FMP: Dairly Update 22/23

Yesterday (Sat) I worked on getting the doors to open when the player goes near. After some trial and error one set of doors was successfully opened! Now that I understand the process more I'll be able to work on the other doors later.

Now that's sorted I need to work on getting the environment to look how I want it- this includes texture and lighting. Today (Sun) I gained access to an empty ward in the Hospital and was able to snap some images of the area for texture. The images I got were then edited in Photoshop so they would be flat enough to use on the walls etc.

Because the camera sort of curves the picture it's difficult to get a perfectly flat image, so to step past this issue the images were cropped in Photoshop then stretched in various places to make them appear more flat.
This was a fairly simple job for some textures and quite tedious for others.

Most of the textures were given a basic PS effect (such as Fresco or Angled Strokes) to give them a more dark, blurred or distant appearance. After that the Brightness/Contrast was lowered to try and remove as much of the natural lighting from the photos (this is so it doesn't look too confusing when the in-game lighting created shadows on the doors, etc.) E.g: Blender would create a shadow on the wall texture, but if I left the contrast as it was in the original photo, there would be two different kinds of shading on that texture.

I tried out other filters and effects to make things seems more creepy, like this change of contrast and brightness which gave off a red cloudy effect on the lower half of the door. It would have probably looked cool, but I'm going for more subtle horror rather than a full on 'this is definitely a haunted area' type feel.

There were other parts of the walls I clipped off to use on the main door so it stands out a bit more from the other two in that corridor. I took a picture of a fire exit door and the sign above it so the player can guess that door is the next one to go through (not that they'd be able to get through the other doors anyway. They won't be programmed to open and will have objects blocking the area so there's less chance of glitching out)

Everything was pretty much ready to be layed over the models in Blender, however I forgot to gather texture for the stairs.. I could use my own stairs or the ones at college, but being realistic to time and knowing that part of the game would be especially dark so you wouldn't really see it anyway, I found this picture of some stairs online. http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/683700

Remembering the change 3 rule to avoid copyright issues, I cropped it, added an effect, played around with the contrast and brightness then rotated. I can always change this if it was seen as an issue.

Using the image option in the texture menu I uploaded the photos as and wrapped the models on the texture as a UVimage. Each area was split up in 1 to 5 parts, so depending on the area the texture was placed on separately and levelled out by eye.

I ran into a bit of a problem with the texture. For some reason it wasn't appearing in play mode, which is no good. I am seeking out a solution to this problem, but for now I have an evaluation to write, so I will pick this up again tomorrow.