Structures

After reconstructing everything with geometry I decided to cut down the environment a bit from 3 segments into 2. It's less overhwelming in terms of ammount of work and more managable to fill with detail. I made everything modular in my max file so that expanding it when everything is textured and unwrapped will be a matter of just copying the geometry and updating the .cgf (mesh) files.
Here is a bit of progress so far. At the moment modeling all the metal supporting structures with all the pipes and detail that will go on the "outer shell" of the environment. Still got to decide if to import it as one big mesh with 15 submaterials to it and dress it all with meshes or to just export the individual modular bits and build it inside the engine. Might even find a compromise between those two. But that will be decided once I'm done with modeling it. I plan to finish and texture the base architecture by the end of this month so that the next month will be down to filling it up with assets.

Train wheels

Been modelling train tracks that will go on each of the train cars. They will also be used as a stand alone element on one of the tracks left for maintenance or repairs. I wanted to preserve some detail on it so I modeled a High poly and baked it down to the low. At the moment its quite high. 5k polys for it. A train car will have 2 of them so that will be 10k gone straight away. Will propably have to tweak them down a bit later on when I will need. Some of the train cars will be covering nearly half of it so there will be some parts that can be deleted since they won't be visible. At the moment I'll leave that as it is and continue with work.

High Poly

Baked Low Poly (Normals + AO)

Already imported it to CE3 and I noticed that I have some shadow issues going on from the top. The whole bit is welded so the shadow shouldn't be doing that there. Tried alot of different solutions but none worked. It's either something with the mesh or something to do with the shadow settings in the engine.

Will have to sort that out soon. Now I need to move on to next things.

Progress

Should have posted it some time ago actually. I've spend some time on adjusting the scale of the whole environment so I won't have to redo stuff too much once I start to produce modular elements. Blockout is pretty much done using solids in CE3. Now I need to figure out how to best approach the entire floor as this area is massive and it will require a mix of at least 3 tilable concrete textures. The floor will be supported also by other static meshes and a lot of decals (cracks, oil drops etc) to break up the tilability.

Here are some screenshots.

I am still trying to find an anwser to my question about floor. Solids or Geometry ? I know for sure that solids won't support vertex paint which I will need to mix up a couple of concrete textures. Second thing is that placing decals will be alot easier.... well I gues that the question is now rather how to approach it etc since it's a very large area. Will have to dig around the CryDev.net forums for that. 

Lifter

My CryDev.net account has been locked since friday, so I've started to create some assets that will be in my environment. Still waiting for the admins to unlock it so I can continue with my work. In the meanwhile I did create a Lifter trolley thingy ... dunno really how to properly name it :P

Now working on the Train wheels that will be shared among all the train cars. Those need to be made in High to Low so I retain alot of detail on both texture and normal map. Will post some progress soon.

Learning CryEngine3

I've spend the whole weekend playing around and learning CryEngine3. I have learned how to create basic levels with both terrain and solids (CryEngineBSP). Solids are used only to block out stuff so that it can be later exported to 3Ds Max and worked over. That way I can set up a proper scale and work out my modular pieces correctly.

I have also learned the asset and meterial pipeline. To be honest it's pretty straight forward and easy. Learning the reuse of tiling textures and multi sub objects in my previous "Rooftop" project made an excelent base for further learning. I was quite amazed how close CryEngine3 and 3Ds max work between each other. It's like a symbiotic relationship which UDK lacked alot.
To test out and learn the asset and material exporting/importing pipeline I have imported my Forklift Truck into the engine.

I have also created a collision which is called "proxy" for it so that I could applie some surfice detail like metal to it. This way each time i shoot it it will react like metal and leave bullet holes in it. There are tons of different properties that can be used for surfices which I quite like a lot and all of them react differently.

 I've spend some time on digging through the CryEngine3 documentation over at crydev.net. There is alot of very important information there about asset and performance guidelines. While doing it I created a document for myself with all the important stuff I need to consider when doing my FMP which will definetively help.

One thing I still need to research is how to approach the terrain/floor creation in my level. That will be one of the goals for this week.
Main one is to blockout the space using solids so I can visualise the area a bit more. I will also create a train car wagon/wheels this week.

Well to sum it all up I think that CryEngine3 is brilliant. It's an perfect artist tool created for artists by artists ! This engine would be perfect for out course to use in the labs instead of UDK cause it doesen't relly mostly on creating fancy node based shaders and alot of technical stuff which is mostly hidden somewhere in the UI. CryEngine3 and 3Ds Max bond is so strong here that with all the knowledege gained through the course and personal learning it is very easy to just jump in and create content.

... more blueprints

Finally found the most important blueprints I need. Got around 10 different ones which I can base on. Those will definetively help with modeling.

Train Car Blueprints

Did a bit of research today towards getting some blueprints and technical specifications of the train cars I will be creating. I have checked some forums and websites devoted to trains. After that I figured out I could actually check www.pkp-cargo.pl which is the website of the company that gave me the permission to visit the train depot. There I have found a large PDF document with all the technical specifications, length, tonage and blueprints of every train car they own.
Those information will be very crutial in modeling because CryEngine3 uses the metric scale and having the lenght and witdh of them will make it all easier. Here are some quick shots I've made of the ones I will be creating.

Main Cargo Car that has sliding doors. Will propably modify it so that only middle one open.

Coal Car. This one can be duplicated and its colour will be changed to achieve some variation

Additional one that will be left to model last.

All of them use a very similar set of wheels 4 and 4. This way I can put the wheels on a seperate texture sheet and copy them over to save texture space and most importantly time.