Working on Environment modeling (Buildings)

Started to model things, long back, for the test level we are making the Kathipara area, so we are working on the buildings located in that area. No updates today. Good news for me is moved to 3ds max.

Not Worked today.

Today, it was not a good day for me, because I was not in the mood to work, even though tried to model something irrelevant to this project. Its a face model, I started with decent edge-loop, taught by one of my prof. I hope I will be finishing it tonight, had to work on project after completing this.

Basic-Concept-Sketch

Today, I had a issue with my laptop, which made me to re-install the device drivers, it took a long time to get a updated driver, so it made me late today, I didn't go to college today because I got too late. So I informed my friend Allen about this, and started to sketch few concept art, which is based on the Chennai buildings. I took reference from the image I shot last day.

This is a building, I have started to model in 3ds max, However, I don't know unwrapping in 3ds max, I will learn it ASAP,  I will update the model, sooner this weeks, And we are running out of time.

Unlucky day----

As Scheduled, today I went to Guindy to get better pictures of the location, which is really hard to get from Google Images. I stopped my bike before the Kathipara Fly-over and walked with my cam, and people were looking, why this guy is walking on this Fly-over, because I was the only person walking at the time. And started to get some pics, I snapped 45 pics, later my camera's battery went down, OMG, I forgot to put the battery in charge, waste of time, I came back home after having a apple juice.

This is something like unlucky..but I will make this lucky!
See you soon with a decent update.

I thank all my followers and people who viewed my blog so far, because I have reached 1000 + views today.

Thanks for all your support till date, I hope this continues till this project come's up successfully. 

Le-Meridian-First-look

My Maya is not functioning , This is causing me delay in my work, even though I am putting my best, there is always something is ready to spoil my work or my flow/ speed!

This Building I should have completed a week ago, And for now I should have completed 3 building, but because of the maya bugs, I am locked here. And I am so frustrated, this even spoils my daily update on blog.

Anyway, I sat with this Maya and done somethings to show you, please comment on it, and don't expect for a high quality for now.

What you see here is just a color map applied version, Still it has lot of works, like AO map, Normal map, Specularity and things. Tree & pillar's, sorry again, I have not finished it. I am moving to 3ds max for the better stability.

Thank god, we have started to work on our project in the beginning, if this issue would have happened in the end, we are dead!

Working on Texturing

Today I started the remaining part of the unwrapping, and I completed the unwrapping at 4.30pm today evening, and I saved the file, and I was trying to get UV snapshot..My Maya gone BUFFF!!! No movement
Nothing..I was waiting for it to Respond..but waste of half-an hour.

I came home from college, during my travelling I was discussing with my team mate on Skype, about our Schedule , and dates for the first prototype. And he asked me to gather some picture for today, so I went into Google and found some photographs which are relevant to our prototype, and I sent the link to the team mate.

After having my dinner I started to look at few unity tutorials for writing a Shader, which is a Chrome shader,
for the reflective material like glass on the building, I just want the window of the building to reflect the environment, and Unity forum helped me in this. As I am a newbie with all this stuff, and to say the least, I am a very new guy to unity, don't know A.. don't know B.

Now I am in the texturing process, but still my maya trouble me alot. Sorry, for not updating the textured Image, because I am working on it, And I know I am taking too long to do this. Anyway, this is making me to learn some new things!

A Tough and valuable day! The Day is saved!

Unwrapping - Slowed down the speed.

Started and gonna complete the unwrapping, I started to correct some  floating

vertices during the process of unwrapping, I find certain areas slow downing my

work speed. However its almost 70% done. 

Gone through some Unity Plug-ins and found one useful plug-in " Easy road3d "

its available as a free version and commercial version, using this plug-in, its easy

to create road's, tunnels, Rail tracks, Rivers.

This reduce your time, but you want some thing good, then you have to make road

on your own , in the Hard way. Instead of using the Easy plug-in.

Back to project, My model was looking good, but after unwrapping some areas had

black/dark spots, mesh flow was alright, but I don't know why this happened all of a

sudden. I know it came after unwrapping, but I don't know how to solve this issue,

Now I am worried about this because, once I apply the diffuse map, it may have the 

same effects. And this is being a important & iconic building in the game, I got to rectify

it. Else I am Dead!

Pillars & trees!

The Le-Meridien is in its Final stage of modeling, only the pillars are remaining to be modeled, and I will be posting the Fully finished one ASAP.

Initially I planned to do texturing today, but I had few corrections to do on the building and I have modeled the basement and parking area in the building and also the compound walls. For the gate I will be using a simple plain.

My blog view have reached 500+, thanks for the followers and viewers for their support, I hope this continues till I complete my project successfully.

Thanks for everyone.

KON-fusing-Kathipara!

Today, me & Allen decided what all should be in the demo/test level, and later Allen completed the High poly version of the petrol Bunk, We have decided to do 5 sets of Petrol Bunk, and the 1st one is done in High-poly, I got to complete it in the low poly.

Allen Rendered the high poly version. And the link for High-poly version is http://maverickworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/11/sleepy.html

This is done by Allen.

My next post will be with finished work of royal meridian.

The kathipara Flyover, we decided to model it, we discussed for 1hour and got confused because of the Google maps direction arrow marks, and the four curves in the road. We have planned to sort it by tomorrow.
i hope it goes well so far.

Restless days!

Today I was working on the pilot study, and still some part of its are remaining unfinished, how ever I will get it done tonight, And have no time, I got to complete the Le-Meridian and got to start work on the Test road map.

Restless days will gain us in the end!

1st update on Environment modeling.

This is the base mesh of  "Le Royal Meridian hotel",
hmm..I just want to do this is Z brush so that I can add
a good detail to this base mesh.

This model will not have roof top and back side, because
its not visible during game play.

Errrr.......Re-topologize!

The day started with some Z brush Tutorials, I was working on the 3D model of Le Royal Meridian hotel, I was trying to sculpt the Details through Z brush, but I had some issue's with the mesh correction, I asked Harish sir about it, but he was busy with his other class, so told me to come early tomorrow, so that he will be taking a special class on my "Doubt". "It is worth for me to learn some thing useful at the end"

Updating Pilot Study

Today I came early to college and started to work on the pilot study, which was left unfinished.
Later my team mate came and joined me, we completed the initial plot for the game , Allen was
working on the GDD, and its almost over (base).

We planned to start the night stay from today,but unfortunately the college had some issues in night stay, so they told that this week and the next week we can't do night stay.

Not a good day for me!

hmm, today I was reading about Normal maps and parallax maps
And
No one was there in college except me, So I can home early!

Not a good day for me.

Cut-Shorting the Map!

hmm, today, Me & my team mate Allen worked on the Chennai map, which I previously did,
The map which I did was really big and it was a image of Google maps, which I joined in Photoshop.

In order to have good racing track and landmark and good representation of Chennai we picked the very important places alone and made them, so that it will fit into the game with no trouble(we hope so).

After I cut shorted the map, then I gave it to Allen as 5 separate images, which he took into illustrator and removed many unwanted street's and lanes, so now the map looks fine. I will thank Allen for this great JOB.

Good job Allen.

The map will Include:

Guindy,
Saidapet,
T.nagar,
Teynampet,
Thousand lights,
Mount road,
Parrys,
Chennai Central,
Triplicane,
Santhome,
Adayar,
Velacherry,
Meenambakam,
Tambaram Bypass.

Chennai map!

Ah...As we initially decided, I took around 4 hours to get a detailed map of Chennai, using Google maps.
Now the map is too big, and has lots of twist & turns, So I have decided to Edit most of the unwanted roads and Highways, so that it fits into to the game.

And the Map will Cover:

Guindy,
Saidapet,
Anna Nagar,
Mylapore,
Velacherry,
Parrys,
Egmore,
Royepetta,
Teynampet,
T.Nagar &Nungambakkam,
Mount Road,
Marina Beach.

So I have decide to remove many roads, so that it will be easy for the player to just concentrate on the track, and it will give the player a smooth drive.

I work so hard to get done this Initial map, Photoshop started to hang, because of the resolution , it was 7048X 6879.

When I was working on photoshop, the size of this map was 159 mb, then I saved it for web & devices, so its now 3.6mb...Really big!

Re-working on Ambassador

Hmm, after few times of modeling the Ambassador, every time I ended with the messy mesh flow, so altogether
I have restarted the modeling process of Ambassador, as hard work never fails, this time the mesh flow is coming good and I hope it will end up with a fine model. After all seeing the GTA5 trailer, I was so impressed and I want to maintain the details for not only the cars, but also the environment, so I think I got to discuss alot with my one & only team "Maverick. A.k.A Allen Paulson"

Epic advice from epic studios, from a Epic designer "Lee Perry" -

"Don't be the kind of designer that writes a document then wanders around the street like a homeless guy, trying to get someone to make your game ... Don't be so dependent on everyone else to make your stuff happen." 

November 1, 2011
Lee Perry, lead designer at Gears of War developer Epic Games, encouraged game designers to take their fate into their own hands, saying they should use tools to prototype and "sell" interesting ideas to the rest of the development team. By using proof-of-concept maps instead of written design documents, designers can save time and more clearly show how a concept will work, in video form, he told an audience at the Gamasutra-attended Montreal International Game Summit on Tuesday. For example, one day Perry was sitting at his desk using Epic's Unreal Engine 3 scripting tool, Kismet. Playing with a prototype when developing the original Gears of War from 2006, he increased the size of a character model by 25 percent, then added a helmet to the creature's belly to give it a big gut. He added a "Booooom" sound, showed it to others in the studio who loved the idea, and the iconic Gears "Boomer" enemy was born, in prototype form. Relying on a proof-of-concept rather than a written design doc (basically, proof-of-concepts are visual design documents, Perry said), means that designers can spend fewer resources and time to try out a new idea. It also is much clearer whether or not that idea will work. Written documents have a place, but more for explaining ideas that were proven through proof of concepts. This reliance on designers was evident for the sequel, Gears of War 2. Perry said Gears 2 only had one programmer working on it for the first six months of development. Perry stressed the importance of putting tools in the hands of competent designers. Other instances of prototyping using Kismet included the creation of the Bloodmount, giant "cover worm" and Shield Boomer enemies, all of which shipped in Gears games. One of the cover elements in the Gears series allows players to kick a table or other object over and use it as cover. That feature was a Kismet effort that worked so well, Perry said Epic just left the Kismet version in the game, with no additional coding. "Yay, free feature!" he joked. Another upside of this method of prototyping isn't just discovering what's usable, but also what's not. Epic tried different camera systems, weapons and enemies that just didn't work. But with the rapid pace of the prototyping, scrapping an idea might mean only losing maybe a 8-10 hours of work. Designers implemented existing assets in resourceful ways. For instance, in Gears of War 3, players can step into and use a powered exoskeleton called a Silverback. An invisible Boomer served as the basis for the suit. When you cut through the arteries of the giant worm in Gears 2, those cutting points are invisible Wretches (ape-like Locust enemies). Typically, after everyone gets on board with the prototype, then the idea goes through the regular process of polishing and placement into a game. Creating a proof-of-concept map is best done by as few designers as possible - one is optimal, said Perry. "All this means is it's a person, maybe two, but keep it as few people possible to keep this pure, fast vision," said Perry. "...All that these are supposed to be doing is create interest within the team." It's the "salesmanship" aspect that is also a benefit to creating proof-of-concepts, as it lets designers champion their ideas. At one point during the development of Gears 3, Perry created controls for the enemy beasts - while there were naysayers (the wide array of enemies moved and attacked in various ways), a quick proof-of-concept showed that controlling these beasts worked, and it got a rise out of the team. So then the well-received multiplayer Beast Mode was born, and shipped in Gears 3. Creating these prototypes is not as complicated as it might seem, he argued. Perry said designers can repurpose trigger events, move objects, attach objects and triggers, play sounds and visual effects, use cameras like any object, dummy fire weapons or trap controller inputs in order to create something new - no coding required. "With any two or three of these things, you can prototype a lot of cool stuff. It's not as complicated as it is in your head," he said. "...Just because [a designer is] not a programmer doesn't mean that they cannot make cool stuff that you can learn from." Likewise, a coder can be more than the clean-up crew, and try their hand at designing using this method, he said. "Don't be the kind of designer that writes a document then wanders around the street like a homeless guy, trying to get someone to make your game ... Don't be so dependent on everyone else to make your stuff happen." He said that designers have the tendency to become the food critic instead of the chef -- that they become naysayers instead of the doers. While the food critic approach might work for some, Perry said, "I believe designers need to be like chefs. They need know how to cook. ... You need to be able to criticize, but you need to be able to know how to cook." Perry told attendees to find people on their teams capable of this kind of prototyping, give them tools to do this and have them use assets from unexpected places. And most of all, don't let naysayers talk you out of an idea until you've proven whether or not that idea can work. "If there's one thing you take out of this, find a way to take lots and lots of small risks. ... The project will be better because you tried lots of stuff," he said.

Bad Internet connection!

Ah!!..I don't know why BSNL keeps their service down often...I had a bad network for the past few day,
which caused me the delay in updating the blog. After complaining to the officials I got my connection with
correct speed.

I am currently working on 2 things,  1 is the Ambassador & 2 is the Le Royal Meridian Hotel.
This will be the 1st building I am modelling for this project, hope it turns well.

And its a big surprise happened in class today, after 2 weeks the regular (irregular) designers turned back to college because of the warning from Harish sir. And we have some class on dissertation by Priyanka mam , tomorrow.