Final Major Project [Post 14] ~ Smashed Windows and Ridiculously Large Cushions

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, UDK doesn't recognise Ctrl+A as Select All, and instead drops whatever material you have selected down on where the UDK box is. Unknown to me, I tried selecting my level by pressing Ctrl+A, it didn't work so I thought it didn't actually do anything, turns out I had actually made it rain in my dining room! After a lot of frustration to figure out how to get rid of said rain, I realise this was actually quite funny and at least I know how to fix this in the future if I accidentally try and use short cut keys.

Other than just general re-texturing of things and adding some more stealable assets, I don't really have much to write about, I am really just doing the finishing touches to my level. I have finished most things and am very happy with what I have made.

On another note, when I imported my re-textured cushions they were bigger than the chairs, which made no sense whatsoever, I re-imported them again and they were the correct size. I think I may have found a problem with either exporting from 3D Studio Max or importing into UDK.

What?

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Final Major Project [Post 4] ~ Building, Building and more Building

Recently I have been like an asset making machine, I have really been enjoying sitting in front of 3D Studio Max and churning out various assets for my level. I feel like I am definitely getting a lot faster with building in 3D and I am pleased with most of the things that I have made. My level was looking very sparse but hopefully once I have put all of these assets into my level, then it will look more like a manor house. I am not really looking forward to unwrapping or texturing some of these assets though as some have very rounded parts that will be difficult to unwrap neatly. I am going to pay more attention to making my unwraps a lot neater in this project though, as I feel that has let me down in past projects, although looking at my assets now, most of them will share the same tileable textures of wood or gold. I made a paint-over of my library, as I couldn't get the ceiling to look right, by doing my paint-over, I realised that the ceiling wasn't high enou...

Final Major Project [Post 1] ~ Ideas

It’s time for me to start my final major project, I have been thinking about what I would like to do for a while now but have never settled on a complete idea. I always wanted to build a large ornate manor house, because I love going to National Trust properties and other manor houses and I already have a lot of reference pictures. I presented my idea in front of my university class and about 5 tutors and the feedback that I got on my idea was mainly positive, (which in a way I was surprised about and glad) the only thing that they weren’t happy about is that I wanted to create the interior AND exterior of the house, they said it would be too much work and probably wouldn’t look right as different game engines are better for different things like this. They gave me a choice which was: I could do the exterior of an existing building, it would be an exact copy of the building but in 3D and would be more of a presentation piece that they would possibly show in a museu...

Final Major Project [Post 11] ~ Working Locks and Melting Brains

I finally found a way to get my library door/key to work correctly, it took a lot of researching and random testing but it finally has the desired effect! Now the player can approach the library door, it wont open but will display [Door Locked] on screen, until the player gets the key. The key is in one of the drawers in the dining room that open when you get near. I had a problem here with the key in the drawer, if the player didn’t pick up the key once the drawer had been open and then closed again, the key would stay floating and clipping through the front of the drawer. I tried a few ways of fixing this but the more I did to it, the worse it got (key was now reappearing and floating in place when player had collected key, secondary key would not go away.) So I took a small break, watched a brain-melting episode of Jeremy Kyle and then came back to the problem, for some reason I managed to fix it straight away, its like all of a sudden it made sense to me. It is very importan...

Maffy Lees ~ Third Year

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