Finishing off assets and playing about with what can be done to liven up my scene this week. I kicked off the week with adding things to the market stalls to populate them. Zbrush is what I started with, adding meat to the butchers and adding a little story element to the ship area. Just a little sleeping bag to imply a homeless person and his den. A nice little touch if I do say so myself.
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| Homeless den. |
Without textures and an added spotlight above shining through, its looking a tad plain currently, but were getting there. The butchers is looking as populated as a rough small town butchers would look under the circumstances.
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| Butchers. |
The veg shop has some market crates with fruit and veg in, with a knocked over version of one of them for the floor suggesting another little story element.
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| Veg shop. |
Movement was another key thing which adds so much to the level, but how could I do it? The main way I drew inspiration for the level was to just go outside and view what was happening around me. Its surprisingly nice to just sit there and watch things move. I think I just need to get out more. I noticed its the little things, the twitching of people, litter moving with the breeze, things like that. Then on the other end of the scale we have the large things, like huge spinning turbines in the background. These immediately made it into the level as they're plausible within the slightly futuristic setting, good for the environment and all that. Along with this they're easy to do and cheap. Another bonus that I overlooked too, was the cast shadows they provide. The movement in the sky translates nicely to the ground wherever they cast.
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| Two types of wind turbines. |
After I made my fairly basic turbines, I was swayed towards the idea of having a more economical and futuristic type of turbine. The idea was solid and looks great in your head, but it didn't translate as well to the scene. So I decided to keep both. The more basic one for the background and interesting shadows, and the futuristic one to go on top of buildings for a smaller movement implication.
Collisions!!! Yeah I had a look at what frame rate we were running at too this week. I've left it for a while as I've been primarily populating, thinking all was going to plan. It turns out it wasn't. The frame rate was at a steady 17 FPS. Which is really, really bad, especially considering the scene has no textures applied. We concluded it could be down to the custom collisions I have made and the lighting. Both problems are a fairly quick fix, but its still a bit of a hiccup.For the collisions I was making very rough shapes, but they weren't out of basic primitives. This could be causing a huge frame rate drop and should bump it back up after I finish redoing them all. The lighting wasn't build as I was just having a bit of a play, which can all cause issues. And finally, all the lights I have in the scene are point lights. With a bit of research I found out that in terms of engine draw, 1 point light can equate to about 4 spotlights. Even more of a draw can come from the point lights casting shadows. Again, not a huge problem and an easy quick fix, but It's still something to improve.
I thought the collisions would have a larger impact on the draw of the engine. But after redoing them all, along with some overlapping light maps, I only gained 1 or 2 frames. Where as when I set the few lights I had in the scene to not produce shadows, the FPS went up by a potential 3. I say potential because it was a constant flicker from 16-22 frames.We have limited BSP in the scene, so when we remove all of that, the frame rate will increase further. But I still need to find out what else is causing this drop.
On another note, this is my final week of the search for a star competition. I'm a bit behind with it as I've been sinking nearly all my time into the FMP as I feel that's more important. The brief is to model and texture at least 5 assets, for use in the unreal tournament engine. Today(Friday) I spent all day working on it, as I've only a few days left. Its coming along, but I have a lot of work to do. The assets I decided to model based on the concepts were: a large doorway, wall decoration, wall walkway, large pillar and a wall section.
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| Snap of my 5 assets. |
They're all currently unwrapped, but I need to bake down the high polys, get to texturing and make collisions for them.
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