So more progress has been made into creating the window for my detectives office entrance, I have now been able to adapt the lessons learnt from online tutorials into making a transparent glass texture and mix into my own practices of creating the bumped misty glass. As you can see below, here is the updated nodes in my shader for creating the bumped effect.
After looking into a lot of references to the offices of Detectives in Noir Films as show in earlier posts, I have been noticed a recurring use of logos on the front office window. Looking into the 1940's design and type of that era, from the image below you can see the design that I had created for the entrance of my office environment. As you can see the type on the window is backwards as it should be right-way-round to someone on the other side of the door. I am very happy with the overall outcome of this design with the detail and style of the logo.
I made the glass texture using the 'opacity' and 'constant' materials in UDK, I then loaded in the logo design and used an 'add' module to overlap on top of the 'opacity' modifier hence creating a solid shape that lies on top of the glass, in this case, the logo for the Detective's Office. (below is the material layout for creating the glass) The design and colouring still needs work, I am going to add displacement onto the glass creating a frosted effect, this will help to bring out the logo into the environment. As well as displacement I will work on colouring of the logo into black as intended in the original design.
Modularity is always important when it comes to environment production, and for my environment, and I've always loved the challenge of knowing where objects can be used and reused in different ways, I used this tactic a lot in previous EPG - environment production for games project in my second year of uni. I began by looking into the list of items I needed for both of my environments and then noted where I could reuse certain parts, for example: the ashtray, radio, walls, bottles, shelves and coathanger can all be used in both environments, that goes for a lot for more of the objects on the list.
Here is the topdown view I have created for my detectives office, as you can see the design is kept pretty simple and has the furntiyre and styles of a typical noir detectives office. I am also going to try and split the small office space into two seperte areas; the waiting room that you can see near the door, this will help to make the small environemtn feel more open and I hope it will also help make the office seem more interesting than the typical office. I am also going to be using 2 different textures for the floor as shown, for the waiting area I am going to be using a wood floor, minimal shine, I will most likely just be using a Diffuse and Normal Map in engine. And for the second half of the office I will be using an old diamond pattern tile floor texture, with this I will be using a specular on top of the diffuse and normal and as well as this I may also experiment with reflective maps in engine too.
Here is my Top-down view for the Second Environment for my Final Year Project. After feedbackf orma tutor a lot is bound to change in the coming weeks or so to my environment. One thing to note that I will be adding that was difficult to protray in a top down view is that all curtains will also hold cutrains; the curtains on the right side of the room that will be ajar will be animated in UDK using realtime cloth physics that I have been learning how to use.
For my Final Year Project I will be creating to Game Environments in the Unreal Engine with a similar theme, I will also be looking the the use of Storytelling in Game Environments as part of my project to show the importance of it in Game Devlopment. Both of my environments will be set in 1940's Manhatten Film Noir theme, the first being set in a detectives office and the second set in a residential appartment building and crime scene. In this project I hope to improve my skills as an environment artist with the use of modular assets that I can reuse in both my levels, as well as this I am going to practice my skills in particle effects and the creation of shaders in Unreal 3. The part I am most looking forward to is the lighting of my scenes, I am goin to try and achieve lighting similar to that of an original Film Noir, for this I am going to being using not too many lights, and strong, harsh directional lights focused on certain areas of the scene as to help guide the viewer through the scene. I am looking forward to this project and am very confident in my current skills and confident that I can achieve a good result in the end as long as I stick to my set schedule.
Hi, and welcome to my blog for my Final Year Project. I am in my third year at Teesside University and have been given the task of producing a blog to document the prgress of my project. For my project, I will be looking into the use of storytelling in environments in games, with this I will be creating two environments in a detective noir theme that as you progress through, they will both slowly tell the player story. Please stay tuned for more updates.
I am a Final Year Student at Teesside University, this will be a space for my updates as to where I am heading in the design and production processes of my project.
A link to .pdf containing more information can be found in my progress review of December 2014 at this link below: