BA5 Production: From Jupiter V to Saturn VI

Back for the New Year with an ambitious New Project... building a Game Environment in CryEngine to hone those Level Design and 3D modelling skills to a finer degree.

Here's my Learning Agreement for BA5 Production:

Name: Craig A Rouse

Proposal:  What do you intend to do?

I intend to concept, level design and build a 3D environment, in Maya, that can be exported to CryEngine or UDK and explored with the default First Person character. 

The environment will be a section of the Jupiter moon Almathea with a Survey Vessel from the Callisto Outpost. It will be possible to enter the Vessel and explore the interior. Due to time constraints a limited amount of interactivity will allow doors to open and lights to be switched on and off etc. As detailed below, other gameplay elements will be ‘designed into’ the environment.

I also intend to build an explorable section of the Moon environment using the terrain tools. 

Although concepts will be based upon the ‘real’ moon Almathea I will make the environment more interesting for the player by emphasizing and exaggerating naturally occurring geological phenomena, such as glaciers, in order to inspire a sense of awe by artistically creating a truly extraterrestrial space.

I will also aim to embed certain gameplay ideas into the environmental space. These include:

A static 3D model of a protagonist that occupies a Medical Treatment Centre space, currently in a ‘coma’. The character model will be designed to allow for rigging at a later stage.

The Survey Vessel Interior will be designed with enough space to allow freedom of movement throughout i.e. doors, walkways, corridors and living spaces will be accessible by the First person default character.  

The Vessel Interior will also be designed with other levels of Gameplay embedded into it, such as the ability to move through the space in a ‘Stealth Mode’ i.e. accessing maintenance tunnels and hatches etc.

The Interior will also include various objects that will ‘tell a story’ to the Player, giving clues about the absent crew.

A route to a nearby ‘crash-site’ investigation area will also be built into the terrain. If time permits the ‘crash-site’ will also be built. 

Assessment Work:  

Schedule of Work: (to include the deadline for submission of assessment):

Research, Concepting and Level Design: 10/12/2012 – 07/01/2013

Concept and Level Design Document delivery: 09/01/2013

3D Modelling, Texturing and Exporting to CryEngine/UDK: 09/01/2013 – 05/02/2013

Testing and Refining/ Assessment Documentation Prep: 06/02/2013 – 14/02/2013

Submission Assessment Deadline: 15/02/2013

I wanted an environment that was unusual and unearthly with an awe inspiring view of a huge planet. Jupiter V seemed a good choice (and also sounds quite cool as a Project name!)

Here are a few images of Almathea the fifth moon of Jupiter. Almathea is the name of the goat who suckled Zeus, or Jove when his father Chronos regurgitated him. The name also seemed appropriate given the original idea for this game scenario...(more of that later!)

I spent a few hours sourcing topographic maps of Almathea and also hi-res textures for Jupiter.

I then built a simple scene in Maya and mapped the biggest Jupiter texture I could find to a polygon sphere.

I then used a greyscale image made from the topographic map in Photoshop to create some basic geometry for Almathea.

It was very basic; just an embarrassing blob! There had to be an easier way...

Fortunately the free, open source, space simulation tool Celestia has a vast resource of 3D models. Looking through their archives I managed to find a 3ds model of Amalthea. I converted this 3ds model into an obj, applied a normal map I made from the greyscale and...

Et voila! Almathea!

I scaled Jupiter and Almathea so that they would reflect the actual size and distance from each other, using the the mean orbital distance of Almathea. Therefore, the scene view from the surface of Almathea should correspond to the actual view. I could have done this using Celestia but I had already started this in Maya and it was relatively easy to do.

This Body Size Calculator resource at www.solarvoyager.com was incredibly useful; it works out the dimensions in pixels the astronomical object occupies in the image! Using data from NASA I was able to work out exactly how the magnificent massive gas giant Jupiter looks from the surface of Almathea. 

So, after alot of research, and parsing about, I had my initial 3d concept of the view from the moon of Almathea...

Hmmm...it's a bit dark out here. And, frankly, a bit boring. 

Literally no atmosphere.

I learnt an IMPORTANT LESSON from this exercise!

Even if something is modelled for realism it won't necessarily be exciting and engaging! We are ARTISTS, we embellish, extrapolate, hone, polish and glamourise. We should choose elements of the real and elaborate with our vision and imagination to entertain and bedazzle!

We are the purveyors of the extra-ordinary. We tease forth incredible vistas and spin the stuff of dreams.

This is why we concept and test ideas. I would be working with CryEngine 3, one of the most advanced game engines on the planet, capable of rendering incredible atmospheric effects in real time and I was considering a setting that was deep in space with little to no light and literally no atmosphere for that light to bounce around and excite the visual cortexes of the player. Almathea had the potential to be an excellent game environment. The dark and silence could be incredibly evocative in it's own right but that will take more skill than I currently possess. I was Silent Running before I could Spacewalk...

I needed to find an extraterrestrial body with an atmosphere. There was only one place to go...the only other moon in the solar system with an atmosphere.

Saturn VI.

Titan.

Notes from 28/12/2012

Been thinking about the moon of Almathea which has a good view of Jupiter but otherwise quite a dull environment i.e. no atmosphere (literally!)

Have decided to place the environment on Titan instead. Has a good view of Saturn with it's beautiful rings and also a rich geologically active topology and exotic, tangerine, methane atmosphere.

It's also a contender for a visit due to it's wealth of hydrocarbon lakes and potential for extraterrestrial biological organisms.

So, will be researching Titan instead. There may even be some 3D information that could be used to construct a RAW or Heightmap!