The due date is coming up in a week. I think my team has been following the schedule very well. For me, I have less pressure now because the major problem in importing the materials into Crysis has been solved. My next tasks are to create interactivity for the external environment and prepare for PowerPoint presentation. For the interactivity part, I am planning to add AI into the people and vehicles. I am thinking of creating camels instead of vehicles in order to give a sense of desert, but firstly, I need to find some research and learn how AI works in Crysis.
After I got 21 groups of furniture, I had to rearrange the placement of furniture in Crysis. I found that it is very difficult to organise an object in Crysis, especially within the building. Sometimes, when we drag an object from Brush toolbar, we see the origin point of an object inside the building, but the object is actually outside. Crysis tools somehow make it very hard for us to control an object. However, with the amount of time spent on rearranging furniture, I completed the furnished model finally.
Figure 1: View through the window showing Lighting and Fitting
Today, Wilson passed me the final model with all furniture and accessories in a good layout, but unfortunately I could not export them at once. There are some errors; the furniture does not appear in the Crysis because some furniture cannot import which effects in the disappearance of overall furniture. What I have done was I applied textures to each element in SketchUp and tested exporting a small group of furniture. When the problem occurs, I tried to export a single element in order to see which element causes the problem, and then delete it. I spent quite amount of time to repeat the steps to each group. At the end, I have come up with 21 groups of furniture.
Figure 1: The Furnished Building Model in Revit
Figure 2: A Group of Kitchen Equipments in SketchUp
Figure 3: Groups of Furniture inside the Brush Toolbar
After testing inside the game, we have just realised that we need to take out all the doors and windows in order to make them interactivity because they are seen to be only a solid object constrained to the building.We are planning to make them openable and also breakable. Thus, I have to remove all the doors and windows in SketchUp, import and reassign all materials again. I found that once I have repeated the process for many times, it becomes easier and takes less time than before.
Figure 1: The Textured Model without Windows and Doors
While waiting for the furniture and all accessories, I have searched for the texture images and tested to the building. The standard materials being used are stone, wood, and glass. I chose the textures that can evoke a sense of mystery and anticipation as the building is underground. Once the material problem has been solved, the process seems to be smooth and flow.
Figure 1: “WellCity” – OriginalBuilding
Figure 2: “WellCity” – The Textured Model in SketchUp
Figure 3: “WellCity” – The ExteriorBuilding (in Crysis)
Figure 4: “WellCity” – The InteriorBuilding (in Crysis)
Finally, we solved the material problem. I wish I could find this forum earlier, http://www.crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=35126&hilight=solid+tutorial. This solves the entire material problem that we have got. Thanks for my teammates, especially Wilson, who always help me finding the useful information.
Figure 1: Material Solution - From Crymod Forum
Since SketchUp could successfully export the whole model to Crysis in the first assignment, I decided to use SketchUp as a tool for applying materials to the building because it is quite easy and convenient to use. I have combined all the methods and solutions as the following steps;
REVIT
- Create the model
- Export the model in DWG file
SKETCHUP (Credit to Amorilia, Seith, and Zapwizard from Crymod)
-Texture the model using proper sized textures. - Powers of 2 (e.g. 64x64, 128x128, 512x512, etc.)
-Open the "Model info" and go to statistics, cllick "Purge unused"
-Export the model to using "Export to Google Earth" (Not upload to 3D Warehouse)
-Rename the .KMZ to .ZIP
-Unzip the files
-Goto /Model and right click on the model and convert it to a .CGF
-Move the material files from the /images folder to the same folder as the .CGF
-Open all the materials and save them as .DDS using Paint.Net or similar
CRYSIS EDITOR (Credit to MaDDaz, Duruk, and Narumara from Crymod)
-Open SandBox2 and import the model. - Put the whole unzipped folder into C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Game\Objects, and then find your object in the RollupBar using the "Brush" button under the "Browser" section.
-Open the model's texture file in the material editor
-Replace the .JPG links to point to the proper .DDS files
** - Right click a list of materials in Material Editor
Today, we had a chance to discuss about group and team psychology with our guest, Tom Denson. I think this topic is very interesting as it involves the understanding of human mental functions and behaviors. He mentioned about conformity in team decision as how members of a group will change their behaviors, views and attitudes to fit the views of the group. I agree that making group decision is more difficult than individual one. Sometimes, when we need to solve a difficult problem, we automatically compare and adapt our answer to the fellow members. Personally, I sometimes lost my ideas and opinion when making a group decision. However, a successful decision also depends on how well a leader or team members open their mind and accept other members’ opinion without biased dissent.
In the team meeting today, we combined our achievement of each individual assigned tasks. For me, I was still working out the material problem, trying to test in various softwares and also in Crisis. Unfortunately, it has not been solved yet. We found that our strategic plan was a bit unrealistic since we could not well follow the timeline. So we adjusted our milestones to fit the remaining time. I volunteered to do the new schedule for the team. I tried to create it in the greater detail for each day, balance the workload and make it as realistic as possible. Finally, we came with the intensive 15 day schedule as below.
