Presentation 1

Today I have just done my first pitch presentation, where I have started to introduce the main concept of my project and which direction I would like to go.

Slide 1 - Introduction

Slide 2 - Research aim

Slide 3 - As seen near the start of this project, this thought process is what helped me through thinking of an ideas for my research question base on what I type of area I wanted to go into. It also made the thought process easier for thinking of all the individual sub-topics that went along with immersion.

Slide 4 - Here I went further into detail as to what my subject area actually meant, talking about the various read materials I researched into to acquire the information, and from that, saying in my own words what I thought it meant, e.g (immersion - when the primary focus of an individual is towards what is on the screen, (virtual world), rather than their own surroundings and they become engrossed)

Sub topics included what is needed to create an immersive experience, such as sound, lighting story, theme etc.

Slide 5 -  Creating an environment that actually makes the player feel like they are in the game or living through the character.

why? - I am trying to find out how I could include immersion because in creating a game, an immersive experience is key to portraying a believable environment and successful game.

Slide 6 - Here are some examples of one of the projects I have done in the past for my third year. This projects influences took root from the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley but had a sort of futuristic interpretation of it.

Slide 7 -  In this section, I explained what I aimed to create for the test levels, that being a Murder mystery/ horror level which is intended provoke anxiety and fear within the player and for the other test I want create an environment which gives the right representation of a zen garden, ( giving the emotions of peacefulness and tranquillity).

Slide 8 - I chose these games as influences for the zen garden test level, because the depict the direction I would like to go if I went forward with this type of environment. Why I chose these two examples at the top ( Far cry 4 - left, Metal gear rising - right), was because one of them is a good example of what I would probably looking for in the garden. Also the other is an influence because of the dream like scenery.

Slide 9 - Typically there are not alot of games in this genre especially to do with eastern influences, but I think these two examples, probably best describe what I intend to do with the project if I go for this theme or at least how I would like the environment to look similar to.

Slide 10 - For these two test levels, I have created a very rough floor plan to give a slight idea to how this level is going to look. Since the level will follow eastern themes, I will be going for the intent of creating a traditional Japanese house, but when it comes to creating the final level next semester, I may move to a more modern style approach, for the house.

Slide 11 - This is how far I have gotten for creating the Japanese style house.

Slide 12 -  Over the next few weeks, once I finished adding the objects to the test environments I will be exploring into what colour schemes & lighting position will be best effective for the two separate themes I have chosen. I also intend to find out what music and sounds best create the mood for these levels.  

(same timeline as in the post below)

Feedback

Overall I think the presentation went fairly well, although I felt a little nervous throughout the duration of it. Although I felt nervous it was a little bit of a relief that I was on of the last people to give my presentation, but seeing other peoples projects I felt at the time the practice based work on my part was possibly a bit lacking. The feedback from the lecturers was ok, there was some good points about my project and a few bad ones too. They all generally said the same thing, that it was good the amount of research I had done, but the project research question that I chose to do, "The creation of immersive 3D environments and how it keeps the player engaged" would be too much for just a one year project, and it is really hard to measure what is immersive and what is not, so they said about renaming the project to something more specific, focusing on a area like engagement etc and suggested maybe something to do with presence.

eastern environmental research - Traditional japanese home

Although I had already started making props for the environment, I hadn't really seen much of what a traditional Japanese would possible look like, and if certain objects were made, where would they be positioned on the environment?. In these first two examples below, they both show the natural look of the interior of these homes through real- life. 

http://www.foymall.com/japanese-interior-design/japanese-interior-design-ideas-grosvenor-house-museum/

http://tonost.com/2013/08/15/%E8%87%AA%E5%88%86%E3%81%9F%E3%81%A1%E3%81%AE%E3%82%AA%E3%83%95%E3%82%A3%E3%82%B9%E3%82%92%E4%BD%9C%E3%82%8B%E3%81%AA%E3%82%89%E3%80%81%E3%81%93%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%83%87%E3%82%B6%E3%82%A4%E3%83%B3/

These other three picture are prime examples of traditional homes in Japanese environments, but the difference here is these environments are built for game use /architecture/ advertisement by a 3D environment artist. As you can see the use of furniture is kept to a minimum, but still keeps you immersed from its realistic stand-point .

http://gnuarch.org/japanese-living-room-ideas-and-main-principles-of-its-design/interior-design-of-a-japanese-style-living-room/

https://www.thefhd.co/japanese-style-living-room-design/living-room-concept-using-traditional-japanese-style-interior-result/

Schedule

Here is a general schedule, for keeping track of what dates I will start and Finnish these individual tasks. Other tasks may be added and dates may change, so I will keep you updated on my progress.

Test 1 - lightmaps

Developmental process

In the end the tutorial process worked. The lightmap/second UV s were generated through the process in Maya and were successful when imported into the unreal 4 engine, as you can see through the image above you, ( the shadows are in the right positions and the light is reflected off the object in the places expected). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJsR0y7R8U

This tutorial will show the process of how to create your lightmaps in Maya, once you have created and textured the object/s, then integrate those objects into engine to provide real life lighting on them.

Final pattern created on photoshop

Reference for floral patterns

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-decorative-oriental-floral-pattern-arabic-style-image30927773

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-oriental-floral-bird-patterns-image12336111

Since my theme for this project was eastern/oriental based I wanted to stick to patterns that were mostly used in this region, e.g. floral patterns. 

For starting off developing this vase, from a cylinder, I wanted to slowly morph off the shape into something similar to what you see below. As you can see by the mid-stage the vase object was starting to take shape, I wanted to add in more geometry so that it gave the illusion of spherical roundness.

References

Here are some examples I took from various sites, for reference in the making of my vase, (For these particular two vases, I wanted to look at oriental patterning and various shapes).

In the previous post, on my jellyfish I asked the question "How would I create lightmaps in a 3D package and then apply it to a game engine". As I have never acquired this knowledge before, and the fact that I feel doing this would improve the look of my objects, giving them the correct shadows and lighting, I felt it was necessary to learn this process.