As discussed last meeting, the goal this time around was to get the actual look of the landscape in place, which I have done. Above is an image from Area 1, looking toward the canyon area. Below is an image from the other side, right by the canyon mouth.
I’ve been able to make progress, however there are some problems with this engine.
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?p=1166008#p1166008
Voxels are a way to sculpt and build up environmental geometry in the sandbox editor, as opposed to creating the meshes outside and importing them. As shown via the link above, the updated engine no longer supports voxels, which is magnificently disappointing, especially since I was going to employ these tools to create details for the level. Additionally, I have experienced other issues and glitches, with terrain textures and the skybox not working properly. One issue is that of texture and material stretching on the faces of cliffs, in spite of the fact that I have been using materials designed for x,y and z coordinates. I’ve spent about 65% of my time trying to combat these issues and only 35% actually designing. Just to give another example of what I am dealing with, I got the proper sky in place, but then as soon as I did, I can’t move while in-game. In fact, now when I try to take a screen capture, something I have done countless times, the engine goes black and I have to restart it. Again, very frustrating, leading me to believe that, after this project, I should consider switching to the Unreal engine. The situation is very strange and unexpected because the level I designed last semester gave no such problems.
Having said this, I have moved forward. The terrain as it is looks very nice. One thing in particular that I like is being able to change the color of the shadows. When I am out in the later afternoon, sometimes the shadows on the ground have a slight blue/purple tint and I was able to recreate that here. The foliage reacts to the breeze and I have added the shadows of clouds moving across the landscape. This constant motion, even when subtle, brings the environment to life.
Above is a third image, this is taken from Area 3, looking back. Below are a couple shots from inside the canyon.
You may notice that some of the foliage appears blurred. This is due to the motion caused by the breeze in the level. The in-game effect is quite nice.
In reality, the “golden hour” looks great but if you don’t have the sun blocked with the azimuth between 10° and 12° then it can be blinding. In order to get the exact color tonality in the images above I have been altering the time of day, saturation, whites and color balance under the HDR settings to achieve a similar look that is unified by a warm light. The image above shows Area 3, with the sun in the back. The warmth is there, but it is not blinding.
When I was younger we visited White Sands National Monument and my mom snapped this great photo of me. There was a pool of water on the ground and it looked like I was standing in the middle of the sky. People thought it was fake but it wasn’t. That image inspired me to make the ground in the final area unnaturally reflective, adding to the otherworldly effect of seeing a rift between dimensions and realities. We’ll see how that goes.
At this point I am blocking out locations for buildings, based on the original plans. While I have more or less been able to adapt to/overcome these issues, the challenge of transferring the buildings with their textures, from Maya, yet remains. One thing I’ve learned in life, whether it is this, design, music, whatever, is that limitations can actually be a blessing in disguise. If this means a simpler approach to the buildings, creating a more aesthetically pleasing effect with single textures/materials, then it could be a good thing. The basic idea of turning a problem into a benefit is the attitude I am employing right now.
10-17 UPDATE
Through trial and error I have discovered that, for reasons currently unknown, mesh operations in Maya such as extrude or wedge from Cut faces or the Interactive Split Tool cause the CRYENGINE (all caps is the proper new name as of release 3.5) export resource compiler to crash. There may be a solution to this in the form of a final geometry alteration. I have reported this observation and I am hopefully waiting for a reply. It might just be something simple, we’ll see. In the meantime I will create a modular structure by other means. Hopefully by tonight I can have something built that, if not yet implemented in the game, will hopefully eventually work.
11-3 UPDATE
Someone from crydev.net has said that the Physics.dll for Maya is not working properly for the current release version, and that they can make it work with an earlier version. I don’t have time to mess with another version and reinstalling everything right now. I also wonder why it works for some simple shapes and not for others. Perhaps this will be sorted on a newer version.
10-17 UPDATE 5:10
Still no luck with the exporter. In the real world there would be several individuals working on this project, not one. There would be, at the very least, a modeler, a texture artist, a writer, an art director, a concept artist, a programmer and, the main missing piece here, a technical director to deal with issues such as the exporter. While I am not yet certain that the situation is catastrophic, I have been thinking about what else I can do that is acceptable short of actually having a completely published level. The point is really not the technical aspect but the design aspect, and I think we are just about at a point where we have to wonder about the effort versus the result. It might be better to focus on the design elements themselves rather than continuously banging my head against wall with a technical glitch. I already wonder how many assets could have been created instead.
In the meantime I figured I would upload the modular structure I made that will be built into the sides of the landscape in Area 1:
The idea behind this design is that it can be presented from any 90° angle and used to build a larger whole, the benefit being that it saves geometry and material resources. It can be stacked or arranged into anything based on the shape of the environment. I also had the idea of using these at 45° angles to create a larger structure in the middle of Area 1. If I could only solve the export issue I could wrap up Area 1 and focus on Area 3.
10-18 UPDATE
I worked on this all last night and all of today, more trouble-shooting but to no avail. I have submitted a forum entry for support, but I already know I am not the only one experiencing these issues. What’s odd is that I can export a single object, such as a cube, but when I make another, or make an edit, it crashes the exporter. This, in spite of the necessary freeze transform, delete history and other such operations. Each export requires a process of validation but, even when validation returns no errors, it crashes the exporter. One possible option would be to try redesigning the assets in 3ds Max and exporting from there, but that would require reworking the objects, installing the plugins and learning an entirely new and, from what Iv’e heard, more complicated workflow. We’ve essentially run into a wall, unless I get some constructive feedback from Crydev.
10-18 UPDATE 7:15
There may be some hope on the horizon! If things begin to turn around I’ll put the new material up in a different entry.
10-18 UPDATE 11:35
I found somebody on Youtube to take a look at a sample file I created and he, while far more advanced than I am, is also unable to figure out why it is crashing. I did another experiment scene, very simple. I created a box, gave it a material, and successfully exported it. Then I applied (gasp!) an extrude, once again it worked. Then I applied a bevel to one edge, it worked again. I then applied another extrude and it crashes again. It makes no sense whatsoever. Still working …
10-20 UPDATE 2:42
Alright. I have made some progress, if you think of progress in the same way that tripping over your shoelaces still technically yields “forward” progress. I can now get geometry into the engine, but it is no longer physicalized. In Maya, during the export process, one must “Add Attributes”, and change Physicalize from “None” to ‘Default” before writing the material files. This makes objects in the game engine “solid”, enabling collision detection. Turning that off enables me to import the geometry. Now I have to try to physicalize the objects from within the engine itself, possibly by adding mass. I have a late midterm for 205 tomorrow for which I need to study, so I probably won’t get back to this until sometime during the week.
10-20 UPDATE 7:14
I put some of the modular pieces you see above into the map. These aren’t final by any means but I wanted to get a shot of the basic idea for Area 1:
The materials need to be updated after I get the proper texture with occlusion baking, but the idea is that you see these modular structures as part of the terrain itself.
Eric Chamberlain 