Yet another update

I probably should write slightly more often, but I keep forgetting about this blog. In any case, since last time I've added some materials to the buildings. I planned to use interchangeable texture sheets originally, but so far it seems like separate tileable materials are a better fit even if there is a small performance hit.

Figuring out the way maps work in CryEngine was definitely fun. I wonder who thought that it was a good idea to save displacement map as an alpha of an empty texture. It used to be an alpha of the normal map, which kind of makes sense, but apparently they wanted it to be a separate map. I wish I could just export specular, gloss and displacement maps as grayscale files, but oh well.
Additionally, there was a lot of glitches with how cubemaps worked. One of the issues included environment map rendering everything flat.

Luckily, this particular issue seems to have solved itself.
Additionally, I changed the museum building slightly, as well as added water. It's not like the player is going to see it a lot, but it is useful for the fly through video.

 

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Level layout

This update is a bit overdue, but better later than never, right? For the past week or so I've been working on getting a semi-final level layout finished. The main issue that people pointed out to me during the presentation was that the idea was not entirely clear yet. So I've built some rough modular dam pieces and the futuristic museum building. Not final models, I'm not exactly happy with them, but at least I was able to set up a level layout.

I plan to make some basic textures for the level so that it is not just white. I'll need to figure out a smart way to set it all up in order to be able to swap the materials around easily.

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Work in progress

I'm done modelling two out of three sets of main modular pieces. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish the last one in next week. Last Friday I found out that all 45° walls are shorter than they are supposed to be, and therefore the wall ring can not be closed. So I had to spend several hours fixing all existing models. The good news is that I can finally make some semblance of a district layout. I'll also will have to find a way to create slopes so that the level is not as flat as it is now.

The plan for the nearest future is to create that layout, finish the last set of modules, add some simple materials, and start making futuristic background assets. I need to break it up slightly, just for the sake of my sanity.

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