Trevor Lift

Lookie here! A fountain! Well at lest the basic model of one. This is going outside the enterance of the Conservatory. I have also made a maze to get from the fountain to the Conservatory just for a bit of a challenge. I am going to be asking a Level Designer how to make the maze better. A few play test of the maze might actually be better. Anyway, Here is a picture of the fountain that I have modeled. Click on the image to see a larger size.

I hope you like pictures, because I am way past due to post some for you’re viewing. Here they are:

These are in game screen shots so I am sorry for the small size. This is still a work in progress as you can see from the dome of the Conservatory being a little weird. I do have some trees that I have made in Speed Tree, but they were removed to speed up the load time for now. They will be back!

Time always seems to slip away from me. I have recently got a new job which has taken valuable time from me to proceed further with this project. These past two weeks have been rocky for me, but now that my work schedule is a bit more set in stone and around my work schedule, I will be able to put more time in to this project. After my Ethics class tomorrow afternoon, I will be working on this project in full force making sure to get back on track with my milestones. Now I know better how my job works and everything, I can manage my time better. I will take a couple screen shots tomorrow and show the what I had started and finished with tomorrow.

I have had some pretty good success in using SpeedTree that came with UDK. After watching a lot of tutorials and, I was able to get a good looking tree modeled. The next part was getting the textures for the base of the tree’s and the leaves. The leaves were very tricky though. I have heard from other students and professors who are a bit more Unreal Savvy that Targa files are better for texturing and is the format I have been using for this project.

Since the leaves need to be applied to a plane, they must have an opacity map on them so they are not all square and box like. That is all fine and dandy, but when applying the leaf texture to the planes, they had a lovely nice white outline. After a long research process, I found my answer. I always though that opacity maps had to be a separate texture. In most cases this is true in, at least in my research of this. However, Targa files can have the opacity map built in the file when it saves. I have to right- click on the thumbnail of the flattened image and tell it to select all the pixels. After that, I just have to save that selection as an alpha map and boom, there is the opacity map I needed for the leaves.

Now that is out of the way, I will be texturing more of the outside and hopefully have that done, or nearly done by the end of this week.

Well I figured I should also post up a screenshot of what I have done thus far. This is what I was able to get into UDK as of today. The texture is from another asset I imported to see if it would work. I deleted the asset, but not the texture. So as of now, I will keep this texture around so I can test and see the other assets as they come. The terrain will not be this flat. I plan on creating a height map for it ASAP. I also plan on creating a few more assets to place in for now and get the full level blocked out for now. Level Design is not my strong suite, but If all goes well and according to plan, I should be be able to have the exterior modeled and textured within two more weeks time.

Now for the screenshot. Click on it to get a bigger picture.

Project Conservatory Dome is the name of this project. I am using this name because I am basing this project after the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan. It is a very nice place down there, though I like to believe that it must be a lot more lively in the summer. I went there just a few weeks ago, and it had to be a cool day to go. The wind was nice, but way to cold.

Anyway, here is my milestone list for this project. I have created this to keep myself on track and on task with the project. I am currently on week 2.

Week 1: Gather reference images and write up project concept document.

Week 2: Start building environment, preliminary models to get scaling right. Add appropriate lighting both interior and exterior, and sky dome

Week3: Model and texture exterior foliage, fountain, and fence.

Week 4: Fully model and texture entrance and dome area of conservatory.

Week 5: Model and texture inside path and walls for foliage areas.

Week 6: Model and texture large foliage: Palm trees, and other trees. Use reference images from belle isle conservatory.

Week 7: Model and texture small foliage plants: Flowers, ferns, etc. Use reference images from belle isle conservatory.

Week 8: Continue to model and texture small foliage plants: Flowers, ferns, etc. Use reference images from belle isle conservatory.

Week 9: Asses texture and lighting quality. Clean up textures, check for seams, lighting quality.

Week 10: Finalize texture and lighting quality.

I had the change to go down to the Belle Isle Conservatory in Detroit this past Friday. I took over 300 pictures of the inside and outside area. This place is very beautiful and will be the basis of my upcoming project.

I have been learning UDK for the past couple days now. Since I now have a better handle of UDK, I will start taking the map that I have drawn up and start making the terrain portion and the main building if I can. Otherwise, it will be modeled and textured in 3D’s Max and imported.

Here are just some of the images that I took.

This is a concept of what I will be working on for my senior project. Right now it is just a basic overview of what I plan to do from now until mid December. My classes only run for ten (10) weeks, and this so far is the scope of the project that can be done in this amount of time. I will be adding more later, like a story and milestones to get the project done on time.

Here is the concept thus far. It will be updated accordingly.

Introduction:

The Belle Isle Conservatory is the biases for this project. The layout will not be exactly like the Conservatory, due to it being outside the scope of the project. The Conservatory will be scaled down to only the center dome area. Out side, there will be tall bushes leading out to the formal garden with a fountain at the center of the garden.

Career goal:

This project relates to my career due to the amount of texturing being done in such a small space. There will be some asset modeling done as well to create a better feeling of it being a Conservatory. Any model lacking detail will be made up in the texturing.

Objectives:

The objective of this project will be to create a portfolio piece of work.

Target audience:

This project will be an educational type of experience. This will be targeted toward tourist who want to experience something more than a few pictures of a place they wish to visit, in this case Bell Isle. Tourist who wish to come to Belle Isle will be able to see the scale of the place and some of the attractions in the Conservatory.

Competition and inspiration:

The competition for this project really comes from being able to accurately portray the content of the Conservatory. Inspiration is coming from the Belle Isle Conservatory itself as well as a previous project I worked on.

Skills:

This project will require 3D asset modeling, texturing and lighting. The project will be built in the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). I have used Unreal 2004, but not UDK. There will be a slight learning curve to using UDK as a whole and beyond the basics. Asset modeling, texturing, and lighitng are at an intermediate level, so the creation of these assets will be little to no challenge.

Resources:

The resources needed for this project are the following: UDK May 2010, Photoshop CS4 or CS5, 3D Studio Max 2011, internet for research, and a camera for picture taking at Belle Isle. All of these resources are provided by myself for my immediate use.