BA6 | Specialism #23

Organising UV’s Ready for Ambient Occlusion (yep…more UV posts *sigh*)

This post is incredibly UV image heavy!! 

Don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoy UV’s and the unwrapping process. I think it’s rooted in my OCD nature and how I try to make everything fit perfectly together and look neat and precise. However with deadline less than 2 weeks away this really is the last time I can worry about them in so much detail. Especially when I have spent the entire day at uni working on making them ready for an ambient occlusion bake only to get home and find out none of my work ever actually saved and now I am an entire day behind. 

RAGE.

After screaming at the top of my voice and punching all the pillows on my bed in anger and frustration I moved on and manned up. I re did ALL the work I had done during my day at uni. Some, to my delight, actually turned out better than I remember it being during the day, however, other elements also weren’t quite “right”. Like I said though, no time to *really* go back and be picky unless I really need to. 

So, after all this, my task was to re size some of the larger UV’s, combine the models and UV maps to reduce the amount of work needed in the future (oh the irony). Lothar, my tutor, had told me the correct way to UV the ropes was to cut them up into segments and enlarge them to get more detail. Leaving them as one long UV would mean no seam but less detail. I can work on the seams where I have cut up the UV’s when I texture it.  As my friend at uni, Robin, stated, I could easily move and combine some of my models onto the same UV sheets to reduce space and work. So this is what I have done. Ill just post up screen shots for how they look currently before I try to bake some ambient occlusion onto them. 

I know this may seem like over the top documentation, and I don't expect anyone else to take much notice in this. It's really for my own benefit to see how I progressed and improved my UV's so that when I produce work in the furture I can refer back to a detailed blog about the unwrapping process and remind myself of where I went wrong and what I did right so I can continue to learn. Sorry if this is just boring for you to look at :P 

BA6 | Advanced Game Studies #05

Advanced Game Studies and Research; Applying my Ideas to the Project Brief!

I’m very lucky to have an idea for my CS essay that I know I will enjoy researching and producing a report about. It is a subject that I feel very strongly about and I am passionate to learn more in. The idea I have has come from the lectures given over the past 2 weeks by Sharon and Kim which have proved very helpful. However, I need to take time to sit back and look at the brief properly, highlight key areas and ensure that my idea fits into it properly because an idea that I feel excited about doesn’t necessarily mean an idea that will fit the brief. 

Here is the brief description, I think highlighting key areas will help me communicate my idea better. 

This unit considers the potential for games to be a persuasive medium beyond mere

entertainment, and focusing particularly on audience it poses the question: ‘Can digital games change the world?’ It will focus on educational, commercial and political games and their potential for wide - scale influence in society.

You will analyse the various strategies that games employ to persuade the player, to gain and to retain an audience, and how they achieve, or fail to achieve, their goals. Looking at digital games from this perspective, you will explore the ethics of game design, and ask whether games have the power to persuade, what ethical implications are there for the game designer? You will research the ways in which digital games are represented in the media, and assess the potential effects of this representation on different audiences. 

Answering Brief Related Questions

Whilst I have a fairly strong idea of what my topic is going to cover, I am finding it increasingly more difficult to attach it onto the  brief and ensure I don’t waffle on about totally irrelevant subject matter.

At this point I took the areas of the brief that I highlighted as key points and turned them into questions which I asked myself. I then tied to answer them the best I could relating to the subject topic I want to cover.  This was my way of testing if I could associate my topic with the brief fully.
  
Do the games you want to cover for this CS unit have the potential to be a persuasive medium beyond entertainment? 

I want to cover games that have alternate meanings and that pass on themes subliminally. For example, Papo & Yo is presented as a platform puzzle game but the deeper meaning behind the game is that it is a metaphor for abuse, addiction and bullying. Another example is Limbo. Many players see the artistic black and white side scrolling platform game but fail to comprehend the fact that this is a story about a boy who is literally stuck in limbo; which is quite a scary thought. 

These games have the potential to persuade the player to think outside the box narrative wise and see a "bigger picture" when it comes to games and how they can be used as a new medium for passing on messages and documenting realistic subject matter. 

When regarding audience, do the games you want to study have the potential to "change the world"? 

   
I'm worried that the subject I have chosen doesn't necessarily "change the world" and I find the statement a bit cheesy and over the top? However, I do think that games with deeper stories and more mature content/background have the ability to change a wider audiences perspective on games as a medium. Is this relevant or a suitable connection?

Will you cover a variety of games such as educational, commercial AND political?

Currently I only have indie games in mind for the topic and I'm concerned that I can't really fit in educational or political games. Does this matter greatly? 

What strategies are used to persuade the player and keep them playing regarding your topic?

Most indie games that I have in mind to cover use simple addictive gameplay to persuade players to continue playing and thus the developers are getting more time to convey their deeper meanings in the game. I want to talk about "Creepy Pasta" wiki and how players create scary stories from their imagination that fit in with games . Often these horror stories are riddled with dark meanings and metaphors. Using Creepy Pasta can be a strategy for players to continue playing the game to find out more about the hidden meaning. 

Does your topic pose a question about the ethics of game design? 

Yes because developers have to make a decision whether to create games that suggest alternate meanings or cover material not often seen through the medium of games. It questions whether games as a medium can be used to document realistic subjects and whether or not they are successful in doing so. I can relate this back to the games I study as well as the creepy pasta inspired video games that have been physically made just to scare and horrify people.

Does your topic prove that games have the power to persuade? 

I think I can conclude in my essay that games that contain realistic subjects and explore them through the medium of play definitely have the power to persuade. Not only persuade but inform and bring light to genuine real life issues and serious narratives that cover realistic subjects.

Regarding your topic, do the games you have in mind to study get presented in the media differently and does this have any effect on the audience looking to play the game?

Most commercial indie games that contain narrative elements drawing from real life (such as Papo & Yo) aren't presented or advertised as doing so. They are often advertised as quirky indie games with a difference that are fun to play. Not "fun to play but you will become gradually aware of the social realisms of abusive behaviour and addiction through play".

My CS tutor, Sharon, replied incredibly fast with helpful tips ad feedback following this study of the brief. She stated that this was a good way to approach the brief and that I had already clarified a great deal for myself in terms of subject matter and topic relevance. I stated that a rough topic title could be “How Games can be Used  as a Medium to Convey and Document ‘Realistic’ Subject Matter Through Play”. 

 

So, To Sum Up…

Hmm, text heavy blog post :/ Sorry! I just wanted to sum up my idea based on my study of the brief and feedback from Sharon. My plan of action is to study a variety of games that contain deeper meanings which have been input into the games narrative, plot, story or gameplay via metaphor or play. I will study how procedural rhetoric and documentary styles of expression and discuss whether these aid the implementation of deeper and often metaphorical/hidden meanings within games…

BA6 | Specialism #22

WIP’s, Finished UV’s (oh, wait no, MORE UV’S!), Small Rock Assets and Tutor Feedback!

Yesterday I went into university to show my tutor, Lothar, my WIP exterior jungle environment. He had seen various assets I had made early on such as the rope and low level of detail bridge but he hadn’t seen it finished as it stands.

Incredibly nervous, I showed him the work I have been slaving over for the past 3 weeks hoping for a positive crit and feedback session. And this is exactly what I got! Lothar seemed impressed with the work I had produced stating that it was portfolio quality if I could ensure the textures are good and that I continue to work hard on it. He seemed satisfied with my organic modeling and the only real criticism he gave me was that some of my models were too high poly; which is totally fair. However, I did say to him that early on in the project I had decided I wasn’t going to work in engine for this unit and that, whilst I didn’t want to go poly count crazy, I didn’t want to worry over keeping as low as possible. He agreed with this and said if I'm not working in engine then its fine.

One piece of advice he gave me was to perhaps add some smaller rocks to the environment scene which I have now done, UV’s ‘n all.

One major question I had for him was regarding the rope, do I cut up the UV’s and make them bigger but in smaller sections and at the risk of more seams? Or do I leave the UV as one long UV net with less quality texture wise but with no seams? Lothar said that I should cut up the rope UV’s and have them in manageable chunks to texture, this will also raise the texture quality and said agreed that so long as I try to make sure my textures are “seamless” it should be fine. I will need to go back and cut up the UV’s and resize them but I will do this when I texture them and document it then. 

Asset #9 - Small Environment Rocks

As I had already researched and found reference images for rock formations for the larger jungle rocks I made previously, I didn’t feel it necessary to find more reference images for the smaller rocks. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out the lattice tool I have previously tried to use but ditched. The tool allows you to manipulate a model whilst maintaining the correct geometry and not breaking your model.

For making rocks this is great. I was able to make a base shape with a decent amount of vertices. I manipulated it slightly using just the verts (low level of detail, base formation rock on the right). 

 

After I got a higher level of detail into my rock by inserting a couple of extra edge loops and manipulating the verts to form a more accurate rock I duplicated again. On this new rock I applied a lattice.

 

Using the lattice control points I was able to further manipulate the rock formation so that it wasn’t similar to the original rock that I duplicated it from.   

I still felt this silhouette was too similar to the original rock, so I made further manipulations to the lattice and it turned out really well. 

  

Time for a new rock, I went back and duplicated the original rock again and applied another lattice., I also did some basic tweaking to the model.

 

Realising I wasn’t getting enough freedom with the current lattice, I created a new one with more control points. This made the modeling a lot easier and more detailed, it enabled me to manipulate the formation even further to get a more unique rock shape. 

 

Finally, you can see all the rocks I made. I wont be using the one on the far right as that was just a base model but I have included it so you can see the progression of shape and form from beginning to end :D

 

Unwrapping the UV’s on the Rocks

 

  

I then had to fit these newly created rocks into my environment and make sure the floor poly plane fits them too. Here are some WIP’s of that process. 

 

Happy with how the assets sit on the floor (for now!) I moved onto ensuring all my UV’s were in place. Firstly I knew that I had left some UV’s bigger than they should be for the purpose of my blog. To fix this and ensure all my UV’s were in the correct grid area, I selected my entire model and looked on the UV grid to make sure nothing was floating outside the UV space. 

After this I did some renders to see how my model looked with the checker pattern on with all the UV’s in their correct placements within the UV grid space.

BA6 | Specialism #21

Unwrapping the UV’s on the Tree Stump

*FACE PALM* I totally forgot that I hadn’t unwrapped the UV’s for the tree stump that I made so I set out to do this after I finished unwrapping the rocks. I thought this would be slightly more difficult given the organic form of the stump but the UV’s actually came out really nicely and I was happy with the outcome! (Even if Maya did “fatal error” on me multiple times during the process!!) 

I started by selecting the main faces that go around the base of the stump and projecting a cylindrical map upon them.

 After a small amount of manipulation in the editor, mainly from my new best friend the “relax/unfold UV” tool, I was left with these beautifully unwrapped UV’s. 

 

I then started to unwrap the tree roots. I had to use the same method as I did for the rope and vines where by I selected similar faces and cylindrical map them, repeating the process until all the faces of the root were mapped, then I would sew the corresponding edges together in the UV editor and use the relax/unfold tool to re shape the entire root so that it was all in proportion. 

 

I then moved onto the areas of the stump that didn’t qualify for the initial cylindrical map I did at the start because they weren’t totally cylindrical; they were more side ways facing. Therefore I used the “select faces and perspective project” method which worked a treat because all I had to do then was find where they attached, in the UV editor, to the original cylindrical mapped area, sew the edges and perform another relax/unfold to reshape the UV’s.  

 

After this I did a birds eye view projection onto the top faces of the stump to finish up the last of the unwrapped faces. At first the projection looked flat and the checker pattern didn’t reflect the depth of the curves in the organic shape of the stump, however once I used the trusty unfold/relax tool on them they looked much more accurate of the formation. 

Overall I am really happy with how well the UV’s turned out for the asset, I think considering how organic the shape is, the UV’s are well laid out and reflect the formation well which will, hopefully, translate well onto the textures!