The Lost Updates

Updates for 22 October to 30 October 2012.

Alright, this are the lost updates. I will try and cover last week's progress and events to the best of my abilities. Here i go.

Last week, we did not do anything too much. We did a bit of Houdini stuff here and there. I focused a lot more in finalizing the level in photoshop.

I did lots of sketches for different parts of the level. After much discussion and drawing we settled on a level.

Besides that, on Thursday we had dinner with Steven Ong. He is a former Side Effects intern from Singapore. He now works as a visual effects artist for Rhythm & Hues, a visual effects company.

We had dinner at Tony P's, a seafood restaurant. It was located at Marina Del Rey, an area near the sea and home to a lot of Yachts.

It was a good time. It was nice to meet Steven Ong and his wife. They shared their experiences, gave some good advice and were really nice people.

Anyway on Tuesday, 30 October 2012, Me and Kevin had to present our project to Stephanie (our Supervisor), Lex, Sarah and Freek. We had to show our project idea, the objective, the progress so far and the plan for the next 5 weeks or so.

Here are the important pictures from the presentation. Our project and game level is called, Hyperion.

Here is a recap of what the level is about and its features.

Hyperion is power station for a powerful anti-air gun (you cannot see the gun in the map, it is positioned off map).

The central structure controls the gun. the structure will charge up and then strike the ground. Every time it does that, the gun fires. 

Teams in the game will have to control that central area for a certain period of time. If successful, the structure activates and the gun fires, earning the team a point.

Surrounding the central structure is a cooling/water pathway.

The central structure gives off a lot of heat and needs time to cool down. Water flows beneath it as a way to help cool down the central structure. 

So you can see the waterfall at one side of the map. The flow is then redirected around the center and goes off into a river/stream at the other side.

The map is hidden is some sort of canyon and the walls have these rectangular shaped rocks. 

The terrain will be the main focus of our project. We will utilize Houdini and its features (like Volumes) for that. The man made structures will be proxies for now.

Here are a few more slides and screenshots.

I started on the final map. There a few problems when converting to Volumes (weird artifacts keep popping out). Besides that is ok.

I will continue on this for the next few days and i am aiming to finish the main terrain (without decorations,UV,Texture) by the ned of the week.

That is all. I hope i did not leave out anything. More updates coming soon.