Development of the game: The Forgotten: Saloon

I decided to take a break from the Titanic model as i said in my previous post so that i culd look further into my research and reference and also to work on more concept ideas as the model evolves. with this in mind i have decided to tackle working on the saloon which will be in one of the main towns of the game which will be shown on the map when i upload it. i thought this would be a interesting peice to begine work on as it leaves multiple directions open for me when i come to do high res renders. a saloon is a perfect peice to use for social observation in art and i felt it would be rich in helping me tell the stories of individual characters without the viewer ever actually seeing the character at all.

so i started this model first by using the unreal tournemant 3 characters as scale as UDK will be the engine me and a fellow student will be using to bring this game into a fully playable end peice rather than just cinematics and high res screen shots. using these reference models i could scale the heights of the ceilings and such and get a general blocked out shape using a box. i then used the shamfer tool on the corner of the saloon to give a area where the door could be to give it some of the period stylisation. i added a boardwalk giving it the tiered steps that are also common of the architectual style of this period and as you can see in the picture i added a balcony and a roof facia which is also used for the signage for the saloon.

as you can see i have taken multiple screenshots of the work so far from different angling this helps to demonstrate the work but also give me the creator a deifferent perspective on the building one which you as the player would see whilst walking around in the environment, this is important to get right before putting the building into the engine. also when rendering any issues with lighting or ahdows can be detected and the probvlem solved befor eht issue becomes any worse.

after closing inspection of the scaling of the model as i began the early stage of the interior i realised the width and lengthe of the saloon where not substancial enough for the interior i had intended for this building so before going any further with the interrior i adjusted these factors as you can see in the picture im now happy with these changes are happy to now start again with installing the interrior.

Continued from my last post on this model i have progressed now to the point of it been able to unwrap the UV's ready for texturing. on the image render above i have placed cylinders as place markers for the finished design of the columns which will be eventually twisted rectangular columns i have put the cylinders in place for the meanwhile to get the idea of positioning and to get a idea of what the overall building will look like when completed.

since the last post on the creation of this model alot has progressed as you can see by the image above i have added cylinders as place markers for the columns that when completed will be twisted rectangles to give it more depth and a more interesting look.

another render showing the column place finders in place to give the idea of what it will look like when finished

the image above shows the starting of the development of the interrior i started by making an inside box withing the outer shape of the saloon and as seen on this image i added the second floor whihc will house a balcony that will run around the whole floor and will also house three lodging rooms

as i said before i have added the three lodging rooms and also the balconyrunning around the shape of the building and a cut out for the position of the stairs.

in this render i have set the outer structure to give the viewer more of a understanding of the structure as a whole, as you can see from this image i have now also added the lower level rooms these will be used for store room and one room for illegal gambling ie poker in the game.

again this is another render of the same as the image above just in a more wide angle shot to show the structure more clearly altogether.

this is a render from below to show that i have added windows to the external running through to the internals and i have also added a internal doors which eventually will be operational in game.

from this image you can see further development in the shape of putting in a main front door on the bottom floow and beginning to add the windows to the front facsard of the building.

this is the finished exterrior of the model which im happy to say is now almost full textured also as you can see all the windows are added to the model both on the ground floor and the first floor of the building also i have added a door to the upstars symetrical to the lower main door.

this is another render of the finished exterior of the model which shows i have added windows on the rear of the building also aswell as a smaller rear access this part of the modelt is yet to be textured.

originally when embarking on unwrapping the model for texturing i worked to try and keep the model all on one map but half way through the process realised it was far to much information to fit onto one map whilst trying to keep the resolution upto a acceptable standard, this lead me to split the model up by detaching the interior from the external and then detaching the roof signs from the walls of the external and also the roof of the balcony aswell as the balcony itself and finally detached the boardwalk, then i also detach the front walls from the back walls this has meant that overall i can get a better resolution in the textures and keep as much detail in the model as possible.

above you can see the colour image for the roof signs the overall texture was on i sourced from cgtextures.com the texture image is of wodden boards with worn paint to fit with the wildwest theme i also sourced the font from 1001textures.com which also fits well as this is a worn texture to fit with the worn paint on the boards. this texture known as the diffuse is the main colour mass and gives the objects its colour.

this is the UV map this is what 3ds max renders out when you have completed the unwraping it give you the placings for where the textures need to go.

this is a map called a normal map also known by other names such as bump map, this map uses UV colours to project the illusion of depth into the texture as you can see the cracks in the boards are showing depth through the variants in colour.

this map is known as a specualr map and simply tell the game engine where the light needs to hit and where shadows should be cast this again adds to the realistic feel of the texture all these textures have been added to the model in 3ds max 2011 the images of this are below. all these maps apart from the diffuse which was created in photoshop by hand where created using a peice of software called crazybump.