Particle Experimentation

Most of these never made it into the map mainly because they just did not suite the realism of the scene that was created by surrounding textures and static meshes. I later created particles in the early version on our UT3 map which I saw as being relevant to the scene.

Role and Ideas

My role in the team was to create particle effects, lighting and laying down static meshes to create the buildings atmospehere. Most of the lighting need tweaking to have a high fallout so that the nightime side of the map took effect.
The fires also looked strange burning from nowhere so I added in piles of debris that the flames sat on with each having their own light source. There was green light illuminating from nowhere as sort of markers for players, to fix this I created a green flare particle so as to lessen the strangeness of that.

Apart from doing those I also came up with alot of ideas and put them forward to the rest of the team and they in return gave feedback as to what would work and what would just be too time consuming.
The very original idea was that two teams competed one team would be 'ladders' trying to get up through the building, the other would be 'snakes' trying to hinder them from getting to the top. This idea was tossed around alot with other ideas of how 'snakes' would be able to hinder them and how 'ladders' would ascend. This became problematic as many ideas spawned from it all which were regarded carefully, ideas such as players controlling movers so that team co-operation was needed in order to ascend the building, parts of the building that could maybe fall away (essentially the hypothetical ladders breaking or turning into snakes, if you want to look at it that way), Chris G's idea of controlling points to open/activate movers and at the same time closing/deactivating a different mover so that different pathways opened and closed. A later idea I tossed out was, wouldn't it be great if rubble fell down around the player? So in response to this Chris G created some nice movers that simulated this extremely well.

All of these ideas where taken through the process on refining into what we knew could be done, and so our gametype developed into a FFA (free for all) game of getting to the top of the building, where players competed against each other to get there. The analogy of snake and ladders in the game is that some movers may take you up and others may take you down, also each player has the potential to be a 'snake or ladder' just by getting to a mover first or even triggering some falling rubble.

UT3 map- Note link also on group blog

Particle pictures

Yeah told chris to make rubble fall and you know what, he did :)
Was making dust for the impact too, till someone broke the file... weis

Hheavy smoke

The furnace...just like to call it that because of the multiple piles of flaming rubble

Foggy Hall

The leaky pipe hallway

One of the Green Flares

Broken machine with sparks and smoke

Fire and Brimstone...err rubble

Water running

Demos

Gameplay demo


Particle demo

experimentation

Team blog is up for UT3

Most progress and updates are gonna be transferred to this blog:
http://irl-studios.blogspot.com/

particle experimentation/ tut

tUTorial

On the Explosions

For my two 'percentage' models I went with two different styles for representing the exponential mass effect of explosion. Obviously with volumetric restrictions only portions of the exponentially increasing could be shown, both models have areas where there is has been small to large explosions where be in get progressively larger in random order. Much to simulate the many possibilities of explosions occurring in various places.
With the 32% model I carved out jagged shape using lofts to a point. These shapes are almost star-like, yet they portray fragmented explosions very well. In some cases I overlapped the shapes to give a another edge to the explosion. The effect of two such shapes intersecting, forms interesting ridge shapes that I would see as being possible in the scenario where there is two explosion to either side of an object, both explosions carving through that middle object towards each other. The sort of explosion that occurs in the model are almost a sort of explosion is obviously some what hypothetical in the sense that it is fairly linear and could only be imagined as vaporising the material it comes into contact with leaving its sharp crystal-like imprints on that object.
In relation to the 32% model the 57% has a more realistic appeal to it in regards to an explosion, as the explosion its does not give its shape to environment around ie. it does act like a 'cookie cutter' imprinting its own shape onto the environment. However, explosions do affect their environment if not entirely, the material that is being affected has its shape molded by the explosion. To what degree that material is being molded by the explosion depends on the materials versatility, in the case of buildings their core structure is most often reinforced concrete. The effect of an explosion on concrete is that concrete absorbs or better yet is resistant to part of the of force of the explosion and instead of taking on the shape of an explosion it crumbles and erodes rather than taking on the 'spiky ball' shape I imagine a explosion to be.

Pan Rotation Zoom

Rotation


Zoom


Pan

3ds models

32% Model


57% Model


Cactus Model

solidworks models

57% model


32% model


cactus model

solidworks vol. calculations

orignal solidworks AKA the '%' model

volumetrics 57% &32%

vol.=88301.41 cubic metres

57% of volume subtracted

= 88301.41 - (88301.41 x 57/100)
=37969.6063

32% of volume subtracted

=88301.41 - (88301.41 x 32/1000
=60044.9588

Cactus model

Cactus model from SW

Peer review

Final Custom Machinima and Found Machinima

To clearly express the way in which explosions have a exponential mass effect was not easy. It was difficult to make sure the viewer could grasp the concept of how two forces that oppose each other, continually increase mass of the explosions in a upwards scale that reaches climax where it doesn't matter which side wins, cause both are eliminated by the sheer mass of such a explosion. There is false notion that the side who let off the climatic explosion is victorious, but rather both sides and everything else are at a loss. I showed one force that was apparent throughout the clip, showing their loss and at the end I introduced a solitary figure that represented the other opposing force also being at a end, in my own view as well the lava falling from the sky is showing how everything else is at a loss, because it is like the blood of a planet and for it to be raining down on the surface means that the planet is also at a loss.



A few problems were encountered along the way for this documentary. The first was that in 30 seconds it was too hard to capture different levels of explosions and their effects on the 3D field, the second was that none of the explosives in GMod couldn't destroy my building. Instead I resorted to skip showing the increase of explosives as a exponential and instead went to the climatic point in that hypothetical exponential curve, the point where the mass effect of explosives is at its greatest, nuclear explosions.

Exponential Mass Effect of Explosions

Out of the four styles of documentary noting my own documentary will primarily be composed of elements of expository documentary but instead of audio narration I plan to use text overlaying the footage, not too small to be indiscreet but also enough to force the viewer to read it. The justification for this is in my belief that an expository documentary is made effective due to the narrator's skill of speaking effectively and convincingly. Hence I find that it would be rather difficult to imitate but instead I aim to use emotive music to support the text.
The documentary in some sense could be observational depending whether there is a sense of real-time portrayed or immediacy. I won’t be making any of it like that of a interactive documentary because as much as I would like to do it, the problem comes with creating a ragdoll or NPC that could imitate human behaviour ( i.e. mouth movement when the director would be talking to the camera).
I think that reflexive documentary always makes things interesting by challenging the viewer to think and part of the documentary could be ended with a something that asks a reflective question of the viewer, at the same time the idea seems rather cliché

Week Two-Task for Today/ Draft

The effect of a explosion on this structure would undoubtedly level it. The weakest part of the structure is most likely the pillars on which it sits, I have already thought about it collapsing due to explosions knocking those out. The first level or midriff of the building is probably the most stable part by being formed from bridges. I have been thinking whether the building will collapse at the height of explosive escalation, or whether it will fall at different stages of the exponential increase in the usage of volatile materials.

funny stuff

Week One- IST

explosions

Watch more C&C3 Videos

Task for Today Week One

Task for Thursday

This machinima trailer portrays the idea that explosives have a mass effect, where they might start off a lot of small explosions only to grow to a exponential scale. When two forces are in opposition it seems almost a competition that drives the growth/size/scale of explosives.
(The constant posting of 'Who can create the biggest explosion?' videos in crysis, crackdown, halo 3 etc.. is almost a testimony to this).

And when they have achieved the absolute maximum force possible, there seems to be only one purpose for it, a means to end all means. In a military sense theres the idea that the victor will probably be the person who can create then biggest 'bang', regardless of casualties and collateral.