Realtime Assets and 3D Creation
Landscape and Foliage
On week 2 of Realtime Assets we learned how to use the Landscape mode and adding foliage.
On landscape mode we set up a plane and used the various tools to sculpt it then we created a new material for the land and painted on the landscape.
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Afterwards we made a foliage brush using bush asset from the starter kit, we also added some other assets to experiment.
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Sequences
Using the sequencer we learned how to make a moving platform, as well as forms of triggering the movement on the blueprints, from triggering from the start of play and by trigger box.
We also animated a door to open using the sequencer.
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Khal's Supremacy pt 1
For this module we are to make a game level with two types of puzzles, a logic puzzle and a spatial puzzle. I am not very confident on my skills but everything is a learning experience.
We picked the kits for this as of Week 2, I will be working with Infinity Blade: Fire Lands and Infinity Blade: Ice Lands Kits for Unreal Engine 4.
Keeping in mind the content of those kits I sketched the level blueprint and made a rough greybox of the walkable parts of the level.
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Khal's Supremacy pt 2 (Greybox)
During the process of making the greybox I did some alterations to the level, mainly the second part involving the jumping puzzle.
I made it bigger so it would take more jumps to get across to the end of the area,
For the level I made checkpoints and areas that destroy the player character upon collision, more specifically in the lava pit area, if the player actor touches the lava collision box, the player will respawn by the nearest check point.
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I also made a blueprint for the first set of moving platforms, they move simultaneously within a set time. The sequence moves all 3 platforms of the first set simultaneous
Khal's Supremacy pt 3 (menu)
During workshop on week 7 we learned more about the HUD and how to make simple health, stamina bars and a simple menu in Unreal 4.
Unreal 4 has a rather simple to work with user interface widget with a designer area and graph area. It gives out of the box quite a lot of options and design features.
The background image used was provided to us by our lecturer via blackboard.
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So for Khal's supremacy game I followed most of the steps to have a skeleton menu and styled it afterwards.
Instead of using the default Font for the Game name I searched for one more appropriate for the game visual theme.
I used House of the Dragon Font (https://www.dafont.com/house-of-the-dragon.font)
The image I found by searching for lava lands on google. (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L3G8BA)
Khal's Supremacy pt 4 (lever puzzle)
For the lever puzzle I followed the model purposed in the lecture.
The levers are meant to be pushed in a certain order to open a gate so the player can progress further in the level.
After making the blueprint in unreal and testing if it works, I used a number randomizer to get a random order of number. Once getting the order randomized I swapped the levers in that order and adjusted the level sequences for the levers.
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I also thought about adding a master lever on the other side of the gate.
Added a boolean so that depending if the gate is open or closed it would play the right level sequence once the master lever is pushed. I also made the master lever reset the puzzle once it is pushed.
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After getting all the levers working I added a text to show up once the player is within the trigger box that allows them to interact with the levers.
Khal's Supremacy pt 5 (assets)
For the assets I had decided to make the gate, the levers and an anvil. However I opted to not make an anvil as there was already a model for it within the kit.
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Since I had already made an asset that would fit within the theme of the level for another module I decided to add in the game level as well.
The assets I made that are present in the lever are a bucket, a gate, the lever and a torch.
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all these assets were made using Maya, the UV maps were also adjusted on maya for each of the assets.
All assets have a low poly and high poly version, the high poly version was mainly to smooth some of the areas, such as the bucket's handle and holes for the handle to fit in. Also added some bevels to the edges of the assets.
The assets were then imported into substance painter, there I baked the texture maps from the high poly versions into the low poly version and textured them using the textures and and smart textures present within Substance Painter. From this I exported the textures then added the low poly versions of the assets along with the exported textures into Unreal.
The bucket was the asset made for another module, upon importing it into the game level I thought it quite fit within the theme.
Originally I thought about making a double door entrance, but I scrapped that idea to make a metal gate that would slide up when being open.
I had made the entry way but opted instead for using the assets from the kit for the gateway.
For the lever I used the same iron texture as I used on the gate so it would stay consistent, and made the handle have a wooden texture.
When I was building the level, more specifically the cave area, I wanted to try and have it well illuminated in a natural way. As it is a cave I thought torches would be a good way for this. Since the kit did not come with a torch asset I made a simple one myself to add to the ambiance of the level.
In unreal I made an actor blueprint and used my torch assets as well as a particle system for fire that came with the kit. This particle system already had some form of lighting but was not quite enough to illuminate the cave area. So I also added a point light and made the colour warm for it.
Then I proceeded to add more torches to the area.
Khal's Supremacy pt 6 (general work progress)
When I first started moving the level progress from the greybox I actually found it very difficult to know where to start from.
Essentially I started by placing some assets in the first area. Then I thought about including the health and stamina system we learned in a previous lectures. I did run into some problems to make it work, specially trying to understand why the health and stamina system were not being refreshed when the player character respawned from the checkpoints.
Upon consulting with the lecturer we figured that the system was not really necessary as I did not have any plans for a damage system, any time the player were to die would be an instant death. In the end I scrapped the system.
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For the landscape, I used the materials from the kit and made a landscape material, adding texture and normal maps from these materials and using a layer blend to blend them together. Ran into some issues with painting, such as one of the landscape tiles reverting to base untextured colour so I deleted that tile, added a new one and re-sculpted the tile.
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On the first area since was a snowy area in mountains I thought about adding a fog effect, I choose to make the material and used an youtube video tutorial as guidelines and applied it using post process for a thick fog.
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For the cave roof, I set a second landscape, sculpted it and made a material with other texture materials from the Fire Lands kit to paint it.
For the lava area of the level, I duplicated the lava material of the Fire Lands Kit and applied to a stretched cube, I then modified the material adjusting the speed and set the emission to transmit light. For the lighting in the area I set up some spotlights.
I then went back to the first area and added some mountainous static meshes so it would not look so bleak and empty.
I had some basic checkpoints set up that I wanted to improve on, for this instead of just using a trigger box with a pillar and light that would destroy itself I set flags on the main level and made the checkpoint blueprint a red spotlight that would illuminate the flag once the player overlapped on the trigger box and only the trigger box would then be removed, this to indicate that the checkpoint was active and avoiding the light to go off if the player were to overlap the trigger box again.
Khal's Supremacy pt 8 (Gallery)
