Christopher Thurman

I was able to find some time within the past couple of days to actual make something and I realized a couple of things.

They never teach you how to create land. When I first created my own mission from scratch it took me about 20 mintues to figure out the controls.  A way to get around it is just change the level layout of one of the tutorial missions.(I bet alot of people do this.)

Once you get the hang of it, everything is good. I am still creating a race track for my first level. Hopefully it is going to be amazing. However, I remeber from the interface conference the first thing that a person makes mod wise you should throw away because you are just learning and it will not be that good. Looking back on everything that I created I also believe this. So, I will show my second one once this one is finished.

I think my final for my independent study it better. I changed the texture to look good and not boring(at least I hope). I also add the light for the candles. There is acouple of things I will add tonight, the skeleton were working in the past, but they are not working now. I also would like to add the waterfall of lava. I learned alot working with this too. I will like to make at least 2 or 3 more maps in this verison then upgrade to unreal 3 and see how it is.

I know that I havent wrote on the subject in a while. However, I am finished with my texturing and lighting final. I am not 100% happy with it. The one that I choose to print out, turned out way way darker then I wanted. I did learn alot more this semester then I did before when it came to lighting and texturing. I believe my project overall is good. Just the printing was bad.

I redid the unreal textures yesterday. I put in points in which the player will be able to know where they are going in the temple. They are subtle, but they are there. I also fixed the lighting problem. You can tell that it is a candle light and where the light is coming from. However, I am a bit nervous seeing how this is my first time working with the engine. I did learn alot from it. Being how this class is one of my final ones and there only being 2 projects. Alot weights on this project shoulders. I will add in the skeletons so that there will be more static meshes. I am also thinking about adding in places for the enemies. I might do that.

I have been updating my textures for the unreal project(which is seprate from texturing and lighting). However, they are still boring which is no good. I am ging to be working on it extra hard and be on that unreal grind for the next couple of days trying to get them to be exciting. I have to look and see what makes a texture appealing. Why would the player want to look at it and not look at it. That concept is kind of hard for me to understand. The way I have them set up and have been setting it up is that everything blends together so that I can reuse them thoughout the whole level. I will have to try a different approach and see if that works.

Well, my hard work is paying off. I have completed my texturing and lighting project. The last part I have to composite the renders. This will only take about a day. I am really happy with my results. This is my best work yet. I have really be focusing hard on this one hopefully the teacher will see it as well. I know I have improved and I will continue to improve.

On Tuesday I showed Amanda what I have. She told me again to work on a couple of texturing issues. She wants them temple not to be so plain along the walls and for me to add some red to it. Also the lights on the under are way too low if that is going to be the only light source. The scenes are too dark. I need to add some fake lights in order for the player to be able to see.

Tuesday is going to be my play though for that I will correct those couple of things and I will also add the portal ability so that I can switch between maps when it gets to that point.

So, I added in a couple of items in for the temle. I added candles for a light source and I also added fire. Then I put some textures of mayan writing on the walls with a couple of pilars so the temple will not look plain. I do think that the temple is finished. Next I would like to move on and try to complete the underworld level. Hopefully I can finish it on Monday or get it really close to finish. Today I woul like to just work on the texturing and ligting final. I havent worked on that in a couple of days.

I showed Amanda my levels and she wanted me to redo the textures and show motation for the lights. I also had some problem putting static meshes into the maps. However, I was able to fix that somewhat and I am getting around my wall textures. I need to add a couple of more things but I am trying to correct the issues before Thursday. I think I might go to sleep now.

To the document I added a players skill section and I am starting to think about the other levels. So basically I still have alot of work left to do.

So, after about 4 restarts I finally made an underworld level that I was happy about. I just have the block out created and need to add the static meshes from 3d studio that I created. However, the world has of course the block out, the lights and the starting textures. The next step is to start putting in the assets. There is still alot of stuff that I need to do, but it is going.