Final Video and Review

Final walk through of Dorian's House for submission:

http://www.screenr.com/9YxN

And a final breakdown:

- Overall, I'm not happy with the final product. I chalk it up to two things; not enough time, and not enough skill. If I were more skilled maybe time wouldn't have been a factor, but I was trying to find as many shortcuts during modelling as I could, just to save some time.

- Of course that didn't work in my favour. Most models were broken, duplicate faces, and backwards normals. It took a long time sorting through all the pieces. I also modelled it all in one maya file, then split all the objects (this is why there are slits in doors and sides). I thought it be possible to import them all in in one go, but again, a shortcut that turned into a nightmare.

- The engine. I'd used UDK before, so I wasn't sure why it wasn't working this time. I think my models were too broken. I switched to Unity, and was lucky to be shown the basics to controllers and importing from my designer. This ate more precious time too.

- The visuals. I'd planned to paint all the textures of the house myself in Photoshop. But I hardly got to do any of them. They're mostly pulled from Google and just feel disappointing. They don't mesh with my original idea/colour pallet at all.

- Lighting. I've never done any lighting in engine before, but I couldn't get the atmosphere right on this. I think this might be due to the texture settings; all of them are on mobile > diffuse.

- No Interactive Pieces. I wanted to code picking up a key/unlocking a door...

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On the plus side however...I am happy I have a final piece. I was worried the model would be too broken to function. Similarly, I'm happy that my original plan to show narrative through spactial area has turned out. Every room has an item that leads up the inevitable ending of the book (the blue book corridor, Basil's hat in library, Dorian discovers the Les Cent Nouvelles towards the game that eventually leads to (besides Basil's death) Dorian's suicide and the portraits glory restored in the attic.

There's alot of visuals I'd redo if I had the time for it, but am over all happy with the spatial construct and walk path of the house.

Feel free to give any thoughts to the project. Thank you.

- Ceren

Complete!

Sorry for the silence here; 2nd semester is always the busiest. I've spent my last few weeks getting Dorian's house together on Unity. I won't lie, for a long time I thought it wouldn't work. I've learnt a valuable lesson; do everything right from the start, or you have to go back and fix every asset again one at a time. When I write my final blog post with learning outcomes, pros and cons, I'll summarize everything. For now, the house model!

Next job is to fix the books for bookshelf, paint the portrait of Dorian, and take video of me playing the game. The video will focus on the interactivity. More specifically, the route/layout of the house playing the narrative, and the items found along the way to aid that...

Slightly Broken.

My main things to do now are; seperate the house pieces, and texture them all appropriately. It's been about a week now that I'm trying to clean up this broken mesh.

Turns out I've some how got face upon face upon face duplicates...I delete and they keep going!

This update sounds like an awful rant, but in honesty this mesh is very broken and slowing down my overall progress to focus on more important things. Next update should hopefully be better. :)

Nope, it's Unity time!

I've abandoned UDK, it's just being a mess. Besides, I've used Unity to create a side scrolling game, but never incorporated 3D into it, so I'd like to try it out. I've luckily got a friend who's helped me figure out the collision and playable character elements too! Excuse that my character is tiny and that the lights are just shoved in to see where I'm walking:

But it's more progress than UDK was giving me. So it's time to move back to Maya, and start cleaning up the mesh and texturing all of the elements...eeep.

UDK time!

...It's not going so well, I'm not sure why. Got afew friends helping, and I've done this before, but for some reason it's coming out very...broken:

To be fair, this screenshot doesn't show how messed up the last upload was. The bookcase was mangelled. It looked cool, but it's not what I'm trying to do, sadly.

I've avoided UDKing so far, but thought I'd check my mesh at least works alittle bit before I start splitting it up for textures etc. Not sure where to go from here...

Final House Layout/Model

It's done! This is it in Maya:

I now need to cut it up, UVing, texturing and start importing it into UDK. Ouch! So much to do!

1890's

Victorian Houses in London were built during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901)

Already posted a similar moodboard, but wanted to stick this up too, it helped me during concept art-ing. Also love the wee tophat on the sofas arm; reminded me about Basil Howard's hat on the sofa in the library, the night he's murdered...

The original concept sketches...

Some very dull quick doodles, 10 mins I'd say. Worth uploading cause it helped shaped my library and some of it's assets (the sofa for example):

Narrative & Interactivity

The house itself, it's layout, should tell the narrative. If I can find a free audio recording of the book, and rip key lines to be triggered when walking from room to room, to narrate the users experience. Especially with those unaware of Dorian Gray's story (Also cause I think I've over analysed it so feel like I might miss something when explaining through visuals with twin meaning eg the hat in the library is Basil Howard's, but how would the user know this? Through the narrative audio)

Interactivity which is important to this module is connected to the narrative. What I'm hoping to acomplish is to code a basic key and lock. So the player will find the key in the bedroom which will unlock the attic door. In the book, he never lets the key leave his side. But at one time, he does have both the portrait and the key in his room. Of course it's no where near the same scale, but I'm inspired by the 'Gone Home', when you see the brightly lit and locked attic hatch for the first time, and its both terrifying and exciting, but it's the final destination in the game, so you don't get the key til later on. In my case, you pick up the key as you follow the story.

I haven't used UDK in a long time and I'm scared to code in the audio triggers, the key and the lock but hopefully it shouldn't be too troublesome.

Colours and Descriptions

As said in my last post, I've stopped the 3D layout for now - and have yet to face my UDK horrors... - to go back and address key things I forgot to. I've done them, but time to post!

Firstly, I uploaded the Dorian moodboard, but forgot the Victorian moodboard, so here:

Secondly, colour schemes. There are some colour references stated in the book, but not for everything. For instance, the book states the library has 'high panel oak', 'cream frieze walls', 'ceiling plaster works', and a 'tiny satinwood table'. His bedroom has a 'silk Persian rug', but theres no mention of it's colour. The skies weather is always beautifully detailed, but since the book describes several different seasons and times of day, I can't convey them all, but think I will change the sky in the 3 different rooms to fit the mood/atmosphere, and to tell the player as they progress, the environment is changing.

For now, this a simple colour scheme I'll go by. I might change it as I notice things that really mesh well in 3D and edit. 

I'll be using this for some concept paintings for now, going to try paint the Hallway, Library, Attic and Bedroom, if time permits... :S

Layout so far

Just a quick progress shot of my house so far...Going to stop here with the 3D and go back to trusty Photoshop. It's important that I don't get too carried away. I've just noticed scrolling past posts that while I did read and re-read The Picture of Dorian Grey (I'm using a Collins Classic 1st Edition published 1994), and noted everything of visual interest, but I haven't uploaded my mood boards of other Dorian Grey media:

The biggest nit pick I have is; Most the recent Dorian Grey's represented in media has dark hair, when the book states several times how fair he is and his blond strands of hair. So at least, when I'm painting the portrait I shouldn't make this mistake.

References for photos...

Attic Painting - http://www.ayseturemis.net/03_stage_costume/09_dorian_gray/attic/attic_watc.jpg
Dorian Gray (movie) & screenshot - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235124/
Oscar Wilde's most famous novel - http://salsa-rain1994.blogfa.com/
'The Picture of Dorian Gray' photo series - http://accessibleartny.com/index.php/2009/09/yinka-shonibare-mbe-at-the-brooklyn-art-museum/
Penguin edition cover - http://dublin.metblogs.com/files/2010/04/doriangray.jpg
Black and white picture - http://eyeoflynx.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/why-you-should-read-the-picture-of-dorian-gray/
Grotesque half painting - http://www.scifiscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/dorian_gray-4.jpg
Movie Poster 1970 - http://images.moviepostershop.com/dorian-gray-movie-poster-1971-1020203698.jpg
Dorian Gray: Marvel Comic, available here - http://www.amazon.com/Picture-Dorian-Gray-Marvel-Illustrated/dp/0785126546?tag=bebugapcsh-20

Dorian's Home

Finished up re-reading the book, going back and making further notes on what I've chosen to do, Dorian's House. There is little explanation to which rooms are connected in what manner, but the rooms they do describe are pretty detailed.

Another page of scribbles:

I really need to get a defininitve list of assets down. I've written down some of the more important/mentioned assets, but the scale of doing 3 complete rooms is alot. I'll draw some quick concepts to get a better understanding, I think.

For now, I'm modelling a book. I have a friend coming round Sunday to show me her pipeline for creating 3D assets in her games, and I'm going to compare it with my own. From there, it'll be the leap to re-learning UDK...

Notes on Environments

As I'm reading through Dorian Gray, I'm taking notes of all the possible environments I have to model for this module. Obviously I want the centerpiece (the painting) to be in the final environment, since it's the key to the story, but I still want to keep my options open. I've covered up to chapter 8 so far, and will post another blog when finished, but so far my choices are:

Lord Henry's House
Lord Henry's Library
Basil Hallward's Studio
Lady Agatha's House/Dinner
The Jewish Playhouse (downstairs and upstairs)
Dorian's Room

Bolded environments are those that have had the Portrait in it thus far. But that doesn't mean they're the most interesting. I'm really drawn to Lord Henry's Library so far, which is arguably the best described room so far and is the scene where Dorian learns of Henry's wife, and speaks of falling in love with Sibyl Vane for the first time.

I'll need to finish reading it to get the rest of the possible environments, and clean up my notes so far. Here is a screenshot of scribbles mostly for me:

A Picture of Dorian Gray

First post of the semester for Spatial Construct! I'm lucky enough to have done a previous version of this class back in 3rd year Undergradate Computer Arts. This time round, we are given an author/book to convert into a 3D navigated story piece... I chose to do A Picture of Dorian Gray, actually one of my favourite books back in the day!

Since I've not read it in awhile and I want to pay close attention to detail, my first job is to get my hands on the book. Then comes my painful and slow reunited welcome with UDK. I've got a few ideas budding for this project but need to read the book again first and brush up on skills. :)