The Forest Grows...

Summer has officially come to an end and I am back in jolly Preston ready for the final sprint of my MA. 

This is terrifying so we'll just skip over that part for now and focus on something a bit more positive... ;)

Being back in Preston means that I've regained my access to UE4 - hooray! While my Surface Pro is lovely at running Skyrim (because that's just what we all need, obviously), it's unfortunately not as confident with UE4, so I've had to lay off it (for the most) part during summer. Though I am back now (and writing this blog post as I wait for a build to finish, actually), and it feels good to see some actual progress finally being made on my forest.

Here's a look at how the process has gone so far:

Building Terrain

For my original forest felt incredibly off - there was something just not sitting right with it at all and I had great difficulty actually figuring out what that thing was. 

And then it hit me.

Forests need depth. They're not all one flat surface like my previous forest, but instead molded around the nature within it - and none of that nature is equally flat or aligned. Forests need high and low ground, broad and narrow paths, barren and cluttered areas. 

With this new breakthrough I decided it was best to scrap my original 'plan' for the forest and resculpt it. Here's a comparison:

The top image is my original 'plan' for the forest, while the second image is the revamped design. As you can see there's a pretty significant difference between the two. The first plan only had proper dips around the planned lake - other than that it was all fairly even and not very interesting.

With the new design, however, I decided to get rid of the lake and instead make paths going all the way around for players to explore. This will lead them to different clutters of characters, fairy circles, and some dark and mysterious areas. Even before adding foliage and characters, I already felt more confident about this revamp.

Adding Trees

With the terrain more or less agreed on, I then got to adding trees and some individual grass strands. While the forest will have a variety of different elements to it, the trees are by far the most prominant element of them all. It's important that by adding the trees I can make the forest feel warm and intimate - if there are too many empty, open spaces then it won't have that cosy effect that I need to create. 

As you can see in the bottom image - not all of the trees took too kindly to the terrain and looked as though they were falling. :'D So I then took the mesh into Maya and made some alterations:

Now the scene uses two tree meshes - the original, which is simply straight up, and an altered version for on slopes. Trees always grow towards the sun, so it didn't make sense to have so many of them on an angle. Sorted!

From here I'm going to continue to gradually add the rest of my meshes, as well as some sounds to go with and that kind of thing. I'll post updates as I go along, so you'll get to see the whole process. :)

2016 Women in Games Conference

This past Wednesday I had the incredible opportunity of attending the 2016 Women in Games Conference at the University of Greenwich. 

Before I begin, I need to give a HUGE thank you to Marie-Claire Isaaman and David Smith for selecting me as a student competition winner - this meant that my ticket, travel & accomodation were all paid for and because of this I was able to attend an event that I will hold close to me for a long, long time. So thank you so much once again. <3 

Throughout the day I attended various inspiring talks ranging from how to expand the number of women within the games industry, to talks on animation and how to kickstart your career in games, alongside various other inspiring keynotes. There was mention of the event being recorded via Twitch, so hopefully videos will be appearing soon that I can provide links to! 

Between talks we had small coffee breaks (one in particular was accompanied by cookies and to say I was happy is an understatement ;) ), where we were able to mingle with fellow guests and talk to others within the industry.

I think a noteable part of the day for me was during lunch time while we were queueing for food - I turned around and right behind me was Jessica Curry (of Dear Esther & Everybody's Gone to the Rapture fame). I was starstruck! But the amazing thing about this industry is that she was so kind and welcoming - so much so that even after I had babbled on to her about how I saw her on TV and how she's an inspiration etc etc, we were then laughing and joking about things and having a regular, natural conversation. It didn't feel like I was intruding, if anything she made me feel warm and very welcome. 

And this was an experience I felt with every single person I spoke to both during the event and at the pub afterwards. Nobody made me feel small or like I was 'just a student'. Every conversation was greeted with visible enthusiasm about what I am doing in my studies, about what it is I'd like to do once I'm finished. Everybody was so kind and welcoming and for someone who is not too great at initiating conversation with strangers, I must thank you all so much for that. <3 

And finally, I want to give a shout out to an amazing group of girls that I had the pleasure of staying with during the event. There were 6 competition winners in total, and every single one of the other girls are insanely talented, passionate and wonderful. I'm going to link to their websites below and would highly recommend that you take a look. :) 

Here are some photos from the event to finish up with, just to add some colour to this long, wordy blog post! I would have cut it down shorter but I feel that something that meant so much deserves the long wall of text. ;)

More images from the conference can be found here!

As promised above, here are links to the websites of the other competition winners (in order of the picture above):

Sarah Wright
Amy Parish
Robyn Wilkinson
Liz Mercuri
Hannah Aicken
 
 

Double Sided Materials

Since I last tried to create a double sided texture in Maya, I thought about whether or not there was an easier and more accessable solution. UE4 is great for many things, so why not double sided textures? Turns out my buddy UE4 had my back and has that as an option afterall, so let's go through it. :D 

UE4 has Blueprinting which is similar to the Hypershade in Maya, just it's directly in engine so I don't need to figure out a way to export or add it in or anything like that. As long as it's in the blueprinting it'll be in-game!

I tried a couple of ways - one which worked slightly but not quite (though it did give an interesting effect), and one which worked perfectly. Here's the first one that didn't quite work, along with what it created:

The second 'Lerp' is for the material's Alpha so that it has transparency, so that part isn't necessary - just the top one. Now as you can see it sooorta worked, but it isn't quite doing what I wanted. It'd be interesting to test this effect on other meshes though, as I like the alien-esque effect it gave to my mesh. 

Now this is the blueprint that worked correctly:

 (You can click the images to see them on a larger scale!)

This blueprint is a little fiddlier but not by too much, and it gets the intended effect. As you can see the mesh now has two separate textures for each side, which is perfect! 

The individual textures aren't visible in the screenshot so let me explain - to do it you need to make sure you have the front and back textures imported, and then place them both into the Blueprint as a 'TextureSample'. Then you can just go from there with the rest of the blueprint. :D

I also made a little gif showing what the mesh looks like with the Sine&Panner combo added, so here's that to end this post with:

Foliage Testing

With my props made and things starting to take shape, I've began to head over to UE4 and start prepping to put my final forest scene together. 

Part of this process is figuring out where and how to place my flower props. 

Lucky for me, I was given some extra inspiration recently from No Man's Sky, a game that there's a good chance you're already aware of! Just in case you aren't, here are some screenshots of what it is:

No Man's Sky is made up of billions of unique planets - each with their own eco system and various plant combinations. 

I find huge inspiration in how vast these plants are - you can walk around within them across a whole planet, and the way in which they are implemented makes it a joy rather than a bother. 

The main issue I had with my previous version of the forest was how bare it felt. Sure, it had trees and some plants, but I really felt as though it was missing something - it really needed more life.

With the added inspiration from No Man's Sky I feel that I'll be able to populate the forest in a much more effective way, and so will need to create various types of grass to go with the plants I have created. It's a little extra work, but it'll be worthwhile!

Now back onto the tests that I mentioned earlier. Here are some images of the foliage tests I have conducted so far:

As you can see from the top image, it was originally waaaay too populated. It's great to have plants everywhere to create a denser forest, but you don't want a player to feel as though they're drowning in them.

The second image shows a much less dense population of plants. There are still a lot of them, but it feels a little more realistic and (in my opinion) allows you to breathe a little more.

I have to consider that trees and bushes will be added in alongside these, plus various creatures and other grass foliage, so it's important to not get too carried away and allow it to get too crowded. Once I have created the extra grass assets my next step will be to add the remainder of my props to the scene, and it's then that I'll be able to (hopefully!) figure out the correct balance. :)

What was that song about mushrooms?

And badgers, or something. Maybe I just made it up...

I've been having a short break from work to have some holiday time, but I've also got some new things to share - how exciting! I'll stack them over a few blogs to make it a bit easier on your lovely eyes, and I'm going to be starting with some mushrooms that I made. :)

Now most of these I haven't had the chance to texture just yet, but they're all modelled and ready to go in-game. Here are some images of them:

I've made a few different shaped ground mushrooms for some variety, and then I have also created a couple of tree mushrooms as you can see above. I felt that the trees are a bit bare and needed a little something more, so the mushrooms will hopefully help out with that quite a lot!

I also made a turntable of the textured mushroom above, so here's that to give you a better look at it from all sides:

The next step is to continue painting these props and get them ready for the final scene. They're already imported and ready to go, just gotta make them look a bit more presentable. ;)

Girls Make Games 2016!

I'm about a week late on writing this post due to happy holiday times (my Ivana is here - I'm so happy!), but I felt that I really wanted to write a post about it to hopefully spread word about such a great project, and to also hopefully share inspiration for anyone thinking about helping out next year. :)

So to get started, Girls Make Games is a yearly camp based (mostly) in America in which girls get together in cities all across the country and create games. They're given talks by industry guests (Tim Schafer of Double Fine in particular is a big supporter of GMG) and are given a tonne of inspiration to help encourage them get into games. They then get into groups and create games of their own, which are eligible for a prize awarded by Microsoft at the end of the camp.

That's just a suuuper brief description of part of what the camp entails, though, and I would strongly urge you go and check out their website to find out more info! It's a really great company with a wonderful cause, and it's an honour to have been able to be a part of it for the past 2 years. <3

Now I'm sure you're thinking "That sounds great!", but what is it I would actually do if I helped out? 

Well, my friend, I'm going to tell you!

I helped out as an artist, so I can only really talk about what an artist helper does. I imagine it would be the same for programmers, etc, though! Just replacing the art side with that specialism instead. :)

So it begins with doing a Skype call to one of the camps. I had a call with a lovely group of about 20 girls from the Los Angeles camp. During the call I talked about what it is I do, what kind of artwork I make, the games I like... and then the girls all got into their groups and told me about their game ideas, inspirations, and what it is that they'd like their game to look like.

There was A LOT of groups who wanted their games to look like Undertale, so I think it's clear which game is still taking over. I guess devs better take note. ;)

After the Skype call I had to wait a few days before being given a group to make artwork for. Unfortunately I wasn't assigned to one of the LA teams I spoke to, however I did get paired up with a lovely group of girls from Boston instead. Here is some sketches of the backgrounds I created for them:

I won't show any more of the art I created as I know the girls want to continue with the game after this year's GMG is finished, so I wouldn't wanna post too much without their permission. :)

After creating the art, it is put into a Google Drive folder for the girls to use as assets in game - simple! 

Being able to be a part of this project is such an incredible honour. It feels amazing knowing that you're helping in a project to inspire kids all over the US who want to get into games, and being a part of something like this is absolutely priceless - I'm so thankful to Laila and everyone at Girls Make Games for the opportunity. <3

I have no doubt that they'll be looking for more artists for Girls Make Games '17, so if you're interested in helping out (which I can't recommend enough!) then I'd definitely suggest keeping an eye on their website, or following them @GirlsMakeGames. :)

Blooming Flowers!

Next on my to-do list is creating a bunch of flowers for my forest. The forest I made during semester 2 felt a bit bare, and a lack of flowers was part of the issue.

The designs above are the flowers I'll be creating, and I've already begun by creating one of them. Here it is:

                                                              (Screenshot in Sketchfab)

                                                                  (Screenshot in Maya)

Now as you can see there's a bit of an issue with the flowers themselves. It's a single face, so the texture is the same on both sides - not ideal! I did have a mess around and fix this within Maya (though Sketchfab doesn't seem to accomodate this), so I'll go through that process now...

It's a little bit like Blueprinting in UE4, just instead you use a thing in Maya called 'hypershade'. This is where you can mess with features for various materials and that kinda thing. Here's the hypershade setting I used to make these faces project 2 different textures onto my mesh depending on the side:

So just to explain a little bit as I know it may look a little confusing...

'phong1' is the material applied to the model itself. 'lambert3' and 'lambert4' are the two materials that are projected onto 'phong1' depending on which side of the face they're applied to, and 'condition3' is what decides which one of these is shown on each side. Make sense?

So with this applied to the model, it then looks like this:

Now as you can see it is showing different textures depending on whether the face is facing outwards or not. Great! The only issue (and this is what I need to fix next) is that it no longer takes the alpha channels into account, and so the transparency stops working.

The next step for this flower is to see whether or not the transparency issue is still a problem when added to UE4. Fingers crossed it won't be, but if it is I'll write another blog post on how to fix it... assuming I can figure out how to myself... ;)