Concept:
The concept behind my research assignment was making the idea of screenshots and screen captures much more presentable. Work with this game engine seems to be a large part of our degree, so being able to present it well is highly important. I already knew how to do two of the three tasks in my tutorial before setting out on it, but the third, being changing character models, was something I had wanted to do for a while, but never had a good enough reason for until now.
The reason I chose to include three things in this tutorial rather than just changing the model is because although I had taken those things for granted for most of the course, I'm very familiar with games and game engines, which a lot of people aren't, and I've been asked more than a few times how to turn off the little displays that get in the way of taking a good screen capture. So having another resource out there that explains it can't hurt.
The most important thing for me was the model changing, because for a presentation standard, having a guy running around in a nano suit doesn't really meet the expectations. Simply being able to change it to a man or woman in civilian clothes makes the whole thing look phenomonally better.
Please send marks to my zmail, which is z3378045@zmail.unsw.edu.au
References for my research can be found either at the end of the tutorial, or a few posts ago in the research section on this blog.
Friday 11 November 2011
Experiment II
Analytics Engine: Defining a space
The purpose of my analysis engine is to define the space of the building dynamically, depending on the number of people occupying it. The idea being, it could be used in something like a club, so that when the room is more empty, it becomes smaller, giving it a sense of being fuller than it really is. As numbers increase, and so does the size of the room as it makes space for new arrivals.
This is the flowgraph that makes it all happen:
Because the feed was frozen, it uses an xml I wrote, which contains a child with 48 values, either 1, 0 or -1. These values are turned into a scaling factor, and then scale the entity. Additionally, depending on the number, the flowgraph will tell an AI to spawn or not.
3 video demonstrations:
Download for cryengine mod and sketchup model:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/20979523/z3378045_BENV2423_EXP2.rar
everything you need to test this out should be in that .rar file.
please email me at z3378045@zmail.unsw.edu.au if there are any problems with anything
The purpose of my analysis engine is to define the space of the building dynamically, depending on the number of people occupying it. The idea being, it could be used in something like a club, so that when the room is more empty, it becomes smaller, giving it a sense of being fuller than it really is. As numbers increase, and so does the size of the room as it makes space for new arrivals.
This is the flowgraph that makes it all happen:
3 video demonstrations:
Download for cryengine mod and sketchup model:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/20979523/z3378045_BENV2423_EXP2.rar
everything you need to test this out should be in that .rar file.
please email me at z3378045@zmail.unsw.edu.au if there are any problems with anything
Research
These links lead to research I used for the research project:
CryEngine 2 Tutorials: Character Editor Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgEMK10xszI
Changing player character - Jules Cromarty
http://arch1101-2010jc.blogspot.com/2010/06/changing-player-character.html
More info on changing character models
http://www.crydev.net/wiki/index.php/
Using_a_Custom_Model_in_3rd_and_1st_Person_View
CryEngine 2 Tutorials: Character Editor Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgEMK10xszI
Changing player character - Jules Cromarty
http://arch1101-2010jc.blogspot.com/2010/06/changing-player-character.html
More info on changing character models
http://www.crydev.net/wiki/index.php/
Using_a_Custom_Model_in_3rd_and_1st_Person_View
week 04
Demonstration:
The data from the feed was frozen at this time, so I created my own .xml file. I represented the data as three different numbers. A 1 represents a person going into the building, 0 is nothing, and -1 is a person going out. These can be seen on the top HUD message. The bottom message is a live update (every 0.1 second) of the building's scale.
FlowGraph:
This is the flowgraph I used to create this effect. The timer generates a random number between -1 and 1, which is then rounded and displayed. This number is factored by half, and added to one of the 3 equal numbers from the entities current scale. This number is then smoothly changed to the current scale of the entity, and the process is repeated.
The data from the feed was frozen at this time, so I created my own .xml file. I represented the data as three different numbers. A 1 represents a person going into the building, 0 is nothing, and -1 is a person going out. These can be seen on the top HUD message. The bottom message is a live update (every 0.1 second) of the building's scale.
FlowGraph:
Tuesday 8 November 2011
week 03
infographics:
This infographic represents information about a tradeshow. The important aspects of it to me are the way it talks about defined layout spaces and peoples movement through them. It also talks about a whole series of different types of ways you can section off spaces, which would be useful in setting out my idea of additional spaces within an already existing space. If this were to be transitioned into a realtime 3D space, the way I would do it would have it set up as a real tradeshow centre. Within this, there would be all the different types of booths, and as you move near one, information about the booth type would be displayed on a HUD. AI could be used to walk around the space, showing how people interact in the different areas, allowing the person experiencing it to understand the benefits of one setup over the other.
This image is not a real infographic, but it was posted on the website, and I thought it was particularly relevant to my idea, so I chose it anyway. It is a long exposure photo of a small cleaning robot with an LED ontop, taken over a night in a guys bedroom. To me, this looks just like a representation of people moving throughout a space. It shows how we tend to stick to outer edges, unless we have a purpose for crossing a room. It also shows how once a useful path has been established, it is used over and over again.
If I were to translate this into a 3D environment, I would use a glowing particle effect to trace the movement paths of players and AI alike. These would show their paths, and fade slightly with time, allowing you to see the most recent paths. This would allow you to get an understanding of a rooms usage patterns, as well as the way people treat moving throughout the room. A more advanced use for this would allow you to redesign a room to change how people interact with it, or to better suit your idea of how it should be used. This would be especially useful in a business, where you could redesign a room to force people to move past certain goods.
This infographic explains the science behind the idea that sitting down for long periods of time is bad for your health. Putting this idea into a 3D environment, I would use it as a simulation for a day in a business man. Throughout the simulation, you would be sitting and standing, moving around. These different actions would all effect your health bar. Standing would be neutral, walking slowly increase it, while sitting would be negative and slowly decrease it. As an addition to this, sitting would have three different positions, like in the infograph, forward, upright and backwards. These would all effect the player differently, as described in the graphic.
If I were to translate this into a 3D environment, I would use a glowing particle effect to trace the movement paths of players and AI alike. These would show their paths, and fade slightly with time, allowing you to see the most recent paths. This would allow you to get an understanding of a rooms usage patterns, as well as the way people treat moving throughout the room. A more advanced use for this would allow you to redesign a room to change how people interact with it, or to better suit your idea of how it should be used. This would be especially useful in a business, where you could redesign a room to force people to move past certain goods.
week 02
Video demonstration:
The flowgraph:
(click for a bigger image)
The flowgraph creates two HUD messages for the player. The top one shows the aveage distance between the player and the entity, in this case the white ball, while the bottom one shows the current distance between the player and the ball.
Analytics Engine brief:
The pachube feed I chose is called creating space with light, and it's aim is to create a space where the number of people determine how lit the floor is, and therefore the space available to these people. I wish to take this further, and create a space that is totally defined by the number of people in it. The number of people inside the space will determine how light it is, as well as how much space is physically available to them, either through the use of moving walls, or creating additional floors within the building to fit expanding numbers of people.
The flowgraph:
(click for a bigger image)
The flowgraph creates two HUD messages for the player. The top one shows the aveage distance between the player and the entity, in this case the white ball, while the bottom one shows the current distance between the player and the ball.
Analytics Engine brief:
The pachube feed I chose is called creating space with light, and it's aim is to create a space where the number of people determine how lit the floor is, and therefore the space available to these people. I wish to take this further, and create a space that is totally defined by the number of people in it. The number of people inside the space will determine how light it is, as well as how much space is physically available to them, either through the use of moving walls, or creating additional floors within the building to fit expanding numbers of people.
assignment 2. week 01
Cyrsis Wars environment being used: Outpost
Analysis of a moving entity: velocity graphing
The video demonstrates the analysis of the ball. The flowgraph system evaluates the balls average velocity, and then displays it through both the hud and a bar graph inserted into the level. The hud shows the precise value, while the bar graph (red, over the antena) shows a rounded value.
Chosen Pachube feed: Creating Space with Light.
https://pachube.com/feeds/35501
SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
The description at the top of the page allows a reader to get a really good understanding of the persons chosen concept, which in turn explains a lot about what the feed should be doing.
Weaknesses: The feeds are continuously frozen, which doesn't allow for any analysis of it. Also, the three feeds on the page aren't labelled very well, which means you can't really understand what the data coming off them represents.
Opportunities:
A system like the one the creator talks about presents the opportunity for a vast social space, and very interesting room use dynamic. The more people in the room, the brighter and more open it becomes, and as the floor is lit up, more opportunity for social interaction is created.
Threats:
The one thing that seems to stand out to me is that if there are initially no people in the room, it will be completely dark, which seems like it would work towards stopping people from venturing inside it, which wouldn't allow any chance for it brightening up, rendering the whole idea a bit useless unless it is a place guarranteed to be populated.
The video demonstrates the analysis of the ball. The flowgraph system evaluates the balls average velocity, and then displays it through both the hud and a bar graph inserted into the level. The hud shows the precise value, while the bar graph (red, over the antena) shows a rounded value.
Chosen Pachube feed: Creating Space with Light.
https://pachube.com/feeds/35501
SWOT analysis:
Strengths:
The description at the top of the page allows a reader to get a really good understanding of the persons chosen concept, which in turn explains a lot about what the feed should be doing.
Weaknesses: The feeds are continuously frozen, which doesn't allow for any analysis of it. Also, the three feeds on the page aren't labelled very well, which means you can't really understand what the data coming off them represents.
Opportunities:
A system like the one the creator talks about presents the opportunity for a vast social space, and very interesting room use dynamic. The more people in the room, the brighter and more open it becomes, and as the floor is lit up, more opportunity for social interaction is created.
Threats:
The one thing that seems to stand out to me is that if there are initially no people in the room, it will be completely dark, which seems like it would work towards stopping people from venturing inside it, which wouldn't allow any chance for it brightening up, rendering the whole idea a bit useless unless it is a place guarranteed to be populated.
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