Assignment: Crash Site
This assignment was for me to create a playable environment that included destructible objects, animated objects, animated textures, particles and cinematic cameras within the UDK engine. Theme could be anything, so I decided upon creating a destroyed military outpost on some kind of alien-attack battlefront.
The terrain needed to have some water in it, so I figured id build the base as if it were positioned on the water's edge. I sculpted the land to hide most of the edges of the map from view. then threw in a trench and a water layer. For the bulk of the objects, I used UDK's packaged content that I felt worked well together, sticking to industrial concrete and metal objects to give it a universal feel. It helped that most of the pieces I found also had damaged variants or had some wear and tear on them already. I set up all of the walls in the base to be destructible, then went through and added broken variants of the static meshes in order to give it a damaged feel. Liking a large metal disk object, I used it for the crashed alien vessel and threw it into the base, adding detail at the wreck point to make it fit better.
All over the terrain we needed to use plants created in UDK's treemaker program packaged with the kit, so I made a basic tree and spread it through the level with some of the included trees in the program to add variety. Across the water I put my own object required for the assignment; a large artillery cannon animated to look like it were firing. I threw in the particle system; a smoke effect I made that I set up at the cannon's barrel and along the wrecked space craft. Needing a way across to the gun now, I thought a moving platform would work best. Set up to follow a path and activate on player contact, it did the job. Last details called for a camera cinematic view that was player activated, so I made one that helped direct the player to the moving platform that would activate when the player entered the area.
I was happy with the results of this assignment, being able to create a believable crash site with a limited amount of assets and then be able to go through that environment in the game was fun. It was really easy to get into details with it, trying to find ways to make it look more damaged.
The terrain needed to have some water in it, so I figured id build the base as if it were positioned on the water's edge. I sculpted the land to hide most of the edges of the map from view. then threw in a trench and a water layer. For the bulk of the objects, I used UDK's packaged content that I felt worked well together, sticking to industrial concrete and metal objects to give it a universal feel. It helped that most of the pieces I found also had damaged variants or had some wear and tear on them already. I set up all of the walls in the base to be destructible, then went through and added broken variants of the static meshes in order to give it a damaged feel. Liking a large metal disk object, I used it for the crashed alien vessel and threw it into the base, adding detail at the wreck point to make it fit better.
All over the terrain we needed to use plants created in UDK's treemaker program packaged with the kit, so I made a basic tree and spread it through the level with some of the included trees in the program to add variety. Across the water I put my own object required for the assignment; a large artillery cannon animated to look like it were firing. I threw in the particle system; a smoke effect I made that I set up at the cannon's barrel and along the wrecked space craft. Needing a way across to the gun now, I thought a moving platform would work best. Set up to follow a path and activate on player contact, it did the job. Last details called for a camera cinematic view that was player activated, so I made one that helped direct the player to the moving platform that would activate when the player entered the area.
I was happy with the results of this assignment, being able to create a believable crash site with a limited amount of assets and then be able to go through that environment in the game was fun. It was really easy to get into details with it, trying to find ways to make it look more damaged.