Cage models

The plane in the background is a test to check the texture on it is seamless, its getting there but isn't quite right. This cage is based on the style of cage used for battery hens which would be wall mounted and stacked up on the wall which would give an imposing feeling.

As we aren't 100% if this type of cage will be included I've quickly done a basic texture over it and more detail can be added into it later. As the other idea is to have more box like cages for the AI to patrol around I will make one of these as well and we can decide which we will use

Here is a cage model, again I've used the unfinished texture from before. When said texture is finished with proper tiling, added decals and specular maps I will update this and the other model which will improve their appearance. For now this will do for checking it works in Unity.

This week

Concept Art:

Paintover of battery egg cages to show a possible cage room concept. I added the rough figures based on the amount of space chickens get to show the cages as cramped and unpleasant and to reflect reality better. I included the escaped figure to give a sense of how tall this would be in engine.  

Assets:

Maya model of the cooker from Joe's processing room concept.Since posting this I have sorted out the issue with the 12 sided face using connect components.

To do

To Do:

Concepts for processing and cage room (Toop)
Assets needed:

Humans - High poly and low poly models - Edit default mudbox human

Arm holding orb (High poly)

Cages

Conveyor belt

Preparation machinery (processing room)

 Tables

 Tanks

 Lab equipment

Meat hooks 

Textures for all assets, ideally two for humans though a lot of farm animals are clones so if they all look the same it might actually be more accurate to what we are trying to portray.

Weekend Plan

We need to have a proper discussion before we can move forward (Monday 11.30). Untill then tasks for the weekend are:


Toop: I will be sketching environment concepts for the cage area and processing plant.


Joe: Research factory farming, look through the research already posted on the blog and do some independent research and make a post on the blog. Its extremely vital that you do this, will make things a lot easier on yourself once you get this done.


Alice: Concepts for objects in the environment

Possible Idea

We looked at a interactive virtual scene of a battery hen farm and came up with an alternative idea. Instead of having the cages arranged in a maze like pattern we could have them arranged in a way more typical of factory farms which would draw more parallels to factory farms.


Link to interative scene:
http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/empathy/virtualbatterycage/#reference

Update

Rescaled the unity file fixing the issue where the AI was moving extremely slowly.





Map

Drew a map of the building showing where the different rooms will be. At the present moment we haven't decided the path the player will go down.

Slaughterhouse concept

Painted over a Maya render to get the basic concept of the slaughterhouse done. The poster is meant to be an advertisement showing the humans having better quality of life than what they are living in which is often done with advertisements for animal products.  This didn't turn out well as a concept piece, I should of painted more into it and I'm not happy with the the shadows.

Tasks for the week

Check the trello board !!! (should be checking and updating  your progress on tasks everyday) and ticking off tasks once they've been done

Joe: Finish the concept art for the alien. The versions wearing suits and the versions with stomachs can be paintovers of previous concept pieces or sketches.


Toop: Complete weekly schedule and update presentation


Alice: Getting placeholder sounds to use in the graybox and finishing processing sketch


All three of us also need to write a personal statement (300 words)

Graybox

Early graybox test from start of the project



Changed the room layout and added placeholder objects, obstacles and lighting

Added in teddy bears as placeholder AI and added waypoints for them to patrol to

 I also changed the ambient light in the render settings to black to allow pitch darkness in the game.

Added a sphere with a point light inside it. Initially we had the issue of the sphere not illuminating despite being transparent and adding the halo effect to the point light though importing the image effects package and applying bloom to the main camera fixed this issue.

 

We had an issue with the bear running very slowly, this appears to be due to scaling issues because everything is scaled up. To fix this we will need to rescale the entire level, because this can't be done in one go this may take a while as objects will need to be reorganised.

This week (till monday 28th morning)

Toop: Continue concepting till end of October unless all is done. (complete 2-4)

Joe: Enemy development for presentation and test arm in graybox

Alice: Player coding (player health and player movement)


Once all concepts are done these can be made into assets starting 5th November at the latest.

For now we will use a small test environment and placeholder objects for assets in Unity

Research

Found this link:

http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/empathy/virtualbatterycage/#reference

Interactive 3d scene to show what its like for a battery chicken, you can drag around to see other chickens in the cage, gives a good sense of how cramped it is. We could use a similar scale maybe?


Also a factory farm moodboard

Research Videos

http://vimeo.com/73234721
Clip from film SAMSARA showing food production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LcoClM-tQk
Advert for free range eggs, puts the viewer in the battery hens position and is pretty creepy


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad3Thqzk4Q8
Cloud Atlas scene with the factory scene where the synthicant-clone people are being turned into food which is then fed back to the alive clones

http://youtu.be/qwnbQfjkdkU?t=1m29s
Scene from Doctor Who - Rise of the Cybermen where people are lead into the factory. Was thinking we could use a similar method for the slaughterhouse to avoid showing excessive gore but make it clear what is happening by using sound (screaming, mechanical noises like saws?) and leaving it up to the players imagination.

Concepts

Environment concept for a laboratory room

Made this by rendering a Maya scene using planes for the walls and cuboids for the tanks and side surfaces and made a basic shape for the tables, lighting the scene and turning on shadows. In hindsight I should of rendered this out at a higher quality as the original image was quite blurry around the edges painting over it.



This was an early failed attempt at the laboratory, the perspective went odd and it looks very typical so it was scrapped

 

Adjusted the tone levels in the render and painted over the edges of the tanks and painted in areas where there would be more shadow or light and added a turqouise colour to the tanks.

Here I added silhouettes of people curled up to the tanks and painted over the top of them using a light coloured soft brush to make it look more like glass, also added bubbles to the water. I added detail to the tables, including a triangle sail as a table light to make the scene more interesting and added sciencey-paraphenallia to the table. I also added some posters with diagrams to the wall
 

Finished concept- added colour using a soft brush on a soft light layer and blended the shadow lights so the shadow wasn't as harsh and then added extra detail to the scene



Concept for how we intend our game to look. Rough paintover of a maya render of a storeroom with hand holding orb visible in the first person view. (Hand by Alice Sullivan)



Concept for the humans farmed by the aliens. Will probably change the colour of the gown to an off white/cream and make an updated version of this piece. Instead of the ankle tag I was thinking of an ear tag like farmed cattle have to further push the similarities to factory farms.

Like this maybe?

 

To Do

Concept Art:
Characters:
Aliens
Human livestock
Protagonist (low priority)
Mutants (low priority)

Interior:
Cage room/s
Processing plant 
Laboratory
Downstairs lever room
Storeroom
Hallways

Exterior:
Outside of building and surrounding area
Building/room layout/map

Other/Objects:
Light orb
Keys

Code:
Pick up
Throw
Animate arm throw
Enemy kill
Possibilities (depending on capabilities of the visual scripting program)
Orb distraction
Enemy Follow
AI movement (partially done)

Assets:
Characters:
Alien
Human livestock (possibly two different models)
Mutants (low priority)

Interior:
Cage
Doors
Lights
Machinery
Tables (maybe + chairs?)
Crates and barrels

Exterior:
Side of building (low priority)
Misc objects outside building (v. low priority)

Sound:
Ambience
Alien noises
Human mumblings
Narration for protagonist
Sound effects

Plan of action

We have decided to use the Unity game engine as we are more familiar with it, games can be exported to multiple platforms and we would have the option of using the Oculus Rift with it. Also we could use Playmaker for Unity so we can use visual scripting which will be helpful for us since we aren't strong coders.

We will start by creating concept art for the project.

• Character Designs - Aliens, human livestock, mutant altered humans, protagonist.
• Environment - Interior, exterior
• Objects - Light orbs, cages, machinery, keys, crates, etc.

(Colour coded for priority red = highest, green = lowest)

Once we have Playmaker we will start grayboxing and getting the basic mechanics in.
Joe's friend will be creating the sound.

We will then create assets from the concept art and start rigging the character models.


EDIT: Heard from Steve that we will be getting a more advanced visual scripting software in so we will be using that instead of Playmaker.
Also using a visual scripting program exclusively can reduce game performance so we will likely still use visual scripting but also include some code for simpler actions like for the orbs.

Unity Test

Made a quick test in Unity to see how we could create the environment. By using planes and cubes we can adjust the building layout much easier than if we made the building in Maya which is helpful for if we decide to change the size or layout at a later stage.

I also added tiled wall and floor textures to get a general feel for the environment.

This is just a test so will change as we update the game.

For now we will be creating concept designs then moving on to greyboxing and creating assets.