Maffy Lees ~ Third Year

In this project I have faced a few problems but have been able to overcome all of them, I have learnt a lot of new skills and how to do different things on UDK and 3D Studio Max. Overall I have enjoyed this project but felt that it was a bit too long near the end and started to get a bit fed up of it! Thankfully I had chosen a topic that I have always been interested in, so even in my breaks from work I was watching films and tv dramas that were set in manor houses so could be classed as research. This project has literally taken over my life for the past few months, resulting in me rarely leaving the house, so I think that after I have handed this in (and celebrated with my classmates) I will be living in the gym, but my main focus will be finding a job! I have already been working on my CV, covering letter and portfolio website to build more of a professional image, but I will put a lot more focus into these and finding a job will be my job for the moment. I am really lookin...

Manors Visited: Highclere Castle – Newbury, England Wollaton Hall – Nottingham, England Windsor Castle – Windsor , England Greenway House – Devon, England Catherine Palace – St. Petersburg, Russia Hermitage Museum – St. Petersburg, Russia Books Read: Blenheim Palace Guide Book Althorp House Guide Book Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family - Pamela Marshall Castles and Houses Websites Used: General 3D and UDK Help: http://www.digitaltutors.com Flashlight Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUhNISTX_tQ Various Forum Discussions: www.polycount.com Various Forum Discussions: http://forums.epicgames.com Royalty Free sounds: soundbible.com Soundjay.com Freeplaymusic.com Convert mp3 sounds to wav: http://media.io/ Media Watched: Pride and Prejudice (Film) Death Comes to Pemberly (TV Drama) Downton Abbey (TV Drama) Poirot (TV Drama) Mr.Selfridge (TV Drama)

It is the Friday before I have to hand in my project so I decided to travel to Leicester to test if my level works on the University computers. Thankfully it has worked perfectly so the only things I have to do now is create my fly-through, get some professional looking print-screens and burn my disc ready for hand-in. I will be glad to see the back of this project but I have actually really enjoyed it and I'm actually surprised with the amount that I have achieved on my own.  I'm definitely glad that I chose to create an environment about a subject that I was interested in, as it has made the project a lot more enjoyable. I can't wait to hand this in and post this onto my portfolio, I am proud of it and want to show it off!

I finally got round to creating the smashed window in the hall, (to signify the player has broken in) it was simple enough to do but to add a bit more atmosphere I decided to put some rain outside. Instead of using a particle effect that I am quite familiar with, I created this rain on an animated material to teach myself something new. I was really pleased with the outcome and feel that it makes the windows themselves more interesting and draws more attention to the smash.  I had the usual problems with the fact that the rain used alpha and so was impossible to actually select in the normal UDK view, and because I have a lot of assets in my level now, its quite difficult to distinguish in wire frame view. I had a slight problem with UDK itself at this point, because I'm not very familiar with actually building things in the engine as I generally just import my own assets that I have built in 3DS Max. Unlike every single program that I have used in the past, UD...