Week 12

5/4/10 - I completed chapter 5 of the dissertation draft; now I just have the conclusion left before going back over the entire thing and starting the long tidy-up process. I also rendered the last two characters on their plinths. Below is a montage video which I threw together in Movie Maker - low quality win! Of course once I have the final character I'll make a slick sexy video with all the bells and whistles.



6/4/10 - Today Abi and I met to discuss creating assets for the first two levels of the game; she agreed to take on everything in the tutorial and a few items in the first level. I have the rest of the assets for the first level. They are all static, and some will go in the game as low-poly models whilst others will be seen as renders. At the moment it is not important that they be textured.

Left: chopped grass stump (to be rendered).
Middle: lilypad (to go in-game).
Right: flower (to go in-game).

7/4/10 - Most of the day was taken up with the degree show meeting, where we discussed progress as usual. I had some time to do more assets for the level as well.

These leaves will be placed at assorted points in the level as renders. The vines will also be rendered and serve as climbing poles for enemies.

8/4/10 - I created the last two items on my asset list, the checkpoint tent and the pansies.


The tent will be an actual model in the game, whereas the pansies will be rendered in the background. Over the course of the evening I managed to UV unwrap and assign very basic textures to each of the level items, before creating the bare bones of a level mesh (which will be edited accordingly tomorrow).

9/4/10 - We started building the level in Unity today, and I created a low poly version of the lead bee based on Abi's concepts. We didn't get very far with level creation, so I set up my own mock-up in 3DS Max. The rendered items are not in yet, since I was unable to get clean transparency today; I plan to fill things in a bit tomorrow.

Low poly Bea (WIP name but I love it!) with a very basic colour texture applied.

The full mock-up of level 1-1. There is still a lot of scenery to be added but the low poly 3D models which will feature in the level are all there.

Zoomed in shots at various points in the level indicate how the game will look when being played. There are probably some scale issues at this early stage.

10/4/10 - I added some scenery to the level, which has ended up becoming quite a bit longer as I expected. Now all I have to do is add enemies in at the points specified on Abi's storyboard, and take comparison screenshots with the mixture of real 3D cgaracters and rendered characters. The screenshots below show the sequencing of the level.

I am pleased with how this is looking, aside from some annoying issues with transparency on the grass billboards. I'm not sure whether it would be a nicer idea to have some sort of fly-through video than just comparison stills...shall have to think on that one.

I also rendered out each low poly character; with Bea complete and textured properly now, we have a full roster of low poly characters - rejoice!!



11/4/10 - I wrote the conclusion of my dissertation draft - next week I will strive to re-read and tidy up what is there, and perhaps start adding references. I am not expecting to get much work done in the first half of the week however, since I will be away Monday through Thursday.

Today I also made a start on the high poly model of Bea and rendered each completed high poly character to a plain, before arranging some of them in the mockup level; I also arranged some low poly ants in the level as noted on the storyboard, for the purpose of comparison.

The beginning of mid-poly Bea.

Low poly ants in their enemy positions.

A collection of rendered characters just to show how they look.

In a higher quality picture, these little rendered characters would probably look really nice. The low poly ants look nice too. I shall have to set up some proper comparison images shortly and put them side-by-side. I will probably have the characters in the exact same positions in each picture, so as to draw a better visual comparison between the two methods.