It has been 2 weeks since my last FYP post, and things are alright I suppose, not the best it could be, but not the worst either. Lets start with my mistakes, due to an error I noticed last time I posted where the asset list is compiled before the completion of the flora and fauna research, I pushed back the foliage asset list by 2/3 weeks, thus pushing back production by 2/3 weeks, so this is the week I start production with any luck...but I'm also tiny bit behind.

• The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and what is known about it 
  

Babylon was one of the most powerful empires of the middles east before the birth of Christ, and there lies one of the seven wonders of the world, The hanging gardens of Babylon.  Nebachenezer II who ruled over the empire from 810BC to 738BC, and in that time he constructed the hanging gardens for his wife, Amytis of Media,  who was home sick for the lush greenery and mountains of the home land. It was built for her around 601 BC, the wife (Amytis of Media) is from Media/Medes of the Median Empire, Babylon is in Median Empire. The structure of the Hanging gardens of Babylon were 400feet x 400feet x 80/320feet. Persia conquered Babylon in 539BC. According to the British museum and a lot of renditions of Babylon, the structure used arcs for doorways and on the top used bricks to make the shape of triangle that works as a protective rail? they were also fond of the colour blue and gold for their art. This is pretty much the cliff notes of everything I read that I  found relevant.

• Gather Artistic renditions of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

There are many artist who have re imagined the hanging gardens, and for this project, I will be looking at how they think it looked like and add my own something to it, I have loads, but if I post them all, it will make this post ludicrously long, so here are a few of the once I like:

and some more picture here, here and here.

• Investigate the flora and fauna of that geographical area for accuracy within the environment

This I'm a bit behind in, I still need to do a lot of reading on the subject before I can compile a list with confidence.

• Collect research on how foliage are modelled

For the most part, there are plenty of tutorials and forum post on this subject, with any luck, I can utilize them all and save my self from making mistakes. here are a few of them that are on Polycount (1) (2).

• How to modular design and environment

This is something I learned a while back, I tried to use it in practice once, but I never really got far in the project, it was referred to in the Polycount noob challenge threads, a tutorial by Chris Albeluhm, polycount also have a plethora of technical talk FAQ for environment modelling that is extremely useful, some might be dated, but it is a forum that constantly growing.

• 2d/3D concept art

This part is hard, being out of practice for several years, getting back into drawing is not as easy as I hoped, maybe I’m over thinking things, but nothing it coming out right, so for now, I’m “learning” the fundamental art stills from ctrl paint. It is useful but it is also taking longer than anticipated, this most likely will slow down my production,  the longer it takes me to create a concept, the longer it will be before I start production for the modular environment pieces. But 2D concept is not the only option, there are also 3d programs, I could experiment with shapes in 3ds max, UDK or even google sketchup.

• 3D modelling

Considering the parameters of this project being able to go the direction of high poly beauty render or an in-game walk-through, I might just aim from the start to make all my assets DX11 compatible, this means creating all assets with very equal topology and a high map that can be used for parallax/displacement map. I could aim the project a bit in the direction of next gen for in game, although as it stands, there is no game engine that supports the advanced material layers or physical based rendering shader that is available for the public. There are some people working on a custom lighting material which mimics physical based rendering, but it’s nowhere near the quality shown in professional engines such as the fox engine using it for MGSV. And also by creating a model with good topology, if the projects goes into the game engine, I can always use "simplygon" that is in UDK to make the models meet the standards of “current gen”, with the low poly, the level of details (which to date I still don’t know how to do, I know how to model the 3 different levels, but how do I get it to read off the same texture map and have the exact same UV unwrap on all 3???)

• Sculpting

For this, I just look into the areas I went over in the last post (Zbrush Workshop) (Digital tutor) (Eat 3D) (Eat 3D) (Eat 3D), but also, look in forums to see the standard which the industry makes the high poly models and sculpts at, take Gears of war on Zbrush central, it is some amazing work! and I hope I can reach that standard

• Texturing

There are 3 tutorials that I have my eyes on that could help me out with texturing, they are nDo2 in 3Dmotive, dDo on 3Dmotive, and if I take it in the direction of game engine (which I really really want to) Advance mesh painting also on 3Dmotive, these are my current guide as to how to tackle the challenges ahead, but also the creating foliage for UDK tutorial shows a good way to texture foliage and not have any artifacting at the edges of the UV's by using Gaussian blur. All useful and hopefully I can try them all out!

Based on the size of the structure, it might be cool to add the Babylonian tree of life, as some of the artistic renditions shows (in the links that shows further compilations), there is a large tree on the roof, so maybe in my design I will do that, or make the tree of life large and tall that he structure is built around it. there is still a lot of data to go through and potentially gather more before anything will be set in stone (lol).

I played around in UDK using the pre existing assets and BSP, and this is what came out

As I'm not great with UDK, I learned that using BSP to "model" is a baaaaaaaaaaaaaad idea! even when I combine multiple to make a "prefab" toward the end, it flat out crashed UDK, so yeah, in the future when I feel like experimenting in 3D, I will use 3Ds max or Google Sketchup. I'm glad it crashed, it was a boring shape, I need to make it more spectacular, which is why I need to focus more on the 2D concept, COME ARTISTIC SKILLS, AWAKEN!!!...nope, nothing happened, I still suck :(

• Extra detail breakdown

This is about making a list of potential things that you can find around those times, but I also decided to break the convention and add middle eastern esthetics potentially before their time just to make the work more aesthetically pleasing to look at, otherwise brown walls and green foliage would be pretty boring. After Persia took control, the silk road existed, so I'm trying to see if it had existed before that time in a smaller scale, and if it's possible to have more foreign things in that time frame. As it stands, this is what I think could work:

1. plant pots
2. Vase
3. lanterns
4. waterfall/stream
5. carpets
6. boats for the river by the gardens
   
7. pillows
8. curtains
9. metal plate
10. tea/coffee pot and small cups

The objective here is to add diversity to an otherwise homogenous environment, this is far from finalized, but it's a start to better look into things. in the end however, the extra details are not as crucial to this project as the actual modular environment pieces or the foliage.

• Foliage assets list

The originally deadline for this was made in error, as this should be the follow up step to the flora and fauna research, I am yet to do this, so yeah, here is a milestone I am yet to keep! But it cannot be any later than this month, simply because the asset list for this project will be a bit too much if I leave it too late

So there you can it, 2 weeks worth of moderate research compiled in 1 post, I do need to work on my reference and sources before I lose where I got the info from, and some areas I need to finish/go into further detail, while I don't plan on creating a historically accurate representation of the Hanging Gardens, I do however want to carry it's spirit and art into my design.

Tomorrow is the 11th, so it's my bday, I'll be taking things easy on the FYP front for a day or 2, and the full-time carer side, there are no holidays!

So outside of my FYP, I'm doing another module, it is Audio for Computer Games, it's a very fascinating modules that certainly opens my eyes to another side of game production that I never really thought about, so I'm glad I'm doing it! It means I can add another "skill" to my skill sets in the footer.

ANYWAY, next week is week 7! aside from being shocked that it is already week 7, and have to do stuff to show my current progress...yeah, there isn't much of that, I've chosen my footage and have done the breakdown, but I haven't started on the recording side of things, so I hope to start that side next week. Since I'm a bit disorganized, I'll post my progress here, so it can stare me in the face and remind me that it needs doing, so here are the modules criteria broken down:

1. A 1,200 word written assignment weighing at 40% of my over all marks for this module
2. 3 practical assignments that will result in 60% of my over all marks

•   20% will be for a 1 minute FMV (full motion video)
•   40% will be for 2 separate 1 minute in-game footage

So right off the bat, scary stuff! Between having to make 3 one minute videos full of Folly, FX, Dialogue, and ambiance, not to mention a written assignment that is worth 40% but with a word limit of only 1,200, it is scary! will I be able to explain things in detail and cover all the points I need to get across?

So for now I will focus on the practical, I have chosen my 3 clips, for the FMV I'm going to use Batman Begins. For the in-game I will use Dead Space and Infinity Blade. Being a full-time carer puts me at a disadvantage and being a commuting students piles on to that, so when I chose the clips I chose ones that would not have too much dialogue. For Batman there are 3 scenes that I think could work for me, Batman's drug bust ( 00:58:05-1:00:05), his interrogation in the rain (01:11:36-1:12:38) and the final battle with Ra's Al Ghul (01:56:07-01:59:40). One of my in-game footage will be from dead space, the reason I chose dead space is because it's futuristic space with "guns", and being a horror game I can try and experiment with how Japanese horror uses tone silence and sharp piano chords, not sure if it will work out, but hey, that's why it's an experiment. The other in-game footage will be from infinity blade, an iOS game, it is set in medieval times and being an iOS game means I need to test around with the lowest level, so everything can be heard on mobile.

In the end my 3 chosen clips ranges from contemporary, sci-fi, and medieval, so it should cover a wide range of sounds to create, so here is a list of potential sounds I need to record:

So there is my starting list, not sure if I covered enough sounds samples that I need to collect, but at the same time, this is for a minute of video prior to any mixing such as panning, levels and other stuff, so am I trying to record too much? and even when I finish with the recording, I still need to learn how to use Adobe Audition to be able to edit, mix, and synthesize the sound clips to be able to use, so it will be a long road ahead, and the scary part is, IT'S ALREADY WEEK 7!!! where does the time go!