies. I don't. Typically as most people do with Ghibli films, I fell in love with the art style and all that, but it was only really last summer I watched a load more of their movies. 

Studio Ghibli's art style has been pretty consistent over the years, but Spirited Away is more of an influence than their other films because of the setting and sheer fantasy it contains. While my FMP is grounded in very hypothetical reality, there are certain things about Spirited Away that I just really wanted to portray in my own way, things like the water train (which I would've done had my tram idea not become the main transport in the city) and just the general vibe of a multi-tiered environment by the ocean. Hayao Miyazaki's very loose drawing style is also what got me back into watercolours, as he demonstrated to me that you don't have to make perfect decisions when using them; sometimes an ink and watercolour sketch is just what you need to get your idea across vividly and quickly.

Admittedly this inspiration is more 2D oriented as it's only really the colour and charisma that I want to take from, but this is stuff that I hope I'll be able to carry over into 3D; creating a world that looks lived in and characteristic will be a fun but challenging task.

Weekly FMP Update

So FMP has been officially going on for a week now, so it's time for an update! Kind of average week, not overly productive but not too little either. I mainly focused on planning and blogging, getting the boring stuff out the way before all the drawing and modelling comes in. So yeah, most of this week was spent on the previous blogs, mainly what is inspiring me through this project and also my plan on how I go about structuring my time and how I'll be prioritizing things. I did do some concept work too, seen above, and some tram concepts I've not scanned yet. I'll be concepting and whiteboxing all the main areas first, before concepting the smaller assets. One thing that came to mind when doing the sketches above for the alleyways is my composition. I know that my project is a cluttered and compact city, but this is pretty much all I had in mind when sketching. I need to run through my books on composition, colour and lighting again just so I can really push the set pieces that will be presented to the viewer.
I think some of what I've learned has subconsciously set in anyway; Feng Zhu always goes on about the rule of three, and how three standout bits of information in a piece works better than more or less, and below I have the players first view of the city, which is compiled of the main city, and two offshoots on either side.

I've also begun my whitebox, so that I can start to quickly build a rough route for the player to take, which I can then bring into CryEngine to playtest. I'll also use it to produce some more polished paintovers, to give and idea of the finished product. As the tram will be a large feature, I will probably have to import a very simple mesh around the same size, to test how I would go about getting the player to enter it and have it move to another point of the level. If this proves too difficult and starts to eat away at my time plan then I may have to scrap it and just have the trams as dynamic elements in the background (but hopefully this won't happen). I had started to model a tram with an interior before realizing this, so I've momentarily paused that 3D asset.

I should also hopefully be going to London next weekend to gather some reference in its Chinatown. While London's Chinatown isn't very large at all, I feel it will still be somewhat useful, as as I've said before, any reference is good reference, even if it's not that much. I did also go around Leicester with Luc and Dan a few days ago for general reference and textures, as their project is fairly similar. I'll post up the personal reference and textures I've gathered next week after I've been to London to discuss and whatnot, some style and colour guides and also probably post up the reference folder I've gathered for this project in general (as making a few moodboards for a project of this scope doesn't seem adequate enough).

FMP Inspirations - Imperial Boy

http://tksn.sakura.ne.jp/

Probably the single biggest influence on my whole FMP is this guy; Imperial Boy. I think it's pretty obvious to see why he's been an influence, and some of his work is why I chose to do an isolated man-made island city. Hopefully you can draw both similarities and differences between my FMP and his work (apart from his obvious extreme attention to detail and masterful use of light and perspective).

Over Summer, before finalising my FMP, I started to look more at his work, and set about trying to do my own similar style of drawings to improve my three point perspective, when I realised I hadn't really seen anything like his work rendered in a interactive 3D world. Not on that level of detail and verticality anyway. So that's when I pretty much decided on doing it for my FMP, and went about starting to concept my own ideas for an island city.

His works definitely helped to inspire me to really master my three point perspective, as this is the most important aspect of his drawings I feel. While the lighting gives it the character and liveliness, it's the three point that just gives you that sense of scope and scale, which I can then use to construct in 3D and create my own lighting in CryEngine.

FMP Inspiration - Bravely Default, Eternal Sonata & Sonic Generations

So I'm gonna be talking about three different games today as while they're all still influential towards my FMP, it's only really certain aspects of them that are (whereas Remember Me was hugely inspirational, hence the longer post). First up is Bravely Default, a game that came out in December for the 3DS in Europe. While the game itself isn't really relevant, especially as it's style involves hand-drawn environments 'extruded' out into 3D traversable locations (which does look great in its own right, just not relevant to me), the locations themselves are relevant. Again, the fantasy setting isn't something I want to tread too heavily into, but (and this is a similar theme for the next two games) the very clustered and detailed city environments are fantastic.

These pics are taken from the art book, as I wanted to include some of the concept work too (the finished pieces are literally exactly how it looks in-game). The concepts still show a clear sense of scale and direction for the player, which gives me a good insight into how I should concept the streets of my city.

The next game is Eternal Sonata, a fairly old game now that I suddenly realised had some really nice colourful locations to draw inspiration from. If I didn't settle on going for a realistic look for my FMP I would have chosen a style similar to this, as it allows for such vivid colour palettes.

Not much to say here really as the images I hope speak for themselves. I suppose it can be a good example of how you can create very crammed and busy scenes with some fairly average modelling and texture work provided the concept has been worked into enough.

Finally, I took this purely for the dappled light on the path. I believe CryEngine's realtime lighting allows for stuff like this to be created naturally given the correct lighting and positioning, but a workaround, if I really wanted it, would be to create an alpha decal that gently moves about, as they do above, in game.

Finally, a rather odd choice; Sonic Generations (althought I believe above is Sonic Unleashed). I chose this purely for the levels Rooftop Run (which is also a re-imagining of a level in Sonic Unleashed) and City Escape (a re-imagining from Sonic Adventure 2). Again, the main theme here being complex city environments made relatively simple once the assets are made and well placed. 

These environments look extremely complex, despite being made from a handful of assets. While the scope of my city isn't nearly as large (and rightly so, I'm not making what is essentially a visual racetrack) it does prove, which is encouraging for me, that large environments can be made extremely quickly and almost effortlessly provided you make smart and well thought out modular pieces.

FMP Timeline

I've been procrastinating a little bit too much lately, so I figured I should kick start myself into this FMP with what I do best; organisation! I don't know how to use Excel at all but I remember how handy it was during the group project and seeing Anna and Shay's plans helped me to start preparing mine. As the FMP has only just begun, I imagine this'll change a fair bit when it comes to the production side of things. Even so, it's nice to see a general overview of how things will start progressing.
The asset list is currently very vague, things like 'Docks' will be broken down into things like 'Boat #1, Rope, Fish, etc.' in separate tables. I just thought considering I haven't ironed out all the details yet it would be best to keep it vague instead of going into too much detail straightaway (especially at the very start). Even just from doing this I can see the scope I've made for myself is pretty ambitious, but hopefully I'll be pretty smart about how I repeat assets and modular buildings. Also I've made a fair few more dynamic elements than I thought, so hopefully CryEngine is as easy to use as UDK when it comes to things like waving clothes and flickering neon signs.

For these first two weeks, I'm gonna be concepting, mainly traditionally and painting over some whiteboxing. I'm going to start with the key areas I want the player to visit, specifically the starting docks (obviously), a few tight alleyways, a tram ride, a large open area of shops and hopefully a garden area, though this may have to end up as extended scope. Then once these are concepted I'll work into how they'll be connected and in what order. I may have the tram be used to take you to multiple areas, but that can also be traversed on foot, it depends how hard setting up movement in CryEngine is.

FMP Inspiration - FeiGiap

http://feigiap.deviantart.com/

For this FMP inspiration blog I'm gonna be talking about an artist that I actually only discovered about a month ago. Anna sent me a link to their deviantArt page, and I instantly fell in love with their style and use of perspective. One thing that bugs me which I'm going to get out of the way straight away is that some of his paintings are almost identical to what I planned with my FMP, and I'm just worried that people may think I'm stealing his themes or compositions, even though I planned this FMP back in summer, way before seeing his work. Hopefully my themes and ideas will be distinguishable and fresh enough to differentiate from his work. I have seen a lot of artists who portray similar themes, and my main inspiration that I'll post about soon is one of them, but it's a theme I've never really seen portrayed in a realtime 3D environment, which was a strong selling point for choosing it as my idea.

   

Some of his work, like above, is very similar to my FMP. The main differences are that my FMP will appear slightly less shanty, with less corrugated roofs and more traditional Asian architecture such as temples and bridges. His composition and use of colour is fantastic though, it perfectly captures that feeling of 'yeah, its a congested and claustrophobic city, but at the same time it looks peaceful and enjoyable to live in.

I also like how he posts breakdowns of his paintings, as I struggle with convincing perspective in digital media. I've always felt like using 3D programs to start with is almost cheating, but thinking about it, anything that helps you become a better artist over time can't be that bad can it?

  

Even though almost everything in this image is cubic, it still appears busy and not very gridlocked. being able to make a variety of modular buildings and assets that fit together convincingly, with the repetition and seams being unnoticeable will help me construct the largest parts of my city very quickly, allowing me to move onto polishing it with various assets and tweaks to the layout.