Unit 4 - Maya
This is the first time using Maya. Our first task was to create a house so that we get used to how polygons work and get a feel for the software. Next we were creating a spaceship, for this we had to sculpt using high poly as the spaceship had to be streamlined. I redered using Mental Ray as I found it provides the best shadows using physical sunlight. Maya at first was hard to even move some shapes (even more to manipulate them), but once I got used to the controls and the plygons it became a walk in the park.
NY rooftop secondary research
Our task is to create a New York rooftop environment for a shooter game, so I decided to do some research on existing game that have combat on the rooftops. Even though Mirror's edge and Battlefield 4 aren't set in New York they provide me with useful ideas on how I should set up the cover using natural rooftop scenery. Mirror's edge particularly helped as you can clearly see the polygons due to its simplistic graphics and its white ad red attire.
The reason I chose to do a ruined new York i.e. chinatown, so that it adds to the feeling of the area being used for combat.
On this image I focused on the mini walls on the edges of buildings. - Made from bricks - Size to player - The enlarged layer on top I also used this image to see how the buildings are designed.
This is what I am aiming to do on my ruined and graphitized side of the NY rooftops. To achieve this I will use a bunch of walls with graffiti.
This image outlines how the models are made and used in mirror's edge. I used this image as a baseline for when adding aesthetics to my rooftops.
On this image I focused on the mini walls on the edges of buildings. - Made from bricks - Size to player - The enlarged layer on top I also used this image to see how the buildings are designed.
Asset research
These assets are to help me fill the rooftops so that theyre not just flat land.
- different styles of water towers will give the map variety and give the sence of progression as the player moves through the level. Having the same water tower duplicated all the time won't be interesting.
-antenna, because every house should have an antenna, and not all are a disc. Just as staded before with the water towers having one duplicated won't be ideal.
- I will have a train passing the play field so It's a good reference to look back at. Plus it will give the New York vibe as they are only seen there.
- Rooftop ligting is necessary as I might make the scene at night.
Source: GTA IV by Rockstar studios
Primary research
I went in game to a pretty old game (nearly 3 years old) and did some research on how the rooftops are designed to both look realistic and provide cover. They will assist me to decorate the rooftops and not make them flat and boring.
These images are taken in the game "Payday 2" by Overkill software.
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Development
A bird's eye view on the scene making sure no open space can be seen from the playfield.
The same deal here, the glass will be reflecting the building that's adjacent to it.
A bird's eye view on the scene making sure no open space can be seen from the playfield.
The fence is plane with a transparent texture, plus the railing supporting it cut down on polygons since they will appear on many places in my map. The texture on the railings is also stretched out so that it appears to be a pole with no pattern.
The area marked blue is where the player will be able to walk on. This is a single player map and therefore progressive; the player will first spawn on a well-built NYC then move on to a ruined state.
The glass is opaque so that there is no need to model the inside; instead I made the material shiny and very reflective. This will give the illusion of it being glass; you can see how the neighbouring building is reflected.
The fence is plane with a transparent texture, plus the railing supporting it cut down on polygons since they will appear on many places in my map. The texture on the railings is also stretched out so that it appears to be a pole with no pattern.
Evaluation
When researching I already had certain games in mind that will help me create my rooftop, other than those games I had in mind it was pretty hard to find other images as game images tend to focus on ground level detail and leave the rooftops just flat.
Modeling in maya becomes very easy once you get used to how the tools work, however texturing is a different story. First finding the correct texture is hard, I found myself scrolling through tonnes of metal textures to find one I need. Second applying the textue. Without planar the texture is all ruined, so that means you have to manually UV map every single texture, which is extremely time consuming. On top of that the textures have to fit its adjacent textures while being to scale. Texturing is what makes a great looking project, but it can also make it look a lot worse. The biggest problem with texturing was repetitive textures and them being too clean. To fix these issues I used bump mapping to add ripples in the texture.
Bump mapping - This is where you tell the render engine to add shadows so that it creates an illlusion where it seems to be more rounded than it really is. Instead of adding a bunch of polygons I used bump mapping mailnly on circular meshes, this saves a lot of polygins which optimizes the game to run smoothly. I also used bump mappig to make concrete seem more rigid rather than a flat surface.
Optimization - faces, textures and vertexes that could not be seen by the player were removed. This improves loading times and makes the graphics card's life easier. My goal was to use less than 100.000 polygons as that would be the breaking point of lag, I managed to complete the project in 62.000 polygons.
Edge loop and cut tool - Edge loop may be more practical as it makes a perfect 90 degree angle of your chosen edge, but I chose not to use it as it comes with a major drawback. Edge loop creates additional edges all around your polygon where in most cases these additional edges are not needed and just add to the performance issue. On the other had there is the cut tool which I used instead. The cut tool is a bit trickier as you have to go to 2D viepoints to make sure you are making a 90 degree edge, plus it only creates the edge on the face you are currently working on. The cut tool was better suited for my needs as I had building with many windows that I had to mark out to then extrude.
Fog - Fog was used to restrict the players vision so that he doesn's see outside the map, but the sun was stilll emitting a yellow glow which does not look realistic with the fog. To fix that I decreased the saturaion of the sunlight and decrased the brightness by a bit. This created the realistic cold light that naturally occurs during fogs.
Overall I'm happy with my work but I could still improve on texturing.
I made the showreel in Sony Vegas 12 as I'm familiar with the software, my friend gave me this awesome music and everything was going good except I rendered the images for 720p, so I was quite dissapointed when I couldn't render in 1080p which also caused some blur in the video.
 My work |  The division |
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-All bricks are on one polygon with no bump mappin. This improves performance but looks very flat
-Brick have bump mapping and eventual extruded bricks to make the wall seem more destroyed.
-HQ textures
-Uneven large stone bricks on top which are individually placed
-Non repeating texture
 My work |  The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) |
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In both images there are buildings which are just boxes with textures and there are some which are up close that are extruded. The quality of textures is very similar. A whole team is usually assigned to do texturing for a game plus it takes years to make a game. Compared to me where it took me less than 4 weeks and I was the only person doing everything, the Spider-man game looks pretty embarassing and dissapointing. Pider-man has windows which reflect sunlight on nearly all buildings whereas I have only one windows which the player slides on.