Container City

So this week I'm back at uni and the new project has started. It's another group project and we have four weeks to make a basic level based on shipping containers.

Goals:

·         Produce a small section of a game level that is dramatically and atmospherically lit

·         Produce a level that has a series of exciting visual compositions from the first person point of view as you travel into the level.

·         Produce a level that makes excellent, effective use of a small number of modular components to produce a convincing environment effectively.

·         Include some interactive elements, e.g. doors that open on approach.

Audience:

·         A games publisher looking to fund a PC adventure game with a small new team. Their target market is the kind of players who already enjoy realistic games like Crysis and Uncharted.

You will deliver:

·         At least two key mood boards with clear labelling

·         At least six key concepts with clear labelling

·         A clean, well-organised, final Max scene that contains all of the components used in the game level.

·         Photoshop files for all textures with layers well labelled.

·         A document that lists who built which asset and shows a screen grab of the asset. The document will also list who lead which parts of the work on the final level. Use both name and P number.

·         A clean, well-organised, final Unreal 4 scene

·         15 high resolution screenshots from in Unreal 4 showing that show off the level effectively with well composed attractive images.

·         10 high resolution images that show the model and texture breakdown and clearly label them.

o   These images should show the final surface with wireframe and maps used.

o   They must label polycount and texture sizes.

o   5 images should be breakdowns of the assets and five should be breakdowns of the level.

As its the first week of this project we're currently concepting. To start with we all did lots of research on shipping containers made into buildings and started to think about what are level would be. At first we were gonna set in a bamboo forest where people had used to shipping containers to build shelter and a place to live. But we decided to scrap that idea. Keeping with the dystopian theme we changed our idea to people living inside an old marble quarry that use shipping containers to build houses and shacks.

We were inspired by an image of an old quarry which showed the different levels of the quarry where people could live. This then made us think about marble quarries and the interesting bright white colour of the rocks.

Once we had a final idea of what we wanted to do we started working on some quick block outs and white boxes. This meant it was easy for us to quickly map out the level and see what we wanted to do the level itself. 

This week we have all been doing different tasks for the project, Zhané has been blocking out and created the main terrain for the level and getting it to work in UE4. Whilst Sarah has been creating the containers and basic level map with the buildings and creating a collision mesh that allows the player to properly walk around and play the level.
Marta has been working on the concepts for the buildings that are made from the shipping containers, this includes the basic shacks, a make shift hospital and even market stalls etc. I have been modelling the basic assets that can be repeated around the level such as tires, barrels, crates, debris and things like washing lines and ladders.
This is how far I've gotten with the assets so far: 

Over the weekend we've all been concepting different buildings so we can then make them for the level. I've done a few concepts and paintovers but I still have a lot to finish for tomorrow.