FMP 25 - Furniture for the House

The way i built the furniture was in the same Max file as the house. I left it as a separate object so i could use more space for light mapping. So i set up the assets in thier rooms ready so that when i import them, i can just fit them into place, saving some extra time. Because of the fact that they are extremely simple, one colour assets, that is the reason why i kept them together. Like the house, i unwrapped them separately and converted it to a multi sub object and added the shiny black, pale white, shiny grey and pale grey colours to the right objects.

Due to the time i gave myself i couldn't carry on with making more furniture. I really could have added more items to the house since they are pretty simple and geometric but it was coming close to the end of the last week and i needed to clean up and start taking screenshots and the fy through for final hand in. I left upstairs open plan, so the lights and balcony and plug sockets are still there but the space is empty and bright. From what you can see, i made a dining table and chairs, a central fireplace, a table in the coridoor with a vase on top, a small kitchen sink with some wall cupboards to go with it and a wall mounted tv.

I would have liked it filled more such as a picture frame, a carpet, sofa and chair, fridge, cooker, wall mounted weapons, bathroom shower, sink, toilet, bed, bedroom storage. See i could go on and could have gone crazy with things to fil into the house but by the end, i didnt give myself enough time.

FMP 24 - Tree Problems and Update

I originally attached my trees to my terrain editor which allowed easy distribution and dynamic live shadows. The problem with this was that i wanted lots of trees for my forest and it created problematic laggy frame rate issues when playing from the beginning where you see most of the trees in the distance. The shadows from the leaves were brilliant but another problem that came up was that the trees were not affected by global illumination. So where the sun was shining, you could see the tree texture but when you looked behind it, it became pitch black. That isn't true to real life especially when my scene isn't night time but quite bright and warm. Light should be bouncing and creating a darker shade to the non lit side of the trees.

The only way i could do that was to take the trees off the terrain editor and place them all in manually which seemed to do the trick. It was major time consuming ball-ache but it made the scene look much better and more natural with better lighting. The shadows became still but it removed the lag. For this busy scene its best not to have the dynamic live shadows. I quickly placed trees into the level by selecting the asset in the package,  holding alt and S on the keyboard then left clicking into the area in editor to place it down nicely. I still had to manually re adjust the the rotation, scale and tilt of each tree which took time but it was all worth it in the end for the final product.

Since the last trees, i added more leaves and stretched them out and down a bit to get more bend. After reimporting the ASE file, the whole scene transformed and become more drastically filled, and less sparse. That was all it needed to now look like a deeper more immersive and slightly claustrophobic and mysterious forest. Compare it to one of my older posts where the tree leaves were more empty and very plain and straight and you will notice the difference.

FMP 23 - Open Plan House For Sale

I added this one object the the beginning of the level to back up the empty and clinical brand new effect of the house. It shows it is for sale and open plan. I placed another sign face down in the main lake as it looks like a fresh asset in a different state such as that. The wood is repeated but i drew lines the match the geometry and made a new specular the make the painted message shinier.

FMP 22 - Dead Trees

This is a separate made tree to my main repeated tree and i placed less around the scene to break up the repetitiveness a bit. The tree texture was just darkened and slightly dirtied to show the tree isn't as fresh as the ones that are alive. I made this with more branches too because i didn't wat to add any leaves onto it. I made a concentrated area around the main lake where the land is less raised as if to say the damp muddy watery section has slowly killed the trees. Kinda looks a bit creepier too.

FMP 21 - Changing the Plank Path

I easily changed the plank UV direction from vertical to horizontal to look less stretched and more detailed. Besides, you would need to carve some pretty long planks to make the long ziggy zaggy pathway to the house eheh.

I broke one section down into the water a bit near the beginning to force the player to swim to the other side and to take the long boring wonder through the path away a bit.

I added walls to the second plank path asset, so to avoid falling while zigzagging through to section 2. It's just there for extra effect to build up to the house scene anyway and easy to add parts like this if im using the same texture.

I added 2 slopes to the section 2 plank path too, just in case you fell into the water and needed to get back up.

FMP 20 - Making the House

Here is some reference for he sort of futuristic open eco bright, neutral, white natural kind of houses i wanted to go for. In 3DS Max i started to piece together a few ideas i had and went with what you see further down below.

I used simple foundations similare to those as seen in my gathered reference to build my desired house. I made a funky roof, a white plank edge, large open windows, showing the inside of the house and letting loads of natural light in. Pillars were made to hold the house up in the water and around the house to show it is being held up well. Upstairs has an outside balcony. The outside roofs have circular lights with udk spotlights shining downwards while the inside lights are long bright rectangles with udk pointlights. Rooms are an open plan upstairs, a large downstairs lounge where the stairs openly lead you upstairs. There is a long corridoor from the entrance that takes you to the lounge and the long backroom which will be the kitchen. Simple furniture will be added later and the water wheel will be added to the sides and back of the house.

I made the windows a separate asset and slotted them in and gave it a simple udk transparent material.

I made the house a multi sub object and gave it mainly plain and neutral colours. Thay are; shiny black for the foundations and guards, white for the ceiling, floor and some walls, a cracked white for the back walls, a yellow emissive for the outside and inside lights and the white brushed wood for the outside floor balcony.

In case anybody wonders, i wanted the plain, simple, geometric look as seen in my found reference pictures. I wanted it to be a clean and original contrast to blend into the warm deep foresty main environment.

FMP 19 - Tree Stumps

I built a tree trunk from scratch to add to the tree and bush varations in the forest. I think it makes total sense to have lots of these lying around because of the amount of wooden planks it must have taken to build the plank path and the shack and the barrels and so on. I placed them in the editor manually.