Outdoor museum?

I rebuilt the terrain to look more like the natural landscape of Lough Gur. I roughly copied the shape of the lake. I placed mountains around it. These do not follow the topography of the real Lough Gur, as I would need access to digital maps to be able to do a really accurate depiction, so I decided it was best to approximate it and take artistic license with it. I imported my assets with textures, and the size of the assets compared to the terrain was not what I expected it to be. I tweaked things a little bit, and then placed the plinth and macehead next to the lake. I really like the way this looks, and I would actually really like to leave it like this and do away with the architecture. The idea here would be to dot several plinths around the landscape and have the user navigate to them, clicking on each item for information. It allows for an outdoor museum where you can look at the objects in the context of the environment rather than inside a building. I may still place the crannog somewhere as a museum object, but I think the idea of the openair museum is much more engaging, and I prefer the aesthetic sense of it.

Inside the museum

I may not have the textures sorted out yet, but I have a macehead on a plinth inside the crannog-museum, which is progress. I'm not made about the scaling here - I modelled all the game assets to scale in 3ds max and it looks like I have a lot of extra space in the museum that I don't need. I think the scaling is actually correct though, I think it's just that I expected it to look a little bit different. I thought I might have time to model some extra objects, but because the macehead took so long, coupled with the fact that many other Lough Gur objects are of much more unusual shape, made me stick to just one. In a larger scale production I would definitely model more - I would have liked to have the shield done. I tried to get the texturing sorted as well, but to no avail as yet. I think the key is to obtain full functionality at the moment, and to worry about the rest later.

I do also have a first person controller in this scene, but I need to add colliders to the objects to prevent the FPC walking where it shouldn't be walking, and I also need to animate the macehead and add the webpage with all its information.

Progress with Unity and 3ds max

I have created most of my sample scene using Unity. If I have time I will go back and create one that matches more correctly the shape and topography of the Lough Gur area, but at the moment I just want to make sure everything works. I have imported the crannog, and the plinth is in there somewhere as well. The textures have not transferred. They transferred easily the last time I tried this so I will have to go troubleshooting. I might also make the terrain smaller as there is only a small playable part of the scene and it is a little swamped by all the scenery. I used an overcast skybox, because it's probably more realistic for the Limerick area.

Note: I think the issue with the textures is just a settings problem ie. I didn't check a box that I should have checked. Will sort this out later on, going to continue with the functionality of the scene for now.

 

 

 

 

 

3ds Max Macehead

It took a very long time but I finally got my macehead to look like I want it to. It was a long process of using the boolean feature to make it look the correct shape. I tried to sculpt it from a cylinder or lathe the correct shape but neither of these approaches worked. I also tried to join the vertices of the individual shapes together for a more seamless surface by selecting individual vertices but this approach was not satisfactory either. Texturing is still needed but I am happy with the progress on this at the moment.

 

More 3Ds max assets

Unity 4.1 has been installed to my machine in college but at the moment my files will not open in it. This is very frustrating as I had planned to do a lot of work in Unity today. I did manage to import my crannog to a new project in Unity by converting the max file to .fbx and bringing the textures in separately, but none of my older projects will work at the moment. Instead I decided to make some more assets for inside my museum, including a plinth with a cushion on top. This isn't done with the correct textures, but I did learn some interesting things about texturing for the purposes of the project. I think for my crannog I need to up the values in real-world map size to make the mud texture look more realistic. I might also attach a separate bump map instead of relying on attaching the mud texture to both bump and diffuse. Here is an image of my cushion file:

The swirl pattern you can see on the cushion is actually added to the bump setting so it looks like the swirl pattern is indented into the pillow. I will do some more work on this over the weekend.

The tutorial I followed is here:

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

Objects in 3Ds Max

I have made a crannog that will provide the setting for the museum in 3Ds max, and I'm in the process of making a macehead, one of the items in the museum. At the moment I have no plans to put more objects into the museum as the project is just a prototype. The object creation for the crannog was very simple; I made a circle spline and extruded it, then applied a shell modifier to create thickness. I converted it to an editable poly, and cut the door out of it using the Boolean compound object. The roof is a sphere cut in half and then reshaped using soft selection and scale. The textures are problematic; I have a straw texture on the roof which looks okay but not perfect, and any mud texture that I have tried to make does not render properly, so I will have to find a solution to that. The macehead is proving more problematic still; I've been working on it for a while and I've been using the Boolean compound object to create the shape I need, but this causes problems with the topology and the textures. The different smoothing modifiers aren't of much use in this regard. I have also tried to create a line and then add a lathe modifier to achieve the shape I'm looking for, but that hasn't been successful. Back to the drawing board for the moment...

More Unity

I'm exploring the use of scripting in Unity which has proved really helpful. What I'm doing is JavaScript based, which is great because we did it last semester so I've a head start on the understanding of it. It has been quite straightforward so far. As well as that, I've been able to create scenes with controllers that I can navigate with. Unity has a lot of templates for outdoor terrains, but unfortunately none for indoor terrains so I will have to model those in 3ds Max. I've really been enjoying working with Unity so far. Simple commands can have really cool effects.

 

Modelling the objects

Each of the objects in the museum must be modelled as accurately as possible. This involves measuring the objects based on the measurements given by the documentation. For example, this macehead from Lough Gur is on display in the British Museum, and the museum's website provides measurements for length and diameter. However, as the object is not a uniform shape, I have to calculate the measurements for the varying parts of the object. I am using an image in Photoshop, scaled in proportion, and I am using the rulers in Photoshop to calculate the various measurements.

The lines of measurement can be seen here. I am hoping that this level of precision will lead to an accurately modelled object.

I began modelling the object in 3ds max. My initial idea was to model it using Boolean operations to create a compound object made from cones and spheres. I did this on Friday but it didn't provide the desired effect. My current theory is to using the loft function in compound objects, as this allows me to more precisely model an object with non-uniform properties.

Unity

Getting to know Unity at the moment, and working my way through the Lynda.com tutorials. The interface is much different to 3DS Max and Maya, but a lot of the controls are the same, which is useful. Really looking forward to exploring the possibilities here :)

I have some sketches made for the design of my museum itself, I will scan them in soon. It's been tough to figure out the architecture, but interesting nonetheless.

Project Progress

I spent most of last weekend trying to download Maya and install it to my computer, which took a lot longer than expected, as there was a corrupted Autodesk download assistant on my hard drive that was there since I downloaded 3DS Max in September. After eventually sorting out this problem, I attempted to transfer a simple box animation from 3DS Max to Maya to see how long it would take me and what it required. I followed an online tutorial but I couldn't get it to work just yet. I'll try again tomorrow; it looks like it's going to be a process of trial and error.