Marco Kovacs

  UH MA GAD18  

[marcokovacs]

SKULL AND BONES

And here we face one more game related to the sea and Pirates! This game has been produced by the Great Ubisoft and will be released in 2019. The pirates life will be simulated in all aspects, sailing, fighting other ships and forts, customizing your ship to improve the performance in the battle and all of this in a brilliant realistic graphic that makes you think you are in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie!

Compared to sea of thieves from Rare, besides the realism this game will have much more violence, gore and gambling. Also, the customization of the ship can improve your ship performance, while in Sea of thieves the customization is jus a matter of skin changes with the same performance for every player.

Ubisoft has already worked with this pirate ship battle system in their previous game Assassin’s Creed black flag, which the story was running in the XVII century in the pirates and great sails age. This game was one of the news releases in the E3 fair 2018, and Ubisoft promise great battles with allies and fleet formation to play online in a vast ocean full of treasures!

This game is a good reference for my project as brings one of the main features which is the pirate battles, and like the Naval Actions these ships are great reference based in real ships used during the XVII century showing the pirate life, their traditions and tales. The art of this game is definitely a good reference for further project that I might produce using realistic style to reproduce this messy world, with dirt and braked wood, barrels and ropes everywhere.

Reference

Ubisoft, (2019), Skull and Bones Available at: https://skullandbones.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/home/ [Accessed 02 Aug 2019].

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GAMES SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

Games publishers and launchers have been creating different methods to attract players in order to buy their games, make the audience keep bounded with these games and make more profit. Until few years ago, if we wanted to play a game, we had to buy a physical data of this game like CDs and DVDs, but the internet has changed the way of how those publishers and game companies deal with the sales of their games and the way that gamers could buy their favourite games. Through the use of applications, the player could create an online account and access the game library of certain company. The fact is each company created their own application or launcher, like Electronic Arts created the Origin, Ubisoft created Uplay then Blizzard and so on, where all the games of that company were available to buy and be included in the player account, once you buy a game its yours forever in your account.

In that same moment, Valve has created their launcher Steam, but the difference of been an open source app, accepting not only famous games, but also games from indie companies, giving the opportunity and incentive to small studios to sell their games, working like a mobile app store for PC.

Now we are passing through a new generation change of how player will play and pay for the games and which console or device will be used. Recently in the E3 fair, which is the biggest technology fair in the planet, the focus of the games industry was in the new streaming services for games publishers, how they will work and how much players would spend to use the services. Working like a subscription service where you pay monthly to have access in all library of game of certain company, again each company will create their own subscription service like Microsoft Xbox is creating the Xbox season pass, Uplay has created the Uplay+, PlayStation now and so on. But one big step that can change the way of playing games is not even those subscription services, because you can still choose if you want to pay monthly to have all games, or just pay once to play just you favourite game. The big change will be the streaming service like Google Stadia, that landed with parashot in this war bringing a solution for people that don’t want or can not pay for good computers or consoles and games that are expensive.

Offering them the promise of playing online any game, at 4k resolution and 60 frames per second, using any device, as a streaming service you can use your mobile to play a computer game (where your mobile doesn’t even get close to the system requirements to play that game). So is very likely that this new system of subscription and streaming become the new alternative of playing games, expanding the audience, making companies keep their games catalogs. But the way how this streaming system would deal with payments in a tangled network of subscriptions is crazy and will need time to people get used to this method.

 Reference

Digital Trends, (2019), Here are the best game-streaming services of 2019 Available at: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/best-game-streaming-services/ [Accessed 28 July 2019].

PC Gamer, (2019), Videogame subscription services are scary Available at: https://www.pcgamer.com/videogame-subscription-services-are-scary/ [Accessed 28 July 2019].

[marcokovacs]

PROCEDURAL ENVIRONMENT TOOLS

One of the biggest challenges for environment artist is to recreate through assets, the variety of elements in the real-world environments and biomes, with different types of plants or trees, rocks, mountains and grass. With the development of technology, many programs and plugins were created to help 3D artist achieve this similarity to the real-world nature. But the last tool that have been helping environment artists recently using code or blueprints is the procedural calculation, that basically is a tool that spread certain object in the space determinate by the artist, modifying its size, rotation and position randomly, to avoid patterns looking tiled or repetitive. In this article from 80 Level website, the Computational Sciences PhD student Torsten Hädrich makes simulation of natural phenomena using visual computing generation. He explains the project he is developing with other colleges about Multi-scale modelling of Plant Ecosystem, which is incredible and very useful to create large scale landscapes.  

The main feature of this project is that the generation of plants or trees is based in the precipitation and temperatures variation and types of biomes that will define which plant will grow in each place, also defines the density of biomass for each type of biomes that variates between 9 distinct groups of biomes from Tundra to Rain Forests. The other interesting point of this simulation is that the procedural calculation runs from de selection of the type of plant for the correspondent biome but also how plants will grow, de amount of sticks, leaves and trunks, influenced by those simulated physical aspects depending on the available resources.

For instance, a group of pine tree that grows high will cover the light for other plants changing the aspect and species of plants in that forest. After the artist is satisfied with the forest or biome, these can be exported for other software as ready assets.

Another example of environment procedural generation, mentioned by the game artist Nikola Damjanov, is the use of Houdini to make abstract FX. He demonstrates an experiment using Houdini terrain tool to spread an object, in this case crystals, through the landscape that later you can convert into polygons.

The plugin use variations on the surface to calculate the scale of each crystal and using a transform attribute to make these objects flow over the landscape. It is impressive how easy can be to manage and organize an environment project with the minimum knowledge of a software like Houdini that also allows us to use other ways of making terrain like height maps. Houdini is an interesting tool that I might learn in the development of my next projects.

 Reference

80 Level, (2019), Generating Procedural Plant Ecosystems [ONLINE]. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/002sgr-generating-procedural-plant-ecosystems/ [Accessed 22 July 2019].

80 Level, (2019), Making a Procedural Citadel in Houdini [ONLINE]. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/006sdf-005cg-making-a-procedural-citadel-crystals-in-houdini/ [Accessed 22 July 2019].

[marcokovacs]

PHOTOGRAMMETRY

As we develop our skills in games art, the technology develops new ways of producing high quality assets with a new software or plugins. Here I will talk about this amazing feature of photogrammetry that is basically a scan system that captures the environment elements allowing us to transform in a 3D asset. It looks great and easy, but as Michal said in this article, photogrammetry started in 2014 with low quality and few tutorials as no one new exactly how to manipulate and use the right equipment in order to get a good result. Thus, Michal learned with his own mistakes, experiments and patience. Michal is a 3D artist with the objective of create optimal realistic game ready assets for games. He explains that the use of photography is very helpful for the light references and specially for evaluate the level of details, as is easier to clean the scan then try to add more details that looks realistic.

One important point he mentions is the organization required to use this technology as it requires a huge amount of data to process then all the files must have the right nomenclature in the library.

Adam is Michal’s partner in the production of environments and he focus in lighting and level design.

He mentions that one of the challenges is to control the sharp shadows in the environment that can be “burned” in the diffuse textures. This method is not 100% PBR approach but compared to standard ways, it brings a fantastic result. One other challenge for the artists is to setup the post process and specular aspects that must work properly in order to bring the feeling of a real world.

During the process of cleaning the scan to remove unwanted parts or details, they select parts of the scan and created models and transform tese pieces in a modular asset that can be repeated using some variations of this different parts.

This is also used to create props and combining this technology with our artistic skills to create or edit materials, this could be an option for artist to make environment in a realistic way, saving time of modelling and generate levels based in real places reproducing it with the same amount of details.

Reference

80 Level, (2019), Photogrammetry in Environment Design [ONLINE]. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/photogrammetry-in-environment-design/ [Accessed 20 July 2019].

[marcokovacs]

ALECAMINATA

City Underwater inspired by Atlantis. Game Environment Art as Final Major Project. Master Games Art & Design

At this stage I’ve started to create video to test and evaluate the progress of my work, also I’ve started to put some screenshots in my ArtStation page and share my work to get feedback, to apply for some jobs and have something to show and start to say, Hello world, I’m here, look what I can do!

Everything was perfectly inside the schedule until now and it will continue like this, I have been working hard in this project as I had to many assets to model, unwrap, texture, sculpt and compose in the scene which I acknowledge it was a big scene for a final project and the deadline gave to us. But I was trying to reach the maximum that I could with this project in terms of learning, professionalism, time and production management and skill development. So many things I’ve learned since the beginning of this project specially since the beginning of this course. This project specifically I think was a good choice as I noticed that many big companies like Blizzard and Electronic Arts were producing and releasing games with similar themes related to mythology, fantasy, under the sea and pirates. At the beginning I was sad about this as I thought that “I had this Idea and now these giants are using my idea” with a small feeling of been copied. But then I realized that this is actually good, that proves that I choose a theme that is totally in a new trend of the games industry and I hope this can help me find a job in one of those companies. But why I choose Pirates and Atlantis? First I love pirates theme, the movie series Pirates of the Caribbean are one of my favourites films, the game Assassin’s Creed Black flag was amazing bringing a whole new point of view of pirates ships fight, then recently the game Sea of Thieves totally influenced my to choose this theme, specially with the amazing stylized art of the game. In my research I read that a new game is coming to us, Skulls and Bones that will be a pirate fight game in a realistic style that I will blog about later on. I wanted to chose some technology mixed in the pirates story and I choose this ancient mysterious technology based on Atlantis, then one of the reasons that my scene is underwater.

[marcokovacs]

UE4 Lighting and Fog tutorial | ArtStation Challenge EP.006

Free UE4 Lighting Presets + Tutorial: https://youtu.be/_bqpw5sOwr4 Follow Me on Artstation for more: https://www.artstation.com/pixelmasher Lighting and fog ...

LIGHTING and FOG

At this point of my project I’ve started to adjust some issues, find bugs or any kind of error to correct, change texture, remodel or complement the composition. But one of the most important features is the light and volumetric light using fog. So, as suggested by my lecture Neil and Mark last class, I started to search for tutorials explaining how to prepare a good light for environments and I’ve found this amazing video by Polygon academy, about a project that was used in the ArtStation challenge. The artist in this video shows us techniques or strategies of lighting in a way that will make the player look at where he wants, following the illuminated parts of the scene.

He states that using different lights in different places should be in the same direction if simulating the sun light. Also, it will bring volume to the environment elements when the light comes from the side, making one side illuminated and the other with shadow. Another tip that he mentioned about artist in general, is that they usually want to show all the environment they’ve produced that people can see their amazing work all over the place, represented in all assets. However, is important to make dark spots in the scene, if needed, that will bring much more volume and reinforce the mood of the scene. 

One more great tip we can see in this video is about fog, that can change the mood to a graveyard for instance, or just create a dense atmosphere blended with the back trees and hiding what’s behind it. The fog also brings a fantastic effect when enrol with lights because it produces the scattering effect making the volumetric light, drawing light beams or god-rays through the shadows of the trees or any other object in the way. This tutorial definitely helped me to make my scene better, giving volume to the temple and pillars, reinforcing the underwater mood. Thus, I choose some places to illuminate that the players would follow in the game. For instance the stairs that leads you to the temple have 4 different ways and one of them is broken in ruins, with sand covering it, a chunk of chain dropped that could be a hazard then I made this spot darker, forcing the player to follow the brighter spot of the stairs.

Reference

Polygon Academy, (2019), UE4 Lighting and Fog tutorial [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsN0LBgrj14 [Accessed 12 July 2019].

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And once more the elements that relates to my work (underwater, stylized, fantasy, ancient temples) rises in an expansion of a famous game worldwide. Here we meet this amazing game, World of Warcraft that recently released a new world to explore the lands of an old enemy, the queen Azshara and her Naga army in the deep sea. This land was constructed in what they call Kaldorei architecture that is very similar to Greek architecture referring to mythological places, and where the player will find the temple of Elun’alor. The story obviously is adapted to the World of Warcraft universe where they create names of kingdoms, clans and gods. But analysing how they built this I could see the similarity in the same references that I’ve use in my project.

This expansion will bring to the players new ways of making alliances, new heroes, treasures, events and special items that will help players to fight the enemy.

The expansion keeps the adventure and action features of World of Warcraft with fights against sea creatures in an under the sea mood. Its interesting to analyse the art of each element they used like corals, algae and rock structures. Blizzard is another titan in the games industry and I realized that many great companies are focusing in this type of theme or genre recently which reinforce my thrust that I choose a good direction.

The strategy behind these releases of new patches or versions of the World of Warcraft universe is seen for some people like a tower that makes the new top, the most relevant part of the game. And the result of this is that they focus everything in the new patch with new cosmetics, items and quests making them kind of forget or don’t need to come back in old missions. The problem of that is the requirement of player been in level 120 to access this new land and as more they create new releases, the content will become less accessible to other players putting World of Warcraft at risk to become a forever game.

Even been an issue for the producers, the creation of new content will allays require more artists working on these worlds. Blizzard has their own recipe and style for the landscape creation and characters that will fit in any new adventure they create, which is incredible due to the amount of content and expansions they produce.

Reference

Blizzard Entertainmnet, (2019), World of WarCraft: RISE OF AZSHARA [ONLINE]. Available at: https://worldofwarcraft.com/pt-br/news/23034748?utm_source=desktopweb-news&utm_campaign=web-eu-desktopwebnews&utm_medium=internal&utm_content=22956187 [Accessed 14 Jun 2019].

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GODS AND MONSTERS

This is probably the game that I will most want to play in the next year. Gods and Monsters looks amazing already, with an art that makes the whole game look like a painting, beautiful shaders, light and the story itself. This style or art for games is brilliant, not only the textures but the models of characters and the entire landscape assets.  Ubisoft is a giant and all the Assassin’s Creed series were made with a good work, but I want to focus specifically the Odyssey saga, that I’ve mentioned before, about mythology, gods, temples also a DLC of Atlantis were recently released. Now Gods and Monsters rise as a new adventure, out of Assassin’s Creed family, but keeping the theme of mythology and gods, which makes me think again that I went to a good direction when choosing the theme of my project.

Gods and Monsters tells a story of a hero in a quest to save the Greek gods, helping them to restore their energy after been defeated by Typhon, the most deadly creature in Greek. For that, the player will face terrible creatures from mythology like the Hydra and Cyclops, explore dungeons and solve puzzles, using powers conceded by the God of Olympus. With a beautiful artistic landscape. Again, that’s why this might be the most interesting upcoming release. As Header Wald, from Games Radar, well said, this fantastic adventure with enchanting painterly style relates to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

In the Ubisoft presentation was revelled by the senior producer that this games has been developed for the past four years, with a focus in the mythology and story of ancient gods that has been part of generations of storytelling transformed into tales. He also states that the story of Odyssey definitely influenced the production od Gods and Monsters and they want to see what it will surge from a new aspect gameplay.

One important fact that is happening in all publishers is the attention about Google Stadia, a stream service that promise to give high resolution and 60 FPS of gameplay for costumers, allowing them to play a wide list of games with no need to buy the game. Ubisoft has created its own subscription service, the Uplay plus that similarly to Stadia will work with monthly payments and unlock all list of games from Ubisoft. Microsoft / X-Box also created their own subscription, the Xbox game pass.

The difference between Google Stadia and the others is that you don’t need to download the game as it will work with streaming service. Is that the trend for the future of publishers? I think it might be.

References

Ubisoft, (2019), Gods & Monsters [ONLINE]. Available at: https://gods-and-monsters.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/ [Accessed 20 Jun 2019].

Games Radar, (2019), Gods & Monsters: Release date, trailer, and everything we know so far [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.gamesradar.com/gods-and-monsters-game-guide/ [Accessed 20 July 2019].

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This game was another reference for me to build the shipwreck, as first I needed to build an entire ship and then transform in a shipwreck, destroying, deforming and spreading elements around. Also, the Naval Action game, developed by Game Labs in 2019, is a realistic reference of ships from the XVII century where the pirates use to dominate the seas and the navy forces were the most powerful structure of the time. This game focus in the battle between ships reproducing a beautiful period of naval history. The details on this game is what makes it interesting as when you shoot a cannon ball, seen its trajectory, it can destroy parts of the ship making exploding parts damage the crew members and even simulate the balls ricochet the floor and hit the opposite side of the ship. Also, the wind and distance affect the shooting tactics of players. Some ship has mortars, a typical weapon used to bombard the enemy from above using a parabola to calculate the shot. Thus, the mechanics of the battle are well represented and detailed with advanced physics calculations in this game. The navigation works in an open world based in the XVIII century and historical maps where the player can explore up to 365 ports based on their real locations.

The art of this game is impressive, realistic with a good photography or cinematic frames, the colours of sunset skies with clouds and fog, mixed with the smoke of the cannon’s shots and the deep dark turquoise from the sea makes every moment of this game a painting. As I’m using ships and pirate theme for my work, this is a helpful reference with realistic and beautiful models for my project, to help me understand and learn about some parts of the ship.

References

Game Labs, (2019), Naval Actions [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.navalaction.com/#ageofsail [Accessed 11 Jun 2019].

[marcokovacs]

Since the beginning of the process of my project I have been thinking about some animations in the scene from the algae and god-rays with slow and repetitive movement to the creature cycle animation with swimming looping and spatial movement. This is where it become tricky, as Unreal Engine was a new program for me, I had to study how animation works, in tutorials or UE documentation, but I always liked to discover things by myself, when I have the minimum knowledge of how some process is made. But animation in Unreal is something apart and its funny that most of the issues I had were solve checking one button or checkbox.  In this project’s case, I wanted to animate some sharks swimming around a shipwreck showing the pirate part of the story, also some other sea creatures like the heterostaci that actually is a prehistoric fish that I think would be interesting to use and bring some variation for fauna. Besides the bigger creatures using 3D models and baked animation from Max, I also created animation for fish shoal using particle system which uses sprites and a material feature that makes them shake, and changing the speed and intensity I found a good “swimming” movement for the particle. This usually are used in grass and trees to give the appearance of wind movement and is a well-known feature between artists. The combination of the particles movement and the grass wind formed a interesting composition for fish shoal, that we can’t exactly say that is the grass wind.

Here are an example of tutorial helping me to understand 2 important elements for my project, cinematics with camera angles strategy and light for cinematics. As we have to make a promotional video of 2 minutes for our presentation and project dissemination, understanding these 2 elements will help me make a good video.

The artist Kemal Gunel is a Lighting Artist at Starbreeze Studios (Sweden) and was interviewed in this article and he explains the mechanics behind lighting for cinematics, giving tips of where in the scene should be illuminated, using volumetric fog or not. He uses, In his project “The Abyss”, the fact of been in space to think the camera movement, using a first person shot, rotating as gravity doesn’t matter anyway, hitting objects and walls and the change of focus, playing with field of view. The other feature is considering the place very dark, then use of the ship emergency lights and his flash light to bring the contrast of some important spots of the level fading to darkness, adding some fog and dust particles he creates a good effect of mystery. Despites Gunel’s project is realistic based and its harder to run away from how light works in real life, is a very good reference of lighting that I can use in my project that also have dark places, is an underwater scene, but as a stylized design, I can consider not blackout everything

Reference

80 Level, (2018), Lighting for Cinematics in UE4 [ONLINE]. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/lighting-for-cinematics-in-ue4/ [Accessed 16 July 2019].

Kemal Gunel, (2018), The Abyss [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.artstation.com/kemalgunel [Accessed 16 July 2019].

[marcokovacs]

Electronic Arts is one of the most powerful games companies in the world due to the long success of their game’s development, creativity, quality, playability and more. In this example I think that the story of this new game, Sea of Solitude, combined with the unique art style that looks cartoonish and vectorized will impress players.

This impressive game that mixes standard third-person with platforming and environmental puzzles, will put the player in a journey to discover and explore a flooded city, where the water level will rise and fall showing or hiding new places to explore. It’s a challenge and puzzle-based game that evolve the story of the loneliness of Kay, a young girl using a row boat to move place to place, hunt and solve mysteries of her own loneliness and finding glowing orbs to uncover her memory.

Players role will be to navigate and avoid creatures and terrifying monsters from the sea to skyscraper ghosts making them fell lost and confuse.

This game is the second title that is part of the EA original program, where they bring brilliant games from small developers to the world, developed by Cornelia Geppert and her team at Jo-Mei Games in Germany. Geppert’s explains that it makes you dig deep into your feelings and core fears and ager, but also is something that fulfil you to express those feelings through art.

The concept of the game makes players think about their own story and social condition and it also relates in another point of view to mental health issues as the story can by inside Kay’s mind.

That happens due to the game mechanics where Kay’s life experiences will affect the world around you in the game, with various traumas that will manifest in a noticeable way, specially when she has flash memories that are represented by monsters instead of humans.

It’s interesting that how a game bringing a powerful message can make we think about our feelings and current situation or condition in the world bringing memorable and personal stories translated by a narrative of a game.

Reference

Eletronic Arts, (2019), SEA OF SOLITUDE [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.ea.com/en-gb/games/sea-of-solitude [Accessed 09 July 2019].

Electronic Arts, (2019) INTRODUCING OUR SECOND EA ORIGINALS TITLE - SEA OF SOLITUDE[ONLINE]. available at: https://www.ea.com/en-gb/news/ea-originals-introducing-sea-of-solitude [Acessed 09 July 2019]

[marcokovacs]

Considering that I’m up to date with my schedule and I still have time to produce, I’ve decided to bring more pirate elements to the project and explain why it was important to do this even not been in my asset lists or Gantt chart. A shipwreck would be excellent for the scene as the story is also about pirates, also is a big asset in the landscape showing the player the presence of pirates in that world. Pirate ships are powerful and works as a symbol for the theme and it’s one of the main element or assets that a pirate game or movie would use. The second important element to reinforce the theme of pirates is the great powerful and feared beast of the seas, the Kraken.

In my project’s case this creature would be in a far distance showing the silhouette of it to demonstrate an imponent titan and possible deadly threat for the players. First try of making this creature was using the same technique as I used for the jellyfish, with a sub UV feature that allows you to animate particles using sprites. The problem was that due to the fog and volumetric light, the result was not as expected, making the object white and bright in a situation that I needed the opposite. Thus, I’ve started to model a Kraken to use in the same place with a cycle animation moving the tentacles. As an 3D or volumetric object, it will have the result I want, using the fog to hide and blur part of its body.

The 3rd element I’ve decided to add in my work, related to pirates’ theme, was a shark. Sharks are not only a sea creature, that makes sense to have it in an under the sea ambient, but also a strong symbol of pirate stories and tales. The reinforce this idea, one of the punishments of the captain was to force a foe or traitor to jump in the board and die eaten by terrifying sharks with razor sharp teeth.

In terms of my progress in the Gantt Chart, at this stage I’m looking for errors, bugs and issues in the models, textures, light and animation as I’ve started to make some takes and learn how to make animation using the sequencer and matinee. I’m making a list of points where I have to fix, change some texture, add some modelling detail or lights to give more volume to the scene.

Reference

Rare Ltd, (2018), Sea of Thieves [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.rare.co.uk/games/sea-of-thieves [Accessed 09 Jun 2019].

[marcokovacs]

Final Major Project Process

Masters Final Project - UH Marco A U Kovacs Music: 10,000 Miles Away, (2017) Staggers and Jags [Album]. The Skullduggers Available at: https://www.facebook.c...

At this stage I already have enough content to make a video showing my development, demonstration the process of production, from the modelling and unwrapping, passing through the high poly sculpting in ZBrush and the texture baking and painting in Substance, with some adjustments in Photoshop when necessary. Next, the video shows the assets been positioned in the right place to compose the scene in Unreal Engine followed by the creation of materials and shades from the Substance textures for each asset. Finally, a short flythrough to show the scene generally and the light, fog and underwater mood.

The music in this video is a pirate song from the group Skullduggers, that use to make presentations for any pirate related event. And for me, music is very important to give life to a composition, it helps me to get in the mood and activate my artistic inspirations, it makes me happy and boost my energy. Also for the final presentation we need a music background which I’m already choosing from media content websites, but I’m looking for some more Epic and ancient mood with an interesting entrance to surprise spectators, combined with the flythrough camera takes that will show the grandiosity of this hidden or lost city.

[marcokovacs]

All the way through my development I have been paying attention in how I’m upgrading it, in terms of graphic quality, composition, colour pallet, lighting and the general mood of underwater. At this stage I can see that I have improved a lot my skills since the start of this project and specially from the start of my course. The city of Alecaminata is becoming a real desire of mine to become a game that I can play, this means that I’m enjoying to make it and the result is making me happy and excited.

I’ve cleaned the scene of pollution of elements like unnecessary particles, exceed of bubbles, water dirt, even the god-rays I’ve reduced slightly to make the scene softer and more stylized look.

I’ve started to put some decals to give more colour variation and contrast to the scene, also one factor that helped with this soft looking was the light calculation settings that with Mark’s help I could bake the light with a better quality. Moreover, I’m starting to put some pirate elements in the scene to have a better approach to the story I’ve created, because it was looking to much Atlantean and no sign of pirates until now. I’m still selecting some good angles for the project to use in my portfolio, also I’m starting to make animations for the camera to have a start point for the flythrough that I will make and animation of modelled creatures that I’m importing to the scene to give more life to this sea. I’m making some sharks which is not only a standard sea creature but also a pirate symbol. The other pirate elements I’m using is the shipwreck that is still under construction, and the silhouette of a Kraken that I will position in a far distance to show the player the danger of the seas and to make a connection to the pirate tales in the story.

About issues, I’m trying to understand how light works with volumetric fog after baking, because I can see a sphere of mass light around some point lights I had positioned around the temple for instance, wish shouldn’t be happening as I’ve turned of the option of scattering effect from the lights. But even after baking I can see these spheres. Definitely something to ask in the next class.

About the process, everything is running inside my schedule with a good progress then I’m using extra time to make elements that were not in my list, but I know is safe to make them without interfering in the production of the main assets.

[marcokovacs]

DILUVION

Gambitious Digital Entertainment and Arachinid Games, Same producers of Ballpoint Universe, have developed a very interest game of exploration and adventure under the sea, with Inspiration from H. P. Lovecraft, a great writer of weird fiction, they created tales and stories of a new world and mysteries underwater.

The game tells a story of a far future world destroyed by wars and selfishness where gods flooded this world by the ocean and covered with an unbreakable ice. Although a new civilization began from different kingdoms and to adapt to this underwater world, submarines were created to explore and discover the ancient humanity’s secrets.

An interesting feature that this game brings to the players is the mix of 2D and 3D graphic and hand painted art, it also let we pilot many different types of submarines which can be upgraded with water weapons and armour. Explore 3 open ocean areas in a big and mysterious environment and fight with terrifying creatures and other foes. Find treasures and loot to improve your crew and ship.

This game relates to my project not only for been an underwater game, but the mechanic of exploration with vehicles and solving mystery puzzles to understand the story of that place. Moreover, the stylized and cartoonish effects of this games make it fit more in a fantasy genre. In this case, this game has a better connection to the pirates of my project due to the idea of exploration for loot or treasures and fights between crews and submarines. The style and art process, using hand-painted textures is an important feature for me as I aim to make my project in the same way excluding the 2D part.

Reference

Arachnid Games, (2017), Diluvion [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.diluvion.com/ [Accessed 25 June 2019].

[marcokovacs]

LIGHT BAKING AND POST PROCESS

 I have mentioned before that I would need to recalculate the light on the scene and that would change the light result but, in this case, I was not expecting that much difference. The problem was the amount changes in light settings and number of light I’ve added for the lava areas, to give a great contrast with orange and blue and changes in the directional light to control the caustics and illumination of the surroundings areas. I’ve also changed a lot of settings in the post process volume which is a volumetric area you can position in the scene in a cube shape, that will change the visual aspect of what or how we see in the screen inside this cube area. Changes in colour saturation, contrast exposure for shadows, midlight and highlight, also adjustments in the camera like the field of view giving the blurred effect depending on the distance of the objects in relation to the camera view. The post process volume is very wide in terms of editing options allowing us even to use materials functions to create more effects for the scene which in my case was the wobbling effect to make the image wave slowly reinforcing the underwater aspect.

All these modifications with colour balance, separated in red, blue and green scales, made me change the light values in many light options I had in the scene. Specially from the skylight, working like a world base reflection where the scene itself will influence in the colour and lighting when the scene is baked, unless I use a 360 HDR image (one of the options for skylights) to give a different colour aspect to the scene. One other important detail that I need to pay attention and modify in the scene is the movability of each type of light, (interaction of light and object) which basically will work in different ways depending on my needs. Static lights are simple light for places with no interaction in the game and so more cheep for the engine to process. Stationary lights will also bake light in the environment but will keep a dynamic aspect when a character pass through it for example. Finally, movable light works for objects that will calculate the shadows all the time, most used for lighting characters and so, more expensive to the engine and less used in the scene. All of this will influence the light calculation time, the visual and performance result. I acknowledge that I wait to long to bake the light and so to much changes were made, next time I will keep a short gap between baked as is taking around 20 minutes to bake in the preview mode.

[marcokovacs]

At this moment of my creation I can take some time to chose my cameras and good angles to make most of it, showing the details and the power of the temple, the exploration of the submarine, flora and all this combined together. I’m happy with the result until now, but I will change a lot of things to improve the quality of the scene. As mentioned before, I think there are to much particles and dirt, fish and visual elements so the first point to change will be reduce all this noise.

Usually stylized design for games are clean so I must keep this reference in order to get a better result. In the Sea of Thieves game from Rare, even under the sea the style keeps very clean, but is dense and blurry, now with the anniversary update Rare has added fish in the water and the player can fish to eat of even sell the fish in the outposts market.

 One detail I’m missing in my project is the use of wood, but this is due to the underwater environment that would be more suitable in this case. Although I’m going to make a shipwreck in order to bring the pirate theme to this landscape, which is also some important point that I’m missing. But first things first, the base of the scene is there already, now is time to fix, polish and add elements to improve the quality of the composition and the mood.

I will need to bake the light again so I know this blue colour is not going to be the same, but at this moment I have something that I would show to someone as a work in progress project. The light is still not ready, I know that I have to give more volume to the scene, specially the temple and some other important places. The light is distributed in the overall scene, excluding the surrounding areas that already have a darker ambient to simulate the distance under the sea, as more far, more dark and blurred.

I want to give the flora spots a better looking with some decals reproducing a kind of moss or some short seaweed layer in the rocks to reinforce the plants areas and to highlight some green areas giving more colour to the scene.

So far everything running in the schedule, a bit advanced in some points honestly but still have much to do to improve the quality of the scene. The weekly tutorials are helping me to learn how to fix some issues and improve my skills, every class Mark and Neil show us new references, tutorials, techniques and tricks to use in our projects.

Reference

Rare Ltd, (2018), Sea of Thieves [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.rare.co.uk/games/sea-of-thieves [Accessed 21 June 2019].