Whiteboxing mark 4

Although mark 3 went quite well I still wasn't 'feeling' it, couldnt get into the groove so it seemed. I basically tried another variation and moved stuff around, tried more of a field section on a different level rather than up on a bit of rock. as in previous attempts it starts with going down a road then down a bit of a slope to the village.



I tried to stay in keeping with this rock over grass idea for the level, just for a test (think of them large rock things placed in my white box as this)In Whitebox it doesn't look too impressive but I think it might work alright. Ill have to try and find somewhere with that sort of thing for proper reference though. Yeah
what you see is what you get, in keeping with things experimented with in previous whiteboxes. Although its probably the best Whitebox to date i'm still not quite there yet with how I want it to be. It simply needs explored some more but its getting there.. its getting there..

Whiteboxing Mark 3

I completly forgotton but during the summer I went to an Arts in Action fair in oxfordshire. It was as commercial as they get.. wasnt terribly interesting to be honest but the actual house which It was based there was a little museum full of all wonderful and deadly looking agricultural tools.

There were quite a lot condensed into 1 small space but it was all very interesting - apparently some of the tools were banned at their time for their lethal nature. With looking at that field idea form Fable surley I could incorporate these in my project somehow.

Anyway yes after looking at this and my other moodboards last post I tried doing another whitebox, my third attempt.



So based on the above reference I tried to make more of a working village with a bit of a field (towards the middle of the image) having it sort of overhanging the river. So far im liking how this is going. I also incorporated
this into the level on the bottom right of the image. I think it helps make it look more natural and interesting than a few bushes spread around the river.
I also thought that I could have one of the large broads on the other side (but inaccessible, perhaps with a little ship or something bobbing up and down.

Whiteboxing Mark 2

Ok for Mark 2 I was playing around with the idea of having the settlement a bit closer to the harbor and having the area surrounded by rocky terrain loosely based on what I seen in Fable 2's Oakfield village.

The idea of compressing the village a little more is what I was mainly going for in comparison to the actual Anglo-Saxon village I went to. With Mark 1, since I wasn't happy with it I stopped before i thought about the actual wooden harbor.

I seen an improovement with this whitebox from the previous but I still wasn't really getting it. I stopped at that point seen in this image as I wanted to try from the start again.

Before Going into it again I had a little break and had a look around the levels in question in Assassins Creed and Fable 2. I remember in the first one there was a little harbor in the "Kingdom" section of Assassins Creed.



Once again this is the middle-east rather than Britain which I think my village will be set in. I did look through my riverside photos I taken in Norfolk but none of them actually had anything like this around. A lot of the moorings were done at the sides of the banks with modern wooden beams and posts, I didn't want boats tied up like that in my FMP as it wasnt true to the time period I was going for and also I wanted to suggest that this village had a working fishing and eeling buisiness.

In fact the harbor is pretty plain but with plenty of posts and areas to moor up.
Also in my norfolk research I taken a photo of a boat house which I thought I could have as part of my village for the more expensive boats.

I thought it was useful also due to the fact that it looked a little dilapidated.

Yes after Assassins creed I looked at Fable 2 again.


I liked the farming element also in this village which I could maybe incorporate with my level to give it a sense of a working village. Also it would make sense for the village to have their own things to sell rather than imported stuff (compared to this age...) The fact that the field wasn't all flat and straight as you would find in the country here, its also 'touching' that the villagers work with what they have got rather than in a perfect work, and during that time not the best tools were available.

Whiteboxing Mark 1

So after that I thought it was time to experiment with whiteboxing.
I made very quick and easy representation of the buildings as well as a few market stalls loosely based on the reference I taken in Norfolk as well as my original stalls from Assassins creed.

To be brutally honest I didn't really know what I was doing for this Whitebox I had a vague idea in my head of what I wanted but I found it difficult both draw or whitebox. This comes closer to what I thought than what I could draw, basically
having a road behind the village which the player would start by. Seeing between the trees they would see what looks like a village which will prompt them to go have a look when they see the turning. There will be a few market stalls around more in the center of the village with a few aspects of home life including a pen for chickens or other live stock.

A few posts back I mentioned about some forms of wildlife which I taken photos of while on holiday and I thought it might be fun to model a few and have them animate around (which ill have to look into, I can animate in UDKS' matinee but for animals they would have to be animated in max and imported).
Also in presentation Heather thought it would be good to have a few free chickens running around. As seen in my assassins creed research there were some caged chickens also, presumably that would be sold in the markets... BINGO!

Lighting Effects

Right so in this post Ill talk about a little trip I taken down the Canal in Leicester, particularly near 'Kings lock' which is near to where im living this year.

In this trek I went out at around 18:00 in hope to get some lighting reference for the transition between afternoon and evening which I was going for in my previous concepts.


I really liked the image of the wooden walkway towards the middle of the image, especially how the light touches it. As far as I know this is treated wood with some special coating which in the era im looking around would not have , but I like how its reacting. For the little wooden section near the water which I may have, taking a closer look at these might be helpful.



This next one is just after the sunset where there is the blue atmosphere but with very little light visible from the sun. Obviously the brighter images are at a different time of day, this was actually walking into uni on one of our early life drawing sessions and I liked how it was captured.

In fact at this point with my rooftop project I was working with skydomes and just playing around with moving the sun around, and you know I think having some sort of night/day cycle may help my project look even more interesting. Having it lit at different times of day will make it interesting for the shadows and ambient lighting. For my rooftop test it was only moving the sun around without actually changing the environmental sections.

Feedback from presentation

This presentation actually went really well, I got good positive feedback from the lecturers.

I basically told them about my trip to Norfolk on the ship with all the riverside wild and plant life and general atmosphere. In fact the river side section will play a small part, will act more of an environment than something which the player can go down. As nice as it is on the Norfolk broads the rivers tend to look the same with the same sort of life and I don't think to explore that would be that interesting. For a Game Level i cant see that working particularly well, I thought it might be fun to have the rivers cut off. The Saxon village however played a larger role and I really wanted an element of it being a working town. I did stress however that I didn't want it exactly like the village I went to, for one thing that wouldn't be particulary original and the 2nd.. Saxon villages are in fact VERY boring with just a few buildings plonked around randomly.
My main influences were from Assassins creed and Fable with these set up market stalls which is part of towns life, in terms of era yes my reference is Anglo-Saxon but I hope to have it a bit more than that - perhaps a little more updated. Honestly I don't know exactly what sort of time period i'm going for.

Anyway yes as said to many others the next stage now is to start thinking about whiteboxing. I seriously need to form sort of layout as for the moment its all in the air.

I felt a little better after presenting as I was concerned that my idea may have seemed too cliche and uninteresting, I pretty much have the go-ahead now so I now have the confidence to continue with it.

Continued

After my other concepts I decided to try one for more of the lighting I was considering, late afternoon/evening.
I'm quite happy with this, as terms of concepts the character is a bit dodgy looking but I felt like the image needed some sort of theme. Again that character doesn't really fit the era of the period I am steering towards.
I would like for my fmp to get nice effects with the water reflection and other rendering. Defiantly having a few boats spread around like that on the lake will add to the effect.



I then did another concept this time facing the village, at this point Im unsure of what the actual layout of the village is but I thought it would be usfull for a previsialusation. I like how this turned out actually, this is more the sort of thing im wanting to go for.

We have a presentation in a few days and I will be presenting all that I have done so far to the lecturers, see what they think of my progress.

Progress

Well I spent a bit of time last week typing up my ideas for the fmp and getting some reference from games as I had plenty of phtographic reference from my trip to Norfolk. I am just about to get some comments from Chris about my idea and hopefully get me more on track with what to do. I did a small concept page for my idea but nothing dead set, it needs redone to be honest.

Im still unsure for the amount of natural things to do, I might need to focus more on the human element to give it more of an edge of being a settlement.

Im certain that only doing the saxon houses from that area, as good as my reference is, wouldnt really be enough. They definatly need updated in the way of chimneys, proper doors and windows. Im not really that keen on going down the cartoonistic style as seen in the Fable games as its not really what id like to go into - I want to keep it in the realistic stylisation but Im also held back by the amount of foliage I may have to model. Obviously I will have to do some of these elements but not be engulfed by doing loads of different sorts. I might like to have in the "center" of the area some sorts of cobbled street or area to acompany the surroundings.

In terms of lighting I seem to be steering more towards the strong daylight time but im worried that if I do that everything is going to look quite childish, It may be nicer to try and do it during late afternoon/evening as I could get quite nice shaders going on with the water reflection. These are things I have to figure out how to do. Arguably I could do it as a sky which changes from morning to night like in the Fable games but im not entirely sure if I should go about it. These are things I have to discuss.



This was my 2nd concept test this time making a small scene in max and doing a paint over to tryout my ideas. This went quite well actually, as I was primarily painting over than editing it looks a little too "perfect" for that sort of environment, and obviously this was only buildings with nothing else. As I mentioned before I still wasn't interested in bright midday summer theme which was happening.

Research

Well Iv spent time over the past few days gathering my research from the Norfolk broads and also source some other material.
Next week we are to go in and see Chris for his input into our ideas for the final major project. As I had 1000's of photos of the broads and the Anglo-Saxon village I produced a couple of moodboards for a general overview. I have also been producing a design document from the start going through my ideas in hope to reach a conclusion.

As an initial idea even though I have good research I imagine it looking rather plain and uninteresting. I did have an idea to have a little market area in the middle of the settlement to reinforce the human element and also have something more interesting than just grass. The time era for this project Im still not 100% sure about, even though that West Stow country park I looked at screams Anglo-Saxon - although its interesting I think it may have to be updated so from that as from information I took the Anglo-Saxon villages were as plain as they looked.

I decided to look at games such as Assassins Creed and Fable as they have a strong connection with towns folk and also about the era I was thinking about capturing. I did a couple of moodboards from screenshots in game in attempt to keeping an open mind as to what to do.
Surprisingly in the whole game there are only about 4 variations of market stands and they are repeated, I didn't notice this before.

Slightly different environments In this game where I found this research
but it was the assets I was looking at and not the lighting as such.

In this game there are large city areas so some elements may not be suitable for that small settlement I was thinking of for my FMP. Generally there 4 types of market stands in this game are carpets, fruit, fish monger, and decorative plates.
As im thinking more small settlement/town perhaps this needs to be evaluated.


Following on from that Ill do a few experimental concepts and see where that takes me.Next ill look at Fable,
after spending about 10 minutes running around the first bit I was surprised how basic this game was in terms of modelling. I stopped playing after the first section as it wasn't really what I wanted. Fable II may have more of what I wanted as at the start it had more of a town feel where its more likely to find market stalls.
I cant say iv played this game very much but i'd forgotten how nice the environments looked. The first part of the main game gives you this lake side area with a day/night setup which rotates – not sure the duration in-between. This was the sort of thing I was thinking of actually, obviously there arn't that many man made buildings in this section but the general feel is quite nice.
The water has animated ripples with also some form of distortion shader of the reflections. There is a lot of greenery in this section and its quite vibrant – the sort of vibrancy you found on that holiday to the broads.

The Beginning..

Well as part of my 3rd year final major project at DMU in Game Art I will be blogging a couple of times each week to give a report on my progress and show some examples of what iv been doing.

Using all our skills in previous years we are given freedom that in the 3rd year we could work on a project we wanted to show off our skills and abilities in hope for employment.
During the summer holidays I spent a bit of time in Norfolk on a sailing holiday around the Norfolk broads.
I taken loads of reference in hope that it could help me in my idea development. The Time I was there was brilliant sunshine and very warm and a lot of what I captured was quite vivid in colour. During my time I photographed everything that I thought was interesting including examples of the river banks, the wildlife, the passing ships, the landmarks seen on the broads and various other miscellaneous things.





I had been to the broads before so I knew what I would expect.


On the way back I stopped at "West Stow country park" which had an Anglo-Saxon village rebuilt which visitors could look around and experience.


I had an idea to perhaps combine my time on the broads with some sort of settlement, during my time in West Stow a little event was running also with a few people dressed up in Anglo-Saxon attire giving demonstrations and information about the site. Again it was a very sunny day and I captured a lot in the sun - which matched my reference taken on the broads which could prove helpful. There was also a little museum full of dug up tools, weapons and jewelry which I captured also.

By the end of the holiday I captured many elements in the 1000's of files on my camera card which was a fairly strong starting point for reference.
I had a vague idea in my head at that time that I could do a riverside settlement involving all major areas in a Game Artists practice; Natural Environments, Human environments, Animals, trees and perhaps a character; All to give a good scope to make for an interesting project. Obviously these ideas need whittled down more than that but Im confident with more research I will be able to reach a good strong idea.