Final Process Memo
It has been a long term, but I am happy where the game project stands. Ultimately, I want more diversity in the areas that I have worked on, but that will come with more work and time. For this project, I produced a bunch of 3D models and textures using a workflow that is tailored for real time 3D game production. For the video presentation, I scripted a series of simplified “DVD special features” style video sequences. The three sections covered a selection of the fundamental methods and concepts that I applied in my work on this project. The first section covered an overview of the creation of a very basic game asset, a clump of grass. The second section goes over the various elements I utilized to create the layered texture shaders that we implemented in our realtime environment. The most work I put into this beyond the documentation, was in preparing this scene to an acceptable graphics standard.
I went into this project with most of the knowledge I needed to take on something like this. I had enough to start and learn the rest as I went along. I learned some interesting things about texture faces as I studied this. I learned that, in the game engine, a textured face only has one side unless otherwise told, this causes some problems if you don’t know what is going on. I also learned that texturing a face with alpha channel transparency has multiple modes. The default mode looks nice, but the game engine has problems when there are multiple objects involved, it has trouble determining what object is closest to you and thus can produce some really weird looking groups of objects. I figured out how to fix this towards the end, unfortunately the fix makes some textures look more chunky than I would like, but I see the same techniques reflected in just about every game engine I have played, now that I understand the underlying principles.
I think one of the more interesting things in this experience was working with the others in this project. I am by far the most experienced in 3D content creation, so I served as a technical leader of sorts. I am glad that Scott and Jason really showed a strong interest in learning these techniques, but I knew it was unrealistic to be able to cram my years of accumulated knowledge into them in one term. It was an interesting challenge finding what amount of workload they should take on, but I think it worked out well in the end. By the end, I had put in many all-nighters, often staying up til 5 or 6am working on this project. I am pretty happy with what I produced for this project. I think I pushed the limits of what this particular game engine can do, and I hope to study and expand on this in the near future.
