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! :-)