Redoing Textures

With me having to redo the textures I guess the one positive thing was I got to evaluate my previous attempt as the annoying thing was i still had the screenshots. On the whole we were happy with the textures so basically redoing most of them very similar to before. I originally couldn't think of what do with The White House which I left white before, but I thought of a interesting idea which I want to experiment with, Kind of having it like a meatloaf which could work. And the other think was needs more sauce like a boss, we dicided to go absolutely crazy, literally turn it into a massacre. We know how much Americans in particular love sticking anything on there food so it fits, Canada were going for a more gentle approach and Mexico a kind of more exotic. So yeh round 2 of texturing and this time I plan on having plenty of backups. Heres a quick screenshot of The White House which I attempted first as I couldn't get right and I really think it looks great

Hardrive Problems

Unfortunatly I had hardrive problems in which it turned out it had broke and had lost about 2 weeks of work in which time had been doing all the texturing for the assets, and its my own fault but I didn't have a backup so I lost a lot of work, I fortunately still have the models so all is not losses, just gonna have to put the extra hours in, and the lesson I have learned from this is to always have a backup not depending on how big the task is.

Texturing To Now

I spent the next few days texturing some of the assets, and was really happy of the results, the toon like effect i was doing on maya was looking very good and I was really getting into a rhythm and trying to keep the project as consistant as possible. Id just leave an outline on the edges and looked really good. Mexico especially was looking really good, I kept to very similar colours and it worked a treat, it makes the texturing look so clean and neat. One problem I did have was cubes and triangles were easy to use this effect wit due to the straight lines and edges but spheres and cylinders were a lot more challenging. I start of by doing out lines on some of the subdivisions and looked alright and worked on some of the assets but others it just didn't look right. So after a bit more experimentation and advice I found this technique best, because its a 2d side scrolling game and the camera will be fixed and you won't be able to see behind the textures the plan was to add an outline on the edge of the part of the asset which will shown on the camera when playing the game similar to the ice cream screenshot which can be seen below. It was also a lot less time constraining as you wasn't having to include as many black outlines and still looked great. I did have comparisons between the two but due to an unfortunate event which happened and I will mention in the next blog post i lost the comparison and wasn't  keen on redoing it on purpose to recreate the comparison you will have to trust me. I'm really happy with most of the textures. One of the most happy accidents was with chocolate fondue waterfall. I was just playing around with texturing and struck across this gold, literally through just messing around I textured half of it white and black for no real reason as the plan was on unity to include a chocolate waterfall so it really didn't matter what colours I used at this stage. As a result this was created and it looks magnificent and i added pink, as it just struck me it looks like Napoleon Ice cream I believe its called, which contains 3 flavours which are vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, so we decided to go with this new design. We still plan on having the chocolate river surrounding the ice creame for the boat to travel across.

Something I'm not as keen on is the tomato ketchup which we have recently added so its still going to be a bit raw, but this looks too much like blocked colours and not nearly as interesting.  In idea I came up with is that for items such as Tomato Ketchup, Fries, Chicken Bucket, Burger Boxes and cans we should make them more interesting by having a logo, but not any ordinary logo. Something which incorporates the main character Ned Bunsem for some tongue in cheek humour such as Neds Chickelicious Bucket with a cheesy image of himself on just to spice the level up a bit and make it more interesting. However With both of us busy on our respective areas we mentioned we could try seek help from a graphic designer to come up with the logos for us to use. I have a few graphic designer friends we could contact or even wait till after the deadline for when we revisit, as Chris on our course who has a graphic back line said he would be interested, or even myself as i have a graphics background.

Another problem I had was with the Cupcake on the start of the Canada level i think I was a bit too cautious on saving polygons as its supposed to be a round shape, however I think I deleted too many subdivisions as it looks too much like a pentagon, and when it comes to texturing it just dosent look right so I might have to go back and either remodel the asset or delete, theres a few issues i have with the start of Canada, I feel theres too many colour clashes and I plan on playing around. Overall I'm really happy with the direction and is a huge stepping stone forward and yes there is plenty of room for improvement but overall Im loving the appearance of mexico and that has set the bar high and the goal now is to get the other 2 levels to that bar, if not higher.

Texturing Research

With the models complete which didn't take long at all, cause we planned well ahead it was time to get to one of the most important stages which was texturing, we knew we were going for very cartoon like aesthetics and from the Elemental project we experimented with the toon shading and it looked really nice. We also really liked the texturing on Paper Moon which we mentioned on a blog before, going for that kind of influence, but including colour as we didn't think our level would work as black and white due to the importance of the colour tones on the level such as the different sauces and different foods, and we wanted to each level to have a different feel, even though I love the texturing on Paper Moon and is defiantly something i'd like to explore with at a further date, I think were gonna have to use colour but we could still take influence from the basis of the design. But yeh I think Toon shading is a great way to take the project forward, and thanks to the previous project i learned how to use this technique effectivly so that it works on Unity as we had issues before, so hopefully I can improve on the skills I learned before to improve and test my self for this project. Heres a quick test I did involving the end of the USA Level where I quickly textured the pizza, letters and burger boxes. And I'm really liking the feel simple colours with a black outline, its worth mentioning when I come to texturing probably I will be going more over the top with the sauces and putting them all over the assets. I think were aiming for simple bold colours in the front. However when it comes to doing concept art for the background Ifraz is going to put that into a lot more detail and wont just rely on bold colours so thats when were hoping they should both compliment each other, and its something were looking forward to experimenting with. Unfortunately that won't be ready for a few more weeks as currently Ifraz is concentrating on the modelling and animating the main character, Ned Bunsem

Importance Of Keeping in Contact

During the group project, we couldn't be doing work together in the same room all the time so we set up a Facebook page in where we could see where each other were at on the project and it really helped, also we didn't do cause we were waiting for the the work to be finished but we could start inviting people and make it more open for people to view, which is a great chance for social networking.

Starting Off Modelling

And so it came to modelling time, heres a few screenshots I took during the modelling, and on first look you can easily tell it follows the concept art almost identically, I had issues modelling some of the assets  mainly getting things modelled so you can run though the assets such as the burger 4 images down. However I learned a trick which I didn't know before, that you can select the bootleans on Maya and select difference and it will create a whole for you based on the shape you using. This made life a lot easier cause on our level there was plenty of stuff which you can interact with and run through. I also found the chocolate Fondue which is the first image down challenging as well cause it was a very unusual shape and I wanted to model it with the thought of the chocolate been animated on unity towards a later date, so provided a good challenge. I also learned to reduce the amount of faces as for example the chocolate fondue model had a lot of faces which were inside the model which didn't need to be there so I spend some time deleting these and it also became alot easier to texture because of this. Overall you can see how well the project is coming up and even in lambert the level is started to take shape and look really great so with the added use of texturing the level should really stand out. I also had problems modelling the start of Canada, unfortunately I have not uploaded any screenshots to this time, but because there more circular based assets creating pathways inside them was a challenging aspect and getting it to link up with the paths I Created but after a few attempts I gradually got the shape i was aiming for and was happy with my results. Finally you can't really tell from the screenshots but to keep the polly count down I was advised to take away some of the subdivisions, especially in the spheres and cylinders because there not needed, especially in a 2d side scrolling game which is not reliant on realistic graphics, plus if were going for a cartoon aesthetic it might be more beneficial not to have too perfect shapes, to create that cartoon look, so I spent some time going over the levels to reduce the count.

Update and Ifraz Concept Art

Ifraz then took my level design ideas and put into concept art with blocked colours, giving a better insight into colour tones and what food they will be made out of, We also discussed as a group more potential assets, both as things which will be interacted with the player and assets to improve the depth as at parts of the games it looks very uninteresting which is not something we want, We want the game to be crazy and appeal to everyone, with something always happening on the screen and drawing you on. i would upload Ifraz concept art but He's already posted about it so I will just send a link at the bottom of the page for those who have not seen it yet to take a look. First of starting with Canada, we really didn't change that much, we just added some big cakes in the background themed towards chocolate and cherry, aswell as Ifraz added some chocolate Flakes which I really liked and works well with the aesthetics of canada, that kind of wooden textures. Thats it really apart from the mass use of chocolate sauce for the rivers which from a camera view we plan on showing on the game so you will be able to see it.

USA is the level which we added a lot of extra assets as there was a lot of parts where not a lot was happening. We started of by duplicating some of the assets such as The Drinks cartons and Burgers, just to fill the level up a lot more. We also added drinks cans which I forgot to add onto the level layout. We also duplicated the liberty bell and added a few on the hill bit to add a little more excitement. They will all be swinging at different paces to try and catch the player out, obviously we don't want them at the same pace and synchronised as that would be boring and our level is mr excitement. Also provides more of a challenge. For the part where you reach golden gate bridge. An interesting concept we came up with was we remembered the Hot dog car, it was'nt really doing that much so we changed the food cars on the level layout for the hot dogs so the players with then have to jump over hot dogs, gives them more of a purpose. We also added a few assets around the golden gate bridge to give the players something to look at, we placed a few of the drinks carton around there, as well as a oversized box of chicken wings which should look great over the bridge. Finally on the bit towards the end of the level I came up with the concept in where you have to get past these burger boxes which will be animated to close on you, just providing that extra challenge to the player, so we got to the stage where we were happy with the layout, of cause were still open to any new ideas or if somethings not working we shall delete.

Mexico we were morealess happy with. Wasn't anything we really added extra, because it was a shorter level and was more open as it was a desert we could get away with there not been as many assets as it worked well. USA was a very urban action packed busy environment hence why we added a lot of extra stuff to represent this. So overall we were happy with mexico so it got to the stage where we could begin modelling which I would be doing whilst Ifraz would start designing the characters and animating. We were looking forward to what the future weeks would leave too.