Final Blog

This is the final blog for this assignment and I shall be using it to show the final rendered "beauty shots" and I will also be having an over view of what I have done and evaluate my work thus far.



The first shot is of the "Meeting room" I took the shot as closely to the angles used in the film however like I said in my previous posts I decided to not to use a wide angle "letter box" look for this shot; this is because I wanted to show more of the walls and the assets that are on the fire place. If I had mimicked the same shooting style then I would have cut out allot of the assets, and seeing as this assignment is mainly graded based on this blog and the two shots that are provided, it would be un-wise to cut out the majority of the shot with the "letter box" style.


Now it needs to be said that I wasn't able to do as much as I would have liked with this scene. The most noticeable thing would be light maps. Due to my own planning issues and flight complications I found out that I would not have time to do any of this work over the extended time period like I originally planned. I found this out on week 10, which mean that I had to do six weeks worth of work in two. However I should have planned my work better so that I would have been ready for hand-in on week 12 as originally set. This meant that I had to UV, texture, re-make my layout in Unreal and light my scene in the two week period. Needless to say I had to priorities my work and light maps were at the bottom.


This that aside, I feel that the actual layout of the scene matches the scene quite well; as-well as adjusting the rooms size to be appropriate for gameplay. The scene room would have been too small for a playable room, even though the room is only intended for the "Hacking" portion of the game.



There were some issues with the lighting, which I may have mentioned on previous blogs. The issue with this scene is that the main sources of light in the scene are from the lamps that are places in the four corners of the room. However in the film scene there is an obvious like coming down from the center of the room. There is no evidence on a light on the ceiling in any of the shots. This light is there to help with the sense of symmetry that this room represents. Like I said in previous blogs this room has been made symmetrical because is it supposed to be designed by machines. I placed a center light aswell as appropriate lighting and achieved the shadows that I wanted; however they don't look as dramatic as they would have if I had implemented light maps.

The second shot is the "tech room" in this room I encounter allot of the same problems that I had in the last room such as light maps, letter box shots etc... In this scene I focused more on the lighting element and trying to make it look dramatic. The key source of like was from the light stand at the end of the room. I wanted to give this light a large flare as it projects light across the room. I feel that I achieved this well by layering two directional lights over each other; the light flare gives a dramatic feel to the scene. Like the other room there are four lamps on each corner of the room that provide a small amount of light each. The other main source of light was from he computer screens. I used a small spot light with a large fall off to give a soft glow on each screen.



Like I said I am not completely happy with the scenes, there were a few things that I would have liked to have done to make them look more presentable but were unfortunately impossible given my time restraint. If I were to do this assignment again, I would have made sure to churn out as many assets as possible and try to get the level set up in the Unreal engine ASAP. I also would have UVd as I went, rather then spending the last week or so trying to UV and texture as fast as I could. All in all I know that I could have done more with these scenes if I had planned my work better so that it would be ready for week 12.

Here are some other shots of props that I wasn't able to place in the blogs

Blog 10

Week 10: In all honesty I haven't done allot for this module this week. I have been neglecting some of my other modules in favor of this one and because of this I have had to spend the majority of this week on my other modules.

I have however been UVing some props  that I had previously over looked and modelled some small pieces that I had left out such as the intersection wall segment at the top of each door. Although these pieces weren't anything complicated, nothing more the single planes I had put off modelling them because of this reason and had completely overlooked them until now. These simply bridge the gap between the tops of the doors and the ceiling. I had also made a floor for the rooms, This is one large plane that spans across both rooms with a tileable texture that repeats across it. I have made the texture mimic the floor in the matrix scene as much as I can. The floor in the scene is a dusty grey stone tiled floor. However one the edges can ever be seen in the film so hopefully it will look ok when the scene is all together. I have been re-importing allot of my meshes into Unreal again. I have done this previously with all my objects however that was before they were UVd.

Apart from that my efforts have been focused on my other three modules.

Blog 9

Week 9: This week I got given feed back for my Alpha presentation that took place the previous week. I personally felt that I did fairly well in the presentation although I must admit that I forgot to talk about my plans for the lighting in my scene in as much detail as I had planned. In the end I was graded a B- a little lower then I had hoped however I wanted something in the B spectrum at least so it wasn't a huge lose. My tutor explained that the main reason that I lost some marks was because I wasn't demonstrating enough advanced techniques in my scene. This was true however I feel that I am restricted with my scene to some degree. Because this is not being assessed as a playable level, meaning that when grading my scene the tutor will be running around the level and looking at its functions, I can't use certain techniques that I would like to use; for example. I would have wanted to use Kismet to create a lightning effect outside of the room, as in the film flashes of lightning can be seen every now and than. I would have also wanted to use a small amount of the particle system to make the appearance of falling dust from the ceiling, as the room is quite old. The only real technique that i can use on an object would be Cube reflection on the Mirror and Morpheus's glasses. I would also have wanted to make moving Gifs for the computer screens but again it is a still image they the tutor is marking so the effort would be wasted.

Over this week I have been UVing the last of my props, almost all of the "tech desk" items have been UVed except for two desks. All of the Mirrors, windows, screens, light stands, chairs, tables fireplace and side props such as books have been UVd. I will get the last few props UVd ASAP and spend the remaining weeks texturing the rest and adding shader networks to the scene. 

Blog 8

Week 8: This week was the week of the alpha presentation. We were required to present our level to demonstrate our progress up to this point, our lighting, our models and any texture work that we had done so far. For the presentation I focused on assembling my level in Unreal and arranging the scene as close to the film as I could. I hadn't done any texturing for this module by this point as I have been focusing on getting the props modeled and UVd for the presentation.

I decided to use PowerPoint as my format for my presentation. This is because we only have five minutes to present our work and opening the Unreal engine would have taken up at least two minutes of that time which I couldn't afford to waste. I began my presentation stating that I had changed the functionality of my room. In my last presentation I made my room for a third-person shoot-em up, however there would be no purpose for a player to go into my scene if it was that sort of game. So to remedy this problem I kept my game theme the same, however I made it so that my room would be used for the "hacking" function that is used in many of the other Matrix games. The hacking function is what the Matrix games refer to when inputting cheats to the game. This is commonly done by selecting the hacking function on the main menu and putting in codes. I want to expand on that and instead of going into a  screen, the player will be taken into my scene, to input the commands. The player can click the relevant "action button" on Easter egg objects such as Morpheus's glasses to activate cheats like "infinite focus" then they could go into the "tech room" and input codes on the computers for extra cheats. I feel that this makes the room more plausible.

I continued by explaining my two shots that I would like to take, and my reasoning for picking those particular scenes. I picked to shot in the meeting room to show the symmetry in the scene, and the exacting nature that the machine influence would have on the Matrix. This shot demonstrates this point more then any other in the film. The scene is perfectly symmetrical except for the two characters in the scene, who do not need to be symmetrical as they are organic and are no longer in the grasp of the machines influence.

The second shot is in the "tech room" from the tech desk angle. The reason that I chose this shot was because it contrasts the first shot so well. The rooms are pretty much identical, however the "tech room" is completely cluttered with equipment that the characters have brought in. This completely eclipses the mechanical precision of the room and makes it near impossible to see the grid pattern that runs throughout the rooms. This room sums up the human influence on the matrix, although the humans are the protagonist side of the film, they are essentially invading and messing around with the Matrix and its mechanically minded layout; and I belive that this shot makes this point evident.

I went on to show some props that I have made to give an Idea on my progress and talked about some of the lighting issues that I would encounter in these scenes. For example, in the first shot the only lighting source that can be seen is the for lamps that are placed on the walls. However there is a large ambient light coming in from the center of the room, This would suggest a light source however there is no source scene, nor is there any room for a light source that would be big enough to produce that amount of light. I will have to place an ambient light in the scene without an necessary prop to emit the light.

After talking about the lighting I began explaining what I needed to do next. My main priorities are now to texture everything, light everything and possible re build the level.

Blog 7

Week 7: My task for this week has been to finish off the tech room. I managed to complete the tech section last week and now I have left myself with the more detailed props.


The first prop that I needed to make was, the mirror. The mirror was a key prop in the scene. Looking into it i found out that the mirror wasn't actually attached to the wall as I originally thought; and that it was infact a standing mirror. Unfortunately you never see the mirror in full in the film so I had to gather some reference. After looking into it a bit I found a mirror that had a similar framework and stands as the mirror in the film; I used this to model the mirror. The mirror has a stand on either side of its frame that begin as cylinders but then join into a rectangle before going back into a cylinder. I managed to meld these shapes with little issue but using an cylinder with 8 vertical sub divisions and then creating a rectangle with beveled edges. This meant that the geometry could link straight into eachother without issue. After softening the normals a little I duplicated the mesh and moved it to the opposite side. The mirror itself was made similarly to the wall segments which I made several weeks earlier. The detailed pattern for the mirror shall be made with the mudbox program.

the next prop to be made was an unexplained device, that had a large eye piece that Scyther (a character) is seen to be using. The device is essentially a tripod stand with several attachments to it. The first part that I made was the eye piece. This piece was made buy a low poly cylinder which was cut in half and then curved off at the sides. I used the extrude and append poly tool to form the section that actually touch the characters eyes. The next part was the tripod stand. I found some reference that suited the prop perfectly. It was a studio light tripod, a simple cylinder based tripod with leg supports at the bottom  and adjustment  fixtures going up the central frame to change the props height. After making that I duplicated a flat screen from the tech section and attached it to the frame, along with a modified keyboard.


I needed to make a large light that stands next to the mirror. The light is held up by an tripod frame almost identical to the frame that i used for the eye machine. I duplicated the frame and modeled a rectangular studio light to attach to the top of the frame.


the final piece that I needed to make was an odd machine which I had no idea what it could be used for. I asked other students and they had no idea and after some research I still couldn't come up with what the machine might be and decided that it was a miscellaneous matrix machine, which I dubbed the "pineapple machine" due to it looking like a half pineapple ring. I started making this prop with a cylinder to which i deleted three quarters of the faces leaving 6. I individually extruded the faces to emulate the "pineapple" design of this device. I then made a simple rectangular base as i couldn't see what the machine was standing on. I then made an arching frame that was designed to hold the machine in place  and then was attached to the rectangle base.


This was the last of the major props for my scene. I proceeded to export each prop so that they are ready to be placed in the Unreal engine. My task now is to arrange all my props in the Unreal engine for the Alpha presentation.

Blog 6

Week 6: This week has been dedicated to the second room, the "tech room" The alpha presentation is in two weeks and all the props that are intended to be in the final level must be made to at least block out standard. I didn't want to have rectangle blocks as place holders for my props so I decided to churn out as many props for the "tech room" as i could.


I decided to start off with the area with the highest prop density, which is the computer section located in the right hand corner of the room as you walk in. This section is comprised of several desks and detachable shelves. The enter area is cluttered with computer screens, keyboards, wires and various other tech equipment. The reason that I wanted to create this area first is because I intent to set a camera behind it so mimic one of the shots from the film.


I began by modeling three main desks. Each desk is different and can be used and altered several times to create smaller versions for all the excess equipment to stand on. The issue with making these desks was that you never actually see what the computers are sitting on in the film. the surface is so covered with sires and tech equipment that its impossible to tell what sort of desks they are using. I had to gain some reference to make the desks from Google.com. The desks were fairly simple designs, I made them so that attachable shelves could be applied to them, as in the scene there are several shelves added to hold extra screens or keyboards.


With the desks made i needed to begin making the keyboards. again the keyboards could be altered to make different looks as in the scene there are several different types. I made the keyboard out of a primitive rectangle and beveled the edges. Adding smaller rectangles helped create the keys for the board. I didn't make individual keys as it would have been far too poly costly and unessacery. A convincing texture with a normal and possible parallax map will carry this prop effectively. The next part was the screens, there are two main types of screens in the he scene. A flat screen and a small TV box. Both were simple to make I made the TV box first giving is a circular stand like old computer screens used to have. The flat screen was made from the TV, all I did was flatten out the back and adjust the circular stand to a more appropriate one. These two assets were duplicated allot to match the scene, and had the size adjusted to match.


The next part was the miscellaneous tech equipment. I didn't know what the equipment was, which made finding reference hard, however there were several shots that gave me a good look at the equipment from all sides. The equipment is essentially a large rectangle with a diagonal sloping edge with several button and knobs attached to it. There is a smaller version of this device that is seen several times scattered around the scene. I duplicated each prop and placed them as seen in the scene.

That was all i did for this week. my next task is the make the remanding items. there aren't as many as there are in the tech section, however they are more substantial as they are major props.

Blog 4

Week 5: For week five my main goal has been to create all the key props to the "meeting room" as i can. This is for two main reasons. 1) it will help me gage the size of the room as I have had sneaking suspicions that I may have made it too big. 2) is because of the Alpha presentation that will happen in week 8 where we need to have all the objects that are going to be in our level.


Now that the two key features are made for that room (the Victorian chairs and the fire place) I began looking into the other items that are in the scene. These items are often only seen in the corner of the shots, but they help to make the atmosphere of the room. The first one that I made was a small Victorian chair; that sits in he corner of the room. I tried to make it as close to the screen shots as i could. The main issue with making this chair is that it's frame structure is very curved and eccentric to the point where the chair legs make an S shaped curve before reaching the floor. These waves and curves are expensive poly-wise. I have tried to keep the geometry down as much as I can. I started by tracing the shape of the chairs back frame by eye using the "curve tool" and then extruded a hexagon through the shape with a pre-set amount of divisions. After adjusting the shape to match better I then took away any divisions that I felt weren't nessacery. I did the same for the chair legs and then used the "append poly tool" and the "merge vertex tool" too combine the two meshes together.

Once this was done I used the "soften normals tool" to take the hard edges off the geometry as this was supposed to be a sleek frame work. The next part was the cushion which was quickly made from a primitive shape which had the unnecessary geometry taken out. I am still unsure about this object as I do not know if I have used the "soften normals tool" too much. I will ask the opinion of my tutor when I next see him.

The next piece was the table that goes with the chair. It is placed right next to it in the snap shots that I got from the film. It is a circular table with a glass base and gold legs. However I asked my tutor about this object as the legs and the trimmings around the base of the table are particularly flamboyant and would be extremely poly-costly to make. It was decided that I shouldn't copy this table to the letter and rather gain its likeness as much as possible so that it fits into the scene, however leave out the unnecessary geometry as much as possible. I ended up making a fairly similar object, however the legs for the table are much simpler.


The last piece that I made this week as the window that is scene in both rooms. The window is a lard double door piece with a long dropping curtain infront of it. The window itself was simple to make. It had a similar design to the wall patterns which I had made weeks before. The curtain however I am still unsure on. I have never made something that is supposed to be fabric before. So for the time being I have only blocked out the curtains shape with the intent to Z-brush them later on next week.