Priorities and Workflow

I think it would be a good idea to establish our priorities for this project, especially individually. If we want to get this project anywhere near completion we'll have to decide what we really want to concentrate on.

Things to do:

Exterior

*Terrain

*The mansion itself

*Atmosphere effects (fog, lighting)

*Exterior assets (gates, trees, fences)

Interior

*General lighting

*Room specific assets

*Wallpapers/Paintings

*Specific decals

The mansion itself is FAR too big, especially for such a small project. I put all my assets in the kid's room and it filled maybe 1/4 of it. So in my opinion; we either need to scale down, or prioritise which areas we want to get done. It's difficult to convey everyone's opinions over the blog, so perhaps we can establish another team meeting?

Updates

A few updates. I've revamped the toy box completely to be more innocent, it's not in-keeping with the rest of the deco in the child's room which is what I want. The box and the lid are separate to allow for some sort of creepy event involving it. The clock I've modified again, the specular map on it I think looks quite good, but I've been toying with the idea of scrapping it completely for a while now.

The chandelier has a plain black texture and a rough lightbulb texture. It currently has a specular map on it, which looks inconsistent in UDK as you can see some of the mapping seams for no apparent reason. I'm not sure what else can be done texture wise on it, because it's going to be on the ceiling.

Two styles of generic shelf, they have slightly different wood textures on but if they need to be the same it's a 5 minute job.

The book is a quick experiment, it's not to scale yet but I'm going to have it lying on the bed or the chair. Any suggestions for a front cover would be welcome.

Baking cakes

What you been up to chris? Well been sculpting. Heres what i've actually been doing today (not that this is related to this project). Most of the time's been spent on experimentation. Heres the workflow i've been using.
3dsmax: prepare regtangle 2x2 edge
Mudbox: highpoly sculpt
meshlab: Produce low poly from high
Max: unwrap low poly, bake high poly details onto low polys UV
photoshop: work on the AO bake adding mud/green layers using blending
Crazybump: Produce another normal map - Only if the max one isn't very good

meshlab actually converts the model into triangles - Which isn't a bad thing actually.
Finding more and more that crazybump isn't that great at creating certain normals, Example of this is some highpoly models transfer hard edges best on a baked normal. You would loose this if you just treated the diffuse in crazybump.

Rocking all over the world etc

Reduced the models polycount with Meshlab from 600,000 to 2000. Then UVW wrapped the rock along its hard edges. Projection mapped the normals and a diffuse for shadows from the high poly. Not a bad result overall looks much better than the rocks i had for my FMP. check out the article from Sascha Henrichs at 3dtotal for the actual rocks production process.

Realistic

just needs the right lighting - and no sunlight coming in the empty door

Building the entrance

Doory Doory Door Door.

This is without any gargoyle feature (which will go on the doors 'keystone' at the top), and fence (which I will either model or just make as an opacity mapped texture).

Decals

Just a suggestion...

Really want this kind of effect in the house somewhere...

I remember when I first saw this, it took me completely by surprise and shit me up... just what we need!

SKULL F@?KER!

Ol' Robo dude's been taking his diet too seriously

Made a skull! ... yeah. ITS A SKULL.

As you can see, they make awesome space fillers!

Radio Gaga

This radio is from the 20s, decided to make the dials seperately for some matinee fun.
Happy with this overall but the fabric is alittle off the reference, But that doesn't particually matter...

Rise from your grave...

 Here lies the body of our resident specter child Sylvia Bates. I have made the model with a temporary ground patch which can be easily altered to blend in with the native texture. From the ground is a skeletal hand which seems to have spelt out the words 'HELP' which could indicate either a premature burial or an afterlife phenomena... either way, the Bates mansion mystery thickens...

You think she wanted to say something?

We are here today...

Poor ol' robo dude really hates funerals.

Next!

For the main doorway, ive been thinking and looking at the kinds of things I want and always I see this kind of thing...

 Thick heavy doors with large, imposing fences and pillars upon a stairway. So... that is what I would like to do. Unfortunately, the house in the engine currently sits too low on the ground to implement the staircase so I would ask that this is considered.

Also, I remapped and textured the Maiden cause as Chris pointed out to me, it looked shit. The new one's face is slightly highlighted and creeps me out in dark lighting.

Yo dawg I heard you like assets

A couple of these are still in the iterative process. The rug and blocks I'm pleased with. The mouldy chair looks good in dark/minimal lighting and bear in mind that the bed/mattress will have a cover over it.

Alpha maps ftw

I didn't want a generic chair so I creeped it up a bit

These can be used to spell out messages that will appear in the mansion.

Neil frequented this bed

Windows

get rid of the walkway allowing 2 large deco windows allowing moon light largely into the lobby? Thoughts? could have boards still covering parts..

Its a door !

As requested here is a short explanation of something i've been mucking around with.
So here we have a rotating door, Braking it down on the right you can see the hitbox of a trigger actor. With it selected you place it in kismet as a "touch". This means that it'll be waiting to be touched before it'll do anything. (We'll have ours have to be clicked to open but this one is just hitbox touched). setting the ammount of triggers to 0 (infinite) we link the touched to the Matinee (Basic 2 keyframe tween) Play. instead of just having the door "reverse" when its "untouched". addded a delay which is started when the matinee is completed. This runs for 3 seconds before it triggers the door to close and itself to stop. (I forgot something, when you add the door mesh to the scene you have to add it as a interpactor. And set its collision to all F4).

I would explain matinee but i don't actually know that much about it myself! so its best not to have the blind lead the blind on that one just yet.

we can have sounds playing also, they are broken down into "open sound, opening ambient sound, opened sound, close sound, closing ambeint sound, closed sound" so theres alot of room for experimentation.

Ive got a semi.

Almost probably finished the Iron Maiden (would have been done much quicker if I didn't have to work) Just needs a collision model! Ill look up a tutorial on YouTube or something. The model looks pretty eerie under dynamic lighting... such as a player torch or gunfire!

What up blood?

Shit the bed.

Whats up pussycat

What kind of lighting we actually having in this area?
Here's a short lession on the UDK packages so that you all can make the map work on your own PC. First off you need to create the folder "mansionproject" in the folder shown below - Then in UDK this will apear in your content broser. when you copy the custom packages from dropbox you need to put them in the folder you created. (Note to Marc, Please save the map into this folder aswell)

UDK 3DS Max UNITS

Our models need to be in the correct sizes before they are added to the level.

If you make your max change its units to default max units they will equal 1 : 1 with UDK units. If you need to measure a size in udk you do it in the viewports with the middle mouse button. If your having fun tring to get this to work 3dBuzz has some excilent tutorials on UI

stairwell

keep your hat on :P, This is only the barebones. Banisters will be a sperate model and there's also carpet draped down im presuming?

At this point i think that the woods looking to new or orange. So im thinking of taking its diffuse back into photoshop and making it more dusty/brown.

Stuff.

I've been working on a few assets, feedback is welcome for each. I'm still not sure of the broken mirror texture on the chest of drawers, it's likely that it will be replaced with a reflection if possible.

Run to the hills...

Been working on this Iron Maiden piece for the dungeon, just need to UVW unwrap and texture it. Any suggestions? Also, its about 5000 polys, thanks for asking.

Beautiful face of agony.

Welcome to your doom.

What a fitty.

wallpaper and damage tests

What do you think?


tried to blen the 2 textures in the middle test, And that really didn't work.
one on the right has a decal on a static mesh which is placed over the plain wallpaper.

Blueprints

 These are the wall and basic layout plans, feel free to alter any of the room contents as you see fit, but try to stay true to the plan! Will be adding more subterranial levels of various degrees at a later time (want the player to literally be led to hell through a tunnel :D). Click images for full 1080x1920 resolution.

Gardens will be filled with fog and eerie shapes

The plan

Alright i thought i'd take some time to layout what we've discussed and what people need to download so that we can opperate as a team.
First off make sure you've downloaded dropbox ( http://www.dropbox.com/ )
If you don't know what dropbox is, it's a folder that will sync up with a clouded version of the same folder. This makes it easy for us all to have up to date files.
Secondly and so we don't overcomplicate things we'll be using the UDK MAY 2011.

Our concept is a Haunted house (pre 50s) which has 4 levels in it. Basement / 1st / 2nd / attic. importantly the house wont be massive since we actually want the project to get to a finished state before we all go back to Uni in mid September.

at this time of posting the current tasks are

Billy: Modeling assets for a Childs room
Neil: Blueprinting house
Marc: Level design
Chris: Unrealscript/matinee research, Misc Modeling, Support UDK

please create the folder
Computer/windows7(C:)/UDK/UDK-2011-05/UDKGame/Content/mansionproject

this will apear in UDK as a package folder and is where we'll save all our assets.
It also makes sence once you have a finished asset to name it with your name in it.

For example Chris-Lamp, Billy-chair

Early Concepts

Sorry for missing the meeting earlier, I was in Weymouth and the duration of both the journey and the stay ran on for far longer than expected. Anyway, Chris has given me the lowdown on my current role. As I apparently have so much experience in children's bedrooms (thanks, Neil :P)...

Anyway; I've started digging around for architecture/interior design that would be useful for us portray a rustic, unwelcome feel.

Over the weekend I modelled and mapped a few assets to get into the swing of UVW mapping. Please forgive the shoddy texturing! Here are a couple that may be of use conceptually:

Exterior and General theme of project?

Want to make this a quite traditional haunted house experience, complete with the gothic architecture and derelict aesthetic. Possibility of key points and triggers in the house to start 'phenomena' animations to further scare (or entice) the player.

Might be a good idea for us to play or at least look into traditional horror games (particularly those featuring derelict buildings and/or gothic architecture) such as Resident Evil (Gamecube remake in particular), Clock Tower (SNES), Shadows of the Damned (360, PS3), Silent Hill 2 & 4 (PS2), Amnesia the Dark Descent (PC), Fatal Frame 2 and Forbidden Siren 1/2 (both PS2) to name a few. Dont forget if you dont have access to these games to check youtube for 'lets play videos' which will have the added bonus of player commentary and feedback for the key elements of the game that will scare our own players in turn!

Amnesia the Dark Descent

Shadows of the Damned

Silent Hill 4 the room

Clock Tower

Forbidden Siren 2

Resident Evil (GCremake)

Silent Hill 2

Fatal Frame 2