Lighting

Benn playing around with the sun position today. This is the first stage to my final lighting setup. As me and Tom have decide on a sun rise, i've been positioning the sun in places were a creeps out or sits between building to find the most interesting result.

My favouite has to be the last one. It cast the best shadows across the level and produces the best contrast between light and shadowed areas. This position also projects a beautiful light into the front of the bank. The best part is the effect when the light blinds your eyes as you walk out of the main entrance from the bank.

Its not final yet! I need to tweak the colour and values and intesity of the shadows, the sun itself and the sun size.

Fountain

I found it really hard to find reference for the fountain. I knew i didn't want a modern style fountain so I knew at least I could narrow my search down. I managed to dig up some images of the style I wanted and this gave me a good starting point of inspiration

From my finding I picked the elements that i found the most interesting and allow me to include the particle effects I had in mind for the end result.

I then planned out the final shape and silhouette. This helped me get a solid idea of the final result. I decided on the last iteration as this included all the elements I wanted.

To keep the poly count down for this asset, I knew i needed to create a high poly model to capture all the details I wanted to include. This was a trial and error process to make sure the low poly model captured all the details from the high poly model whilst still keeping the poly count to a minimum. I ended up remodelling and re uving this model around 3 time before I was happy with the final normal map  I baked out.

The particle effects were a real challenge. My first attempt used only meshes with a modified version of my water texture that made it slow down the model into the water below. This looked to lifeless and clean.

The next attempt used particles. After many attempts and creating many textures, I felt I was getting to a realistic and believably result but there was something still missing.

I then tried using both meshed and particles. This gave the perfect balance of a strong flute pouring out, with the mess of foam that escaped the flow of the full force of the water.

Ad 1 of 3

I've been having some fun with creating the ads for my level. I've decided on perfume. a phone and a car.

First of I started with the perfume. I had a look at what was already on the market. Then designed the shape of the bottle.

So here is the first of the list done. Had a hard time finding a French phrase or word but I ended up with "Je Veux" ( I want). I'm happy with that. I think it turned out really well

Quick skyline paint over

As mentioned in my last post I have done some quick paint overs to visualy convey the end result ofter adding in some skyline details. I really think this will help to break up the flat rooftops I have at the moment.

Distant Buildings

Finished of the rest of the low detailed buildings. One thing I have noticed is the skyline looks bare, so I will create some simple planes of some high rises and maybe add some chimneys and sky lights to the tops of the buildings. Other than that I am very pleased with the amount of details I have so far.

Building 3 and 4

Carrying on with the detailed buildings that now complete all the structural elements that are in close proximity to the main playable area around the bank. Again I drew my inspiration from real world examples and broke down the elements to include that were specific to those buildings.

It would take to much time and have a dramatic effect on performance if I was to create individual sets of assets for each building so I was very careful to pick elements that I could use to create different varieties of buildings.

In doing this it would also make sure that the theme for all the building would be consistent throughout. I will only be making subtle hue changes to the colour of the walls etc to add a slight variation.

More assets

Some more smaller assets that I will be adding to decorate the surrounding streets. I have been particular to only include assets that you would find in real life as I want to stay away from having pallets, tires and rubbish etc, just to fill up and area.

Police Car Textured

Got round to finishing the police car texture and set up the shader for the reflection on the paint. I created a mask to mask out all the plastic parts. I also used a Fresnel node to make the reflection show around the edges as instead of evenly around the whole body of the car.

Telephone Box

Just a quick asset I did today. Managed to find these near the train station in Leicester so I was able to gather lots of reference as it was one of the things I forgot to photograph on the London trip.

Second building

As I have been creating a collection of assets for the buildings I carried on my work of adding in the rest of the surrounding buildings. This one I decided to use house bricks to add variation to the textures I am using on the walls. From our trip to London we noticed that all the buildings were made from the same materials around the financial area of the city with the exception of a few that were closer to were the shops were.

To break up the flat tops of my bulding I will be creating bay windows like in the pic above.

My worry was that I may look to similar with the same wall textures even though I was creating different looking buildings.

Pub Progression

Managed to finalise the assets for the pub building that sits next to the bank. I ended up creating a mesh for the corner wall of the building as I was getting shading artefacts with bsp. I also reduced the cap at the top between the top of the windows. I felt that it was just to straight and bland that's is what lead me to add the top floor with the smaller windows. This broke up the shape of the building.

Glass Building

Created some more assets that make up the glass building that sits opposite to the bank. I used a reflection plane to create a real time reflection in the windows. Worked out pretty well. Still need to add some more detailing when I make some more assets for the buildings. You can also see I added the street lamps.

I used to normals from the water to create the rippled effect in the reflection. This did the job and saved me some texture space by not having to create a separate texture.

Plaza Floor

Decided to go with a cobble floor for the plaza area. One that i liked the most from my reference was from our London trip but the picture wasn't the greatest for creating a texture so some editing was in order

Original

Texture

Added some variation into the bump map to make the bricks uneven. Also the grout was very dark in the picture so I create a mask by painting out the grout areas and lay a texture underneath. This help the normals read better and make the cobbles look raised out of the ground slightly.

I made the edges of all the bricks catch more light in the specular also to enhance the normal map details.

Foliage

Been working on the foliage for outside the bank. I decided to go for evergreen plants and shrubs as these are the types of greenery you see around towns and cities. This is because they are around all year long and need no maintenance. Also because the scene is set around this time of year there isn't any flowers in bloom yet.

I used some reference form beck home as we have these scattered outside our house along the driveway.

I cut out the parts I wanted and lay them out to create the diffuse map. Making sure I left enough room to cut round them in Max to create the planes. I also crated the bump map to generate the normals.

I used the same workflow I used for the trees to create the plants and the material was also used as it is set up so I can create and instance and swap out the diffuse and normals.

 I experimented with painting the verts to create a realistic look as they blew in the wind. for example the base verts are black so they don't move and all the tips of the leaves are full red so they move the most.

I also changed the parameter in the material to enhance the wind effect.

Lastly I created another instance of the material as I felt I needed more colour variation. In the new instance I changed the parameters for the colours ever so slightly to add a subtle variation.