Creating the Abandoned (Zombie) Hospital

The process itself of creating the room was simple enough. I started out just blocking everything in the room in order to set up a simple visualization of what I wanted to do:

As well as implementing some very basic lighting:

it's already spooky

From there I started creating objects in Maya and color coding them so I can add in materials later:

And then gradually importing and scaling them all in:

Of the objects that I imported, only a few were from Turbosquid:

• Desktop Computer Set
• Phone
• Plant
• Office Chair

I edited many of the materials and created textures for the objects I imported. For example, the walls only use the basic_material that Unreal gives, but I edited it to have the poured concrete bump map in order to give the illusion that the color was painted on.

Here are some of the textures I created:

this is the texture used for the cover of one of the magazines, which I created in photoshop (all images used were, once again, royalty free)

the Auphrey decal on the wall

the bump map that for the carpet that I made in CrazyBump (once again, bless that program)

For the paintings, I was surprised to find royalty-free photos that I could use that were high quality. Even though they're public domain, I'd feel bad if I didn't provide a link to them:

• Photo 1
• Photo 2
• Photo 3

Creating the blueprints was a matter of trial and error, as well as assigning the matinees to them.

the coding for the triggering of the lights

the coding for the door cutscene, which combines stepping into a trigger and pressing the "f" key to activate the cinematic

Creating the various lights, sounds, and triggers (as well as the additional post-processing volumes) makes for a cluttered scene in the editor:

This is the tutorial that I found that taught me how to add in decals to the scene and graciously provided me with free blood decals to use:

For the sounds, they look a little something like this:

the beginning of the Emergency Broadcast, which uses an EAS beep sound effect I downloaded and the edited text-to-speech file I created online

the ambience I made. I used 5 different sound effects for this. A ton of editing was done to the pitches, tempos, and speed of the audio clips.

A LINK to the text-to-speech website I used.

And here is a list of the sounds I used for the level:

• EAS Beep [The TV Broadcast]
• Wind Blowing [Ambience]
• Zen Temple Bell [Ambience]
• Ting [Ambience]
• AM Radio Tuning [Ambience]
• Tension Wood Stress [For the Door]
• Bounce [For the door when it hits the ground]

Creating the sounds for the scene was surprisingly fun.

With all those elements together, I was able to create something as nice as this:

Progress on Office

As of today, I have created the main models for the reception area of my zombie-infested hospital room, as well as placed down the basic particle system and blocked out the rest of the room.

the blocked out room

The desks were a pain to make, but in the end I am satisfied with how the model turned out. Creating them was a large process of creating edge loops and extruding faces. As of now I've been using Maya's automatic unwrapping feature for the UVs. This will make it easier for me to apply materials through Unreal.

The filing cabinets are separate from the desk itself, and can be pulled out of their slots. I plan on adding in files and papers once I finish with the rest of the furniture.

The cabinets on the wall are almost the same, except that the doors are separated in maya instead of Unreal. I may change this later, but for now it's a low-priority task.

I am currently working on a hospital chair, which I intend to be a bit higher poly and more rounded than the cabinets and desk. I'm doing this for the sake of adding in smoother curves.

Now that I've gotten the hang of modeling for Unreal, things should go by faster.

A fog and particle system are in place to give the room that extra "this is infested with zombies" feeling. I'm debating on whether to add in more lights (like I originally intended) or keep it as is, since the atmosphere is already great in my opinion.

the models are color coded to show me where different materials can be applied

In Maya I'm using the human model as a reference for size (ignore the chair as I haven't scaled it yet). This has proven to be immensely useful for me, though a discrepancy remains between the scaling of Unreal objects and Maya objects for whatever reason (and yes, I did scale things as the tutorial for maya/unreal scaling instructed).


Overall, in one day of modeling I have managed to finish some of the largest set pieces of the room (the desk and cabinets). Smaller set pieces (like cups, magazines, etc) will no doubt be much easier (and quicker) to make.

After I finish the chair model, I plan on moving towards creating the table, the television, and the potted plants. I expect that the plants will be a challenge given the leaves, but we will see.

UE4: Blueprint Tutorial Level

I will admit, I put in a lot of extra time in this level just to add something cool to it. I'm really happy with it though.

And here's a closer look at the two main players of this scene (coding wise), which was the level blueprint to make the doors open (which used a ton of matinees) and the monitor blueprint to get everything started.

this is used to open the door and make the alarm light spin

these set up how the monitor handles the player (press F when hitting the trigger area and the door activates)

And some more screenshots:

I felt the room was too dark so I added in a few more lights to the side

the [f] sits nicely on top of the monitor when you get close to it

The lights turn green and the door opens. Getting this to (semi) work was both frustrating and rewarding

the monitor area, which I also felt was way too dark

UE4: Matinee Building (and making doors open)

And here is a closer look at the web of programming in the level:

this starts the opening cinematic

these open and close the elevator doors, depending on where you're standing

and this mess controls if the elevator goes up or down, depending on whether or not you mark the variable "elevator topside" (ie if the elevator is on the second floor) as true or not

UE4: A Cave Story

Here is a video detailing how I put together the cave for the Unreal Engine tutorial.

One thing that I forgot to mention in the tutorial (and will address below) was the implementation of sound, which, like lighting, is fairly easy.

I place the cave wind sound near the cave-in area, just to give the idea that there is something behind all that rubble, such as a tunnel

Similar to spotlights, sound nodes can be edited in their intensity and their range. For sound this is found in the Attenuation bar:

There's also falloff, which reduces the sound as you walk away from the source,

Basically once you enter the cave, you begin hearing the wind.


Playing around with this level was really fun, aside from the few bugs I experienced when it came to player movement (which was solve by changing the yaw and pitch values).

UE4: Making a Room and a Landscape

Here's a link to the process I took to make the well: the Making of a Well

And here are some shots of the level:

trees were purposely scaled down the further away they were, just to give the illusion of distance

the ever so mysterious well

Dustbowl

Here's the promised post about the edited Dust Storm video. Unfortunately the lag was a little too high with the recording software, but the basic gist of it all was...

....that I used a ridiculous amount of edited particle effects!


I placed some colored point lights here and there to give the illusion that there's more to the inferno than what's actually there.

Most of the steam was resized and tilted on their sides to give that duststorm feel. The dark lighting ensured that they wouldn't be a non-dusty white/grey.

I also increased the time dilation to make it seem as if the windspeed was ridiculous and, well, stormy.

A similar thing was done for the fire in terms of sizing.

And it was all done in my free time to give you this:

the fields of perdition for barrels, apparently

I swear I was just going for a simple duststorm at first (before I discovered the fire particle effects.