Bits and bobs

Hey there, Sam here again!

I thought I would show some of the assets I have created

Fire Alarm Bell

Fire Alarm Trigger

Fold up Chair

Fold up Chair 2

Ventalation Shafts

Pushing Trolley

Recycle Bin

Wall Mounted TV

Wallphone

Recepetion Desk

Firs Aid Box

Courtyard Window Frame

Toilet

The Effects of Sound

Near the beginning of the project the team had discussed about use of sound for the project. FOr the theme that we had intended with a schizophrenic pychopath, we thought it would be apropriate to add faint unnerving voices to our level.

We didn't just look at voices however. We also looked at creating our own sound effects for aour level such as foot steps, door creaks, electrical buzzing noises, etc.
A team consisting of Sophia, Samantha, Evie and Sam had gotten together to record various sound effects one may find within the level.

Some of the descisions we made when creating sound were dictated by noises you might hear to make you feel watched and not alone but unable to see your stalker. We wanted very uneasy sounding noises such as the metal clang of a shopping trolley or the rustling of platic bags.

The equipment we used was just a microphone and headset, Audacity, a dictaphone.

Though we had gathered a collection of sound effects, time constraints had made it so that we had to prioritise whats important (mainly the level visually) and that we weren't getting graded for sound, we never had the sound put into the level.
It was a shame we never put the voices in, but the level just wasn't laid out enough for us to think of how to involve the text around the level at the time.
The experience we had throughout the whole process however was a fun one!

Auditorium fun

Hi there!

This is Sam writing about his journey on creating the DMU famous auditorium.

The reason we decided upon making the Auditorium in 3DS Max rather than create the rooms like the rest was because our Tech lead was having problems creating it from UDK.

My first problem I encountered was to get the size right. With the blueprints from Blackboard and the Queen’s building, I had to make sure to keep referring back to the actual level built to keep the size consistent. It was a massive pain as the rest of the queens building would lag my computer to the pace of a tortoise as well as the rest of the level obscuring my vision.

Making many reference images of the auditorium was essential. I was trying to get it as accurate as I can to begin with the modelling to make sure I had captured the main parts that made it the

auditorium we know such as the desks, the holes near the ceiling of the auditorium, circular shape, etc. It started off slow, trying to get it as accurate with the sizing as I could and has hindered my other responsibilities such as other assets quite dramatically.

As time went on and I pushed the auditorium further and further it started to speed up much more when I had the desks put in. With the room and desks made, this created a template in which I could use to gauge and create other assets. The chairs were copied and pasted with the exact amount as in the lecture theatre. Before copying however I had unwrapped the original chair to save myself time in the long run.

The curtains were a pain to create. I tried using the cloth modifier only for the plane to fall straight through the cylinder I wanted it to drape over. In the end, I had to take a different approach I found on YouTube. It involved attaching a group of verts to the cylinder and animating the cylinder to shrink. This would create a curtain effect in which I would repeat it a few times and then Turn it into an editable poly when I was happy with the shape (a little expensive in tris though!).

Screenshot of my progress

During my time on the auditorium, other members of the team would help me in creating some other assets such as the auditorium lights, seminar stand, projector and the white boards.

Sophia and I had an idea we wanted to experiment with in which we would have corpses and body parts hanging from the ceiling and littering the floor. I had her create a human body to experiment with.

After getting down the main mesh, I oriented away from keeping it as complete replica as I wanted to darken some of the furniture and assets within the room to better suit the mood and feel we wanted from the level.

Towards the end seeing everything fit together in the level felt really good. The experience I had with creating the auditorium for a group project made me feel much more confident with my 3d skills.

During the whole time, I had thought up many ideas I could include into the room, however most of them just didn't suit the theme we had. Oh well, it was fun thinking them up at least!

Some little teacher dolls I made for the level, I want them placed maybe in the cells on the beds that have their names on, more of an easter egg. I felt that the level needed something amusing.

Assets...

This is a list of all the assets that our level holds, who has made them and for what room within the level;

There are a few things that didn't get made, or didn't make the final cut;

Wheely chairs (computer chair)
Pipes
Lamp
Push trollies
Metal stool
Full body suits
Metal table
Laptop
Computer monitors (flat screen)

UDK

Ok so I managed to put all my assets into udk, just to make sure that they actually worked and there wasn't any problems. I have imported so many things now that I could probably do it with my eyes closed.

I am glad that I got to import my own assets into our group level. I think that everyone got the chance to do some importing, as I thought that this would be useful for everyone in the future. 

I am really happy about how the ambulance turned out, even with all the problem, such as unwrapping and making sure the light mapped work in UDK.

Asset Time table

Ok so after a fair few weeks, we realized the group was falling apart. The original asset list failed as people were not being pushed to do the work. After finally electing a team leader, well actually we have two. (we have two because of the work load, and thought it would be more helpful for the two leaders to bounce idea's off each other) I thought it would be much easier to create a timetable of all the assets and set deadlines for everyone.

. 

Ok so I split up all the assets and allocated them to every member of the group. Taking into consideration how long each asset should take, hopefully it looks fair. By having deadlines and giving people the assets to do people will just get on and do them instead of picking and choosing and finishing them when ever. (this being our original idea, and well it just didn't happen.)

After the emergency meeting during the Easter break (23rd march) we gave everyone in the group a select role. We should of done this in the beginning of the project but we thought we didn't actually need this. After find this out the hard way we finally allocated people with roles;

Producer (leader); Sam and Evie

Technical art lead; Maarten

Art director; Sophia

Artists; Everyone (as this is an on going role, through out the project)

Texture artist; Shuwei