Posters and the TRAMMM

It's always reassuring to check the date of my last Blogger update and see how much I've done since then (or in some cases, not so reassuring). Basically the past week I've got the shopfronts done and  finished, and I'm working solely on my tram now until its done and animated (I'll worry about how the player will get in it/trigger a cut-scene later). I added some more decals to my level too, and my trip to Chinatown proved useful again as I was able to extract some textures from images I had taken there and combine them with some more worn and torn ones from photos I obtained online. Below is a shot of how I was combining them into decals. As I've said before, the focus of my FMP is to deliver a large environment as efficiently as possible, so instead of create decals for each bit of paper and stack them together in engine (which would create a lot more unique results) I opted to create four or so composition in Photoshop and export them as decals, which I could still stack, but just less uniquely. This keeps the draw-calls a lot lower as decals are relatively expensive.

I don't know why CryEngine loves to use extremely dated software, but as long as it works I'm not complaining. I had to use what is literally a program for Windows95 to create my skybox, and once I finally figured out how to get the plug-in working for Photoshop (tip: if it's not working in 64-Bit Photoshop, it's probably because it's a 32-Bit program) it was actually quite pleasing to use. You basically save out 6 sides of a cube as tga's from Skypaint, then place in your photos to use, open it in Skypaint and voila, a box comprised of your images in a 3D Previewer. You then pan to where there are seams, mostly on corners, hit Enter and it opens that scene in Photoshop for you to paint out. Then you simply use the plug-in to update it Skypaint and continue. Setting up a grid and marquee tool of a fixed 1024x512 ratio helped hugely here. I used a panoramic photo I obtained online to create my skybox. I purposely chose one that had a slight greenish-orange tinge to it, similar to my FMP logo as it captures that 90s filter you get on a lot of holiday photos that I am trying to emulate in my level.
Once I was finished painting out the seams I saved the images out according to how CryEngine supports it; I wondered why the suffixes had to be '_12, _34, _5' but learned on a tutorial that it's because you stitch the sides together, and the numbers correspond to the sides of the cube (the sixth being the not needed bottom face).

I extracted some photos of some clouds and used a feathery brush to create some more, tiled them and created this image for my cloud shadows texture, seen below in the two screenshots. I'm not sure how I feel about this at the moment, when there is a cloud shadow panning over a portion of the level it flattens out a lot of the contrast and speculars, making it look very boring, but at the same time that's what clouds do and as such it adds some nice realism to the level.

Just some more progress shots showing more graffiti and placeholder trims for the little tree area.

For my shopfronts I just used photos of window displays I took in Chinatown. The spot healing and clone stamp brushes worked wonders here and helped me remove a lot of unwanted woodwork and reflections.

In this shot I've overlaid my normals map just to make a point of me being a bit stupid with my texture space. While I have planned out all my texture sheets that I need to do, I decided to add a metal door to my level and I had some spare space on this shopfront texture sheet so I added it to it. When doing my normals for it and baking them down I realized that nothing else on the texture sheet needed normals, and my metal door ones were quite intricate so I couldn't save it out as a 512x512. So, just a point of me wasting a lot of space by accident...

Finally, some shots of the tram being textured. Normals are done, and I'm doing the diffuse now. I'm pleased I managed to do all the normals in a day but at the same time wish I could spend more time on them, as they mainly come down to the standard panels and bolts everywhere. I did sculpt the cushions in the interior in Zbrush though, so there's a little redemption there...

More Decals and the Tram

Just a quick little update from the past few days of work. Got some more decals in and sorted the reclections on the windows by fiddling with the glass shader and placing 5 or 6 environment probes around the level. Below are some shots of the barnacles decal I placed liberally around the docks and a water stain that I can put pretty much anywhere that's sensible.

I also fiddled with the lighting even more and applied one of CryEngine's default sky-boxes for the time being. I may add in clouds to have pan round the level too. I added a panning cloud shadow texture (again, a default one for now) which I've set to slowly move across the level, which creates some really nice dynamic soft shadows which really help add to the feeling of it being a cool summers day. I also looked into CryEngine's water, and from what I've gathered it doesn't actually use a texture, and is purely determined by multiple parameters in-engine. So I tweaked the fog depth of it and how rough it is and all that so I have a greenish, murky yet still slightly inviting look to it.

Finally, I decided it's time to get the tram done and out the way. The first two screenshots were what I did way back in January because I wanted to get an early start on it (hah). I'm glad I left it though as when I went to work on it today I made a lot of weird choices that I wouldn't have today (mainly about how to do the interior and top and bottom of it). So it was good to have a base to work from at least, and I tweaked it a fair bit to the finished result above. I was going to have proper seats in it but have stripped it to two benches and some handrails in the sake of time. The mesh is probably 90% done, I just need to unwrap it and make room on the left side for the doors. It looks pretty basic but I'm going to add a lot of paneling detail in the normal map. A lot of reference I looked at showed some intricate machinery on the top and bottom, but the design of mine is that it is pretty much suspended from the top two leverages, which adjust in length to balance out the tram (so that it doesn't tilt crazily like my first roller-coaster-tram did).

Signs and Floors

In the past four days I've been focusing on my signs and shopfronts. I've finished the signs and I'm creating adverts that suit the universe my level is set in, focusing a lot on the high sea level concerns and what can be done about it. I've had to rely on fairly simplistic sentences and Google Translate here, as they do actually (probably poorly) translate to things like 'help restore Earth' and 'remember fields of green?' in the chance that anyone who can read Chinese sees my level. I've also thrown some references to friends FMP's in, just to break up all the Chinese (because there is actually an awful lot of English on Chinese adverts and signs).

So these aren't done yet, I'm probably going to change the EARTH logo I created (which is a shame because I even went to the effort of painting the Earth and covering large portions of China and Australia up in water). Below are the finished signs though, which I've started placing around the level. Below that is just a shot of how the main area of my FMP is (finally) fleshing out. I really need to look into how to realistically roof the buildings, as I've almost exhausted my current routine of 'put flats on top or the Chinese roof pieces'.

One thing I did which I probably should have left until later is add some street art and graffiti with the decals tool. That being said it does add a lot of character to the level, helping lift that grimy unclean look that had started to dawn on the place. I used some graffiti and street art from around Leicester that I sourced myself and created the rest from photos from external sources (either by painting a study of it and making it look more pop-art, or altering the photo within Photoshop with filters and various other tools).

I fiddled with the lighting again and returned it to being sunny, so I'm going to look into rolling cloud textures today, as the dawn lighting was simply far too moody and gloomy compared to what I want. I also edited my neon signs again so the glow is more realistic. Now that it is sunny again these are kind of washed out, but I'm going to keep them at least dimly lit, just to show that they are lit and I didn't just make static neon signs.

Lastly, I finally got my floor texture in, as my placeholder concrete one was driving me crazy with how ugly it was. I created the base tiling texture from some photos, then vertex painted a cracked texture on top. I used more photos for the cracks, and painted in and out some other cracks. It was very hard to get this one to tile nicely, so in the sake of time I left it tiling at a mediocre standard, and just carefully painted it over the base texture. I also tried to use CryEngine's displacement/parallax mapping and add some fake depth to it, which seems to have worked reasonably well. I would've liked to push it a little more but this created some nasty shadow banding so it's fine for now. 

Signs and Backdrops

Well, one month remains and I am in 100% lets-work-all-day-except-for-eating mode. It's extremely draining, but everyone works better under pressure and this is the final month before Uni is completely over, so one more month of intense work and May 6th is gonna be extremely satisfying to relax on.

Above was me just fiddling with glass shaders, as it was previously on Illum and not properly reflecting the cubemaps either. Below were my parameters I was fiddling with; I'm still not 100% done with them yet as I'd rather get more of the level assembled before doing the polishing work.

Basically my plan for this month is just to plow through my asset list. I've made some quick plans in my trusty notebook detailing what I am having on each texture sheet, which is very useful and reassuring as I don't need to worry as much about what to put on each texture sheet anymore. Below are some shots where I've started to add assets like the pipes, wires, aerials and using CryEngine's rope tool liberally for the docks (which as I've said before is great because it lets me break up the modularity without needing to model loads of slightly different length and taut ropes).

Another crucial thing I'm working on is the tram. Before I finish the model and texture it I want to make sure it actually moves through the level alright. While the animation won't be too difficult to do, just time-consuming, actually letting the player get in it has proved troublesome. I would keep clipping through the proxy no matter how slow it was going, unless I was constantly moving. So now I am going to look at having the player trigger a 'cutscene' as they walk into the tram, where the camera would place itself in the right place and follow the tram path up the top, where the player will be given control again.

Modelling a load of planks meant that the unwrap got extremely messy, but to keep it efficient I made a general wood texture that had been worn in the middle, to simulate the path most people take over a bridge (the centre), and moved all the planks around slightly on the unwrap.

After our final assessment I got straight to modelling signs as my level, apart from the rooftops and bridges, was lacking anything substantially Chinese. I keep worrying about my tri-limit, but I also keep forgetting CryEngine (and most other engines) can handle an intense amount of tri's - it's the textures that consume tonnes more memory. Plus, CryEngine's water is constantly hovering around 350,000 polys, so I don't think a few wires on some signs will make too much of a dent in that (and besides, the wires make it look so much more dynamic).

In order to add more contre-jour elements and strong chiaroscuro to the level I fiddled with the lighting again. After failing miserably at a sunset feel (which made the sky super ugly and the ground super orange) I settled on an early dawn-ish time, with some fog/smog (because it wouldn't be China without some level of pollution). While the day-time lighting kept the level looking happy and positive, like I wanted, it's extremely difficult to get nice contrasts in lighting with it. I may revert back to it if I get the time to add clouds and their shadows (something I was reading up on in CryDev earlier) as they would add some nice dynamic shadows to it all.

That being said I added some mountain planes to the backdrop so it wasn't just endless ocean which actually looked a lot nicer than I thought as the fog I had already created added a really nice silhouette to the ones against the sun. I used photo's online of the Zhangjiajie National Park as they have some really striking mountains and spliced them into a long panorama. Then I masked them out for the alpha and crushed it into a 1024x1024 (which kept the details surprisingly well) and applied it to a huge cylinder around my level. Below is the first result - I removed some of the mountains, fixed the fringing and duplicated and pushed it out some more to create even more depth, without cluttering it with too many mountains.

Luc rightly pointed out that these particular mountains are formed by river erosion so probably aren't as tall as other more viable Chinese mountains, but I'll keep them for now as they are really great silhouettes.

Right now I'm working on the non-neon signs and possibly adding some low poly mountains a little closer to the city. Once the signs are done I'm going to create the boats as I can't possibly leave the level finished with a completely vacant dock. I originally wanted to put sails on the boats but I'll see how that goes, as I can't afford to get wrapped up in little details now.