Game Scene Week 2

Bioshock Infinite Game Scene

Group Members

• Anthony Herrera is our group leader whose job it is to organize and hand out tasks to the other members in order to make sure we hit our deadlines.

• Trevor Davis is our lead texture designer whose job it is to create most of the texture assets for our scene.

• Patrick Tambunting is our lead modeler whose job it is to create most of the model assets for our scene.

• Mari Fong is our lead Unity designer whose job it is to set up and arrange our models, textures, and post processing effects to create the final game scene.

Trello Board

Assigned This Week

• Anthony

• Model the Statue of Comstock

• Patrick

• Model Modular Pieces for Street Buildings

• Trevor

• Model a Stopping Bar

• Model a Umbrella

• Mari

• Research Particle and Post-Processing Effects

Completed This Week

• Anthony

• Patrick

• Trevor

• Model a Stopping Bar

• Mari

Figure 2.1

Still In-Progress

• Anthony

• Model the Statue of Comstock

• Patrick

• Model Modular Pieces for Street Buildings

• Trevor

• Model a Umbrella

• Mari

• Research Particle and Post-Processing Effects

Object List - 3,338 Tris 

• Buildings - 1998 Tris

• Yellow Store Building

• Bell Tower

• Modular Street Buildings - 1998 Tris

• Cafe Building

• Modular Floating Buildings 

• Bell

• Small Props - 602 Tris

• Trash can - 90 Tris

• Bench - 360 Tris

• Table

• Chair

• Umbrella - 152

• Platform Connector

• Fence Bar

• Fence Post

• Large Props - 738 Tris

• Lamp Post

• Hot Dog Stand

• Fresh Produce Stand

• Giant Billboard

• Platform Post

• Stopping Bar - 738 Tris

• Platform

• Platform Street Bridge

• Platform Central Circle

• Platform Connector

• Platform Stairs

• Hero Object

• Statue of Comstock

My Work

This week I found and tested a few assets I found on the Asset store that I thought would be helpful in finalizing our scene.

The first thing I tested out is a few free skyboxes I found in the store. While they are a vast improvement upon the default skybox, none of them have the look and feel that fit the Bioshock theme.

Skybox 2, for example, had the right amount of clouds and fog I was looking for (in just the skybox), but was too cool for the warmer feel of Bioshock. It also has a very huge and obvious seam where the image starts and ends, and while on a static scene it would be ok, due to the fact we are doing a walkthrough the scene, it would be far too obvious.

Skybox 2

Skybox 1

Skybox 1, on the other hand, was the right tone of blue, and the sky on the underside had the right kind of haze, however without an appropriate amount of clouds in the skybox itself, it would reduce the amount of depth in the scene if I were to just use clouds I created in the scene.

Next, I decided to test out a grass asset that I had gotten off the store that we could use to add some subtle detail to the playable area to give it some life. It is very detailed, and not too realistic which will fit into the scene. What will most likely happen is that I will create multiple pieces of terrain that I can then scatter throughout the scene in places that I see fit. The grass includes flowers which can be used to add a bit of floral decoration to portions of the scene, wherever they seem fit. 

Grass Asset

I also found another grass asset in another asset package, which also had a tree, which could be useful to either be used as is or used as a reference to model a tree after. This version of grass is individual clumps of grass, which is helpful to add a bit of organicness to the roads, with weeds and such growing out of cracks, or to add some variation to a patch of grass.

Tree and Grass

So far I've found mostly nature asset packs, which help for small sections of the scene, and can help serve as references or stand-ins when I start to build the scene. It can help see if we should model some other objects to fill a space, or adjust a certain texture.

Work for next week:

Start comparing assets (different skyboxes, thinking of creating custom assets [skybox, particle systems]), get any completed models in to start building the scene and figure out any flaws in the models (scaling, for example). If there are any assets that can be textured, I will try my best to help with that process (i.e. texture props). 

Game Scene Week 1

Project 3(10/20/2020): Bioshock Infinite Game Scene

Group Members

• Anthony Herrera is our group leader whose job it is to organize and hand out tasks to the other members in order to make sure we hit our deadlines.

• Trevor Davis is our lead texture designer whose job it is to create most of the texture assets for our scene.

• Patrick Tambunting is our lead modeler whose job it is to create most of the model assets for our scene.

• Mari Fong is our lead Unity designer whose job it is to set up and arrange our models, textures, and post processing effects to create the final game scene.

Description of Game Scene Project

For our group game scene project, we decided to model our scene after the location known as Eden Square from Bioshock Infinite. The point of this location is to really portray the massive and wondrous look of the City of Columbia to the player as a way to the player a great first impressions of the city before they find out the true dark nature of it shortly later on in the game. As such, our goal with this scene is to essentially make colorful railroad attraction where the player will be awe-struck by the colorful and Utopian look of Eden Square.

Figure 1.1

Figure 1.1 was our starting and main reference image for how we would go about designing our scene. As you can see in figure 1.1, we spent the first portion of our project marking out objects and pieces we wanted to model and add to our scene, with green outlines marking what major objects we wanted to break down into modular pieces, red outlines marking what objects we wanted to keep whole, yellow outlines what we wanted to be the main focus of our scene, and purple outlines marking complex but non-essential objects that we might want to add into our scene later if we have the time for it.

Figure 1.2

Figure 1.2 is a basic annotated map we created to show how we want the player to be moving through our scene. The green line represents the main critical path that the player is roughly supposed to follow while the yellow line represents an optional side area/path that the players are supposed to follow if they end up wanting to explore the map. 

Blocked Scene

Figure 1.3

Figure 1.3 is a rough block out of how we want our scene to look like and be formatted.

Object List

• Buildings

• Yellow Store Building

• Bell Tower

• Modular Street Buildings

• Cafe Building

• Modular Floating Buildings 

• Bell

• Small Props

• Trash can

• Bench

• Table

• Chair

• Umbrella

• Platform Connector

• Fence Bar

• Fence Post

• Large Props

• Lamp Post

• Hot Dog Stand

• Fresh Produce Stand

• Giant Billboard

• Platform Post

• Stopping Bar

• Platform

• Platform Street Bridge

• Platform Central Circle

• Platform Connector

• Platform Stairs

• Hero Object

• Statue of Comstock

Trello Board

My Work:

For my part of the project this week, I am researching different Unity assets and effects I can use to help enhance our scene.

One of those things is a skybox, which is necessary for our scene as the city floats in the sky. This should be a relatively easy task to do and will ultimately become a finishing touch to the scene.

Next is cloud effects. While the scene is in the sky and the skybox will have some clouds, adding extra physical cloud effects would help further immerse the scene. I can use a particle system to create this effect.

For ambient sounds, taking a clip of audio from the scene itself would work well. Adjusting it to fit our needs may be necessary, as our scene may vary from the original scene.

Our second particle effect could potentially be a fire hydrant, as creating a water sprinkler particle effect would be easy and add some life to the scene. 

I also created the annotated map. It was a simple photoshop project, color coded. It was relatively simple as we were not sure how complicated to make it.

Next up is covering the rest of the requirements (second audio source, reviewing post-processing, animation, etc).  

Tower Micro Scene

 

For this assignment we were assigned to create a base tower with 3 toppers. We created a high poly version of the model, and a low poly version as well. From there we learned how to use baked lighting in Painter, as well as how to use LOD in Unity.

For my scene, I decided to riff of the tower from the Studio Ghibli movie, The Cat Returns. This  tower, in the movie, is the exit from the Cat Kingdom, where the main protagonist Haru must exit through to get back to the human world and turn back into a human. Surrounding the base of the tower is a maze, which the characters must get through in order to get to the tower. One of my towers is a replication of that same tower shown in the movie, with a few adjustments to fit within the 1x1x2 space I have. For my other two toppers, I decided to make 2 different cat towers, as the original seems to be based off of a simple cat tower as well. Each tower is adjusted to fit within the 1x1x2 space, and are scaled so they fit on top of the base well.

One is a cat bed atop a post with hanging yarn ball toys, and the other is a cat head shaped bed on a basic cat tower. My props include a top hat and cane, which is a reference to one of the characters in the movie, Baron. I also have a basic ball of yarn, as well as a few maze pieces to construct the maze that surrounds the replica tower.

For LODs, two models are created at different poly counts so that it is easier to render them in real time in games. For example, these towers would be best suited for a game that requires multiples of towers like these, and zooms in and out a lot.  In a mobile environment, these would be good towers for a collection game, like Neko Atsume (if it was 3D) or Dragonvale (again, if it was 3D). LOD models would work especially well for games like Dragonvale, where you can zoom in and out of your area.

Painter view of tower base + toppers.

To texture these, I used Substance Painter. I used multiple stone/rock, fabric, fur, and rope materials to texture my pieces. Since we were learning how to use baked lighting, I used a baked lighting filter on top of the pieces, and adjusted the light to mock the lighting in the scene in the movie where she exits out of the top of the tower. To export, I just used the base color map and imported that into Unity. 

For Unity, I exported all of my models individually and imported them to Unity. I then used a material, with the base colors applied to it, to apply the texture to the models. Once that was done, I used the LOD tool and added my high and low poly models to two different LOD depths. My high went on LOD 0, and my low went on LOD 1. I then used Terrain Tools to add a terrain for my towers. I decided to go with a dirt and grass terrain, as it was heavily inspired by the movie and the Cat Kingdom, which is covered in grass (and cat tails, naturally!)

I definitely struggled with this project a little. My biggest problem was with modeling, however texturing and Unity went extremely smoothly. After my last assignment, I learned a lot about the programs and this assignment was much easier. As for modeling, I struggled with the tri count and creating a low poly version of some of the pieces, especially the ones made from spheres. I did find a good solution which was to delete a few edges that wouldn't be seen, and applied that to my pieces.

Base + Topper Base Color Map

Prop Base Color Map