Level Design

2014/04/30

So,we have to build a level.In my case,it’s sci-fi level.And after some consideration,I might be going for low-fi sci-fi,just because I love Alien movies and old science fiction books.

Below you can see my original level layout.

I’ve started working on the entrance area with the elevators.I’m using one of my old drawings as an inspirational piece for this area.

I created the first block-out in Maya, and started unwrapping it.I had to remodel my ribbed pieces a couple of times,the were a complete and utmost nightmare to work with,as the piece that would go into them had to be curved on one side and straight on the other one.But I still quite like how they turned out.

 

I was trying to make sure all of the pieces would be wisely designed in terms of their sizes.Well,the whole thing didn’t go as well,as planned,I it will be discussed in the lessons learned section down below.

The first test I did in UE4 was disappointing. I had some weird shading artifacts I’d never seen before.Had to do a lot of googling,learned what a light map was,and learned how to fix them,which,again,is discussed in more detail in the lessons learned section.

2014/05/05

Spent this week mostly unwrapping the models, and fixing/tweaking the light maps.

2014/05/12

Started assembling my level inside the UE4. I was really struggling with my colour choices. I feel pretty confident when I have to paint something in Photoshop,I usually feel satisfied with the colours I choose,but once it comes to using some other programs,I suddenly become colour-blind and feel completely lost. Slowly learning how to deal with it…  As I wanted to go for something dark and gloomy, I thought black panels would look cool, but then I realized it was too chess-like,not extremely interesting.

I liked this orange version a lot, but, unfortunately, it had nothing to do with the theme I chose for this level, and it looked somewhat too ‘happy’ and bright.

When I finally modelled a ceiling for this area, I started tweaking the lighting a bit, and I fell in love with this version. It was dark, and gloomy, but people kept telling me it was too dark, and I also realized it wasn’t looking sci-fi-y enough, and that everything had to be shinier, metallic.

2014/05/19

This week, I started adding some basic textures to my level, and I also tweaked my lighting just a tiny little bit. I added a couple of emissive maps  (there’s no sci-fi without emissive maps,right?) which immediately caused some extreme flickering/noise issues.

UE4 answer hub wasn’t much of a help and I got some help from one of our programmers (Thank you,Chris Howlett!).

So,if anyone has a similar problem,you have to type this in your console command line: r.SSR.Quality 0 (it goes from 0 up to 3,I think). 

  

It is a bit sad you have to turn the quality down,but I don’t think there’s a way around that at the moment,it just how UE4 calculates reflections. It’s also really annoying, as I have to change the setting to 0 every time I reopen my level. At some point I got too tired of doing this, and now I have the freaky reflections all over my level…

2014/05/26

This was the week when I realized how many thing I had to do,and how little time I had left. I was still going for that ‘living quarters’ looks. I couldn’t find any free assets for my level on the Internet, and modelling all of these ‘mundane’ objects myself was out of question. I also did a quick block out of that area in Maya (I was planning to create a new set of panels for it), and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. After importing the blockout in the Unreal and running around it,I thought the area was too big and too empty, and I had not so much time left on my hands to fill it in…

So, I thought I should try and focus on reusing the assets I had already modelled, plus making some new ones I could place around the area. I thought it would be nice to have some sort of seats. People like sitting. I used Substance Painter for texturing these pieces. I’m not completely satisfied with the tool,I keep using it hoping that one day I will get better at at, but at the moment everything I texture in it looks not as nice as I would like it to look.

2014/06/02

Started building the outside walls,and also working on the second area. The exterior elements weren’t really modular, so I had to fix a couple of issues (see the lessons learned section).

 

2014/06/09

Modelling some additional pieces for the second area. The low wall in between the rooms gave this area an overall feeling of openness,which I liked. But I had a couple of holes I needed to fill in in order to make that wall look okay.

Also, our lecturer showed me a really cool model last thing (by PhilipK,btw), and suggested doing something similar for my level.

I ended up modelling these:

All of the panels are interchangeable, so in theory I can create a lot of different variations of the same thing. The UVs are positioned  in a way that also allows some variations:

I also find out a tutorial on making a cool glowing effect for UDK, and used the same principle in my level (http://cgi.tutsplus.com/articles/create-a-futuristic-animated-computer-screen-shader-in-the-unreal-3-editor–cg-572). I actually learned how useful a linear interpolation node can be, it blends between two textures, and you can animate this all using time and sine nodes:

2014/06/16

Did a bit of texturing and fixed my lighting a bit, added a couple of new objects to the scene – like the ‘bridge’ pieces between the two areas. Ben Carnall and Chris Howlett helped me with one of my blueprints (the one that opens the doors in the first area). I did the other doors myself using the level blueprint. The next time I do it, I’m going to create a class blueprint for things like that,so that I can reuse it anywhere I want.

So, these are some ‘close to final’ shots (might add a couple of things tomorrow,still have two pieces I want to finish texturing,I also might add a terrain to my level):

 

 

Some final thoughts and updates:

2 hours before the deadline I ran into a huge issue – couldn’t build my project.By build in this case I mean exporting the package and trying to play it – the functionality of the first blueprint was completely gone.It meant I got stuck in the first room.Ben Carnall was trying to help me,but nothing was working.The blueprint was using the same logic we used for our titan game,and it wasn’t causing any issues in there.

5 minutes before the deadline Ben decided to ‘merge’ my level to 4.02 (I was using an older version of the engine) – and it magically fixed the problem.I didn’t have time to rebuild the lighting,so the thing I submitted has an ugly looking panel on the floor in the first room.Oh well..I’ve got a ‘clean’ version on my hands now,and going to upload it to my dropbox in case anyone is interested: level

A couple of new screenshots (I also decided to add a decal,it’s the 17 number I used on some of my walls,for some reason I thought it would look cool,it would also imply that this is in fact an underground facility,and you’re on its top level):

A video of a run-through:

————————————–

Lessons learned section:

Looking at this post a couple of weeks later,I must say now I feel like a UV expert of some sort.I’ve unwrapped so many things (twice! sometimes 3 times…),I’ve learned that if you’re using modular pieces that have to sit really close to each other,any difference in the size of the UV sets you use will be noticeable.In order to fix that,you need to check your lightmap density inside the engine,and after that change your lightmap UV set.I didn’t have enough time, and my easy fix was creating a seam-fixing panels,just like these ones:

 

In any case,if anyone has any weird shading artifacts in UE4,make sure you check out this: http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/udk/udk-lightmaps-02-uv-techniques-and-how-to-create-second-uv-channel-in-maya.php

Another thing I realized while working on this project – supporting edges are important.Even a cube, any simple geometry will look so much nicer after adding a couple of edge loops and softening the normals. This is the trick I learned from PhilipK modular assets tutorials: http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_sets/modular_sets.html

And it has to go in this order (I learned it the hard way) – model something very simple, unwrap it  – even automatic unwrap can work quite well with simple objects (and don’t forget the light map channel), and add some edges for smoothing normals afterwards. After that I tended to start working on the normal maps – my level has the most simple texturing possible,but interesting normal maps make everything look slightly better.

The third thing I’d like to mention here is the Photoshop plug-in called nDo. Not the commercial version,just the free-to-use plug-in.It saved me a lot of time. It pretty much saved my life on multiple occasions.This tiny plug-in allows you to create normal maps inside Photoshop,using mainly shapes,marquee selection tool,brushes or the pen-tool.Normal mapping has never been easier.All the normal maps I have created for this level were done with this plug-in.The only negative side – I imagine it would hardly work for something not hard-surface (although,I personally managed to use it on the lizard model a couple of times,so I might be wrong).

One of the most important things I learned working on this project is planning.At least,now I know how crucial it is.Especially, when it comes to planning the size of your objects.It becomes twice as important when you work with modular pieces. For a very long time I though UE4 had issues with snapping.It actually does,but not as brutal,as I thought.In fact,all you have to do is to make sure you put your pivot points in right places,and place your objects inside the scene using Unreal snap tool and snapping them along along the gridlines.Now when I think of it I don’t know why I was so confused about that.There’s really nothing hard about it.I thing at some point I had an object 25 cm long rotated 45 degrees,and that’s when I started having either overlapping issues or holes between geometry,as I wasn’t using the correct settings for my snap tool.Well,lesson learned,I think with the amount of assets I have I could build another couple of rooms in no time.Now,the exterior and also the ceiling of the two areas are slightly harder.The first ceiling I did utilized tileable texturing technique,but it wasn’t really that ‘modular’. I had to manipulate the UVs quite a bit to make it look sort of the same:

I’d also like to mention some issues I was having with auto-exposure: this was a tricky one.Whenever I looked around my scene,the brightness would automatically change.Which is cool,I guess,sometimes,but it didn’t work well with my very dim lighting.These are the settings that worked for my scene,maybe they can help somebody else… In order to get to these settings,you have to find your character blueprint (in my case it was called My Character),go into your components tab,and select the camera attached to the character. Click the picture below to see the details.

One more thing I’d like to discuss is overscoping. When I first presented my project to our lecturer, I felt quite smart, as I thought other people were overscoping their projects, and mine seemed so small and doable compared to theirs. Now when I look back at it, I realize how wrong I was. For the last 5 weeks, I’ve been basically living at school, trying to get this whole thing done (on top of the other projects we have). Everything takes time, and one should never forget something will go wrong no matter how hard you try.  But it has been an amazing learning experience so far. I’m pretty sure if I had to do this again, creating exactly the same thing would take me twice less time.

And one last thing – after having these massive problems with building my level today,I must say I still like UE4.It is buggy sometimes,sometimes it magically breaks,and then fixes itself.But this is completely understandable – it is a new engine,a really powerful and easy to use.I can’t really complain.If anything I should’ve tried and built the project a couple of days ago .This is,I guess,another lesson learned.Hopefully.