beauty screenshots

I took a series of 8 screenshot of my level in udk to be put into my portfolio. these demonstrate how effectly i have used the lighting in udk and placed my modular assets in engine to create the environment. Their is also a landscape material and mesh placed under the level where have used heightmapping and 2 different materials to create the land mass.

maps and material editor in udk

I created various different maps for each of the modular assets withing my game. These included opacity, diffuse, specular and normal maps. I did however encounter a lot of problems with the opacity map on my windows. This was due to the opacity happening all over my assets and an error in my original max file that made all the assets act really strangely, I fixed this by re-doing all my modular assets ove rthe course of one day.

This is how i have set up my UDK material, showing each of the maps. The opacity map is in the alpha channel of the diffuse texture.

google sketch up map

This map shows the original map I had for my level design. This was too ambiscious as their were too many interiours and the map was too large to create in the time that I had.

Level walkthrough

This video demonstrates my level from start to finish, it is a lot shorter and smaller than i original anticipated but it still works and shows off what i was trying to do. This is due to time restrictions and have problems with modular meshes along the way.

gameplay Idea's

The idea behind the gameplay of my level is that the player aquires special powers to take down a bounty target.

The player can teleport in this example which i replicated by attaching a triger to the character and with key button press this teleports the player to the trigger. This works ok and is ok for prototyping but would more in depth programming for a finished standard.

I also looked at AI and HUD in udk to prototype both of these work really nicely but same as the teleport mechanic only for prototyping purposes.

I also was going to create a mechanic that when the player dies they become a ghost and leave their body before respawning at a "hellgate" giving them a slight tactical advantage over enemies, however because of how i had set up the teleport mechanic this was no longer do able.

I looked at the folowing sites for tutorials for guidence:

http://www.hourences.com/tutorials/
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_udk.php

Level sketchs

I started this project by craete a small sketch sheet showing the buildings and how modular assets will create them. This helped me to understand what assets I will need to create.

To do this first I looked into both are's of the theme of my game. Here are some examples of my reasrch images and my sketch page.

inspirational people

Viktor Antanov, the art director on noticeable title such as Dishonored and  Half-Life 2. I really like Viktor's art style, i feel it is very stylized but still retains a high amount of detail giving it a unique feel.

Scoot Sinclair, the art director of the original bioshock has an amazing artist i find the strange yet kind of graphic look to his art style very interesting.

Jaime McNutty is part of the team at irrational is one of the environmental artists their. This is the career i would like to aspire for when leaving uni and maybe into a art director role later on in life

Environmental artist job role

A environmental artist is in charge of creating the environments of a game under the advisement and leadership of seniors and an Art director. The job position could compose of creating 3D assets that will create the world that the player will explore and placing them together in the engine.

An environmental artist earns an average salary of $46,000 (2011) for less than 3 years experience which less than a programming job. With more years experience and a promotion of an Art Director role can earn an average of $107,000 which is a big difference.

facts have been found in this article on the salaries of game devs: http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/fall2011cg#pg27

This forum was also found useful:
http://eat3d.com/forums/general-chat/what-it-takes-be-environment-artist

My plans after uni

My plans after university are to hopefully start off at a UK company as a junior environmental, I have a strong interest in this subject and find it really entertaining creating the worlds the player will be exploring.

After working after i while i would like become a senior environmental artist and hopefully maybe even become a art director after a few years. I wish to work for irrational studios (well know for the bioshock series) as I find the art style and worlds that they create very unique and very interesting and think that the art style is nice chance to get creative while staying working for a large company.

Their are a few people in this field that i wish to aspire to such as Viktor Antanov, Scott Sinclair and Jamie McNutty.

Each of the areas discussed will have blog posts that go into more details following this.

My job role.

In my group I had to come up with the card designs and all the mechanics that go with them. I started with a few idea's and play tested each to see how they would actually work with our board game. This required a few different session to get a final idea on how the final game would work.

the final idea worked using a different set of cards with separate illustrations and comments demonstrating what each of the different cards worked, these were only used in combat against other monster such as the junk titan. Their were also environmental cards which did not work as well as intended as it got difficult to track when it had been 5 turns and events cards which could either help or hinder the player depending what card was chosen.

Final Models

(The images will not upload onto the blog for some reason but this images are printed in my portfolio)

These models are efficently all under 2,000 polys and the texture is nicely applied using a ambient occlusion the original plan was give these models a more borderlands 2 style which i researched into using the art borderlands 2 book but due to time restrants was not able to persue this.

Final turnarounds

Build of heavy model

 

The heavy model was the first I did so i took screenshots as I was creating it I managed to stay under the limit of 2,000 polys (without acessories) and this is my favourite of the models. This however did take the most time as I need to refresh my skills in character model and had to keep changing certian parts as shown above to make them look nicer the texture will make this model stand out more.

Final unwraps

These unwraps all efficently use ambient occlusion maps generated through 3ds max. I think this gives the shading a very team fortress 2 style.