Fire!

The center piece of most pubs is the fireplace and especially in a olde worlde pub or a fantasy pub. Fire was therefore going to be really important for me to get right in this project; so tonight with the help of a youtube tutorial I have learnt fire! Well I've got to grips with the basics of particle systems and the possibilities of the material modifiers which is pretty damn exciting because before now I've only had a really simplistic understanding of how to use the material modifiers to achieve something other than simple diffuse, normal, specular and emissive textures.

With this new understanding of how to do things in UDK I'm realising that the technical side of the art is really something that I enjoy. I'm looking forward to using Kismet and the other flow diagram style programming which is just a great deal more satisfying than slaving away over the HTML, PHP and CSS that I've been getting angry at recently.

I recently visited a pub locally known as "The Pub With No Name" as there are two pub sign posts signalling its presence to the country road its situated off and neither of them have a pub sign in them. The building is a mishmash of original building and extensions of various sizes and ages however the bar is still in the original area, the colours were fascinating and the entire place was really beautiful. The walls, which from the outside are a pale ochre-y colour of faded white, are completely brown indoors because of the tar from tobacco smoke over all the years. This was enlightening as my logical brain thought the opposite would be true, I hadn't taken into account maybe a hundred or so years of smoke. Again the fireplace and the atmosphere was incredible, the comparison between outdoors and indoors was something incredibly bizarre walking inside everything is brown, black, brass or reflecting the fire...

Heres the fire tutorial I used, this guy also has some pretty sweet tutorials on other things and different engines great help:

To do...

So with that batch of props textured up and everything I need to think about starting the walls and bar, the big things the things that will be noticed a lot :/

In the mean time I've been looking back at the props and I'm not really sure how happy I am with them, I went into this to learn stuff. I would say I've got a lot more comfortable with Zbrush because of this project so far but haven't really learnt anything. Hand painting the textures looked nice for the barrel but I'm not particularly keen on the overall aesthetic of what I've produced so far and I'm not sure how it'll look for the rest of the pub. This led me to looking at Dishonored, I started playing it around March time and kept getting distracted with various other things and have recently started playing it again. The textures in Dishonored are stunning, not because they're so life-like but because they just work so well.

They are quite obviously fairly low resolution but it still looks really good and all fits in together, the style is really honed in and complete; this is something which I'm a bit worried about for this project. However it is my first attempt at painted textures and my first environment which wasn't mish-mashed together but I'm still being fairly uncertain about how to proceed... I may just be having an uncertain couple of days.

Have some lists they tend to help with working out what to do next...
Things I can start work on now:
Walls
Beams
Brick texture
Fire place
Wall candle holder

These are the main things I want to at least try during the project:
Poly painting
Sculpting
Particle effects
Fire/Smoke in UDK
Lighting in UDK

2 Weeks have past...

So I've missed 2 Sunday's worth of posts many apologies but I'm pretty sure this practice is for me more than anyone else... anyway!

In the past 2 weeks I've actually managed to get some stuff done which is always good. I finally managed to start the bar concept for the old pub project (which you can see below). This was my first real attempt at white boxing and environment concepting I found it pretty difficult but I'm almost happy with the end result. White boxing is something that I think I need to really try some more as its meant to give you the perspective and the perspective is slightly off in this painting, also I've been told that a wider angle of view is often used to show off more of the environment when concepting so that's something I'm really going to bare in mind next time I go to paint.

 Fortunately I've also made a start with some of the props for the pub and I hope to start making the walls and fireplace in the next week or so. at the moment I'm almost entirely hand painting the textures which I'm worried about when it comes to the glass bottles... that is going to be a pain and a massive learning curve! So far I've finished off the barrel, kettle and ceramic bottles. I have a feeling that I may need to increase the tricount on the ceramic bottles sometime soon as they really look horrible at the moment. So here are all the props so far:

  

Games as Work, Work as Games

This is a nice short speech looking into games and the psychology of playing games. Although it doesn't tell you a huge amount or give a huge amount of ideas it kinda says what I would say if I wrote a blog post on it. New and interesting ways to use the intelligence of the people playing games is an incredibly awesome pursuit if you ask me.

Zombies...

So World War Z. The book came and it went without me caring, I'd always assumed it was the typical zombie stuff. Why our culture is so obsessed with zombies? Most of the time a good zombie film is a mediocre story with way too much time, money and hype thrown at it that it becomes, either, yet another disappointment, or a standard simple entertaining film which is neither a waste of time nor worthwhile.

Hollywood films in general seem to have some fixation with having at least one character who doesn't quite get it, who acts like a total idiot or simply can't control themselves. This may lead to some arguments or "character development" which is considered to be good entertainment but mostly its just irritation. World War Z was incredibly refreshing in the fact that there are very few points of idiocy, there are moments of beautiful common sense, great understanding of the situation and capable characters.

The resourcefulness of the main character is another refreshing point, he often uses common sense to protect himself and those around him. His wife and the women he runs into are portrayed very well and in a very positive, capable way. I don't want to put any plot spoilers out there but the way the zombie-disease spreads is really well thought through with a basis in fact and with an understanding of nature. The story line shows this same understanding throughout the film which makes the film a better portrayal of human nature than most films. granted there is the cliche happy ending of a family being reunited but it is done in a believable and sensible way, I walked out incredibly satisfied. Time and money well spent, go and see it if you can.

More Pub references!

So just another dump of a couple of references for pub designs.

Also I've finished the sculpts of the candles and may make some colour variations when I've finished more of the pub!

Old English Pubs!

Being from the Hampshire countryside I'm very used to walking into a pub and seeing dark oak beams, massive fireplaces, tankards hanging from the ceilings, furniture either stolen or blagged from churches and everything else looking like its been in the same place for centuries. So I had a list of awesome pubs we could go to get reference for this Old English Pub group project we're doing. Over the past few days of being at home I've managed to get to some of them and get some decent photos to use when concepting the interior of the pub.

The Sun in Bentworth

Air Conditioner... so Olde Worlde

My Mum found a painting her grandmother loved and it seemed quite helpful for references.

So resource gathering is going pretty well, looking forward to getting back to Leicester to get some work done!