Flag Asset - Post Alpha

During my Pre-alpha stage of development I spent a lot of time trying to animated my flag and use the animation within UDK, unfortunately UDK kept hitting errors and crashing and I could not find anyway pass this, Although I could spend more time looking into this I think at my current stage there are other assets, texture work which need more attention.

So I started thinking of way that I could fake some kind of movement of the flag as there are seen from a far that helps, I started looking at how I developed my water shader and how it works within UDK using various expressions such as Pannar to get the actual sense of movement.

Inside the material for my Flag asset I decided to re-use my normal map texture I used on my water shader for a ripple effect, using a very slow setting on the pannar this worked very well, I added a second normal map for more definition as the normal passes along the texture, Although this is not perfect I feel at this point in time it works and because I used my previous normal maps this has optimized my time that I would of spent trying to accomplish a full fledged animation.

Displacement Map - Post Alpha

Displacement maps as stated previously is a totally new area which I never really worked with in any of my previous work, as you can see from the GIF. Below This was my process of in developing a height map which would define the height within my displacement map, White is for the height and black defines a more flat surface, I added blocks of pure white over a select few of the stone work within the texture map, this is to push out the stones more so than the others.

Figure 1. GIF

Figure 2

Figure 3

When working on this I found that is started to look very grainy and mess which is not what I wanted using the parameters within the BumpOffset I was able to clear out and define the shape of the texture map as shown in Figure 4. 

Figure 4

Post Alpha - Gantt Chart

I produced a Gantt Chart, which dates from Alpha presentation (week 8) to final week (week 15), I have added each task and asset needed for completion of my scene, each asset is colour coded from which will take/need most attention, Red being most and green being least, I also broke the tasks up for more clarity e.g. Main tasks, Texture work, Kismet and presentation.

I have also tasked each from week to week instead of days and dedicated a set amount of hours each week to hit targets and gave myself personal deadlines in-which I must complete the set tasks by.

Water Shader & Cube Maps

Water shader, This was a massive stepping stone as an artist myself as I have never attempted to create such an in-depth shader, this took a lot of time when learning what nodes/expressions within the material editor do what, and how I can create a water effect which would fit my scene/concept.

To gain the reflection needed that would relate to my environment I produced a cube map, which renders out images in various directions, these images are then used within the shader to create the desired reflection.
Once I rendered out my cube map I only used one of the rendered images as seen below I used the image of the sky dome being used within my scene this gave the reflection of the sky across my water shader. Worked very well in reflected the color of the sky dome the pinks and oranges bringing to life the water shader.

Cube Map Render Target

Render used for shader

Once I had my water shader looking the way I wanted and reacting to my scene, for example the water depth and how it changes the actual mesh beneath even though this water shader is applied to a single plan mesh, After this was done I started looking at the flow of the water shader, as you can see from the three images below I changed the water shader settings to give a varied effect of the water flow, Figure.1 shows a more think and dense water flow where as figure.2 and 3. have a more disperse water flow.

As my scene is based around some kind of canal or sewer running through a medieval city/village, I can only assume that it is a man-made so the water flow would be quite mucky, dark and also have a more dense water flow, I will still be working on this water shader until the final hand-in as it is a massive dynamic part of my overall scene I feel it needs the most attention.

Figure.1

Figure.2

Figure.3

Modular Assets - More Trims

As you can see in the Figure.1 the wall is very bland as does not offer much shape, as I working on a medieval scene I started looking at castle walls, and decided to go from there.

Figure.1

Figure.2 shows a simply modular asset which connects to the top of each modular wall piece, this helps me create a diverse scene with only two simple assets, it not only breaks up the geometry but also adds extra shadow definition across the whole scene.

Figure.2

Flag Physics

Within my Scene I have various city flags places around the scene, as they currently stand they are very static, To bring the scene to life I wanted to add some kind of animation to the flag assets, I found this is accomplished by using various tools within Auto desk Maya as well as the physics tool inside UDK.

I started looking at the nDynamic section within Maya and It allowed me to create some kind of cloth animation using nCloth I used a preset "T-shirt" as I thought this would give me the effect I wanted which as you can see from the Gif below is did offer somewhat to the desired effect.

I hit a block wall and could not understand the process in-which you export this mesh with animations and import within UDK, So I started looking through online resources  and couldn't find much to help this issue, This is still at work in progress but for my final scene I will plan to have some kind of cloth physics working with the flag mesh.