Moodboard
I created this Moodboard in Photoshop with the intention of showing all of my ideas I have for my project. The images I chose were all environmental images. This was intentionally done because I want to create an environment as part of my work. I plan on taking heavy inspiration from these images and design my environments around them. As well as images showing my themes that I will explore, I've also included a colour scheme which would apply to my practical work later on.
gantt Chart
This Gantt Chart serves as a timescale for the development of my project. Having this chart helps me complete all of the work I need to do in enough time.
Check list
This check list was provided to help with covering all of the content needed in our sites. I'm ticking off the activities as I complete them and showing them here on this live document.
mind map
I created this mind map to delve into different key ideas for each of the 3 time periods I'm including in my project. This mind map covers Visual Designs, Buildings and Audio. The Buildings will be the main visual characteristic of each time period, so I collected different examples for each of my themes. The Visual Designs are effects common to these periods that would be added to the buildings and the surrounding environment. I have audio sections on my mindmap to provide information on the kinds of sounds and instruments that are used to represent these times. The findings I made will help me when creating my music.
Japanese environment building
I wanted to do a trial of environment creation before I began creating the actual environment of my project. I started by researching "Japanese environments" in Sketchfab, an online model library. I found this full Japanese shrine scene, which I downloaded and exported into Unreal Engine. The only editing I had to do myself was adding all of the material samples to the correct nodes of the included textures in the material editor. I plan on using this map as the "Ancient Japan" map section in my project.
Aztec environment building
When adding my Aztec environment into my scene, The scene started as built together but blank with no texture. Provided to me in the downloaded file was a folder full of different texture maps to apply to their respective material. For each material texture, there were 3 maps to apply. The 3 included were an albedo map, a metallic map and a normal map. Once all plugged in, the textures automatically applied themselves to the appropriate sections of the environment.
On Sketchfab, the file is advertised as being in fbx format. Despite this, after downloading it, I found that the temple model itself was a 7Z file. Unreal Engine isn't compatible with 7Z files, so I had to convert it. Using an online converter, I converted the aztec temple 7Z file to an fbx file.
Utopian environment building
On Sketchfab, the file is advertised as being in blend format. This meant I had to use this file in blender to make use of it. I downloaded Blender and opened this environment. Once I had the project open, I saved it as a obj file. Being an obj file, I could then import this file over to my Unreal project.
This is the Utopian environment I discovered and installed from Sketchfab. This screenshot is the environment in its untextured form. The environment features metros, water distillation domes, solar power farms and agriculture domes. My idea for my Utopian environment was one that featured a wide variety of eco- friendly systems. The environment contains a lots of tall buildings, with a central hub-like structure in the centre.
This is how the Utopian environment looked after texturing. With this added texture, its clear that the creator of this map was going for a light and bright colour palette. Seeing the amount of grass and nature life in the scene emphasises the idea that this is a sustainable, eco-friendly, Utopian City.
When I applied the correct texture, I wasn't sure if it looked right. Because I was unsure, I experimented with adding a different texture instead. The top photo shown here is the correct texture that was labelled for the water distillation domes. Because these are supposed to hold water, I thought it would be good to see that that is the intended function. I thought the block colour was too opaque to represent a dome of water. Instead of using the intended texture, I applied a "glass" texture to the dome. This made sense as the dome is made of glass anyway. An issue I faced in this change of texture was that the water dome and the water itself were linked to the same texture. By changing the domes texture, the water also changed. This made the water look completely clear, which isn't very accurate to how water I should look. I plan on doing some further troubleshooting at a later date to fix this issue.
The creator of this model forgot to include part of the material sample for the leaf texture. The leaf texture was a PNG image, but Unreal won't recognise that the background shouldn't be included. To fix this issue with the leaves, I had to import this leaf texture as a jpeg into Adobe Photoshop. Once in there, I applied a black and white filter on top of the image. Then, I added the newly created black and white image to the "opacity" control button. Doing this change meant that Unreal Engine recognised the leaves as the sole texture and the background should be removed.
Audio creation
This is the first of the 3 tracks I aim to complete for the environments of my game. First, I tackled the Aztec era. From my mindmap, I identified Aztec sounds featured repeated sounds and used bongos/sit drums. I ticked both of these boxes by creating this piece of music, as foreground drum beats are featured with the drum melody repeating. I intend to loop this piece using Unreal Engines cue editor so that this music plays throughout the time spent in my scene.
problem solving: dll file compatibility
When installing an instrument pack to use in the creation of my Ancient Japan environment theme, the file was unrecognisable to me. The executable file to run was a .dll file, a file which contains instructions for other programs to do certain things (Fisher, 2021).
This error message appeared when I tried to run the file. Online sources weren't very helpful at first, with the majority of answers not addressing the issue I was having.
I tried installing this onto a different machine. When I was viewing it in my files, I saw that there was a text document within the folder. I hadn't seen this until now. The text document was mainly a promotion for the creators other work, but it also contained installation instructions. Once I followed these instructions, the dll file was able to run. The dll file had to be accessed through a program rather than on its own. If the executable file was put into the programs assigned library folders, then it will work. I did this on my home computer and put the file into Cakewalk.
Music production: Ancient japan
Line 1:
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For the first line of my Ancient Japan piece, I used a downloadable VST pack called DSK Asian Dreamz. Within this pack, 7 instruments are included. These are a Pipa, Pipa tremolo, Luan, Guzhen, Erhu & Ban di and 1 percussion kit (DSK releases Asian DreamZ, 2008). The specific instrument I used was a combination of a drum and a wooden clicker, both coming from the percussion pack. The line was composed as 1 singular drum beat, then a pause, followed by a 4 more drum beats, this time in quick succession. Next, I repeated that same line again after a longer pause, this time ending with a wooden clicker sound. This acted as the bassline.
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Line 2:
Next, I created a line using the Ban di instrument, a side blown bamboo flute from the Asian Dreamz pack. The line composed was 1 drawn out note, followed by 2 notes in ascending order, with the second note higher than the first. After a pause, a note that was higher pitched by 2 notes finished off the sequence. Directly after this, the sequence repeated. This line acted as an accompaniment.
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Line 3:
My 3rd line was played by a 3 stringed lute version of the Shamizen instrument. This was accessed through another downloaded pack, the Shamikoto pack. The line composed here is one note, followed by a double pause, then 3 notes in descending order. The 3 notes go from the higher note, then 2 notes below that, then one note below that. This sequence ends on the same note it started on. This acted as the lead melody in my piece.
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Line 4:
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My final line is played by a Crash cymbal, another instrument from the percussion pack of the Asian Dreamz VST. The line composed here is just the one note, played for 3 beats. The 3 beats can be described as an initial sound played (beat 1) followed by the echo of that (beats 2 & 3). This line acted as secondary accompaniment.
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Music production: Aztec
Line 1:
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The first line of my Aztec music track is played by a Bass drum, coming from the drum kit instrument pack (vst) that comes pre-installed on my chosen software, Cakewalk. Within this pack, there is a full drum kit with different presets available to apply to it to customize the sound to your liking. In my case, to get the rumbling drum beat, I chose the Grinder preset. The line that played was 2 hits of the drum, one after another. This acted as the accompanying line.
Line 2:
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The next line I created was using the Alto Flute instrument from the Orchestra pack. The line I made using this instrument was a 4 note rearranged downward scale. Beginning with the lowest note, then the highest note, and down from there. All of these notes were held for 4 beats each. The purpose of this line was to act as this tracks bassline.
Line 3:
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Using the Alto Flute again, I created a third and final line for the Aztec music. This third line featured 4 notes, all played at different tones and lengths. The first of these 4 is also the highest note, with a 4 note difference from the next note, which is played as the lowest note. From this point, the notes ascend, with this third note being 2 notes above the second. The last note is 1 note above the third. This line acted as the melody.
Music production: Utopian Future
Line 1:
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For the Utopian Future, I made use of another free VST from Cakewalk, the String pack. The pitch of these notes are shown with 3 different string instruments, the Bass, the Cello and the Violin. The preset I used for this particular piece was the Zenon preset, giving the notes a laser-like sound. This first line was the highest of the 3 lines. For track, I used 3 lines of the same note pattern, all at different octaves. This first line is the highest of these 3, starting in C3.
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Line 2:
This next line of notes is the exact same as line 1, only this time the notes are played in the middle of the 3 octaves, starting at a C4.
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Line 3:
This last line of my Utopian Future Music track is the lowest of the 3 octaves, Starting at a C5. With this line being the lowest, its possible to call this the bassline of my song. However, All of the lines of this specific piece blend together, so there's no defining role to each line.
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Foley recording
Using a Zoom recorder, I captured some Foley audio that I would then edit and place into my game. This included footsteps, environmental ambience and specific asset based sounds. Apart from the Ancient Japan sounds, all of these were recorded at college. While this did help with finding all the different surfaces and equipment to creating my sounds, the outdoor sounds created an issue of wind. After recording the sounds, I took them into Bandlab to trim them down, removing all of the portions that were unnecessary and, in some cases, where the wind is very audible. Some recordings had to be done twice if the wind was too strong.
Ancient japan
For my Ancient Japan environment, I aimed to capture a footstep sound effect for the gravel-like floor and a sound effect for the stream in the environment. In order to recreate the sounds of a water stream, I poured a bottle of water down my hand into a bathroom sink half full of water. The water would trickle off of my fingers, creating all of these different running noises. The original track was trimmed down to be much shorter, which allowed me to loop it much easier too. Next, I created the gravel footstep sounds. To do this, I used artificial stones that were in a jar. By pulling the stones against the side of the jar, they all crunched beneath my fingers. This light crunch gave the sound of a light gravel, seen within my Ancient Japan environment. I trimmed the track to just give me a single footstep sound, making it now usable within Unreal Engine
Aztec
When creating sounds for my Aztec environment, I wanted to include a footstep sound effect for both the stone floor of the temple and the wooden bridge that links the two buildings. I also included a sound effect to act as ambience within my scene. For the stone floor, I recorded myself walking in place on stone paving slabs. Originally, there was too much wind noise in the audio, so I had to record this sound effect twice. I've included the original sound file as well as the newly trimmed file. Next, I recorded the wooden footstep sounds. This was achieved by having me walk in place on a wooden bench. A lot of my steps differed in sound, so I chose the most fitting one for a wooden bridge sound and cut the rest of the sounds out. The final sound I recorded was of Aztec ambience. Aztec temples are usually created within a Jungle environment. So because of this, I recorded myself shaking a tree branch so all the leaved would rustle. This created the illusion that trees were rustling, which I would later add to my environment on a delayed loop. The wind was also an issue for this recording, but there were a few sections which were uninterrupted by wind, and the specific sound I ended up choosing from all of these sections was accurate enough to be used as Jungle trees rustling.
Utopian future
Finally, I set out to create my Utopian Future sounds. I needed to create multiple footstep sounds here, as the Utopian environment features two different types of walkable ground, grass and concrete. For the grass sound, I recorded myself walking in place on a soft patch of grass. I specifically looked for soft grass to walk on, as the context in this environment would be that it is well taken care of. Next, for the concrete footsteps, I recorded myself walking in place on a drivable strip of road at the college. On the place I walked on, I made sure to put loose bits of stone and grit beneath my feet, as this would help to emphasize the sound of walking along the concrete. Then, I did recordings for the Utopian water machinery (these are the distillation domes by the body of water). To do this, I wanted to take two sounds and use them together: one sound of water flowing and the other of machines whirring. Originally, I used the sound coming from pipes of a bathroom tap. Specifically, pipes that were covered by a wooden box. This box was an easy method of finding a sound that had some echo to it, as if I was recording in a tunnel or under a bridge. I wanted the water to sound like it was flowing deep inside the domes, so this echo effect helped with that. Now that I had the water flow sound captured, I then needed to find a sound that was similar to that of water based machinery. The audio of a toilet tank refilling after a flush was perfect for this scenario. The tank was acting as a box to reverberate the sound, similar to the wooden box with the tap recording earlier, so the echo was used in both sounds. Also, the sound of the pipes drawing water to refill the tank had that liquid mechanical sound I wanted. Finally, I took both of these sounds and placed them on 2 separate lines in Bandlab. I needed them to play together to act as the sound effect in my game, and this was the best way I thought to do that. The "water flow" sound was the water entering the dome, and the "water machinery" was the water being drawn from it.
Attenuation
So I could organize my sounds and music to their correct themes, I included an attenuation field within the audio blueprint. Attenuation is a sound node that allows for the selected sound file to play based on a set radius. I applied this tool to all of my sound files. Shown here is the example of how I applied attenuation to my Utopian environment. To help me with this process, I followed a YouTube tutorial that covers some different sound nodes and how to use them.
further environment building
(Symeou, 2017)
Now that my sounds were added to their respective game environments, I had to build up the environment itself. I started by activating the landscape editor, a tool in Unreal that allows you to create immersive outdoor terrain pieces (Engine, n.d.). This gave me a big open space to work with. Next, I scaled each of the environment builds up to their appropriate sizes compared to the player. Once I did that, I activated collision on all of the environments so moving around on them was possible. Finally, I built the grass floor of my landscape up so that the spaces looked more blended.
For my Aztec environment, I found that after scaling it up, this entry point was too small for my unreal character. Because I checked the "combine meshes" button when I imported this environment, it came into my scene as a full model, rather than lots of editable assets. Because I couldn't edit this doorway directly, I added some basic shapes into this space and textured them with some of the maps included with this environments folder. This made the tunnel look like it had collapsed on itself, so there's no way of getting through. This added change was an easy solution to my problem.
When adding collision to my Ancient Japan model, I found that while this did allow me to walk around the model, all of the different details on the floor and the cel-shaded outline meant that I kept getting stopped and maneuvering was difficult. To fix this problem, I made two planes that were shaped like the two parts of my model, placed them on top of the model and made them invisible while in gameplay. This meant that the player would actually be walking on the planes and not the model itself, but just wouldn't be able see them.
There was an issue when editing my Utopian Future model. Because of the model's large file size, it would be very demanding on the PC to make big changes to this model. Earlier in my project, importing this model took a few attempts, as Unreal Engine kept crashing, so I already knew there could be problems with this particular file. The original issue was that I was trying to import it as a skeletal mesh, as I felt some of the buildings needed to be edited slightly. This couldn't be done so I instead positioned the building at a distance where this wasn't visible to the player. Because the file was so large, applying complex collision to the model was just not possible. I attempted it twice, with both times resulting in Unreal Engine completely freezing with me unable to use it at all. Because of this, I had to work out a solution instead. What I planned to do instead was keep simple collision applied to the model, and just not walk around it in my demo. Instead, I would walk around the outside of it. That way, the sounds could be heard, while at the same time demonstrating a longer example of the attenuation applied to the sound files.
applying the footstep audio
For my footstep sounds, I had to implement a blueprint that essentially told Unreal Engine when to play the footstep sound, when not to play the sound and which sound to play, among other smaller details. To do this, I had to open the Unreal Engine character blueprint and put a new script in there that detailed all of the steps to take for the process of playing a certain audio cue when walking. In order to do this, I copied the steps to make this blueprint from a YouTube tutorial. This tutorial covered how to add first person footsteps without using a character mesh or animations.
One issue I would find with this was that, unlike the scene shown in this person's video, my game featured multiple environments and I would need a dynamic footstep system so that I could have different footstep sounds for different materials. Although this is touched on briefly at the end of the video, I was still unsure on how to accurately create this within a single blueprint without an animation. The method I came to on how to solve this problem is as follows: Record separate videos of me walking around my game environment for my final project. One video of me walking around the landscape, displaying the attenuation usage in my scene. Another video for each of my environments, where I walk around on those other models with the correct footstep audio applied.
(Aspland, 2021)