Cyberstein Final Sprint

Final Touches, BP & Bug Fixes & More...

Contributions: 

1. Final touches on all lighting and set dressing.

    - Did a final lighting pass for the replicator room and created custom meshes for light shafts. 

2. Optimized and created material instances for anything missing a material instance. 

    - Had to remove some of the light shafts in order to improve shaders complexity. 

3. Set dressed the level and added decals and final touches. 

4. Added some light flicker BPs and modified the button BP to change color depending on the type of part selected.

5. Helped implement and test the grate destruction into the good ending. 

6. Built final lighting and packaged project. 

Cyberstein Summer Sprint #5

Debugging, Lighting Pass, Material & Mesh Updates

Contributions:

1. Continued to test lighting within VR headset. Worked on lighting in the side rooms and on the monitors near Viktor. Created "TV light meshes" and a light material to give the illusion of god rays from the computer screens. 

2. Debugged lighting issues and built out enclosure around the play area in order to combat light bleed.  

3. Continued to modify room layout as needed (set dressing) and update materials/blueprints within the level.

Cyberstein Summer Sprint #4

Added Game Res Models, Set Dressed, Stripped Lighting!

Contribution: 

1. Stripped Lighting: Troubleshooting lighting in order to bring the scene into complete darkness, removed all post processes, and started lighting from scratch.

2. Grayscale Materials for Lighting Test

3. Improved the existing Lever BP

4. Set dressed some of the level, implemented the meshes, and moved objects to make more sense within the space (ex. light intersecting gaps on pillars and lever station in awkward position on pillar, moved to opposite wall instead)

Cyberstein Summer Sprint #3

 Updated Meshes, Materials, & Lighting!

Contributions: 

1. Team Organization - Making sure things are turned in on time in order to meet presentation deadline.

2. Lighting - Another lighting pass for the updated meshes and materials.

3. Set Dressing - Set dressed the outside of the building to make it less empty looking.

4. Editing Body-Build BP - Updating and troubleshooting the new meshes/materials within the main Body-Build BP.

5. Editing Light Flicker BP - Created more light flickers in order to create a more dynamic feeling environment. 

Last Week's Lighting

This Week's Lighting

Cyberstein Summer Sprint #2

Lighting & Team Organization Revamped!

This week, my contributions were made to organize the team by taking the spreadsheet Jaz made for us all and translating them into individual tasks into JIRA. I created a JIRA board for us to effectively document the amount of tasks we have and to be able to assign them to individuals in order to make sure that everyone is accountable for their assigned tasks and to stay on track with the project. I've also completely revamped the lighting in our scene and done some set dressing as well. I've added some quick proxy emissive materials to some of our light sources, created light blueprints in order to provide more dynamic lighting to the scene, and hooked them up inside of the level blueprint in order to trigger at certain times. I also found a few SFX and hooked them up to the lighting BPs so that it would sound like flickering light or an alarm blaring (this one still needs to be tweaked). We're experiencing a few bugs that we're currently trying to troubleshoot (like our main lightning effect and fog simulations). 

Before New Lighting Pass

After New Lighting Pass

Sprint Video

As a team, I think we've decided to go for a little bit of a different mood and take inspiration from a few scenes from the 1982 Bladerunner movie. Things definitely feel like they're moving along more smoothly and quite a bit has gotten finished this sprint. Super proud of everyone!

Summer Sprint #1

 Return from Summer Break!

This week, we've returned from Summer Break and have gone into a bit of a planning phase. We're really trying to button up any loose ends and begin tracking high priority tasks more closely. For the first two classes, Anthony and I were collaborating on what simulations and VFX need to be completed by the end of the project. We decided that we're going to do pre-baked destruction simulations in Houdini for the different endings. We've already begun looking up how we can achieve this and have begun development within Houdini. Lighting will need to continue to be worked on as we continue to filter more assets into the scene. Looking forward to what we will be able to accomplish by the end of the semester! 

Maya Artist Tool - Game Ready Assets

 

Stylized Heart Trail Niagara VFX

 

Post Processing Material - Toon Shader

 

Cyberstein - Build & 'C' Level Delivery

 Cyberstein Sprint #7

This sprint, I focused on redoing the lighting for our scene! For this project, we're taking a lot of inspiration from Blade Runner, so I decided to use one of the Syd Mead's Sci-Fi apartment concepts for reference. I also created my own cube map with a Blade Runner-esque cityscape. 

I'll continue to do more lighting passes as we begin to populate the scene with our final meshes and materials. 

I also worked on setting up certain events inside of our Level Blueprint. The police lights now only trigger when the endings are played, rather than flashing the entire time. Ryan and I also did a lot of troubleshooting some last minute blue prints (like the thunder BP which triggers the bolt of lightning VFX and flash of light, and the material switch for our meshes). We also play tested quite a bit to make sure things worked before and after building our project for tomorrow's C-Level presentation.

 

Cyberstein - Polish & Level BP

 Cyberstein Sprint #6

This week we focused a lot on trying to figure out what things we really wanted to nail down and polish within our VR experiment. Since I've been having a few issues with the spline for the last Sprint or so, I decided to modify it a bit. I've done quite a bit of research and reference gathering, but I think I know what I'm going to do now. I've decided to take the saw away completely and replace it with a really small emissive sphere with the sparks VFX attached to it. I'm also going to attach a beam emitter to the BP so that the laser cutting through the garage door leaves a "heat trail" behind. It's also extremely dark in our scene right now, so I went in and made some slight light changes so that it wasn't as hard to see in some areas. Along with the "garage door being cut down effect", Ryan and I worked together to implement the timing into the scene itself, so now it only plays when the endings are triggered. We also worked together in creating an environment animation and attaching it to a BP, so that the garage door falls when the ending is played. We've yet to implement that specific BP into the level BP, but it's on it's way!

Cyberstein (New Teammates!)

 Cyberstein Sprint #5

This week we welcomed to new team members to our team. We spent a decent amount of time catching everyone up and figuring out how the tasks should be divided amongst our new team size. I'm still having a lot of issues with the spline blueprint inside of Unreal. This week Anthony and I tried to troubleshoot it, with no luck. However, we were able to adjust the movement of the saw so it looked a bit more realistic when sawing into and out of the wall. The sprint has not been as productive as I think we're going into a "Spring Break" mode! Lol. We're really lucky and glad to have Anthony and Marshall on the team! Ryan needed some help with the animations, for sure. This week was a lot of organizational stuff onboarding the new team members and creating our post on the Unreal Forums. Now that we're a little more settled in, going into next sprint should be easier when divvying up the tasks. Lighting will need to be re-worked again, so that's on our radar for the upcoming sprints as well as fixing the clipping issue with the conveyor belt. Now it's just polishing what we already have and adding more "liveliness" to the environment itself!

Continuing to Polish

 Cyberstein Sprint #4

This week, our team continued to polish the things that we already have. I went ahead and started to create the material instance for our material swap. The body replicator will print out body parts and at the beginning of the machine, they will start with this material pictured below. I'm working on trying to set it up in the level BP as well as the monitor screens that will display the Media Player texture materials that I created! Ryan also continued to polish the mocap animations that we have with the updated Victor model from Kaylie and Jazz continued to work on our SFX and audio cues! Brian went in and made some edits to the lighting to make it more reminiscent of Blade Runner. And Piper is continuing to polish the assets that we have as well! We're still working on setting up certain cues for some things, but we have pretty much all of the assets completed. :-) They just need extra polishing now!

Implementing VFX & SFX

Cyberstein Sprint #3

This week, we spent a lot of time trying to get all of the proxies in for our VFX effects. Jaz also spent quite a bit of time polishing our SFX and working with Robert, the composer for our VR experience. Brian and I spent some time getting a lot of our proxy VFX into engine. Ryan continued to polish our mocap animations and tweak our already existing BPs. I worked on setting up a BP and spline system for the VFX for the saw traveling along the border of the garage door. I also did a lot of research into how we would do our material switch, and we decided that we would attach it to our button BP and time the material switch appropriately. Kaylie and Piper also continued to polish the assets we have and add new ones to the project! Everything is coming a lot quite smoothly!

Beginning/Middle/End, Part 2

Cyberstein Sprint #2

During last week's critique, it was noted that it was difficult to understand what buttons/objects you can and cannot interact with. The story was also hard to follow because the user was required to read from a tablet, but also play the experience at the same time. For this sprint, we focused on making it more clear as to what objects could and should be interacted with by adding a post processing material to interactables. I created this material to be used with a post processing volume to highlight interactable objects/buttons in our experience. When Kellie play-tested our experience last week, she was able to spawn underneath and on top of the level map. So, one of my priorities was to fix the Nav Mesh so that this was no longer possible. I also continued to work on our trigger event VFX: specifically, the fog and sparks. We were also able to implement dialogue so that the player would no longer have to look at the tablet to follow along with the scene. This week, Ryan and I worked together on the level BP and the police siren BP to get some of the VFX to play during certain trigger events: like the police lights. Jazz was able to get a bunch of people in the VO booth to work on voice overs too! Everything is coming along really smoothly! :-)

Beginning/Middle/End, Part 1

Cyberstein Sprint #1

This week was my first sprint with the Cyberstein team! Unfortunately, the Mad Tea Party team was cut at the end of last semester, so we were not able to continue with that concept. However, I feel really confident with the direction this new team is going and I'm really glad to be apart of it! This week I worked on updating the lighting within the scene and did some troubleshooting on some of the build errors we were encountering. I was able to figure out what was causing it and to fix it! We're still experiencing some weird edges/shadows on some of the meshes, but we decided to move forward from this and focus our efforts elsewhere. I enjoyed setting up the lighting and playing around with the post processing for this scene. I also started on some of the electricity VFX we're going to have in our scene (they haven't been implemented yet and still need some minor tweaking). 

   Before Lighting Pass

After Lighting Pass & Post Processing

    Niagra Spark Effect

Week 14 - Mad Tea Party VR

Final Presentation and Proxy Experience

This week we all worked really collaboratively to fix any pre-existing technical issues within our scene. Isabelle finished off the rest of our proxies and updated our material and FBX files. Akshay worked really hard to troubleshoot any problems with the VR headset and building out the lighting and object placement in our scene. For this week, I worked on implementing the ground fog into our environment, cleaning up and condensing our presentation, and working inside of UE4 to do some final polishing and added our animations to the scene. 

Week 13 - VR Project

White Boxing and Concept

This week, Isabelle went ham on our proxy models for our Mad Tea Party environment! Everything is coming along really smoothly. At the beginning of every week, we come together and discuss what needs to be done and then divide up the tasks. This week I was in charge of revamping our PowerPoint presentation, adding music to our scene, and creating the asset list for our project. Blue was able to nail down our story timeline and create more concept art, and Akshay has been working diligently in our VR project to make sure everything is functioning correctly! He also added some environment trees and shot our video for this week. I'm really eager to continue the project and can't wait to do more! I feel really lucky with my team :-)

Week 12 - Starting Proxy Environment

ASG (Custom Style Guide/Starting Prototype)

VR Environment YouTube Link: 

This week, we worked on getting our project set up and organized inside of Unreal. This week, I went ahead and created the folder structures to keep track of our assets within the VR UE4 project and our Art Asset folders. I also took video of our VR Environment, edited a voice over, and uploaded to YouTube. At the beginning of the week, we all divided up the tasks between each other and were able to work really cohesively throughout the week in order to get everything finished. I created a OneNote for myself and my team to reference whenever we take notes in our team meetings and professor meetings. 

So far, everything is going smoothly! :-) 

Presentation Link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lKs4EC7hDoaELhDmhkoOWuJRrIN-vY5v1FrZZICp6gc/edit#slide=id.p

Week 11 - Art Style Guide

Discovering Your Own Art Style

This week we narrowed down our art style for our VR game. We did a lot of research on technical considerations and other VR dependencies that could potential affect the quality of our gameplay or cause the player motion sickness. We will continue to do more research on what kind of visuals we should avoid in order to keep the player from getting motion sick, while also keeping consistent to our chosen art style. We all evenly divided the slides up again this week and added extra images and gifs here and there throughout the presentation. We also created a Photoshop Pass for our images so that they held a consistent visual look. 

Google Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1zmX6fKU_DdRzQujQru3ZgCZwKZdTsy0NDvXUVvL30W0/edit#slide=id.gfcca0e5cea_2_125