Friday 31 January 2014

Lighting, concepts and textures

After the basic whitebox for the level was done and Luc did some basic paint overs for it, we felt we had the general feel for the level. So we moved onto the next most important part of the level – the design of the slums. We wanted to have 2 different types of slums, a low end slum (made out of basic materials like sheet metal and bricks) and a higher end slums (more sci-fi orientated). This is so it keeps the level more interesting for the player as they explore the level.  I produced a white box of each building type (police building, sci fi slums and low end slums). Which Luc then took to produce some paint overs to get an idea of surface detail.


Dans initial whiteboxes for the houses/shacks

Lucs concept from the whitebox

Lucs concept from the whitebox

Lucs concept from the whitebox

After playing through the whitebox within cry we felt that certain areas needed tweaking. We made some areas, like the back alleys and road system wider as they were too narrow to navigate when playing the level. We also made the centre section of the level with all the slums an extra 2 meters taller, as we felt the balcony was too low and the alley way next to it wasn’t tall enough either. Height is something we feel is important for the overall look and feel to the level, so we want to get it right.

After making tweaks to the whitebox we started to put the lights in. We did this we get an early idea of the atmosphere we wanted for each part of the level, we kept to our art guide for this. Low level slums are green, sci fi slums are pale/metallic blue, courtyard are purple and the wall/police building are blue and orange.


We also wanted to get an idea on how to lead the player down certain paths. We did a quick test by putting in a few lights in key areas, then we played the level to  see where our eyes are drawn too. First test were pretty positive, trying to be impartial our first reaction was to go down the correct path, but we feel it is a tad biased as we know the level. We plan to have people who don’t know the level play it and see where they do do get an idea of how people will play it.


New screenshots of the level with the lighting and tweaks have been given to Luc to produce some detailed concepts.












Me and Luc have produced a texture list for the houses so we know what we need to produce for them. The list also includes who does what along with the texture sizes. We have also started to produce some basic tiling textures for the level. Below shows the work:






Dans Brick wall texture

Dans Cobblestone texture

Lucs Concrete

Lucs Plaster

One of the main things we wanted discussed and sorted out was this week was how we are going to approach the modular system. We hit a few problems with what parts of the buildings we wanted to have tilling textures and what parts we wanted modular. We decided that because the sci fi theme fits well using a modular system, all of our sci fi buildings will be made out of modular parts. But on the lower end shacks we will be using a mixture of tiling textured and props. 

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