Roman Ludus Cinematic Project - Finished

Finally!
Ive battled with numerous issues, from the project file messing up to loosing the UDK screenshot sequences and having to upgrade my laptop's HDD half way though putting together the final cinematic.
Its been a frustrating effort to get this project wrapped up.


So in summary: This is the final product of my 2nd year (1st semester) project for a digital media class at university. We had to work on an architectural visualisation and I chose to mix things up a bit and use a game engine for the rendering which lead me to UDK and to the 11 day level design tutorial. (Id never used UDK before, but Ive had several years experience using Blenders inbuilt game engine)

The building and surrounding environment is based on the Roman Ludus and terrain from the TV series 'Spartacus Blood and Sand' and 'Gods of the Arena'.

Id originally submitted a rushed version of the final cinematic for the actual assignment, but wanted to tidy it all up a bit more before uploading to youtube (thats the part thats taken so long to get around to doing)

Ive mostly used 3Dsmax for the modelling, but did a bit in Blender as well. Level blocking was done in UDK and Gimp/Photoshop for 2D texture work.
I did a lot of preproduction, including drawing up some blueprints for reference from scenes in the series and an entire design/planning document to refer to throughout the duration of the project.


And finally heres the cinematic:


Now, time to get into other projects :)

Ludus DVD + Cinematic

The DVD design is finished, and the Cover+DVD with the cinematic on it was handed up Monday when it was due. Unfortunately I had to rush the cinematic quite a bit more than what I wanted, so its very much lacking polish. Didnt have a choice however, I had to hand it up how it was because I was out of time.
This means I wont be uploading the final cinematic for at least another week, as I need to work on it some more first.

Heres some pics of the DVD










Next up Im doing the final part of the project, an A2 poster.
Cant wait to finish this and get back to some Blender projects!

Final week progress

Got less than a week remaining for this project to wrap up (at least the major cinematic part, theres still one part of the project to do later but thats not so much 3D related)



The ludus is coming together well, Im just about finished making assets now, and the level has been rebuilt a bit for some extra rooms and the staircase connecting the ground level with the top, plus its all pretty much furnished as best as I can with the remaining time Ive had to work on it. Im starting on the new camera angles now for the full cinematic which will be rendered using Manitee.
I also spent a bit of time yesterday making a ton of decals. They should liven up the bland walls and texturing. Soon we'll be seeing walls with damage and chipped away surface, or the occasional stains, grime and blood splatters.

Last night I also got around to making a full 360 terrain object complete with mountains, which really adds to the overall environment. The terrain was modeled in Blender in about 10mins (would have had a migraine trying to do it in 3dsmax, Ill get to that in my next post)
Then I slapped on some rocky texture, which didnt really cover it properly (lots of stretching) but it doesn't matter because all of this will be in the distance, and UDK's DOF blurs the distant mountains anyway.


(thats the Ludus in the bottom right)

UDK Level progress

So I spent a decent whole day working on this Tuesday (samples of raw footage were required for the university assignment Wednesday afternoon)
For the most part Ive finished the majority of the level design, lighting, basic details, postpro effects and managed to animate and test render some camera movements using Manitee.

Heres a teaser of some of the better external angles so far:



So whats left to do? - Polish and detail mostly. Theres a lot of objects I havent modeled and added to the level yet, some stock ones from UDK I want to replace with my own and a lot of the textures need rework and tweaking. Then its time to render some more interesting shots and compose the final cinematic.

WIP's - April 2011

Currently I'm working hard on a 3D related project for University (Uni being one of a collection of things taking up the majority of my free time at the moment).
Anyone whos used UDK before will have instant familiarity with the screenshot below:




This is the very early 'blocking' out of a UDK game level which is the focal point for the overall assignment. Its coming together slowly, as this is my first time using UDK, but I hope to have a decent amount of work done early next week. Will be interesting if anyone can recognize what building it is and where its from. Key word here is 'Ludas'.

Consequently the logo sting I put up on youtube a few weeks ago is also related to this project:



More about this project soon.


Another project I'm hoping to finish soon - A Blender one I started in January, hoping to have finished it before the Uni semester began, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I got a bit out of control with the node-setup for the render and then Uni went back and I haven't really touched it since.
It was good practice with nodes at least - and much needed practice since Id hardly touched them in the past but had been meaning too at some stage.
Id say 95% of the node setup is complete, still a few things to tweak and tune, but overall that part is finished, all thats left is to animate the character and render it all out and compose the final clip together. Ill get to it again soon I hope, because it leads onto other projects I wont let myself start yet (trying at the moment to finish some projects before I move onto others)
Its looking pretty good at the moment however, nice lens flares, blurs, all kinds of lens effects, a functioning HUD just for the hell of it, plus a whole heap of render layers interwoven in crazy mind-cramping ways, and even some bubbles which refract the environment and character behind them (one hell of a pain to composite using nodes as I found out)

To finish this post off here's a teaser pic of the node setup -