Coding - Sight Iteration - John Howard

Task

Create a sight system that allows peripheral vision.
Stage One - Initial Ideas

I spent a while before coding drawing and writing up diagrams like above trying to work out what kind of angles I needed and how I could approach the code. Researching into the unity API and forums I found out that degrees over 360 don't exist in world space. There are just 180 degrees on both side. So I need to cast out the angle comparison in the forward direction To force the AI to only raycast on the front facing side.

Stage Two - Raycasts

I decided to create a distance called raycast system rather than a collider based one. This means the sight doesn't require a bool to activate it just activates at different distances using if statements. Each if statement contains a cone of vision and a debug.ray of a different colour to allow me to test in the scene view when a certain part of the vision cone is being called. By giving larger widths of vision a smaller distance I can start giving the AI some peripheral like vision. I decided to create this script on a static test cube to just be able to see how the sight debugs changes, as seen at the start of this video. Once this was working correctly I put the new sight script onto the cube AI.

Thoughts

I think this script turned out really well. With a little bit of API raycast research I was able to set up an original functional script and get it calling the correct parts of the AI states. The extra cones of vision really help the AI seem more intelligent and reactive.

Character Spells - Jack Schular Animation/VFX

I created a bunch of  spell animations for the character controller for better feedback whilst the characters spells would be coded. These animations would need to be able to be blended in to movement so I tried to keep only the upper body moving where possible and where it was not I wanted to create a faster animation. The spells were created through acting out how I thought a fireball or teleport spell would look and re-creating it through keyframes.

Environmental Assets Pt. 1 - Matt Glen (Concept Art)

Another part of the game that needs designing are the objects and set dressing that will sit throughout the level. I already knew that I needed bookcases, pillars and odd faces that emitted light, and so this is where I started.

Moodboard

I felt it would be beneficial to gather some references first in order to inform the designs. I put together the following images, incorporating columns and other relevant things in order to generate ideas. I quickly felt like implementing some kind of sarcophagus or small tomb would add to a sense of age and morbidity.

Bookcases

I began with the most simple object, drawing out perspective lines, sketching out the rough form and then painting.

The offset in the centre of the cabin was an accident, and I'm not entirely sure how it came about, but I don't believe it ruins the design. The lighting works well enough to show the object well, and I've added little cobwebs in between shelving to indicate age and lack of use. My next step was to edit this image and create a smaller version.

This didn't take too long at all and was mainly a sort of cut and paste job. The main point of this was simply to see if a very basic smaller version would look interesting enough next to the larger unit, and I think it works well enough for use in the game. These are not focal points or centre pieces, and are meant only to litter the environment.

Columns

After this I moved on to columns, which I adapted from a series of drawings I'm working on that should help our 3D artists to design the Crystal Room. More on that in another post. For now, I combined multiple arches to get a feel of how the objects might work together in the space, and be used to direct player movement and enemy direction.

Here you can see a couple of pillars joined by a sort of barricade object, as well as a broken column set piece that would add a little variety to the set dressing encountered by the player. I also had a think about how the pillars might connect to the ceiling, which I had not actually considered until this point. I came up with the below image:

While a little exaggerated, and perhaps burdened with superfluous embellishments at the top, I think it looks at least somewhat grand and classical, which had been my intention. This design is perhaps not perfectly in-keeping with the overall aesthetic of the level, but I think it does work and shouldn't draw too much attention to itself. 

Face Lights

Eventually I moved on to the part I was least sure about, the grotesque, Gothic faces that I wanted to adorn the walls of certain parts of the level and emit ghoulish green lights. I wanted to adapt the design a little from the original concept that came from the Screaming Cells room into a more haunting, pained expression. I also had to consider the quality and brightness of the lights. I began with an iterative process, painting first a rough head and trying to pin down the expression, and then gradually adding lights and details.

After getting to this stage, I blew the image up to a larger size and began painting over it with more details, textures and lighting.

I'm fairly happy with this outcome. I think I got the face to look roughly how I wanted it, although perhaps it could have contained a trace more fear; facial expressions are immensely complex and subtle, however, and I doubt I could ever capture exactly what I was after. The lighting is fairly dramatic and the glowing orifices are pretty creepy. I decided with this piece not to use a cracked earth texture, as I had done previously with the Screaming Cells concept, and instead painted this in myself. My use of textures is often haphazard and slapdash at best, often looking flat and alien, not a part of the scene. Until I resolve these issues with my use of texturing, it may be best to continue working in this way, even if it makes the work slightly more difficult and time consuming. 

For now, I think these assets do their jobs and should lead to some interesting objects in the finished game.

Mage statue modeling progression

Along with modeling the main character I was also given the task of creating some of the environment assets as well. Fortunately a lot of the environment assets that we require within the game require the human form, to create them such as the statue that I have began modeling here.

To make the process of creating this statue quicker for myself, meaning I can give it to my team a lot faster also I exported a lower poly version of the character that I was working within Zbrush, as I was told that this statue was going to be of a mage, the beard that was given to our main character could be useful for this statue too i thought. 

As the mesh that I exported from Zbrush was however of course in the Tpose position I set up a basic humanIK rig, similar to how I did so before in order to get my characters base mesh into a Tpose position I was now doing it again to get it out of a T pose and into a more heroic stance that would be more presentable as a statue of a mage. 

After Posing the model I began creating items for it, such as the book you can see it holding, along with the boots and robe that he is wearing, this will make my process in Zbrush easier later on down the line where I will be adding detail to the statue in order to give it the effect that it is made of stone that has been worn away from its years of being in the dungeon that it is placed within

main character detail progression through zbrush

This will of been the first character model that I have ever taken into Zbrush so the beginning of this process was very experimental for me.

Attempting to mimic the anatomy of reference images of body builders and muscular males from a website that I was recommended - https://www.3d.sk/ - I began trying to sculpt the torso to the desired muscle mass that our main character had. Admittedly, my first effort at doing this wasn't going quite so well, as you can see in the screen shot, not only was he not muscly enough to match our characters concept, the model simply wasn't that accurate to male anatomy. So I began to refine my model.

Jumping forward a bit, as our characters concept started to become more and more refined, so did the over all appearance of my character model within Zbrush. Prior to this point in my workflow, I hadn't been able to work from a finalized character concept that would of been given to me by our concept artist, as the main focus of at the beginning of our development was environment. However by this time, a finalized concept was given and our main character really started to take shape.

In this design progress I have shown above however, the appearance of the character is of course far more like our original concept but I still don't think that at this point I had managed to accurately capture an accurate representation of male muscle anatomy, so once again I will have to refine mainly the torso and the arms later on through my workflow

Main character base mesh progression

Been Given the task of modeling the main character from our concept artists design, I preemptively decided that it would be a good idea to create a basic humanoid male model that I could work on when the final concept was given to me. 

By using a reference image for a basic male human model I was able to begin modeling the basic shapes of the body within Maya. Switching between viewports through this process was a key part of the work flow as it allowed me to ensure that all angles of the model where as precise as they could be, so that later on down the line I wouldn't run into any trouble.

With the Body Complete I began to model the face. As the face provided in the original concept I used wasn't very accurate I used a reference image provided to me from one of our classes. This reference image proved very useful as it mapped out the correct topology for the face, though very basic it meant that later on i could easily build on top of this model when given the final concept.

Due to the reference image not being in a T pose position, I decided that I needed to somehow get the model I created into this position so as to make it easier for our animator later on down the line when it comes to  rigging and animating the character. To do this I set up a quick rig using the HumanIK feature within maya. I was then able to move his arms up into the T pose position and then delete the HumanIK rig so that our animator could replace it with a far more accurate version.

Final base model for the main character. from this stage I am now able to take it over to Zbrush where I will begin sculpting it to make it look far more like our finalized character concept.

Golem Attacks - Jack Schular Animation/VFX

These are the final attacks for the Golem enemy. I animated a cube in the scene to be knocked back and animated the punches around it to create a sense of power for the Golem. I set the cube to roughly the scale the Player should be compared to the Golem so I could aim where the Golem is punching the Player. I am happy with these animations as I feel I have achieved the goals I set myself when creating them.