EXP 2 - TMR

Well, here it is:

After Vourgin galactic turned out to be transport for the wealthiest and most powerful to start a temporary new world on Mars, life on Earth started to turn sour- mainly from the dirty bombs that were left behind to clear the land of human life.

A week before his martian trip, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe decided to airlift his building to a serene location, far from civilisaton to preserve his masterpiece.

After the bombs carried out their duty, Ludwigs' crew, knowing of the Pavilion's location, decided to travel there to wait it out. They were able to set up power, and treated their pools.

Then one day, complaints about a crewmembers hygiene during a birthday party resulted in delicious betrayal- a spiked punch. The smelly survivor, victorious in his treason, celebrated with a drink while overlooking the sublime beauty that is, The Misty Ring.

Spot the double joint ;)

Assignment starts now 4/11/13

OH MY G-G-GRAVEL BUMPMAP

Thanks to a kindly donated Geforce 9800 GTX, and a thorough registry cleanse...





We're online, baby.

EXP 2 - Week 3: Breakable objexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This takes a little effort and time, but in the end it's worth it.

Dummy: Limit = 100 

This means that after 100dmg it will break

Piece: mass = 200

entity

Gives it weight, and says that it's a thing

EXP 2 - Week 2: Bump maps and such

Before

After

2nd test

Before

 After

Week 8.5 (experiments)

So I decided to come in today and work on my CryEngine/3ds skills.

I was watching Last woman standing ep6 of northern mexico, and they had some sublime scenery- so I decided to replicate it. I then got caught up in using terraces- so now it's a mix of the two.

A few problems:

1. Too many poly's and shadows = game lagging out when surveying the landscape (around 30s at a time). [I guess that happens when you're doing 4kx4k on a uni comp]
2. It looks great from the top. It's realistic, all my layers are set up with angles and makes for quick editing. BUT when you get to the ground- it looks like poop. (textures not loading until really close, unless it's the cliff texture; splotchy paint and "pixels" of colour everywhere. Going to try different textures)
3. This program has more crashes than NeedForSpeed.

...

...

I came back to it after the 3ds session below

I can barely admire the view... 

Yeah so, that's that. On to 3ds..

I decided to try making a house from a house plan on GoogleImages..

Made a plane and applied the material..

Set snap to grid and fit the image to the grid..

Drew the walls in, attached all lines, set shape mod and gave it some height.

I've added segments so I can add windows and cover the doorways.

Here we go..

Yup.

Week 8 - 3ds 2DMAX

First week back at 3dsMax since 2007/8 - starting to recall everything, it's prety easy.

(shapes) Line *draw*, attach + (mod) shell = floor w holes 

(make sure to make the shape in an anti-clockwise direction)

Materials editor is new, slate is like CryDev's flowcharts. It's also easy to pick up.
Though, to be honest, I don't really like Slate, it's a little fidgety and you have to make the window large to see anything.

The lecture was interesting, I never really thought about material life in terms of architecture, and how different things will fail first. The harder and non-reactive a material is, the longer it lasts, so a marble house would outlast a wooden cabin- though environment comes into it, so perhaps the only way it'd be the other way around would be if the marble house was in a windy desert (which would be an awesome idea), and the cabin was in a vacuum bell.

Here's a pic of four textures applied.

 I need to find tiled textures for my project.

I also tried to export, but this keeps coming up - I think it's just about the 3.5.3 bugs atm

I was right - no 2014 plugins as of yet
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=324&t=109413

INDEPENDANT STUDY

BORDEAUX HOUSE

The most unconventional of the three, made from oddly shaped building blocks and materials. Things like winched concrete windows and large open areas are cool- it leaves a lot of space for furnature or great reflective surfaces. Will probably use this one, but we'll see how things go.

BARCELONA PAVILLION

To me this looks like a Roman bath in the 20/21st century- large open spaces, marble and straight edges.
If I chose this, it'd have a huge amount of dirt collection on certain walls and corners, the floor will be cracked and flora will be sprouting through, and most of the structure will still be standing.

RUDIN HOUSE

Cool little house. I had an idea for a house kind of like this, a while ago, though they went with the traditional style of housing. Pretty standard Sims2 housing. It is interesting how the front door is through stairs.

In regards to its shape; I think it's making a statement, rather than being an excellent piece of architecture.

Week 8 (EXP1 final)

Here it is.

Vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajgt2YsPceY

Files:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3bc8ah2thzzr1t7/JVUGCqZ4zz

Well, I'm gonna be late- Week 6 -> 7

Well, I guess I'm gonna be late.

Oh and they moved the voxel cube option in the rollover panel - which screwed me for caves and flying islands

Week 4 - Atmos fear

Well, here you go.

This is default 

 Amped up the sun for some ray on rock action

 Added snow, increased particles, added red fog, adjusted size and brightness of snow.

 It's all clear now - even the water

Rain added, sun pulled back, brought brightness and atmos to good levels.

All in all, a productive week

inbetween weeks rant

I spent 6 hours (from about 8 to 2am) doing work, and I've come to a few conclusions:

1- Making custom terrain is retarded. Why is everything based on randomisation?
I do realise that not many people have the time to place every square foot of space, but god damn is it hard to get what you want from drawing in GeoControl, or in CryEngine- it's pretty nuts.

1a- When moving terrain.raw into CryE, it's like terrain on steroids, it's about 5x as big as it needs to be, and forget re-sizing it, it's not a congruent scale - so all the valleys and pits lose their edge.

1b- Also, I have the annoying task of making an island out of I and 8. Not the most aesthetic combo.


2- After 3-4 hours, CryE crashed. My file became corrupted and I lost everything. I suppose that's my own fault for not saving separate files.

3- The materials editor is a little whacky. I can only seem to use 5 materials.. Sand, coal, pineneedles, limestone and grass.



I think the scale I'm working on is waaaay too big.
I think I'm going to work on a tiny island.

In any case- I feel like I got nothing done tonight.
F--- my computer for not working with this..

/rant

Week 02 - Now I'm mad

This is easy.

Fixing my PC is hard.

I can't work on this at home. I would be on this 24/7 if I could.

This is the culprit.

2008/2010 C++ installed

DX updated etc...

I gotta format and buy a new copy of windows.. 

Anyway, here's the sprouting seeds

I started with highly elevated tiny islands.

Then used Voxel object brushes to cut-out shapes I wanted

Testing to see if I could stand on these objects (explosions for style)

Added more stuff - this is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeasy

And I thought I wasted my time learning 3dsMax. 

I'll be a little behind with the homework

-_-

Week 01 - Yeah, u mad

CryEngine Blog

The text that you're reading now, is unimportant.
The upcoming text, however, is not.

Customising the Editor:

1- Hovering over editor buttons should display what they do, as well as the hotkey.
ie- hovering over the select tool will display a note saying "Select only (Q)"

2- The tickboxes in the properties panel (Right hand side) should only display the word true.
It's very confusing when you see the word false and an open box- to me that says that it is true (or not false)

3- When changing values in the properties panel, you should be able to click and drag up or down, wherever you want, to change the value. Clicking on the tiny up and down arrows is difficult, you have to be very precise.

4- Modify terrain needs brush shapes, like square.
It would also be helpful to have a height limiter in the settings, so that you don't create enormous spikes.

5- It would be nice to have a tickbox for entities or objects to react to environmental factors, such as gravity. This might be because I haven't found it yet, but it would be good to control what is static, and what's dynamic.

Moving around:

1- You can use the standard gaming WSAD (or arrow keys) controls for Forward/Backward L/R movement + right click for rotating the viewport. 

2- You can click "Goto position" and enter coordinates.

3- Shift double click will take you to the X and Y coordinates of your click. Z value will not change.

4- You can also right click on the word "Perspective" on the top left of the viewpanel to look at different types of views. Map is cool.

User Interface Panels - Overview.

1- CTRL + G - takes you into game mode. Great feature- huge likes.

2- CTRL + Z and CTRL + SHIFT + Z - Undo and redo

3- Z - Takes you to current selection. Handy for visually locating objects.

4- M - Opens the Material Editor

5- CTRL + T - This opens a list of all the objects in the scene, making finding objects easy.

Lecture:

The lecture was fine. It was a basic overview of what we needed to do, and informed me that UNSW has some new VR tech for use and experimentation. I would like to try this technology inside CryEngine and also add some of my own ideas to the project if possible.