Multipass...

First day I am back home and went straight to business. I have tried to get today some mood photos for my FMP. As I have thought it may require a bit of work to get into those places. I have went to the shipyard and the trainyard today to see how things look and as it turns out I actually need a proper pass for those places so that I won't get cought by the security and my camera won't be taken away from me. In order to get a permission to take photographs I need to contact a larger contractor which is in another city to get a permission from them to enter the shipyard and take photos. This will also require me to write an application for it which explains that I am a student and what I need the photographs for etc etc.... The same thing goes for the trainyard. However I have already written it when I was in the office asking for the permission. Hopefully they will get back to me soon. There is still one place I will propably need to do the same which is the Dockyard Administration so I can also get in there and take photos without any problems. Good that I have done it the first day...

CryENGINE3 .... yeah Baby !

Today Me and Kristian got green light on creating our FMP's in CryENGINE 3. Was quite happy how it all went. Making my environment in it will be very interesting and challenging at the same time becouse I will have to learn the engine as I do it. I will devote a part of my christmas break to lure into it a bit more. Maby I will reimport all my Palazzo assets into it and rebuild it there to see how would the workflow be when I have all the assets done already. This will make it easier to learn all the Engine stuff. Looking forward to that :)

Good. So it's settled !

I am quite happy that the tutors liked my presentation on my FMP. I am also very excited on what I will be doing as it will be a part from where I come from made into a game environment for my portfolio. This will be a perfect piece becouse it covers alot of skills for my portfolio.
I already have an achitecture/foliage based environment and this would be more Metal/Concrete based piece with a contrast between new and old parts of the dock. It is a lot of work as I look at it now but with proper planning and pre-concepting I will be able to pull it off. All the modularity in buildings will allow me to quickly construct them by doing the textures first and then wrapping them around the buildings. Most scarry part will be creating a good terrain for everything to fit on. This is my weakest point at the moment which I will be trying to improve buy this environment. I also don't want to create too much overgrown and foliage in this one becouse that's not the whole point of that environment.
I just need to make few more test blockouts and sattle on one. Now I need to focus on creating my proposal document with all the technical specifications etc. Newer blockouts will have to wait till I go back home and get my first hand reference on the site. Then I will have more resources to salvage ideas from :)


Well that's the end of reposting my posts from my old fmp blog. I've updated some posts and made them longer with proper pictures from my presentation. I will continue to post my future progress on this blog !

Blockout Brakedown

The blockout brakedown has a purpose to show exactly what will go where. All my gathered initial reference pictures put into use referencing to the blockout.

As you can see there is alot of areas to cover so I have devided them with the importance volumes.

Here are the areas of importance when producing the environment. Green areas are the most important parts that need to be done no matter what. Blue ones on the other hand are just additions which can be created later on when there is still time. However I will be concentrating on the green areas and polish them as highly as I can so it might come to this that the blue areas will never be built. Sometimes less is better... well in most cases it is :P


I have still yet to decide on couple of things. This blockout here is just a Pre-Blockout to get the overall idea. I need to fiddle around with the green area more and make a couple of more blockouts from it to see how I can differently arrange elements to create a perfect scene that will make sense.

Few more Renders ...

This is most likely how I would imagine the main view would look like. Old dock in the foreground and the "NEW HAVEN" part in the background.

... although this would be at night time.


Simple shapes but they give the idea of what I want to achieve. I am working on a small brakedown of the blockout to show exactly what will go where. Will post that soon as I finish it.

The Blockout

First Blockout of the project. This is how I imagine it looking like. Main "playable" area of the old dock on one side and the "not reachable" area of the "NEW HAVEN" dock in the distance.


.... the trainyard area with loads of abandoned carriges.



Destroyed cargo area with a fallen over cargo crane. This are will be an addition option to create if there will be still time left. It will not be a priority.



This is the first blockout of the area. I will post soon an overall brakedown of the area indicating what parts of the environment will look like.

Mood & Lighting

Achieving a proper mood and lighting in my FMP will be a challenge. I have gatherd couple of ref pictures of what I would like it to look like. Foggy lights and reflections in the distance of the "NEW HAVEN" dock would be very stunning to look at. Night time and a bit of a fog would be the perfect choice.


If I will be able to recreate those light water reflections within UDK it will look stunning once its done properly.


Was also thinking to add some bell buoys with a constant bell sound going on in the distance to enchance the mood. Some ship horns from the distance would be a great idea to have in the environment as well as those metal bending/crackling sounds that occur when a strong wind is hitting the high structures like cranes and bends them a bit.

Other Structure Reference.

Apart from the building i have covered in erlier posts I will need to gather some more reference to cover other areas. The area can't have just 1 building complex in the main playable area. For this I will be roaming around the areas of the docks to gather structural reference simmilar to those ones. Most of those on the panels are there.



I have also got tons of other reference from my hometown I have gathered through last 2 years when I was back home. I have took pictures in the gasworks area near the main river and dockside that I visited during the Easter brake in year 1. This was built by the Nazis around 1920's. Well back then Szczecin was named Stetin and was a part of Germany. Here are some sample photos
This photo is from the 1920's when it was freshly built. Wanted to show you how it looked back then and how it looks now.Amazing structure. Looks like a perfect Anti-Zombie Fortress to be in when the Zombie apocalypse happens xD

I have also got a nice set of pictures taken this summer from an abandoned and devastated paper incinerator factory which you can find on my main Art Blog. Here is a link to that post.

ThreeDeeRage - Environment Ref

So as you can see there is tons of interesting places I got back home to fit any sort of kind game art project :)

The Elevator !

Another building which would be a part of my environment would be The Elevator building of my hometown's shipyard. It's still in use so there might be a problem to get into it close. However I will only need a sihlouette ref and some materials becouse this building will be in the far distance in my environment as a part of the "NEW HAVEN" dock. I will explain it more in the future post about blockout once I get into it.


I will need to modernize the building a bit as it will be the more modern/futuristic part of the dock in the distance for the player to look at ... some sort of a new hope. That will be the contrast between the old part of the dockyard and the new part.
I really like the colosal feeling about this building. It's sihlouette is very simple. Adding a little touchups to it will make it even better with all the modernized Cranes serrounding it and all the lights.

The Elevator looks brilliant at night with alll the lighting going on. This is how I imagine the mood of the environment to be like.

Reference continued...

The dockyard wouldn't exist without some great buildings and structures. Erlier on throughout my research I came across an amazing complex located in France called Le Carreau Rodolphe. It is an abbandoned coal transit facility with a bit of a trainyard. It looks like something that would be refered for another "STALKER" game and that is why it made me interested in it. Also I love how it brakes up the sky with all the vertical connections between blocks. Great structure !


The way it looks and its build will allow me to make modular pieces that I could arrange and add in different ways to get a perfect look and fit it to my environment.


The only bit I think won't fit to my environement would be the roof of this structure. It's not very communistic 80's style. Might change it to more angular, blocky sort of brutalism style and mix up the concrete parts with some folded metal panels which would put some sort of a contrast in that element of the environment. Will see how it goes further.

I won't be able to go and visit that place but I got some very simmilar structures back home which I could refer to and mix up with the idea of Le Carreau Rodolphe.

Trainyard Idea

When I looked at what I could actually implement into the environment I thought of the ammount of trainyards I have in my hometown. This could be a nice touch. Mixing a dockyard with a trainyard. Previously I concidered it as just a place to get a reference for the buildings and textures but now I think I could easily implement it into the idea. I think that going through this procerss of shuffeling ideas made it a bit stronger and I am quite happy that I went through all of it. It is sort of mixing the first idea which I had with the abandoned trainyard with the new dock one.

Back home I have two large places of interest which are the Locomotive trainyard and the carriage yards. Both of them are basicly factories with loads of space to repair and trash old ones. They also make new ones there for use at the docks.


I used to go there as a kid when I was 10 with school trips and found it quite interesting. Tho back then I wasn't that enthusiastic about it as I am now looking from an art perspective on it.
Inside the main building they had a small electric powered model of the area with model trains for the kids to play around but it wass all behind glass so no damage would come to it. I guess thats where I got my love for my train models I've been collecting over the years as a kid.


Got alot of them back home in a box. Alot of different locomotives and carriges. Was a bit of my childhood hobby back then :)

So going back to the topic. Some Reference pictures of the style and a picture of some game art models. That is the kind of quality I will be aiming at to achieve.


Making a couple vehicles for the level will be sort of a challenge but with proper timing I think I will pull it off. I am very interested in making them for the level so that will keep me focused on that aspect more.
This will be one of 3 most important places to visit for reference. Can't wait to lure into it again after the years with my SLR camera :)

Hometown Reference

I made a presentation panel for this FMP Idea from where I could get reference from. It basicly shows the areas of interests and explains a bit of background for my hometown.


You can see why the rest of the country thinks why Szczecin lies on the sea coastline :P


The red area indicates all the docks and shipyards in my hometown. As you can see there is alot to reference from.

Areas coloured are the main areas of interest for getting ref :
Red - Shipyard
Green - Docks
Yellow - Trainyards
Violet - Additional random areas

Here are some pictures from those areas.



Once I am back home for christmas (going there a bit early so I can get to the places I need) I will start gathering first hand reference.

New FMP Idea

I have revised what I could actually create for my FMP but also having in mind getting the first hand reference. There is no better place for this than my hometown really. Szczecin - Port city with one of 2 largest dockyards in my country which is now closed and abandoned.


Here is a view of the centre of my city. You can see how large are the areas covered with docks and cranes. Becouse my hometown has a shipyard, alot of docks and its close to the sea, the rest of Poland thinks that Szczecin lies on the sea coastline. Well they are all wrong becouse we got like 100 km to it :P Bunch of retards.
There is tons of reference to get from for my project. The main area to get refference from would be the shipyard where all the major strikes and "Solidarność" had it's beggining in the early 80's to repeal communism which eventually happened in '89. My Grandfather was a member of Solidarność but he was working in "POLMO" which was also one of the biggest Factory in my city. Closed down in the early 90's. He worked on "Junak" motorcycles.

This is the Junak motorcycle. Pride of the socialist technological invention ! Old photo taken in my hometown. You can see the shipyard Elevator in the background.
In short words I will propably base my Idea on the shipyard and dock areas from my hometown as this would be very interesting and game arty to do as a game environment project.

Back at the Start

I feel a bit bad that my main Idea of the Fjord environment got bashed a bit. Maby it was most my own fault becouse it wasn't presented properly and explained. I should have had some sort of blockout to support my vision. I gues that with my explaining my vision didn't properly present itself. I was missing the main point in the presentation. Other 2 ideas that I have presented had more attention. I guess it's back to the drawing board and brainstorming. Maby I could make a mix of my previous ideas. One thing that was mentioned from the tutors on the presentation is that they would like to see something interesting more from where I come from. With this idea in mind I am going back again to research something I have had in mind to create for my fmp at one point during the summer when I was taking a couple of interesting pictures from the places I visited in my hometown.

FMP Ideas part 5

FMP - The Fjord

Idea of this project would be to create an amazing and stunning outdoor landscape which would support the main focal point which in this case would be an old viking graveyard with tombs and a part of a church. Here are some presentation panels I have made.

As I mentioned before I would make the viking graveyard the focal point of the whole scene. Implement some sort of ruins of a church and soem sharp monoliths sticking out from the ground.


For reference I would need to go to Norway or visit north of Scotland to get the feel and mood of this kind of place. Without a proper blockout it would be hard to visualize this idea and that is whay if this one, which is my favourite to do so far would be approved I would start the blockout ASAP.

FMP Ideas part 4

FMP - Cathedral

This was my original idea for my FMP which I already have it planned since the second semester of Year 2. Beautifull sculpted Gothic architecture with stained glass and moody ligthing. For this project I would create an Cathedral Interior based on one of the places I visited and would visit for further research. I have already visited 2 Cathedrals and took reference pictures. One in my hometown and one in Toruń a city in the middle of poland where there was one of the largest teutonic knights castles and which is Copernicus hometown

Statue of Copernicus

The only main problem I have with this Idea is that one of last year FMP was also a cathedral and I don't really want to repeat that. Also I already have one "Architecture" project in my portfolio.