And the modular work begins...

So for the duration of February I'm gonna be making and placing my modular pieces into my level. I've planned and sketched out every single asset which I deem as 'necessary'. These are most of the pieces the level needs to populate the majority of it, and after these are done I will work on more unique assets like the garden and shops, and finally clutter assets like trash, bins, wires, etc. Below is also the tram colour schemes I did. I'm probably going to go with the middle one as it best reflects the levels overall colour scheme, but I may see what the first one looks like as it may stand out more and look more interesting.

Also, more grids! Making stuff I won't need green for completion is a bit deceptive, but it means once its all done, the whole thing will be green. This may not make much sense to someone else but I personally know exactly what I need to do and how to lay out and use my texture sheets, and I can use this grid to keep track of what needs doing.

Style Guides, Modulars and More!

Finally got round to scanning the stuff I had in my sketchbook today, so you can see where I'm at now. I've got the mandatory modular pieces sketched down, so most, if not all of February will be spent making these and their LODs and placing them into my level accordingly. I've read a few articles and posts on how best to approach building with modularity and I feel what I've written below will work nicely. Basically for the actual buildings themselves, I will be creating 3 or 4 tileable textures for them, which will be fairly neutral colours - these I can alter in CryENGINE in the material editor to give each building unique hues, making them seem more homely and personal. As the textures will be tileable I can preserve the UVs on the base building itself and quickly create many differently shaped buildings to stack on and next to each other, quickly creating indentations for windows and doors.
While the grid method is a very reliable way of creating seamless areas of levels, I don't see it of being tremendous use for a lot of my level as it is all very haphazardly built - there's no formulaic layout the people of the city are sticking to. This means I need to be careful where two pieces of geometry collide. For things like corner trims and placing windows and doors I can still snap to a grid, but for more 'organically' placed objects, such as wires, pipes and AC units, and also where two buildings at different angles meet, I'll need to be very careful  as to how they collide, or if something needs to be placed there to cover it up.
I will also create decals like cracks, stains and build-up of mold to further break up the textures. Once all of this is done, 70-80% of the level will already be finished. Then I will have the remaining two months left to focus on the more unique assets such as the shopfronts and also repeatable assets like signs, bridges and lanterns.

At the rate things are going I'm still confident I'll get everything essential done on time, but some things may end up not getting done in time. Originally the garden area was going to be extended scope, but as this has become a mandatory part of the level now, I'm going to switch it with sound effects and the lighthouse. The garden is the only part of the level where it is predominantly natural, which serves as a nice contrast to the rest of the man-made city. The lighthouse was merely just another unexplorable unique asset to populate the area. Sound effects were always going to be very low priority, as even though they add a huge amount to the experience, this is obviously an art course, so spending too much time on something I won't even probably touch in-industry will be a waste of time.
I also whipped up a colour/style guide today, which I'd been meaning to do for a while now. Nothing much to say about this as I've covered what I want my level to feel like when discussing my inspirations, but I did also add a section on what I want to avoid. This is because when I explain my idea to people I feel it sometimes comes across quite grim and claustrophobic, something I obviously don't want to emanate in my level.

I have a logo 'n shizz, yay

Not a major update today, I'll probably do a much larger one tomorrow once I've scanned some stuff in, but just an update to say I've made a logo for my FMP/City and also updated the blog's layout so hopefully it's a little more relatable to my project now. Not too sure about this logo as I'm obviously not a graphic designer (which everyone outside of my course seems to think I am for some reason), but I'm still pleased with it. Tried to capture a fairly 80s/90s postcard vibe, seeing as it's set in a alternate timeline where the Earth is mostly submerged in water. The Chinese at the bottom should translate into something similar to 'Earth's best hub for all your adventuring needs!' referencing that my city is a hypothetical hub for players in an explorative MMORPG. Fúchéng itself translates to 'Floating City', nothing too clever but sensible enough. Unfortunately 'Upon-the-Sea' translated to Shanghai.

Chinatown and tonnes of other Ref!

Finally posting up this blog post after arriving back in Leicester. Over the weekend I visited Chinatown in London not actually expecting all that much (in all honesty it was just to show that I went that extra mile in getting first-hand reference for myself) but it actually turned out far more useful than I had hoped. Most people I spoke to about it said it was literally just a street, but it was around 5 or 6 streets and alleys, all housing a large number of Chinese and occasionally other oriental shops. I got a load of reference for things like general clutter and structure too. I can hopefully Photoshop and use a lot of these textures for my shopfronts and signs I want scattered through the level.
I've also taken the time to place all my necessary first-hand reference into my FMP folder, which is mainly collections of photos I've taken around Leicester, alongside the texture gallery I've built up over the years for myself. I'm not sure how important all this is when it comes to marking and whatnot, but I always like to submit my work with all the reference I obtained myself anyway as it shows I haven't just nabbed the pictures off of the internet (and if I do have to do that for textures I can't personally obtain I always source where I got it from). So above is a snapshot of some of the photos I took around Leicester that I think will come in handy, and below is a snapshot of some of the photos I took in London on Saturday.

Above is another snapshot of textures I've collected over the years, the ones in the photo being the most recent. Again, I'm gonna delete the ones I don't think I'll use (such as the fire hydrant ones) but some I've found always come in handy when you need to grunge something up. Below is a snapshot of my general reference gallery; photos and artists I've gathered the past 6 months that have directly influenced my FMP. Some of these I haven't sourced as they are merely just to get me thinking and such; I won't actually be using them in my project unlike the textures I have. For real life inspiration (considering I've already done blog posts on all the artists and games that inspire me) I mainly looked at Hong Kong and Tokyo's streets, mainly for the stuff above street level - the signs and AC Units, pipes and wires everywhere, but some more obscure stuff got me inspired too, like the Abraj Al Bait towers (which prompted me to have a large clock at the centre of my shopping area).

Finally, just thought I'd post up some random textures and photos I'm gonna be using, so you can see some in higher quality than the thumbnails above.

Some serious lens distortion on this as I didn't want to step into the road, but nothing Photoshop can't fix! 

I was quite lucky to go when I did - the area is preparing for Chinese New Year next weekend, but if I went then it would've been way too busy to take some of the shop front photos free of people. I really like the shot below as it encompasses pretty much everything I want in my level - air conditioner units, window boxes, Chinese lanterns, signs, wires, etc.

I'm really glad there was so much stuff like this, as it's just random signs and such that I can plop around the level as decals, and means I won't have to rely on Google's not entirely reliable Translate function to do all my writing for me.

In CryEngine

Just another quick update on some more whitebox fixes. I keep posting saying it's done but then something else pops up. It's good to make sure the whitebox is fully finished before creating the level though, as it ensures I know exactly where everything should go. The texture I applied was just some random default CryEngine concrete texture so that I could get rid of the dark red 'REPLACE ME' texture.

This area is the biggest problem at the moment, as the tram rail leads the player through an alleyway that leads to a dead end, instead of to where the tram entrance is. I'll probably rectify this by adding a bridge to the dead end, and converting the original path into a more open area (but still an alternate route).

Quick Update

Got some feedback today from Max and others on my whitebox, so above is what I've changed. I'm hoping it's final now, all that's left to do is play-test it in CryEngine. Also I'm sorry about the weird orange tinge going on, Bloggers upload is doing that for some reason. In regards to the tram going through the street, I want it to have the same 'non-threatening' sort of imposition as the train below when passing through (though obviously not at ground level).

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.