Week 4 - Lecture Summary

This week we looked at drama, weather and lighting. We focus primarily on the sublime and how altering the weather and lighting in a scene can have a big impact. We looked at artists such as James Ward and Caspar David who use weather, lighting and specific views to create drama and a scene that is realistic however makes you question its reality.

Week 3 - Short Clip

Short Clip

Week 3 - The Picturesque

Week 3 - Reference Images

William Gilpin

Claude Lorrain

Capability Brown

Humphrey Repton

JMW Turner

West Lake; Hangzhou

Week 3 - Lecture Summary

This week in our lecture we focused on The Picturesque. This was the notion of creating a landscape that looks natural, however, everything is placed intentionally and with a specific purpose. In the artworks we looked at, there was a clear definition of foreground, middle ground and background. I intend to incorporate ideas of The Picturesque into my island by creating 'view points' where the view is framed by elements in the foreground. 

Week 2 - Island 02

Week 2 - Island 01 - Custom Texture

Week 2 - Island 01

Week 2 - World Creator

This week I experimented with using World Creator. I found the concept of this software really good however it didn't really work when I imported the height map into Cry Engine. Here is the result from my test of creating a land mass in World Creator and importing it into Cry Engine:

Week 2 - Lecture Overview

In the lecture this week, we focused on some artists whose work looked at the relationship between the virtual and reality . We also looked at some comparisons between images taken from cry engine and reality allowing us to see the quality and detail we are aiming to achieve.

Week 1 - Reference Images

Found on desktopwallpapers4.me

Vegetation: This Island is densely covered in trees except for the beaches.

Terrain: The Island has a few mountainous areas and then it flattens out near the beaches.

Lighting: This photo is taken at a time of day where you can easily see half the island in shadow and half in sunlight.

Found on mymodernmet.com

Vegetation: There is little vegetation in this image due to the presence snow.

Terrain: The terrain is fairly flat with a few hills in the background. The terrain then drops forming a large waterfall.

Lighting: This image is taken at sunset so you can see the oranges of the sunset against the white snow.

Found on eu.greekreporter.com

Vegetation: There is very little vegetation on the outcrops.

Terrain: There are very steep cliffs that drop straight into the ocean. The cliffs form small caves that could easily be explored by boat.

Lighting: The cliffs appear almost white in this sunlight which allows the land to contrast with the blue ocean.

Found on tarkine.org

Vegetation: The vegetation of this Australian rainforest mainly consists of very tall trees.

Terrain: The terrain is primarily flat, however, it does look like it could have some steep slopes.

Lighting: The tall trees allow the light to filter through the leaves creating an atmosphere that makes you feel very far away from everything else in the world.

Found on images.nationalgeographic.com

Vegetation: Dense green trees covering the islands.

Terrain: Many small islands in clear blue water. Some of the islands have quite tall mountains.

Lighting: The series of islands are shown during the day allowing you to see the clarity of the water.

Week 1 - Lecture Reflection

This week in the lecture, we primarily looked at previous work done in the course. This gave a good insight into the level of detail that is required of us as well as providing a bit of inspiration for our own assignments.

Many of the islands are set in apocalyptic settings, however, one that stood out was set on multiple islands that were floating in space. This sparked an interest to think outside the box and to create an island that is very unexpected and hopefully quite different from everyone else's.

Week 1 - Shortcuts

1. Select objects panel = ctrl T
2. Hide = h
3. Freeze = f
4. Helpers on particle objects = Shift space
5. Move = 1
6. Rotate = 2
7. Scale = 3

Week 1 - Moving Around your Level

1. w = forward, s = backwards, d = right, a = left.
2. Right mouse button to look around
3. Middle mouse button to pan around
4. You can move around the level with the mouse only by holding the middle and right mouse keys and moving the mouse around.
5. Shift makes you move faster.
6. You can use the mouse wheel to move forward and backwards.
7. alt and the middle mouse button allows you to rotate around an invisible point.
8. You can change the viewport camera speed.
9. You can input specific coordinants into the go to position button which allows you to jump to specific places on your level.

Week 1 - Customising your Sandbox Editor Setup

1. You can drag one window into another to minimise the number of windows open; e.g. drag and drop the flow and data base view onto the material editor.
2. You can then drag and drop windows onto the left, right, bottom and top of the viewport.
3. You can open, close and detach the console panel at the bottom.
4. You can turn tool bars on and off and place them at the top.
5. To customise the editor go to: tools > customise keyboard.
6. You can then create a new tool bar, turn tool bars off and turn them back on again.
7. Once you've made a new toolbar, you can browse the functions and then drag and drop them into this new toolbar.
8. You can turn on 'show short cut keys' under customise keyboards options.
9. You can create hot keys.
10. You can customise the colour of the console at the bottom.
11. You can create customised buttons e.g. sound on and off.

Week 1 - Sandbox User Interface Tips & Tricks

1. On the top right corner of the view port are the stats.
2. If you right click on the text "perspective" you can access different viewports.
3. You can change the resolution of the viewport on the top right corner of the view port.
4. If you search the entity name in the search bar you can isolate different elements of the level.
5. AI physics will simulate in game animations while in the build mode
6. control g = in game mode
7. The console panel at the bottom of the screen allows you to input comments into build mode such as turning the sound off. By pressing the browse button in the bottom right hand corner you can see all the accepted comments.
8. The first tab on the menu bar on the right hand side of the screen is the "create" tab. This allows you to bring entities into the editor. The second tab is the "modify" tab which allows you to modify the terrain, etc. The third tab allows you to hide and unhide render settings, entities and brushes. The fourth tab is the "layers" tab.
9. If you create a 'solid' or a 'brush' you can export this as a .obj that can be opened in most 3D modelling softwares. 
10. You can easily group objects and entities, making your level organised and easy to work with.
11. A prefab is like an instance set group whereby if you change one instance of the group, all the same elements will change.
12. The tools menu will allow you to easily reload parts of the level such as textures and geometry.
13. In the view menu, you can find all the tool panels allowing for easy access of different functions within the software. You can also hide and show the roller bar in the view menu.
14. You can save the layout of the software through the view menu, allowing you to easily access your customised layout.
15. On the navigation panel at the top of the screen you can find a list of all the objects so you can easily find a specific object.
16. You can select a group of objects and save them and then import them into another game level.

Week 1 - The Sandbox Folder Structure

• The folder structure of Cryengine and Sandbox are very simple and easy to understand and work with. There are several different folders making it easy to find what you are looking for.
• "Bim 32" and "Bim 64" are folders where the executables are as well as the game files and the editor.exe files.
• "Bim 64" is faster, loads faster and allows you to use a lot more memory.
• There is a folder titled "Code" where you will find codes and scripts that you can change and edit
• In the "game" folder there are .pak files that contain all the game information including music, sounds, particles, animations, etc.
• In the "game" folder you can extract the .pak files/folders to allow you to use the objects in them in the build mode.