Unreal Engine 3 - Castle Scene - Built with UDK

                                           https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3jhwvDS-mo

Progress of the castle

 These are progress pictures of my castle, It started with the bell tower and eventually branched out.

What I've done, learnt and encountered.

This is my first ever project using Maya and UDK. I chose UE3 to render my scene because it was the engine with the largest following/community online. This meant that any questions I needed answering about UDK most likely could be answered on a forum or explained in a YouTube video.

At first, all I was planning on doing was what was explained in the project briefing, design, and texture a castle and export it to an engine with a base terrain. Half way through the project I found myself expanding the scene in UDK, I wanted to make a scene that I could look in any direction and the world would appear full without seams or voids. I chose to do this possibly because I used to make maps for Counter-strike where I knew the level had to appear seamless because players had the freedom to go anywhere withing the map. Because I chose to do this It meant that I needed to create a lot more assets then was necessary. I created long distance trees and various other assets including a hilltop kingdom with a village.

Another feature that I included was the addition of a secondary bridge. Initially there was just going to be the footbridge, But it bugged me that the front of the castle was without a bridge, so I got to work making a bigger (horse friendly) bridge. I went back to my references, and I really liked the idea of an aqueduct style bridge. The bridge also looked really good from a long distance linking up buildings in the terrain.



The way I went about importing meshes was by importing finished, unfinished or un-textured assets. I knew that I could re-import textures or meshes when the time was right. By doing this it gave me an idea of what the scene looked like and it gave me ideas of what was needed and what else I needed to put into the scene. Also by doing this it made it easier to combat issues with meshes or textures, and I could organize my packages easy by doing it gradually, rather than importing everything in one go.

There has been many times that I've totally restarted models or re-textured them. This is true with the texture of the main castle. It was the first asset I made, so naturally it was the at the point where I had the least experience. When I did the UV mapping I didn't use up all the space, and therefore the textures had a terribly low resolution.

There were 3 rules I used to achieve higher resolution textures, first there is making things modular, by doing this it means there are less surfaces to UV map, and you can make the faces larger in the UV texture editor. Secondly is using up as much room in the UV texture editor, more room used means more resolution area used. and lastly is tiling textures. Making a subtle texture without noticeable features and a seamless border means you can repeat the UV more than once, this means there will be more pixels on the surface with multiple use of one texture.

If I could change anything now it would be the amount of detail in my assets. I was constantly worrying about polycount, it was only until later I discovered that I would have been safe to add more polygons than I did. For example I could have beveled 2 or 3 faces onto edges instead of 1, and I could have smoothed a lot more assets. But as long as it's not too visible I guess It doesn't hurt it too much. Another thing I would have liked to have done would have been creating the castle last. It's the most important part of the scene, and I did it first when I had only a little experience, therefore I believe It's of lower quality.

Overall I'm happy with my progression, I'll for sure be doing more asset creation within Maya In my free time. I feel I've developed a clear understanding of the features and tools withing the software. When it comes to the game engine, I think in the future I might try UE4 or Cryengine since UE3 is soon to be replaced by Epic's new engine. I still need work on my UV maps, I feel I could make them cleaner with more practice. BA3 has been my favorite out of the 3 units in my first year, and I might choose 3D environments as my focus in the following 2 years.

multiple images

Some Props

    Some of my props from my scene.

Torches

While I was doing my time of day renders for my castle, it occurred to me that the night time render would be ALOT more interesting with light sources. So i modeled and textured a torch to be placed around the castle. This torch can be placed on the plaque or upright on a pedestal.

time of day renders

castle

bridge1

Long Distance Castle

This is NOT my main building this is just a terrain prop. I added it into UDK without caring much for textures because you couldn't properly see detail on it from so far away. In UDK I added spot lights to make it look like some of the rooms were lit.

Build lighting

This is the scene as a result of build lighting, also I've changed the sky material and lighting settings, the scene is much richer in shadows and colours now.

Current_progress

Tree development

After a long time trying to make suitable trees to go into UDK, i eventually discovered a piece of software that came with UDK, that being SpeedTree. With this software i was quickly able to create a tree that had LOD meshes (billboards), and they were effected by the wind.

rocks

These are rocks with and without textures. The last rock has had a heavy displacement map applied.

statue low poly

Shaders and Bump Maps

These are some of my tests with different shaders and bump maps. I'm mostly going to use the Lambert shader with normal and displacement maps. I'll use the Blim or Phong shader on more organic objects or to create a "wet" look. 

Clocktower gargoyle

This is a low poly gargoyle that will be on top of the building. I imported this into Maya to be textured.

Trees

I plan to use various high poly trees, I found that using the same tree over and over makes the environment look very strange.

Below are the very far distance terrain trees. these will be barley visible, but ill will give a sense of distance.

standalone castle plan

plan (whole scene)

castle idea

some maya objects

       This door will be on the front of my castle. The sides aren't textured because they won't be seen           when the scene is finished.

        Here is a tree I created, This is one of three trees I made. There are multiple trees because it will           look more natural in the scene if there are differences between them.

More Castles

                                               This bell will be atop my clock tower

                                       I'm going to use this tower In my Maya project.

                                         I want this kind of cliff behind my garrison