It Begins!

So, this is it. The official start for the final major project - Riverside settlement for me. Now I was hoping to get a few more whiteboxes done over the Christmas period but in the feedback sessions I was asked to try and enhance my rooftop and vehicle project. It taken the entire time to get them completed so didn't have the chance to continue. But I am back now and eager to continue.

My previous white boxes were done during the 'ok I know what my idea is but not really whats happening layout wise' period and I think i still am at that stage. I have a better understanding of what I want and by my 4th one it was starting to shape up.. but I still wasn't happy with how it was going.

To reiterate what i want;
A little road outside the village to start as the introduction to the level, trees towards the back of the village with gaps which allows the player to ride past and think 'Oh! whats down there then!' then a turning into the village starting with the main houses to the center full of various market stalls which the occupiers are hoping to sell.

From my research from West-stow I will not just be doing 1 of the houses but all variations if possible with the different thatching methods, but also I want to update them slightly to get out of the solid Anglo-Saxon tone and going more through the ages. There was also a workshop building at west-stow where the Blacksmiths do their work, and with that various props can be positioned around that area.

The entire village is on a sloping hill down to the river but also it will not be a regular hill but one with various forms.
A few sparse houses will be closer to the riverside with 1 small field (probably ploughed) with various agricultural tools scattered (base on the research I taken from that Art-In-Action venue) enclosed by rickety fencing.

Then the actual riverside which will have a small boathouse and a bit of a pier with various equipment used for fishing, eeling and other boating activities.

Along side all these will be a few natural props being trees, plants, animallife, produce on the market stalls and a night/day cycle looking at the different lighting styles.


Listing it like that puts it into perspective and hopefully ill be able to start another whitebox with these elements in mind and get a good layout going.




To be honest, even though I have pretty much just started this Im actually quite frustrated by my progress, I seem to be getting into that rut like with my last whitebox.
After consideration i think my issue at the moment is that as my village is quite terrain based and although I do know how to do some terrain modelling in 3dsmax I find that I don't have a lot of control over what I want. This is only the previs stage really and i appreciate that the models for the whiteboxing should be basic but I think I need to find a better way of doing it to solidify my idea.



I found a way to paint the terrain with pressure sensitivity in 3dsmax where I can change the brush size and all like in Photoshop for selecting polygons, the image above shows the greater control than what I was doing earlier.
What I did earlier was just tick soft selection and adjust the brush size, below that is a button for paint, revert and blur and in the rollout there is a "use pressure sensitivity" which makes it easier to select vertices. Below is a test result.

It would have to be done in sections though as the height is translated into 6 colours, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, dark blue this isn't really enough for what I want. even though the control is better now, it isn't THAT good to be able to choose the colour and paint as its all dealt with pressure.

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.