Llantern

[N. Sigismund]

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As I will be using the fictional character Nye Sigismund as the journal writer of the age, I have to point out this isn't me writing as Nye in this thread. I'm planning once development begins properly to have an IC thread over at the MOUL forums for a bit of fun.

Hello folks!
I have about 3 and a half long months of idleness before I return to university, so I thought I'd attempt to do something I've been meaning to do for a while, namely creating an age for Uru (and hopefully MORE) of high quality and general shinyness.

The design brief is as follows - I wanted a medium-sized, versatile age - one that when OS rolls around could be used for both gameplay and community projects. I wanted it to be on the cutting edge, using the Cyan plugin with all the advantages inside. I wanted a strong single player area with a series of puzzles with a neat reward at the end. The "reward" is the office I am working on first (because it will have some neat things inside, and also develop the player's understanding of the Nye character).

I decided on a seaside age called "Llantern" - welsh for light - which has a reasonably sized entrance area with a nice view and some objects of interest. The opening area is a beach surrounded by high sandstone cliffs. There is at the far end of the beach a cave, and inside is the series of puzzles.

I'm going to go about development in a stage system - the beach will be done before the mine is really started.

At the moment development is at me learning how to do stuff...

Anyway, here's what I have so far.

Concept Art:
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... ncept3.png

Screenshots:

Nye's Study (part of the age in theory - Nye's office is where I'm going to be testing out stuff like linking books and journals. It will be included at the end as a seperate age.)
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... tlook2.png
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... stlook.png
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... -33-10.png
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... -33-10.png
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... -18-48.png

Oh, and I have the IC journal stuff, but that'll be for later.

Modelling in 3DS is actually quite easy - a lot easier than Blender - so I'm making good progress. I'm also optimising as I go, so hopefully it will run well!

At the moment, I'm trying to get the Plasma dynamic lights to work. I tried with only them in the office and it was pitch black (the light in the screenshot comes from a 3DS omni light.)

I'll try and keep this thread updated with progress as I go.

- N.
(Huw)

[griffinps3]

Awsome... but don't you want to have the satisfactionn of reading a big blender book, visiting about twenty blender info sites, and then learn to animate? It's so not fair! I've started my project a while ago and you already have it at modling within youre first post. I'm still ready a big book about Blender! The 3d modeler god must have blessed you... or maybe while you were kissed by that guy who made elephants dream as a baby! I am jelous.

[N. Sigismund]

Well, I guess it's just the ease of use of 3DS. It has a nice logical interface. Plus, the Plasma toolset is very nice. Of course, the Plasma tutorials put together here, on the GoM site and the general 3DS tutorials scattered across the 'net have been very helpful.

The "age" - I should point out that it's actually on Earth (his edited notes I plan to leave on both Llantern and in a more full form in this age should explain the plot behind everything!- has as its goal "being able to do everything needed for the first stage of Llantern proper". And I also want it to look very nice in Uru - so I'm looking for stuff like shadows and whatnot.

I spent a long time today seeing how basic lighting, skyboxes and the like work. But more development of Nye's office has happened!
Screenshot:
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z99/ ... -33-10.png

I'm going to try and figure out how to do bump mapping next. I want this age to be at the highest possible quality. Speaking of which, I'd be interested in a tutorial on how exactly to go about bump mapping, if one has been created yet.

EDIT: Bad OpenOffice! Open Cyan's Plasma documents now!

[andylegate]

That's starting to look good!

I've not made a tutorial on Bump Maps yet. Cyan's documents do go into it pretty well though.

However, keep this in mind: Not all the textures in Uru's Ages use bump mapping. If you read through Cyan's docs, they tell you how you should use it for what is suppose to be bumpy rough surfaces (like rocks). There are a lot of restrictions involved too when using them.

[N. Sigismund]

Thanks Andy!

A lot of work happened today, mostly it revolved around struggling with lighting. But modelling was done too!

I've decided to link screenshots directly, so here's the current state of affairs.



I'm really having trouble with this lighting. Real light bounces off of objects and spreads out, but I'm not sure if that's simulated in any Max or Plasma lighting effects. If it isn't, I'm going to have to fake it with cleverly placed omni lights...

I've also decided on some goals I'd like to achieve with the age:

1) It looks really nice. This is the important one.
2) A custom animation (drawing out the chair from under the desk and sitting down)
3) Dynamic lighting inside - the lightbulbs flicker and the computer screen splays light onto the bookcase (and this is where the bump mapping comes in).
4) Physics phun. You'll be able to knock over a stack of books.
5) The book on the desk will be openable on mouse-click, and the age window will animate (I've seen it done in Camp Bravo Night, it's gotta be possible).
6) The computer is interactable, and clicking on the screen brings up a digital journal.

(I really like the idea of intertwining "Human" and "D'ni". So Llantern, which is an ancient D'ni age, will have out-of-place looking objects brought in by Nye)

Basically, when you link in it will be at the highest possbible quality. Of course, this relies on more decent textures (so far the only one I've liked is the pine one used for the bookcase)

EDIT: Really cool little story - I had just finished with very basic lighting for the outdoors, which was a nice feeling. I decided to test out the camera in the age and true enough it pops right out of the window, creating this really nice "looking in through the window at yourself" effect, so I intend to reward players who find the neat camera angle with a nice bit of graphics. If I can get this lighting and whatnot to work (too dark, too washed out, too light... the only light effect I'm reasonably happy with is the Max omni inside that's giving of the faint yellow light.

Thought for the evening: Why are so many fan ages obviously enclosed/rectangular or far too flung out (I'm looking at you, Writers Niche)? Less is more as they say...

[kaelisebonrai]

Awsome... but don't you want to have the satisfactionn of reading a big blender book, visiting about twenty blender info sites, and then learn to animate? It's so not fair! I've started my project a while ago and you already have it at modling within youre first post. I'm still ready a big book about Blender! The 3d modeler god must have blessed you... or maybe while you were kissed by that guy who made elephants dream as a baby! I am jelous.

Well, some people have experience with working with 3d, blender or 3dsmax >.> I had spent years on working with blender, before I even knew about Age creation. =P

Also, your Age looks great, btw, Nye =)

[andylegate]

Keep this in mind when "lighting" your Age:

Do not depend on using the Lamps (be they Max lamps or Plasma Runtime lamps) only to "light" your Age. Instead, use the lamps to mostly light your Avatar.

Most of your "lighting" for your Age, you will do through your Materials and your Textures. You will have MUCH more control over the color and brightness of your objects in your Age by working with your Material Editor, than you will with the lamps themselves.

Light Splashes (like a spot light, light cones on a wall, etc) are normally achieved either with a pre-rendered texture, or with Lightmaps.
Detailed shadows (like a tree shadow let's say) can be achieved better with a Projection Lamp.
In you have an Age that has an outside and inside places, remember to use a Soft Volume to "turn off" the light on the avatar when they go inside.
Cyan would use at least 3 Runtime Omni lights in outside Ages to light up the avatars: A "Sun" (or "Moon") one where your sun is, another opposite and down a little from the sun with less strength, and one below the surface of the Age, also low in strength and color. The last 2 are used for "bounced" lighting, light that is reflected and diffused. Again, this is mostly for the Avatar to light it up. If you don't, and have a single "Sun" lamp, you'll end up with a Avatar that is brightly lit from above, with deep shadows on his body....like someone is shining a flashlight right above their heads.

Test, test, and then test somemore: constantly export and link in to look at your Age, and how both the lights and materials are affecting how things look. It can get annoying and time consuming, but by doing this, you assure that you are seeing what changes you make in either Max or Blender, does with your Age.

Last: don't give up. If you can't seem to get the desired look you want, ASK someone here by posting. Chances are, someone will know how to help you, or have run into the same problem and know how to fix or solve it.

[N. Sigismund]

Thanks Andy, I'll have to look into using lightmaps, and that Cyan technique sounds roughly like what I was planning to try.

Onwards and upwards today... I'm getting a lot of the basic models done. I suspect the sticking point will be the texturing...

EDIT: I'm having huge trouble with light mapping. Some objects work perfectly fine... others do not, instead applying the colour of the light map as a uniform darkening...

Here's an example:



The chair has what I'm looking for (minus the weird lines...), but the desk, wall etc do not. The lamp is not part of the group being lightmapped. Both the desk and the chair share a material, and what they're sharing with is in opposite positions (the oak table is lightmapped, the pine bookcase is not).

Ideas?

EDITX2: It works entirely randomly. It's either bad instructions from Cyan or I'm missing something. I'm abandoning efforts to use it for the moment.

[Chacal]

7) a Llama.

[Paradox]

The chair has what I'm looking for (minus the weird lines...), but the desk, wall etc do not. The lamp is not part of the group being lightmapped. Both the desk and the chair share a material, and what they're sharing with is in opposite positions (the oak table is lightmapped, the pine bookcase is not).

Lightmapped objects cannot share materials with other objects. Each lightmapped object must have its own material.

Otherwise, you'll see things like this random darkening, or random bits of the chair lightmap being applied to the table. Always work with separate materials when using lightmaps to avoid as much weirdness as possible (avoiding all weirdness isn't an option: you're using lightmaps )