Research
For my final I wanted to create a city you are able move around in. So the first thing I looked into and researched was different cities. I looked at a wide spectrum of different cities. I did this to get a basic idea of what I want my city to look like. A few of the main cities I looked at before finally coming up with my city was New York (Obviously) , Moscow , Italy/Rome , Tokyo , Dubai and LA. I needed to look at some many because I needed to know what kind of city I wanted to make mine. I had to decide on a lot of things while making my choice. For example weather I wanted it to be a modern or old fashion city, very industrial or maybe even a small city/town you might see in Italy.
I finally came to the decision to base my city on the city New York, one of the biggest and most famous cities in the world.
Once I had made my decision to on which city I wanted to create I then had to decide how I was to go about making it. ie. What programs I would use, how I would create it using that program and what techniques I would use. Then finally what sort of style/feel the city was going to have.
I knew straight away I wanted to use the program Cinema 4D as I have great knowledge and loads of experience with it as I have used it to do many other projects.
I then started looking into what I wanted my city to look like. I started looking at a few different games with cities and towns in. I looked at GTA first but I soon realized it was going to take too long and be too time consuming to create a city that detailed and that big so I moved swiftly on.
and took a look at Need For Speed. This was a lot like GTA, far too difficult to make.
But the main game that caught my eye and I chose to base my game on was Mirrors edge.
This game is a Street Running, Action game and a very popular. It also has a very different and fresh feel to it. It's all about simplicity. It only actually has about 4 or 5 different colours used within the whole game and the textures are pretty much left alone. There is no detail on any of the walls or objects within the game.
I liked this style straight away. I also knew this would be a lot easier to create as well as it looks very unique.
Grand Theft Auto
Need For Speed
Mirrors Edge
After deciding on what I wanted my city to look and feel like I then had to research how I was going to make it and give it a new design and feel of my own.
So I started to draw up some ideas on paper of basic designs for my city. Here is a detailed drawing I made to help me plan out what my city could look like. I then scanned it into photoshop and use the pen effect tool on the lines to make the lines stand out easily. Because the way I had draw it the lines were quite faint.
I then had to convert my hand drawn city from paper to digital. To do this I simply went into Cinema 4d and started to play around with basic shapes and textures till I found something that looked effective and something sightly like a city.
So I started to draw up some ideas on paper of basic designs for my city. Here is a detailed drawing I made to help me plan out what my city could look like. I then scanned it into photoshop and use the pen effect tool on the lines to make the lines stand out easily. Because the way I had draw it the lines were quite faint.
I then had to convert my hand drawn city from paper to digital. To do this I simply went into Cinema 4d and started to play around with basic shapes and textures till I found something that looked effective and something sightly like a city.
I made my buildings by simply using basic shapes, changing the size of them and extruding inner some of the sides to add a little detail to the buildings. But I had to make sure I didn't add to much detail otherwise I would lose that very effective and simple style Mirrors Edge used within there game. Once I had a few simple designs for a few of my buildings I simply copied and pasted them and pretty much based each building around the same design. I only actually had about 15 different buildings. The rest were just copies. But I made sure I didn't have two of the exact same building next to each other so it wasn't obvious what I did.
Here are two images of the first couple of buildings I created and found looked effective.
One thing I noticed is it looks a lot more effective the more buildings you have. So I started to add more and more buildings and my city slowly grew over time.
Here Is a image of my city after a few days. The first building were the hardest because I had to create the buildings from scratch. But as my city grew it got quicker and quicker because I was able to copy and paste more of my pre made buildings.
After I had created my city I needed to learn how I would navigate around my city.
I needed to decide what view I would have. For me there was only two options to choose from. The two options I had were first person or third person. I looked at a few different game's that used these different views. I went back to Mirrors Edge to look at there game and play style. I again really liked what they have done. Its a first person view. The only thing you can see is your arms and maybe legs when there in front of you. I really like this style and it also means I don't have to go through the trouble of creating a character, making a walk cycle and rigging him.
When It came to researching how I was going to create my first person view this was pretty simple.
I knew I was going to use Unity so I simply Googled First person view Unity. This gave me a short and simple tutorial on how to make this. The tutorial was very quick and only took about 5mins to finish because on Unity there is a pre made First person character to use with all the pre written coding and commands I would need.
I needed to decide what view I would have. For me there was only two options to choose from. The two options I had were first person or third person. I looked at a few different game's that used these different views. I went back to Mirrors Edge to look at there game and play style. I again really liked what they have done. Its a first person view. The only thing you can see is your arms and maybe legs when there in front of you. I really like this style and it also means I don't have to go through the trouble of creating a character, making a walk cycle and rigging him.
When It came to researching how I was going to create my first person view this was pretty simple.
I knew I was going to use Unity so I simply Googled First person view Unity. This gave me a short and simple tutorial on how to make this. The tutorial was very quick and only took about 5mins to finish because on Unity there is a pre made First person character to use with all the pre written coding and commands I would need.
Journal
Day 1: My first day was deciding what I wanted to do for my final. This took me quite a while because I was really unsure what I wanted to try and create. My first idea was to create and interactive story / animation within C4D and flash. My second idea was to create a mini horror game, a lot like Slender man. My final idea was to create a interactive city you are able to walk around and explore and this was the idea I stuck with.
Day 2 - 4: From day 2 - 4 I spent my time researching. If you look at my earlier writing on my blog It says everything I did for my research within these days.
Day5:
Step 1: Step one was very simple. It was creating my environment. In my case it was making my city. I knew what I wanted to do I just had to do it. I have already said how I have created my city within my research so there isn't much point repeating how I did it so I will move on to step two.
Step 2: Step to was to put my city into Unity I did this by exporting the C4D file as a .fbx.
One it was a .fbx file I then only had to drag it into my new project's asset folder and it was on unity ready to use as I wished.
Step 3: I then dragged it from the asset folder to the preview screen so I can see my city on Unity.
Step 4: Once I had my city in place I then had to put my character into the city. For me my character would be a first person view. Luckily Unity already has a pre made first person controller so all I had to do is drag the pre made controller onto my city and that was pretty much done for now.
Step 5: Step 5 was again very simple. I had to create a plane so my character wouldn't fall through the floor of my city. All I had to do to do this was go GameObject > CreateOther > Plane. This created a plane for me I then just had to edit the size by left clicking the Plane and using the size tool till I found the size that matched my city.
Step6: Step 6 I had some trouble with, this was creating a mesh collider for my buildings. Which basically means when I run into my buildings or jumped on top of them I wouldn't go through them. The reason I had so much trouble with this is because my city has so many buildings in it and the mesh collider on Unity only lets you add it to individual objects. Obviously with the amount of buildings I had this was near to impossible to do, as it would simply take far too long. The reason it took me so long to work out is because I was trying to solve this problem through Unity. I thought there must be away to add it to all or even drag my city into the mesh collider component. After a lot of research and asking around I found there was no way to fix this problem through unity. So what I had to do is go back into Cinema 4d open my city and group all the buildings within the city so it make's the city one object instead of loads of different individual buildings. Then when I exported it and reopened it in Unity I was able to simply go Components > Physics > Mesh Collider and this put a mesh on my whole city stopping my character from running through the buildings.
Step7 : Step 7 was adding a light and texture to my city. All I had to do to do this was go GameObject > CreateOther > PointLight. This simply created a light. I was then able to change the intensity of the light by left clicking the light and moving the intensity bar higher or lower. I also did the same thing with the range bar to change how big the range of the light was. For me I wanted the light to represent the sun so I made the range huge so it covered the whole city and turn't the intensity up to suit what I thought looked like a realistic representation of the sun. To add a texture to my city so it wasn't just black. I simply left clicked the city and used the texture options provided with Unity. I didn't have to really do anything to complicated as I wanted to stick with my original style of plain and simple that I spoke about in my research.
Step8: Step 8 was adding the sound. I simply downloaded some free MP3 sounds that I thought were good and dragged them into my Asset folder. From my asset folder I was able to drag them onto my city. At first it put it as a 3D sound. I didn't want this so I left clicked the sound and untickd the 3D sound box. Pretty simple really.
Step 9: Step 9 was just simply adjusting some things to make my game funner. I did this by editing my character. I left clicked the character and changed the movement speed, jump distance and height and then lowered the gravity so my character had a slight hang time in the air while jumping.
Once I had finished these steps I was pretty much finished and was ready to hand in to be assessed.
For my Final project I created a 3D game where a character is controllable and you can move around and explore a city I created. I learnt a lot while creating my project. The main things I learnt were in Unity. All the stuff I wrote about in my step by step I learn't while doing this project because I had not used Unity before. A also learnt a few different techniques within Cinema 4D. Although I had used it before I learnt how to make multiple objects one. And I also learnt how to use a few of the tools within MoGraph like the cloner tool for example. The reason this project was so good is I can now take all the skills and techniques I have learnt and use them in future.
For example if I needed to use Unity or even any basic coding im going to be able to do because of what I have learnt on Unity. I will also be able to use more techniques on Cinema 4D if I use the program again. I feel my game has been quite successful. The thing I think is most successful with my game is I really captured the simplicity of the Mirrors Edge style game. I also feel its really fun and enjoyable even though theirs no real objective to it. Your able to just mess around and do what you want. That could be trying to clime to the highest building or point of the city, or just exploring and seeing the different futures of the city.
Another thing I feel was really successful is capturing the look of a real city. If you think about it my city is just a few squares and rectangles that are edited slightly, it shouldn't really look so much like a city but it does because of a few of the buildings and key features. For example the empire state building is so well known you can tell its a city just by looking at it.
One thing I don't think was so successful is there are some some bugs with the lighting and the textures. For some reason when you use Point light it messes up with the texture. If I was to do the same project again I would use directional light because that doesn't create the same bug. I would also maybe put in a objective to the game as it can get a bit boring with nothing to do after a while. But the only problem with adding a objective is you lose the simplicity feel I originally set out to get.
Day 2 - 4: From day 2 - 4 I spent my time researching. If you look at my earlier writing on my blog It says everything I did for my research within these days.
Day5:
Step by step
Step 1: Step one was very simple. It was creating my environment. In my case it was making my city. I knew what I wanted to do I just had to do it. I have already said how I have created my city within my research so there isn't much point repeating how I did it so I will move on to step two.
Step 2: Step to was to put my city into Unity I did this by exporting the C4D file as a .fbx.
One it was a .fbx file I then only had to drag it into my new project's asset folder and it was on unity ready to use as I wished.
Step 3: I then dragged it from the asset folder to the preview screen so I can see my city on Unity.
Step 4: Once I had my city in place I then had to put my character into the city. For me my character would be a first person view. Luckily Unity already has a pre made first person controller so all I had to do is drag the pre made controller onto my city and that was pretty much done for now.
Step 5: Step 5 was again very simple. I had to create a plane so my character wouldn't fall through the floor of my city. All I had to do to do this was go GameObject > CreateOther > Plane. This created a plane for me I then just had to edit the size by left clicking the Plane and using the size tool till I found the size that matched my city.
Step6: Step 6 I had some trouble with, this was creating a mesh collider for my buildings. Which basically means when I run into my buildings or jumped on top of them I wouldn't go through them. The reason I had so much trouble with this is because my city has so many buildings in it and the mesh collider on Unity only lets you add it to individual objects. Obviously with the amount of buildings I had this was near to impossible to do, as it would simply take far too long. The reason it took me so long to work out is because I was trying to solve this problem through Unity. I thought there must be away to add it to all or even drag my city into the mesh collider component. After a lot of research and asking around I found there was no way to fix this problem through unity. So what I had to do is go back into Cinema 4d open my city and group all the buildings within the city so it make's the city one object instead of loads of different individual buildings. Then when I exported it and reopened it in Unity I was able to simply go Components > Physics > Mesh Collider and this put a mesh on my whole city stopping my character from running through the buildings.
Step7 : Step 7 was adding a light and texture to my city. All I had to do to do this was go GameObject > CreateOther > PointLight. This simply created a light. I was then able to change the intensity of the light by left clicking the light and moving the intensity bar higher or lower. I also did the same thing with the range bar to change how big the range of the light was. For me I wanted the light to represent the sun so I made the range huge so it covered the whole city and turn't the intensity up to suit what I thought looked like a realistic representation of the sun. To add a texture to my city so it wasn't just black. I simply left clicked the city and used the texture options provided with Unity. I didn't have to really do anything to complicated as I wanted to stick with my original style of plain and simple that I spoke about in my research.
Step8: Step 8 was adding the sound. I simply downloaded some free MP3 sounds that I thought were good and dragged them into my Asset folder. From my asset folder I was able to drag them onto my city. At first it put it as a 3D sound. I didn't want this so I left clicked the sound and untickd the 3D sound box. Pretty simple really.
Step 9: Step 9 was just simply adjusting some things to make my game funner. I did this by editing my character. I left clicked the character and changed the movement speed, jump distance and height and then lowered the gravity so my character had a slight hang time in the air while jumping.
Once I had finished these steps I was pretty much finished and was ready to hand in to be assessed.
Evaluation
For example if I needed to use Unity or even any basic coding im going to be able to do because of what I have learnt on Unity. I will also be able to use more techniques on Cinema 4D if I use the program again. I feel my game has been quite successful. The thing I think is most successful with my game is I really captured the simplicity of the Mirrors Edge style game. I also feel its really fun and enjoyable even though theirs no real objective to it. Your able to just mess around and do what you want. That could be trying to clime to the highest building or point of the city, or just exploring and seeing the different futures of the city.
Another thing I feel was really successful is capturing the look of a real city. If you think about it my city is just a few squares and rectangles that are edited slightly, it shouldn't really look so much like a city but it does because of a few of the buildings and key features. For example the empire state building is so well known you can tell its a city just by looking at it.
One thing I don't think was so successful is there are some some bugs with the lighting and the textures. For some reason when you use Point light it messes up with the texture. If I was to do the same project again I would use directional light because that doesn't create the same bug. I would also maybe put in a objective to the game as it can get a bit boring with nothing to do after a while. But the only problem with adding a objective is you lose the simplicity feel I originally set out to get.
