Experiment 2 Final Submission

Final Images

CryEngine Files and 3DS Files

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/geuppfjazm0rvek/I7cnN9JWGm

Video Clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAD_OrO3zdc&feature=youtu.be

Update

Strategy

My strategy for the decay of my building, is that after 100 years without any human interaction, mother nature will have almost completely taken back the entire planet.

Firstly the destruction of the Rudin House. It is made almost completely of reinforced concrete. This will last a long time, but eventually, water will corrode it, and plants will break it apart. The parts to be first affected will likely be those closest to the ground, so the 4 support columns and the stairs will be the first to go. Also, once one column breaks, the building will lose around 20% of its support, and so, with the other 80% support being weak as well, the whole thing will come down and break most of it apart.

There is also the wood and glass materials of the house to consider. In my opinion, wood and glass will not last 100 years, the wood will fall apart and be eaten by termites or something similar, and the glass will break apart and be ground into dust long before the structure gives way.

Once this has occured, with the building being even closer to the ground, mother nature will take hold. Moss will likely grow in great quantities, bushes will grow in corners where sedement builds up from rain, and trees will grow from the ground, through any cavities in the building.

Week 3 Lecture Reflection

This weeks lecture was on Abandonment. In it we looked at the effect that nature can have on man-made structures in short time spans, such as 5 or less years. To display this Russell showed us the effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, Kolmanskop in Namibia (and the effects of sand) and Prypiat, Ukraine (and what a city would look like after nuclear waste exposure). As well we looked at images from artists impressions of the world after humans.

These examples help to visualise the first steps in the deterioration of buildings after a few short years from weather, and then what it would look like after nature takes back its hold. This will help me with the Rudin House as it is of basic materials and in a very soft landscape with mostly grass surrounding it.

Week 3 - Rayfire Test

EXP 2 Week 2 Lecture Reflection

In this weeks lecture we were shown a few select materials - that related to the buildings we will be using in EXP 2 - and how they act after given up for lost by humans. Interesting imagines were from the earthquakes in NZ and how bricks react to it compared to timber - the bricks collapsed quite easily, as they are more rigid whereas the wood bent under the pressures exerted on it. We also looked at steel corroding, especially abandoned ships next to or in the sea - they had practically disappeared in less than 30 years. Some even had completely new ecosystems growing on them.

Doing Rudins House, the material I am interested in is concrete, which lasts well over time, however it does get stained by weather effects quite quickly.

EXP 2 Week 2 Materials

Reinforced Concrete

A composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are counteracted by the inclusion of a high tensile strength reinforcement, usually steel reinforcement bars (rebars) embedded in the concrete before it sets. The concrete is usually pre-stressed to improve the behaviour of the structure under working loads.

The rebars have to be well bonded to the concrete and act well under thermal pressures (ie. don't expand and contract to much), and resist corrosion. Also, the thermal expansion of concrete is similar to that of steel, eliminating large amounts of internal stress.

Chemicals within the cement paste used in the concrete react with the steel to create a passivating film on the surface of the steel making it more resistant to corrosion.

How it Corrodes:

• Mechanical Failure - cracking allowing corrosive elements into the structure, poor design.
• Carbonation - carbon dioxide attacking rebars too close to the concrete surface.
• Chlorides - salts from salt water (sea) or from chlorinated water in concrete mix (now disused)

Glass

Glass used in architecture is soda-lime glass, made up of 75% silicon dioxide, sodium oxide, lime and several minor additives. It is melted in gas fired units, homogenized and refined (bubbles removed), then formed. For windows, the float glass process is used - molten glass is floated on a molten metal surface. The top surfaces are then subjected to nitrogen under pressure to obtain a polished finish. It is finally annealed to remove stresses.

Glass is quite corrosion resistant. Only a few chemicals actually attack glass - hydrofluoric acid, concentrated phosphoric acid, hot concentrated alkali solutions and super heated water. However, in architecture, these acids do not usually come into contact with glass.

The most common way glass corrodes is by water. Alkali ions in the glass are extracted by hydrogen in water, leaving a silica-rich layer on the surface of the glass. More and more pH will touch the glass, rapidly increasing the corrosion process.


Timber

The making of timber is a simple process. Trees are felled, transported to a saw mill and cut into pieces of timber.

Timber is widely used in construction as it is one of the few natural building materials. It is renewable, low in production cost, a good insulator, readily available and easy to work.

However, wood destroys easily, mainly from fungal effects and being eaten by insects, mainly termites. Termites do not have a huge effect on timber structures at the moment, but without people to keep termites away from buildings, termites could eat an entire timber structure within a year. Timber is also susceptible to fire. Usually timber is the first material to corrode in a building, however it does stand well against things such as earthquakes.

Week 2 Texture Export

Had a bit of trouble exporting a few shapes, this is an error message about degenerate shapes at x,y,z location. However, I checked the first set of coordinates and there was no vertice there...

I did manage to export this piece though. The roof is concrete, floor bricks, and windows wood. 3DS made the textures look quite big but when exported to CryEngine, they tiled very small, so i will have to play around with the UV map settings.

EXP 2 Week 1 Lecture Reflection

This week we were introduced to the theme of Life After People. Russell showed us how man made environments would react to the re-emergence of nature through clips from the discovery channel etc. One of the most interesting things learnt was the way in which different materials would decay over time, especially when multiple materials are used in one piece of structure, such as chrome plated steel. Although this won't have a huge effect on my work on the Rudin House as it's made mostly of reinforced concrete.

Experiment 1 Final Submission

Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeG_HMYThPE&feature=youtu.be

-music-

"We Built Our Own World" - Hans Zimmer

Note: Youtube has removed all audio from this upload, so I have uploaded the trailer to dropbox:

CryEngine Files

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zrpzq50u4rdve1y/Q8ZQcJFJ9-?m

Strategy Statement

http://andysbenv2423-2013.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/week-5-strategy.html

5 CryEngine Screenshots

My letter and number are D6.

Week 5 Strategy

My strategy for concealing the letters and numbers within my level will start at the micro scale and work up toward the macro. However, this will not coincide with the subliminal nature of any of my reveals. For instance, I may have a macro scale reveal, which is subliminal. Within the trailer there will be obvious (non-subliminal) and subliminal reveals.

The Memorial Block - The first combination of D6 will come up on a memorial block, and it will simply have D6 stamped on to it. This is a small reveal but quite an obvious one.

The Graffiti - The second combination will be spray painted onto the wall of the shed at the top of a hill among other graffiti tags. It will be clear to see only if you know what you're looking for.

The Cave Rocks - This will be a set of rocks that, when seen from a certain perspective, will reveal the combination of D6. This is a macro, yet subliminal reveal, as the combination can only be made out from a certain angle.

Dried Blood - The letter and number D6 will be written on the wall of an enter-able house in blood, and will flash up onto the wall with a light projector through the use of a delay timer in a flowgraph. This will make it a mid-level, yet un-subliminal reveal, as once projected it will be easy to make out.

Cliff and Castle - My final combination is both the biggest and possibly most subliminal. The D6 will be made up of a rock formation on a cliff and the broken walls of a castle, sitting 100 or so metres apart, which can only be made out from 1 point in the level.

Reflection

In the lecture we were shown how artists have created words/letters/numbers out of the environment, and how previous students hid their letter/number combination.
My personal favourite was the ability to project a decal onto an entity.

Week 4

Original Sky

Original Time of Day Settings

New Sky Light

Small Amount of Editing

More Editing

Final

Final Time of Day Settings 1

JMW Turner's Evening Star

Original

New Sky

Mount Everest Image

Original

Post Editing

 Time of Day Settings

Week 4 Lecture Reflection

The sublime is a very interesting topic, especially recently. As S. Morley stated in "The Sublime", we no longer believe in eternal essences, or great beings who shape our lives, such as God, yet when we see something that is sublime, especially a landscape, we can't help but think that something bigger than us has created it, the "other".

In our CryEngine work we have to reproduce this sublime sense on a, at least in my case, much smaller scale. My island would be probably no more than 500 metres by 1km, yet what we perceive as sublime in our world is generally kilometres in size.

Week 3 Lecture Reflection

An interesting observation made in this weeks lecture was the fact that many of these paintings from the late 18th - 19th century have "created" landscapes - unreal landscapes - which really shocked me as I always thought "it'd be cool to go to these places and just sit and look and the awesome landscape." Now, however, I realise that I can't as they don't exist - a bit depressing.

We are also doing the same with our CryEngine work, as we create these picturesque and sublime landscapes that can never be truly visited and experienced.

Week 2 Lecture Reflection

In this weeks lecture we had a look at the concept of "Real vs Unreal", and how humanity is blurring those lines, with artwork leading the way. A particular piece interested me by Eric Testroete and his "Papercraft Self Portrait." Eric was able to reproduce his face from a bare few polygons and the relationship between the paper face and the real face was fascinating.

This links into our own work as we try to replicate real places and artwork of real places using a computer program, in a generated world - an unreal world.

Week 2 Independent Study - Custom textures

Custom texture bump map

Custom texture diffuse

Images of custom texture in CryEngine environment. Note, not my actual environment, temporary for this work piece.

Week 3

Claude Lorrain

Humphrey Repton

JMW Turner

Liu Garden

William Gidlin

Week 2

Sublime

Scene

Calm

Miniscule

Serenity

Lecture vs Own work

The student work we saw in the lecture had an immense amount of detail put into it, contrasted with the work I did last semester for ARCH1101. Clearly much more time must be sunk into CryEngine to achieve good results.

Week 1 Independent Study

"Customising the Editor"

1. You can change the skin colour of the Editor by clicking the "Skin" tab in the "View" rollout bar.
2. 
   

"Viewports"

1. Wireframe mode (can be shown using F3)
2. Safe Frame mode. This will lock the viewport's aspect ratio if you're making a video with a certain aspect ratio, ie. If making a video in 720p, it will lock the viewport to 1280 x 720
3. In the Top, Front or Left views.

"User Interface Panels - Overview"

1. Holding Alt+Middle Mouse Button will pivot the viewport around the centre point.
2. The 1, 2 and 3 buttons switch between the "Move", "Rotate" and "Scale" tools respectively.
3. Holding down space will show the name of every object in the Level in the viewport.
4. Ctrl+1/2/3/4 will constrain movements to "Follow Terrain", "XY Axis", "X Axis" and "Y Axis" respectively.
5. Pressing the F3 button will change the viewport to wireframe mode.

Sandbox UI 10 Tips and Tricks

1. The 1,2 and 3 buttons switch between the "Select and Move", "Rotate" and "Scale" tools respectively.
2. The lock selection button locks in the currently selected entities so that only they may be used and edited.
3. The "Select All' drop down menu allows you to control which types of selections you can make at any time ie. only brushes, only entities, only prefabs.
4. The "Snap to Grid" tool allows you to snap an objects movement to a grid of defined size. For example, moving a house 1 metre at a time on the X, Y or Z axis.
5. AI/Physics allows you to experience the game engine working while still being able to edit the Level.
6. Goto position allows you to jump to an exact coordinate in the level when entered.
7. You can change the skin colour of the editor by going to the "Skins" rollout in the "View" tab.
8. Holding down space shows you the name of all objects and entities in your Level.
9. By going to the View Settings in the "RollupBar", you can hide objects in your level by category, ie. Brushes, Decals or Entities.
10. Holding down Alt and the middle mouse button allows you to rotate the view around the centre of your screen, holding the focus point in the middle.

Sandbox Folder Structure

5 things I've learned about the Sandbox folder structure:

1. I can create new config files to modify the way I CryEngine works for me.
2. The Settings Manager (SettingsMgr.exe) can detect the resource compiler (rc.exe) and its status.
3. The RC compiles your CryTIF textures into DDS textures that can then be exported.
4. I can install plugins for 3DS Max, Maya and Photoshop which allows me to import entities from these programs into the CryEngine Editor.
5. I can install a CryEngine Tool Bar in 3DS Max from the Cryengine folder.