Swarm Agent Tutorial

Im gonna do a swarm agent tutorial soon. Ive had quite a few pagehits on swarm agent stuff. So expect a short little tutorial on using UDK Swarm Agent soon. Its quite a simple little setup and I dont have any tutorials up yet so ill start by doing this one.

Outdoor Environment And Dev Blogs.

 Speedtree
Lately ive been working on the outdoor environment. Specifically the trees, and working within speedtree. Speedtree is a pretty damn awsome program. So for all of the trees in any work going forward they will be done with speedtree. The only issue is the export, with the free version givin with udk you cannot export them in any other format such as a .obj. You need the full license for that unfortunately. Oh well.

Outdoor Environment
A recent thing ive worked on for a bit was adding darkness depth to the forest. I really want the forest to be an area that the player will not want to wander in. Yea sure there is just adding collision so the player "cant" get there but if the player is afraid to in some way that will help with the experience. I dont want the player feeling limited, because then the experience is broken. I will still need to have a limit and put collision in the woods area, but i will have that far enough back where the player will need to wander for a while. And with enemies on the map, it should be difficult. Another thing with the darkness is it allows for cover of the enemies until they are right up on the house or area around it. Glowing eyes and silhouettes will really sell the dark woods if done right. And i got some ideas on how to do that.

Dev Blogs
So recently ive decided to start doing some video dev blogs. These will go through some of the things i did since my last update, as well as some troubles I ran into along the way, and eventually what i plan to do next. Im gonna get these up and running within a week or so. I planned on doing these earlier but some parts of the level are just unacceptable looking currently. I transferred from bsp brush for the rooms to actual static meshes done in 3ds max, but i have lots of holes to cut for windows and doorways. So once that is done and decently fitted i will start doing video logs. So expect that soon.

Wrap Up
All of the screenshots below just show the darkness and the depth for the woods. A few of the pictures have paths for which enemies will spawn and run from. The next update will have holes cut into meshes for windows and doors, this will take a bit of time and is tedious. Not difficult at least. Also with the next update will be some more kismet examples. I want to get the first 10 waves done with some good solid functionality in there. Probably change some things with the waves sequence as well. Some things are no longer necessary and need to be removed.

Made some trees in speedtree.

I decided i wanted to work on the forest more and make that look better. So i opened up speedtree that came with udk and worked on some trees. I wanted them to have a unique different style. Similiar to the trees you see in vast forests where their are only leaves on the top. Then i made some trees that are really distorted and have no leaves on them. Currently im working on adding some fog to give darkness to the forest and give it a real scary depth. Ill get some more screenshots of that when its done or at least some more progress is made.

Using Object Lists to simplify things.

Here are some screenshots of me using object lists. The object lists are labeled accordingly and each object list contains pathnodes of each area. Then those named object lists are then referenced with named variables in each of the waves.

Wave Structure.

This is how each wave will be setup. Instead of checking the wave number by adding one to the integer value i will instead just set the integer value to the wave number. This way I can still do a check to change events in correspondance to the wave number. The screenshot will show the base structure, as every wave will be scripted and all will be unique. Not just a simple adding more enemies kinda thing. I dislike that.

As you can see all of the 50 waves will be in sequences and remote events will be called to activate each wave. This will help keep things nice and clean.

Side note. Some of the waves have had more work done. If you look under the sequences you can see "Wave 2" has a total of 26 nodes. This is because this wave has some enemies functioning and spawning now.

I got a new way to do the wave system, it will be more effecient.

Instead of doing a check and making sure whether or not the waves number is going up. (Since every wave will be unique and not just a simple add more enemies here). I will be setting the wave number at the beginning of each wave, this will help tidy up all of the kismet and will use up less space, memory etc.

Ill have some screenshots in a day or two to show what I mean.

Sidenote, im currently up to wave 10 on the structure of the waves system. From here it will be smooth sailing, once the structure is set up its a matter of copy and pasting the constant things in each wave. (The wave announcements and timers.)

Waves system kismet.

      Heres the first five waves setup. There will be a total of 50 waves total.  After the check to see wave number it fires off the remote event. Which are in the sequences. More later.

Set up some simple script work.

     Worked on some kismet, this is a simple wave system for the game. Its pretty simple right now and kind of a mess. I havent gotten around to attaching everything to remote events. Im gonna be doing some more work on this as the level is nearly blocked out.

Doing some reflection work, more vertex painting and a new cement texture.

There will be some more stuff showing up soon. Once i get a little bit more free time.

More blocking out done in 3ds max. Enjoy some screenshots.

WIP- Main Hall

WIP-Outdoor Mansion Walls, Vertex Painting.

WIP - Main Hall

WIP - Outdoor moon

WIP - Outdoor moon.

Did some work with the moon.

I apologize if the screenshots are a tad bit dark but i didnt have time to brighten them up. Theres a few things id like to do to tweak the moon a bit. But i think its an excellent start and really helps the mood and feeling to the outdoor area. This will work just fine for quite some time until more important things are done.

Lightshafts/God Rays.

 Tonight I worked on just some simple fun things, one of those being lightshafts. I enabled them for the dominant directional light and toggled with a few settings for it. As well as changed some parameters for the skydome in the material instance. I finally got a decent looking lightshafts and it looks rather cool running through the woods. I also made one minor adjustment with the postprocess, just added a slight desaturation to give a little more of an old feel. I think tomorrow ill work on a decent moon instead of this gradient style moon. This moon does not do justice in my opinion. After the moon ill start modeling out some more of the house as i need to finish that ASAP.

More Soon.

Oh yea and lighting wasnt built for this.. Dont have time to wait for that to build, tomorrow most likely along with the other changes.

WIP - LightShafts and slight scene desaturation

WIP - LightShafts and slight scene desaturation

Vertex Painting And Modeling house in 3ds max.

WIP - Some Vertex Painting on house.

WIP - Some More Vertex Painting on house

Working on some destructible assets, and unwrapping models.

 Havent posted on here too lately, but still been working on my UDK project. Ive recently been playing gears of war 3 and saw many destructable environment assets like pillars. So i decided to work with the fracture mesh tool in udk and make some stuff of my own. Destruction is fun! More soon.

As for the unwrapping, ive unwrapped some of the main staircase and am working on that now so i should have a decent looking staircase with a rug soon. Eventually after that ill work on making the walls in 3ds max and cleaning up the edges and move away from the bsp.

Worked on main staircase some more, no texture still. Still in blockout mode.

Did some more work on the main stairs for the main hall and did some work to the stairs leading to the outside door. The screenshots are from in editor view as i do not have time to do a lighting build and have to be somewhere pretty soon. Enjoy!

Been working on assets in 3ds max.

     Havent posted anything too recently. Most of my work now is in 3ds max. Mostly for baseboards and actual proper stairs, railings, and to overall clean up some rough edges. Lately ive been working on the main hall ( the first hall you enter in the building). Ive also done some work to the outside stable to give that more of a horse stable feel.  No screenshots on that however. I havent gotten around to texturing the railings and stairs. That will be one of the last things i do as its still in blockout stage. So all of the textures are just temporary for now. As well as all the models are not absolutely final. The endings of the railings and sidings in particular need to be worked with. But none the less, enjoy! 

WIP Main Hall

WIP Dining Hall

WIP Main Hall

WIP Main Hall 2nd Floor

Export Blockout From UDK And Imported Into 3ds Max

WIP- The Scene right after import from UDK

I recently got the blockout decent enough to where i can start working on stuff in terms of paneling, stairs, windows and doorways. I exported the level as a .obj from UDK. Heres a screenshot.

More update screenshots. Built lighting.

     Recently built the lighting using swarm. So here are some more progress pictures.

Main Hall WIP, Textures are not final.

Outside of Mansion textures are not final. WIP

Outdoor path to cabin, WIP textures are not final.

Outdoor path to mansion from cabin, WIP.

Got more of the level blocked out.

     Been working hard on this project lately. Got a lot more done in terms of the level being blocked out. Added some more textures and have been working on materials as well. I also did some simple lighting to add to the feel of the outdoor area of the level.

     Created a few more prefabs as well, one of them being funtional doors. When the player goes up to the door and presses "E" on the keyboard the door opens for them, after 5 seconds the door closes. I need this to work similiar to the doors in left 4 dead where the player can close the door manually as well. But that will be for a little later time. Another prefab i set up was some simple torches, these were already shipped with the udk. But this prefab includes an ambient sound, the static mesh of the torch, and the fire particle system.

     On a side not all of this is a Work In Progress, dont expect these textures to be final in anyway. I know some of them are in areas they dont belong. ;) I shall clean that up once people start playing it to test out the "fun factor"

Swarm Agent Up and running on both my computers.

Worked on reflection and cube mapping on the tile floor. Still might need some adjustment.

Swarm Agent for UDK.

Recently decided to set up and work with the Swarm Agent that comes along with UDK. It was actually very easy to setup and worked flawlessly. So now my lighting builds will finish much much quicker! Now if only I had a render farm like Pixar or Epic Games :P