UDK

     The UDK project was our penultimate brief of the year from Heather and, to me at least, it felt like taking the next step in 3D. What I mean by this is that up to then we'd been producing a model before moving on to the next one but now we were to put those in a level, we were getting that little bit closer to the real thing. So to begin with I redid my Dalek from right back at the beginning of the year as it was the first thing I created in Max and I wanted it to be the first model I imported into an engine. I should have done this right at the start but for those that don't know UDK stands for the Unreal Development Kit which is the editing software for the Unreal game engine. For this project it would allow us to create a small scene with all our 3D stuff from earlier in the year. Yeah, back to it then, for pretty much sentimental reason I wanted the Dalek to be the first asset I imported in, so like I said, I went back and remodelled it then brought it into UDK.

     I did this primarily though to get to grips with importing models and textures and then placing them into a level. This was done during the time I was back home after the operation so I felt a little isolated due to my lack of knowledge and the growing amount of question I had surrounding the software and it held me back a bit in regards to creating my scene.

     With this dry run of sorts complete I went back and edited all my existing models making sure they were all fit for engine, this meant creating collision meshes ( I'll go into them in a sec), correcting N-Gons, deleting isolated vertices and re-naming objects to fit UDK's naming conventions, what I mean by this is that UDK recognises that a mesh is a mesh by adding a "SM_" before the model's name or an "UCX_" before a collision mesh's name. A collision mesh surrounds a model, as with the van below, and, while invisible, creates a solid object surrounding the mesh. Sounds a little weird sorry but that's the best I can do for know hopefully the images below will shed a little more light. From left to right we have the collision mesh and model in 3Ds Max, in the center is what the two appear in engine and to the left is what it the van looks like in the level.

     I had six models ready to import into UDK after I cleaned everything up and by this point I was back in Leicester. On the Monday following my return I was told about terrain editing and had some fun with that and after two or three practices I created the terrain that I used in my final scene and from there I began to import stuff in. With my trees I used the foliage brush to place them which unfortunately didn't incorporate their collision meshes but there was a script to fix this which I didn't have enough time to implement. I also followed a tutorial to add wind effects although I don't feel it's that good, it feels too artificial when looking at it but I don't know whether that is down to there just not being that many branches so the wind effect is more apparent. I also added water by again following a tutorial online, it isn't swimmable so if you go under it just appears as a textured plain and while I found a tutorial online to add an underwater effect and allow the player to swim I, again, didn't have enough time. 

     I'm happy with the level I handed in considering how much time I spent on it due to the two weeks I had back home after my weekend in the wards. Although I feel the level is a little Spartan and I would like more models and effects going on and I probably would've made it larger too. It was funny handing the project in as Heather wasn't expecting to see me, it's nice to know that I was missed while away. Anyway this will be the last entry on the stuff I worked on from first year, it's still weird thinking that it's over. Helping people pack is like admitting that to myself, speaking of packing I'll be starting any day soon as I'm pretty much on my final week in Leicester before summer. Seems unreal.

     If you want to see more pictures of my level head over to my Tumblr ( I know, I know. Self promoting myself) and I'll leave you till next time.