Alright, i'm going to level, i havent done much of anything these last 2 weeks. I'm WAY behind in every class so i've had to work on catching up big time in all that. So, for the project,i'm way behind working on the dragon model. I've taken the model that healthy worked on for the dragon and started remodeling it to fit the design of the character. As I'm writing this the night before class I'm working on the model and by god i will get this damn model done before class.
Pros: Not much by I'm trying Cons: WAYYYY BEHIND
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These past 2 weeks have been pretty successful for me. We had a 4 hour long mocap shoot where we got both male and female animations. We started off with the more advanced takes which included dragon mounting, wall climbing, wall hanging, barrel rolls, and then we did some idles. After that we switched actors and brought in our female actor so we could have the variation. Since we had over 60 takes from the first shoot Ricardo and I decided to split up the takes so that we could get them all cleaned in the two weeks. Below I have videos of the clean shots in Vicon Blade.
I also met with Matt and we discussed how to proceed with the buildings for our villages. After meeting with Dr. Wagner we decided that we would go with a modular building system so we can easily create new buildings without having to fully remodel everything. However I had already made a model so I’ll also show that since it shares similarities in the architecture style.
Pros: Got more of the art figured out. We are scheduling another mocap shoot this week so expect new data!
Cons: The mocap clean-up took longer than expected. The shots were more complex and the ladder really screwed with the cameras. The past 2 weeks have been extremely productive for myself. The first week was spent primarily on setting up the map of the game and creating the logic of the moving islands and the logic of the islands being captured. This took an extremely long time due to my unfamiliarity with the AI and Navmesh systems of Unreal. This was done by connecting small, AI controllers, at the bottom of the floating islands which then drive the movement of the islands. This creates a pretty good movement, however they currently cannot see the borders of the other islands due to the way the navmesh works. Once this worked I was able to move on and set it so islands can be captured by players, and move to their respective bases. Next, I had to set up the logic of how the islands lock themselves and connect to the main base island of the team that captures it. This works off of 2 arrays which always fills the first open slot in the array. The logic of this got pretty funky, but works well After this, Ruben and I had spent time integrating our two separate projects together. This took some time, and file management got somewhat out of control, but the networked splitscreen now works on my map. This broke some of the current logic of the game as they were incompatible between the two maps, but Ruben is currently working on fixing that. Also I got perforce set up this weekend, so now the entire team can access the perforce server, checkout blueprints, and edit the project. I am still not entirely sure how to make branches of the main project, but that will be figured out this week
The biggest thing these past 2 weeks was our Motion Capture session,which gave me plenty to work on afterwards. Rob set up the studio, and I was not there until the second part of the session, so I missed everything Kevin acted for, but was present for the entirety of Aviva’s. We set up a Google Sheets doc, and took down notes for each take, which has been very helpful. Since I was not there for Kevin’s part of the session, I suggested Rob and I split up the work by who was actually in the studio. Kevin’s parts were more complicated, but there were a lot more takes for Aviva’s, so I thought it seemed fair, but Rob has been talking a lot about how what he has to clean up is harder than what I’m working on. I’m not sure if he’s bragging or complaining ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
So far I have exported 18 shots, and have looked through a bunch more that I determined were not good to use. First I do the Blade post-processing pipeline, and I watch the capture clip several times from different angles. One thing I have found to be helpful is to hide everything except for the solving bone, since it is what gets exported, and it is easier to spot any jerky movements than on the labeling bone. Almost all of the shots I have worked on are fairly simple, and the actor remains upright the entire time. There were some mistakes in the session, the two biggest ones were that a hand marker was on Aviva’s thigh for 17 takes, but it’s not a huge issue since the hands usually don’t give fine data, and have more markers than truly needed. The second is that the boots seemed to be a little loose, and flopped a lot when they hit the floor, and the takes that have running lose the auto label on most steps. That has mostly just created more work for clean up, but may have made the data overly shaky. I am making good use of the spreadsheet though, and taking detailed notes on the specifics of each take. Other than that I modeled a tower, which I was intending to make a lighthouse, but I think I would rather use this design for a simple tower, and save the lighthouse for something more obvious. Tower V1 by ricardotnet on Sketchfab These last two weeks I spent a lot of time working on the project. The problem the game had prior to these past two weeks was that we could not assign teams to the players after joining the host game. Now the teams will spawn in the correct locations based on which team they are assigned. This took a lot longer than expected using the blueprint system in Unreal. The issue with the set up the blueprint is that it technically lies to the user as of now and doesn't actually tell the game the game which team is which so this week I plan to fix that and actually have the players tagged to specific teams.
The programming team was also able to combine the various builds we were working on into a master build. This is great because we have a working demo of networking spawning with teams consisting of riders and dragons. Pros: We have a decent demo I completed my goals for the weeks Cons: There is still some catching up to do We need to tag the players to the correct teams to have this truly work #ruben #squadgoals This week Rob and I went really in depth about what we needed asset wise for the game and decided on a modular building system. We created a list of modular building pieces to create and started creating them. From this list, I have already made several different permutations of the modular stone walls we need.
Pros: We finally have a game plan about what we need to start making interesting environments. On top of that, I am finally feeling productive. Cons: No real cons from me this week. This week was less productive than I would have wanted. Between classes, work, and our game, I didn’t put as much time into modeling the character as I could have. I finished shaping the basic armors onto the characters. I was able to rig my existing base model and hand it off to our Mocap team for testing, but I made some mistakes with the rig and model and need to redo them so I feel like I was a bit counterproductive in that department.
Pros Luckily I started my model in the summer, so I’m not totally behind. My base shapes are finished, so I just need to finish integrating them into the model. I talked to the Mocap team and have a better understanding of rigs and am able to help out with that. Cons I didn’t finish modeling the character and I need begin skinning and texturing soon. I made it a priority to finish the first pass final model to showcase to Wagner before our meeting on Friday. All the remaining armor and accessories will be modeled and shaped without the extraneous details. These next few days will be crazy, but I have to get it done to get back on schedule. The past two weeks I had a really rough start. I put in less hours than I anticipated that I could. Week 6 I wanted to step in and begin on the dragon so we would only need to worry about shaping. So I pushed aside the environment and was able to help create a really rough base of our dragon with the right topology. The loops form around the eyes for blinking, the snout will be able to deform right, as well as the legs. Topology was my main concern. Shaping will be Riley’s task. This week I’ve started on the environment but I’m nowhere near where I would like to be. I planned on having 3 rough environment assets done and to be able to dive into substance painter and figure out a basic texture map for one of the 3 assets. I even don’t have one rough environmental asset complete. However, I found a set schedule where I can sit in the labs for the next 4 to 5 weeks for sProj. I will also be able to squeeze in at least 30 hours this week as well! I set deadlines to get the totems, 3 assets, and the texture guide done!!! No excuses, if I don’t get them done, then fail me while I’m behind! But please don’t.
Since I started on the environment, I am slowly getting a better grasp on how I need to model, which is much different than I’m used to. I know how long it will take to get done so I should be in decent shape by Friday, and caught up by Sunday. Pros: - I know how long it will take to get my stuff done. But I need to make the time to get it done. - The Dragon topology is done. Cons: - I spent a while on the dragon in zbrush, but in the end I ran into too many issues and redid it in Maya - Not enough time spent on project - Time spent on project not well spent The past couple of weeks have been difficult. Getting networking integrated into the game is one challenge, but getting splitscreen AND networking is even worse. As of now, we are able to join games via LAN networking. The client is able to connect to server after executing a command console command. I have created a UI where the user can host, search, and (one day) join a server. For some reason the client cannot find the server which is why we are using the command console. In this screenshot, the top and bottom player were being played on my laptop while Kevins laptop was home to the 2 players in the background. Networked splitscreen has set me back a decent amount. We still have to work on character controllers, the floating islands, and the game mode. We met a lot as a team to discuss game mechanics, programming, and to playtest our paper prototype.
Pros: Networking and splitscreen are almost fully integrated We have a much clearer idea of what we want our game to be We made a paper prototype to test out rules and mechanics We are communicating as a team much more often Cons: Programming is a lot more behind than expected For passed two weeks of this project week, I have been working on concept and research about the UI and the sound effects. I figured out that our logo is too complicated so, redesigned our logo. I have been working with the team and giving out some ideas that can be added towards our game. I also created main menu in Unreal engine and started concept and crating other menus for the game.
Pros: started to learn and implement through Unreal engine, bought a new mic for Foley. Cons: Having hard time using unreal since its the first time using it. |
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