Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Sound

Diegetic Sound –

Diegetic Sound is audio which is visible on the screen or is implied to be present by the action of a character. In terms of games design these audio clips will be sounds such as the voice of the character or the noises that have been made by an object that has been interacted with.  Diegetic sound can be on screen or off screen, it depends on the source of the audio, if it is present within the environment then it is Diegetic.

Non-Diegetic Sound –

This is audio where the source is neither visible on screen or implied to be present within the scene. Within a games design non-diegetic sounds will be used just as much as diegetic sounds. An example of a non-diegetic sounds that may be used is a narrator talking or the music that is used to set the mood. This audio may be present within the game however there is no source within the environment or scene.

Example Comparison –

An example is that Scary Ambient music may be used to set the overall mood in a horror game but the music is just played in the background and does not come from a source within the scene (this is non-diegetic), however the footsteps that are used will be diegetic as the player knows that the source is the players feet connecting the the ground.

Source – http://filmsound.org/terminology/diegetic.htm

 

Creating A Logo / Watermark

I was messing around a little bit in Maya trying to think of something that I could model that was not a part of the Imagine Worlds project. This is because I wanted to try and do a small variety of other things. Because of this I used my initials J & F to create a logo that I could use on my other pieces of work and also use as a water mark on my portfolio. Using this logo I decided to revisit animation keying by simply making my Logo spin within a circle. I had a lot of fun making this and I think it turned out really well and the way I wanted it to look. I could improve this logo by possibly adding colour in the future, but for now I like the way white looks as its very minimalist. This little project has helped as it had reminded me of how I can batch render within Maya as well as key in movement.

Emerging Technologies – Presentation Work

Last week I had handed in my Emerging Technologies Essay which was on Virtual Reality and it’s effects on the Games Industry. During the writing of this essay I had actually learnt a lot about Virtual reality such as its effect it has had and its growth over the last couple of years. I had also learnt about failures such as the virtual boy. However the essay was not all I had to do as I must also present these findings. Rather than doing it through a power point I decided that I could get a better end result if I made a video presentation with game-play and images using Adobe Premier. This also allowed me to record my voice as an overlay to the video.

Imagine Worlds – Trap Door

The next Item that I chose to model for the Imagine worlds Project was a trap door that would go into the bedroom area of the cabin. This door will not be usable however it was decided that it would be a good addition to the cabin to add the extra layer of fear so that the player would wonder why there is a trap door and what could be down there. The model itself was quite simple so UV unwrapping was not to difficult and I did bevel the edges so that it would look more realistic. Most of the detail of this model is in the texture as it is quite a simple mesh. However I really like what I have done with the model.

When laying out the UVs I took texel density into account and tried to use up as much space as I possibly could within the map while also trying to maintain the proportions so that the textures would all be equal in size.

I used a couple of different wooden textures for the door and also added a steel to the hinges and handle. I then went over these base materials with different brushes. I stuck to the overall house style by adding a lot of dirt to the object and also some scratches to the metal as well as mould.

These are what the exported textures look like. I am still not sure why the textures map stretches out where there are no UVs however it appears to not effect the texture of the model so it may look broken but it is not.

Creative & Technical Modelling – Completed Presentation

Today I complied all of my images and screenshots that I had taken during the creation of my wood cutting axe. These images were placed into different slides within a presentation I began to work on, this will be used to show the workflow that I used for my model. I have created a low poly & high poly mesh and also UV unwrapped and laid my UVs out accordingly. Once this was done I Exported both Mesh’s as FBX objects and imported them into Substance Painter. This is what I used to Bake my High poly onto the low poly. I then began to texture my model using a variety different brushes and materials.

Modelling Pipeline of a Wood Axe

Imagine Worlds – Beginning the Environmental Building

Last week me and Ben began to create our level within the Unreal Engine. We started to do this by setting up a First Person level, luckily I had a little bit of experience with Unreal due to working with Unity last year as it is sort of similar however I had also done a bit of research in UE4 during the gap between year 1 and 2. As I had created many of the cabin panels at the beginning these were the first assets we began to drag into the scene so that we could begin to build up the cabin to get a feeling of what sort of space the play would actually have to explore within the scene.

As the textures were done in substance and exported as Unreal Engine 4 Packed Textures we had to drag our models in and then a add the textures to the shader that was on the model by default, this was not a difficult task however at first this was rather confusing. This is due to the fact that substance combines Metallic, Roughness& Ambient Occlusion Maps into one map. When it comes to render in Maya these would all be separate files however UE4 prefers them to be combined. Because of this we did not know how we could plug the maps into the shader correctly so we had to check Unreals’ Documentation. For the Base Colour and Normal Map these had to simply be plugged into their designated slots. However for the combined map:

• Red had to be connected to Ambient Occlusion
• Green had to be connected to Roughness
• Blue had to be connected to metallic

For this example the maps colour was yellow and orange in colour, I think this is due to how it is a wooden material so it does not require metallic, however for metal objects the map colour changes to a pinker colour.

Once we had all of the specific textures on the correct shaders and the shaders on the correct objects we could really get a feel for what the scene was beginning to look like. We did also have some incomplete models where the basic mesh was done but we did not have the texture files. Using these we simply dragged them into the scene to also get an idea of spacing. The kitchen and Fireplace both fit nicely into the scene and as soon as the textures are imported the scene will begin to look even nicer. I have also enjoyed the practise with Unreal 4.

Comparison of a Movie & Game Storyboard

From my research and through the recent lessons that I have spent on storyboards I know that storyboards are an essential part of planning movies and sometimes games. Both will also include different kinds of concept art of the environments that the story may take place in. A storyboard illustrates the journey that the character goes on. However one of the biggest differences is that a movies storyboard is more linear as this is used as a device to plot out the beginning through to the end of a movie. Whereas a games storyboard may include other elements other than the primary story line. A storyboard for games may be used to illustrate what mechanics may be involved in the game to bring in the interactivity element, such as pressing a button to open a door. In a lot of scenarios games may not use storyboards due to the story not being linear, storyboards may be used to show off interactivity but for a game like skyrim as it is open world they may choose to focus primarily on key-shots and concept art. Skyrim is another example of a game that does not have any cut scenes, games like Halo may use storyboards to plan out the story within certain cut scenes.

Movie Storyboard –

Games Interactivity storyboard –

Games Cutscene Storyboard –

Imagine Worlds – Project Update

Currently my group us slightly behind schedule with the creation of our 3D environment, however I think we are all pretty happy with the progress so far and we know we will have it done by the deadline, we are pretty close to having the assets for our minimal viable product. We are still having an error with the unreal engine and because of this I think I may have to put the assets together at home. Currently our communication has been very good within the group, we have been using a face book group chat to talk to one another as its easy for everyone to access and using this we have been sending the images of our models to one another for feedback and how they may be improved. We have also used discord to communicate while doing work to help each other out. The only room for improvement is getting a little more work done each week to leave us time at the end to make sure everything is working correctly and to possibly leave time over to add more detail.

Imagine Worlds – Cooker (start)

The asset that I began to work on today was the cooker for the kitchen. I have only modeled and unwrapped the cooker and I will be waiting till I am in college to get some assistance with the substance textures as I am not 100% how I should do the texture on this object and I would like it to fit with the style of the kitchen that Toni has made.

The cooker looks very square due to how it will be inside of another object which means that I did not need to bevel the edges, but I did bevel the door as these will be seen by the player.

Below shows an image of what the cooker may look like once it is in with the benches.

I then created a separate asset which would be the hob which will be able to go on top of the bench and still fit with the overall style. 

Imagine Worlds – Different Pans/Cooking Pot/Tin Can

A couple of weeks ago I modelled and textured a cooking pot and I had actually forgotten that I had finished that, so this blog post is a little delayed. However I also began to create some different variations of the pan to add the the realism. I created a pot, a deep pan and a frying pan.

Nothing about these models was that difficult however they did still take a while to create and texture. As these models were small I chose not to do a high poly version but instead just add the detail in using substance. These models are small and will not be a centre piece to the cabin, they are more of just a filler item to add realism.

Below are the images of the textured models. I still tried to add a nice amount of detail to these items but I can tell I did not spend as long on them as the book and axe as their is not loads of fine details, but this was a choice of mine so that I could begin to work on other models as I am slightly behind on the project currently even though I am happy with my progress.

Substance Renders –

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Other than the pans I also created a small tin can which could also go in the kitchen. Due to it being an older looking cabin I chose to make the can look rusted as if they had been there a while. For the tin can I created a low and high poly version so that I could bake the small indentations into the object.

The bake was successful and turned out the way I wanted it to look.

As the tin cans were supposed to go with the old theme I chose to make them rusty as if the person living there had stocked up on food a long time ago. The theme of the cabin is for it to look old and dirty however its supposed to be ambiguous if there was someone still living there. This is the reason I chose to not make the pans rusty but instead semi dirty as if they have been used but there was an attempt at them being cleaned.

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