Nearly There

Over the next couple of weeks we will be finishing our trailers and pieceing them all together. On wednesday me and Robin worked in the recording studio to create a piece of music to go with the trailer. Wether the audio really fits with the theme of the trailer is debateable but it was still really fun to do, even though I've not picked up a guitar in nearly a year.
There is jsut a little bit of editing to do to put all the guitars and drums in position and transition from one style to the other. We also recorded some general sound effects such as foot steps to be used in the trailer as atmospherics.

My 3D work is very cloe to completion, I'm currently halfway through texturing my enviornment, the lighting has been added and will have slight adjustments made when I've fuly textured everything, after that it's adding the camera and rendering out my scene.

Environment Video

Yesterday (Wed 30th March) I continued work on my environment. As I had completed the layout of the environment, I started working on the lighting. I am using two main types of lighting for my environment - Target Spotlights and Omni lights as well as an atmospheric type of lighting- Fog.

For the Target lights I am using them as lights on the ceiling pointing to the floor - an example of that is in one of my earleir posts when I first showed off the corridor. I basically create a cone shape to be the lighting and then add the target spotlights facing towards the floor from that cone. I then change the parameters so the cone of lights is visible but not too bright. I am adding htese lights mainly in teh corners of the environment as too many of them will alter the lighting and add too much.

The other type of lightin gI am using are Omni lights. These are basically sources of light. Where you place the Omni light, the area around that point lights up based on the settings of the light. Like the Target spotlights, I will be adding Omni lights at key places for maximum coverage of light without it being too lit up.

The video below is another test video, similar to the first test video I did. This video was to test how my fog looked as well as a small test to see how the lighting was. After I tweak the setting a bit more, I will add the textures and be ready to render the final trailer.

Please not the video was made using only 75 odd frames and the video clip renders out at about 25 frames per second, so the camera does move quite fast.

3D Work Update 2

Last week I wrote a post talking about how my 3D work was progressing or not due to th problems I ahd when "Flipping the Normals", I'm very happy to report this week that I've restarted that particular environment from scratch and got a fully built series of corridors all welded together with all of the Normals inverted so I can light the interior.

The next tasks on my list are to sort the lighting out - which is causing me a few problelms as when I create the lights, I click off them to move them to a better position and when I click to edit the lighting, the options are not available for me. Once I have that little problem sorted I can easily duplicate the lighting for the rest of the environment.

Finally I need to get my textures on it. I have just about all of the textures I want to use, but I need to resize themso they will work properly. But Once I have hte hang of that and get the first couple of textures on and got the hang of it, I'll be able to texture th erest with ease.

Once all that is done, I just have to render out the animation with the use of the camera and setting up the timeline.

Final Team Story Board

Below is the final version of our team storyboard showing what is going to happen in the entire trailer:


From this plan we will know what order to put our clpis together in and what needs to be made.
Everyone in our team has agreed to this plan as we discussed this in a team meeting on Wednesday and went through all the details and everyone should know what they need to do for their section of the trailer.

3D Work Update

I thought I would give a quick update on how my 3D work is progressing - or should I say how it isn't. Over the last couple of weeks I have been having increasingly annoying technical difficulties when trying to put all the pieces together. This is mainly in tihe form that "flipping the normals" keeps breaking - I select the entire box to flip them but when I click "Flip Normals" only a small portion of them flip even though I selected all of the faces. When I try to fix the normals it keeps repeating the same problems it just flips random normals even though I select specific faces. This is making it impossible to continue on that particular save and so I've had to restart several times now with several hours worth of work time wasted.
Physically my section is probably the easiest to make out of all of them, its just flipping the normals and sticking all the pieces together that is creating all of my problems.

Hopefully in this afternoons 3D class I will be able to progress further than I have manged to get so far.

Texture Slideshow

The above slideshow showcases a series of photographs I took to use as potential textures. Also in the slideshow there are a couple of photos of buildings/shots I thought would make good inspiration. For example, the image of the church behind the trees. I took thath picture as it gave me inspiration similar to how I felt when you see Rapture for the first time in Bioshock when the camera moves over the hill. I get the same sense when I see part of the church in the distance mostly obscured by the trees.

As for the bulk of the shots, I took those picures as I thought I might be able to use them somewhere within my trailer. So I was mainly on the lookout for metal grids and grates that I could use as us flooring and greys and dark browns to be used as the walls.
I was speciically looking for darker colours as it would fit in more with the feel I want to achieve with my section of the trailer - dark, creepy, horror themed. As my section willl be of ruined corridors, my main focus is on the lighting as I feel it is the most crutial part of it. As the lights will be dark, brightly coloured textures would look out of place so I am trying to keep a common theme throughout.

Fox's Biscuits

The second advert he told us about the Fox's Biscuits with Vinnie the panda bear.
Even though the trailer is ten seconds long and can be watched by clicking HERE, the trailer cost considerably more. This ten second trailer cost over £1 million to make due to there being several problems and indecisiveness by Fox's biscuits over what it is they actually wanted. So it cost over £1m to make - way over the original budget and had over 120 staff working on it.
Some of the jobs the staff were doign was - photography, 3D modelling, lighting, catering, legal, poeple renting rooms and props, voice over artists
All of those costs built up and with Fox's Biscuits being indescisive about what they wanted, Double negative soon found themselves over budget and quickly running out of time before they finally managed to get a completed advert that the company liked.
Thankfully the advert was so popular, that 4 more were produced.

Double Negative - Channel 4 Dubai Advert

As stated in the previous post, Lewis showed us 2 adverts that he had worked on and we talked about things such as its cost, how many people worked on it and what they did etc.

Click to see the Dubai/construction advert HERE

The brief for the advert was to show Channels 4 logo/number within the buildings that were under construction. In the advert there would have been about 40 people working on it all doing different things such as the helicopter pilot, 3D modellers, animation, photoshop artists.
Producing the advert took a couple of months for the filming of the ariel shots and hten for t he actual editing and adding the 3D buildings, shadows etc About 50% of hte buildings and cranes in the advert are 3D models.
The overall cost for the advert came to about £250,000. A quarter of a million for a 40 second advert.

Double Negative

On monday we had an industry event where Lewis Guarniere from Double Negative came in and gave us a talk about what he does. He's a 3D modeller and on his current project he is responsible for adding veins and details to muscles on characters, but has doen 3D work for a variety of other projects.
Some of the projects that Double Negative ahve worked on are:
The Dark Knight
several of the Harry Potter films
Cloverfield
Inception
These are some of the great films where Double Negative have provided digital graphics and post production details.

Lewis went on to talk about his position in the company and what his job involves and how he got to where he was from school, going through university to getting his first job in the industry as a "Runner" someone who runs about getting drinks for the staff and other similar jobs.
He also told us how much he was earning which was about £35k. His talk about his history and the work the company has done took about 2 hours. After lunch, when we all met up again, he gave us some example trailers/commercials the company had produced and asked us to write down things like -
how much did we think the commercial cost/budgeting?
How many staff were involved and what were their jobs?
What implications could there be - such as legal or health and safety issues.

He was impressed that we were taking so many different things in to account such job roles of staff, implications such as insurance, catering etc.

My Quote
"I found the presentation overall to be very interesting and gave lots of information. Even though it was more iamed at the movie/TV industry than the games, alot of it could be applied to the games industry. I learnt alot abou what goes in to the production and post production process as well as the huge amount of money that goes in to creating a TV trailer. A brilliant presentation and I would recommend talks like this being done again."

Responses To Company Contacts

Or lack thereof...
A couple of weeks ago our team got together to send an email out to a few games companies to ask for information on how they make game trailers and how the industry works in general.
Below is a screenshot of the email I sent to the companies:

The letter was written with a degree of professionalism and told the reader who we were, asked our questions politely and also invited them to come and attend our digital showcase in May.
This emial was sent to 3 games companies -
- Lionhead Studios
- Bungie
- Naughty Dog

We chose those companies in specific because at least one of us were fans of games created by those companies and we all knew something about them. It also helped that I ws supposed to have done work experience with Lionhead a couple of years ago, however that fell through when they stopped it to start testing Fable 2. This meant my previous contact with Lionhead shoiuld have helped in writting to them and general contact with them.

About 2 weeks have passed since we sent the email and sadly none of hte companies have got back to us which is a shame. The only reply we got to our email was an automatic reply from Bungie thanking us for sending in a "bug report", which of course we didn't do. So we are a little dissapointed at the lack of response. However, while our team didn't get any replies, the other teams did. Some of the responses they got didn't have much information, one emial that Steve, of Intelecual Arcade, got back was full of information that answered most if not all the questions that all of the teams asked. Below is the response that they got, which Steve, kindly emiled on to us as we haven't got any replies.



The emil talks about the different roles/people involved in making a trailer, team sizes, the timeframe forcreating a trailer as well as mentioning a bit of the budgeting for them though he doesn't mention any prices as the costs can vary so much.

Naming Our Game

Yesterday, while our team was researching marketing, one of our tasks to come up with the official name of our game. Each person in our team had to come up with at least 2 ideas for the name and place them on a mind map (Images of the maps are coming soon)

Some of the names we came up with are -
Underworld, Insanity, The Gate, Infected and Silent Horror.

But the name our team chose by vote was:
Gates To Insanity: Vorota Bezumiya


Below are a couple of concept art peices for a banner and the game case:

Corridor Test Video

In a previous post, I showed how I had worked on lighting a 3D environment. Today I created another corridor but changed the lighting colours and added a volume fog. This made it so there was fog within the actual corridor while we see it through a cameras perspective.

This was a test render of 100 frames to see if it all worked and now that I know it does, I can impliment it within my section of the trailer. The video is very quick due to the fact I only worked with 100 frames and worked with it at around 25 fps.

Team Storytelling Reflection

The following will be a reflection on the presentations we gave yesterday that were about storytelling. The presentations were also recorded.



Above: The image above was the first presentation board and shows the work of myself (Work on left) who researched Folklore and Harrison (work on the right) who researcehd Viking/Norse storytelling and mythology.

Below: The image above shows the presentation board of team mates Robin (work n the left) who talked about the Aztecs and Corey (work on the right) who researched Egypt but talked about childrens nursery rhymes and stories.



Overall, how do you feel your presentation went?
Over all I feel that our presentation went quite well. We all spoke clearly about our chosen storytelling section - me with folklore, Robin with Aztec, Harrison with Norse/viking and Corey with general nursery rhymes and stories. Corey could have practised a litttle more on what he was going to say but other than that I think our presentation went well even thoguh we were having them recorded which was a last minute addition.

How long did your team take?
The preperation work for the presentation too a couple of weeks to gather the information and prepare what we were going to say and do. The presentation itself I think took about 15 minutes altogether, however I've not looked back on the recording for an official timing yet.

Was everyone prepared?
I think that the majority of people and teams were prepared and ready for giving their presentations. They all knew about their chosen storytelling methods and times though I thinkn it was that we were being recorded that threw poeple off a bit. As stated, having them recorded was decided just before the first presentation was to start and so it made people feel even more self conscious that they would have done if we weren't being recorded. As stated previously though, I do think Corey could hvae practised a little more on what he was going to say but other than that I think everyone from both my team and the others were prepared.

How did your audience react? were they positive, encouraged, distracting etc how did this make you feel?
I feel that our audience reactions and participation was quite positive and engaging. We asked the audience questions and go responses, they asked each of us questions which we were able to answer. I believe we havd the attention of the whole class while we were giving our presentation but I think their attention started to drift a bit towards the end of it. The fact that we were getting a positive reception to our presentation gave me more confidence when I was speaking and I hope the others in my team also got mre confidence.

Comment on yourself while doing the presentation- were you prepared, were you nervous, what can you do in future to improve this?
As I was the team leader I had to speak first; we were also the first team to give a presentation and going first always makes me nervous. However I think I did fairly well, I did mix my words a little when I started but as I went on I got more sure of myslef and spoke more confindently. I feel that I was prepared, I knew the subject I was talking about - Folklore and I knew the majority of hte story I had to tell, thoguh I did forget the name of the place it was set. During the telling of the story I did mix my words up again a bit but I think that I handled it well.
In the future, to improve myself I think I just need to memorise the names/places more and jsut to work on my speaking to an audience more and build my confidence.

Generally - what did you learn from doing this presentation? what can you take from your research to use in your team game
From doing this presentation I learnt about many different storytelling methods as well as stories that were told int hose various styles - Folklore, Viking/Norse, Aztec, Cherokee and more. Knowing thiese different storytelling styles and how the stories were written gives me a greater understanding on story construction and their meanings. I can then take that and use similar methods to write the story of our team game and incorperate the ideas into teh actual trailer.

Lighting

Today I learnt how to use lighting to make a simple object look much more realistic.
I started by making a new file and created a plane and adding a sphere on to the plane so that it was standing just on the plane. I then added a spotlight above and behind the sphere and directed the beam at it.
After I added the spotlight, I changed the colours of the sphere and the plane to better suited colours to work with the lighting. I turned the shadows On and set the shadows to Ray Traced Shadows. The ray traced shadows turn normal shadows created by the program into much better quality shadows and much more realistic.

After that I changed the colour of the lighting and changed its intensity so that the lighting it was giving off was warmer and still worked with the colours of the plane and sphere. I then set a decay on the spotlight and set it as an inverse decay. I carefully moved the decay start to make the scene look warmer and focus more on the sphere than the plane.

After doing that basic lighting figured out, I then went on to practice creating similar lighting to use in my environment. As my environment is comprised of interiors only, I feel that it is important to figure out how to light the rooms and corridors before making the primary environment.

Firstly I created a box and shaped it into a corridor, then changed it to an editable mesh and took both ends of it off along with its roof. I then flipped the normals of the box so that my eventual lighting would show. I made a small cone to act as a light shade and placed it where the roof would be.
The next step as actually adding the lighting. I made a small target spot and placed it just under the cone. I strated playing about with the intensity multiplier until I got to an intensity that suited my needs. The final stage to setting up my lighting was to add an atmosphere/effect to the target spot. I added a Volume Light effect and lowered the density so that when the scene is rendered, you can see the actual beam of light but at an acceptable level.
Once I was happy with the density and how the lights were looking, I made several copies of the cone/light and placed them in intervals along the corridor. I also placed a small Omni light at the very end of the corridor to light it.

Trailer Plot and Character List

Character List -

Elizabeth Krasivaya - Main Character - a serial killer with one hand missing. She was imprisoned in the facility and only works with other for her own ends.

Dr L. Crosgrove - Lead scientist who performed the experiments on the inmates

Dr Cyka - another scientist who is slowly driven insanr by the situation. A cowardly person who only survived by leaving their friends/co-workers behind.

Doug - another serial killer who has survived but is reluctant to help anyone as he enjoys being in the overrun facility.

Plot Idea For Trailer -

The trailer starts with a sweeping panoramic shot of the frozen wasteland possibly in Siberia - te coldest habbitable place in the world. As the panoramic shot moves, a frozen dam comes into view. As the camera moves in on the dam the screen fades to black and a scream is heard.
The camera focuses back and the viewer is now in a coridor in what appears to be a medical prison facility.
Dr Crosgrove will be doing a voice over as the first interior shots are shown. All looks reasonably normal as the camera moves down the cold, lonely corridor. As the camera reaches the end of the corridor another scream is heard - the view turns back around and the corridor that you just walked down has changed into a nightmare - blood, grime and bloody handprints and trails are all over the walls and floor. The camera quickly moves down the changed corridor as horrible sounds start coming from the metal doors lining the walls.
The next several shots are of a ruined facility with blood and gore and horrible sounds.
The camera will zoom in on a person playing in the blood and gore - Doug. It will then cut to a shot of Dr Cyka huddled in a corner muttering.
The final shot of the trailer will be the camera slowly moving towards a cell door and looking in through the window. Inside teh camera will zoom on Elizabeth Krasivaya's scarred face.

Constaints

What problems have I/will I encounter?
The following questions are the main constraints both me and my team have to consider about our project and all that is involved within it. These questions below will be filled in later on thios week after our next Team Meeting where we will discuss these questions as wella s the currebt state of the trailer.

How will the team work otogether/or not? -

Organisation, who is doing what and when for the client? -

Financial/budgets, How much would a project like this cost to produce? -

Legal, copyright, IP's, Patents? -

Deadlines - As we have not been given a dead line, I would set our team deadline for hte completion of the trailer to between two weeks a month before the digital showcase. This way the team will have time to polish the trailer and make sure everything is as good as it is going to get.

Rescources Available -

3D Design Plan

As our team are focusing on different aspects to be combined into the trailer - Harrison and Corey are working on exterior/outdoors environments, Robin is working on an interior for the medical section. However his side is where it is all pristine and clean. I am working on an interior section rather than an exterior/outdoors environment. It is my intention to create an environment of a medical facility but in opposite style to Robins version. Where he is making a portion of the facility all pristine and clean, I am wokring on the sections where the horror aspects are - dirt, blood, grime.

The following link will take you to an example of how I hope my environment section will look like:
Click here

Here are some screenshots taken from that example trailer -

My current plan is to draw the layout of my environment before I proceed in making it so i know where everything should go. If I manage to get the same feeling in the example trailer into my own work I will be very happy.