Strategy
Landscape Design
To begin with, the previous 'Island' scene had to be retopologised in order to incorporate the landmarks in this project. Firstly, I did some research into the terrain surrounding the real-life Sao Paulo Museum and found out it was on a relatively flat, but still uneven surface (the Museum itself has 2 distinct sections, one that is on 'ground level' and the other is built deeper into the ground.)
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I really wanted to incorporate an 'Ice Age' theme in this piece, the idea being that a huge freeze has destroyed all civilisation and its remnants are weakened by the deadly combination of sub-zero temperatures, icy winds, rising water levels, and increasing moisture in the air.
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The Museum as depicted in this piece has only just been exposed to the frozen weather. This is why you can see a lot of vegetation and foliage thriving inside. Water trapped in crevices on the ceiling drips down onto the cracks in the floor, feeding hardy plants and producing a small ecosystem inside the building. The Museum is sinking into the snow and ice, and soon the whole structure will disappear.
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Systems Failure
A staircase lies crumbling into pieces due to the stress and weakening of its supports by the harsh weather. Glass windows are no longer existent, with wide gaping holes where they once stood as an integral, iconic part of the original Sao Paulo Museum design.
Human Occupation
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Scaffolding appears to have been erected to fight against the crumbling concrete, but to no avail. Broken pieces of shelves, tables, chairs and water features show how the previously-inhabited Museum has not stood the test of time.
Textures
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Using reference photos and pictures from the original year of creation, I was able to reproduce the colouring and shading intricacies of the Museum. As it used reinforced concrete, I utilised texture references to match the designs of cracks in the surface and designed blending patterns using the CryEngine Blend Layer tool. Unfortunately, the low texture memory of my development workstation has limited the resolution of surface textures and compromised the quality of the final product.
Interactivity
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Destroyable objects include evidence of human occupation including chairs, tables and shelves. The half-destroyed scaffolding can also be interacted with, as can be the water dripping from the ceiling. Real-time fog, clouds and the use of particle effects such as snow also enhance the interactive effect of this piece.
Final Thoughts
On reflection, I may have been unlucky with the choice of model for this
project. This Sao Paulo Museum model was not very well made, with the
modeler showing some signs of rookie mistakes. The model contains very
few double sided faces, despite the modeler creating walls that were
paper-thin. The glass surfaces were not modelled accurately, so I was
forced to remove the entire section. The ceiling and walls were modeled
haphazardly with no regard for texture coordinates, but a lot of that
could also have been the FBX Exporter that SketchUp uses.
On the positive side, I was able to use some previous Blender skills to adjust and fix normals, update double-sided faces, retopologise meshes, and clean up any disjointed vertices to ensure the final structure looked realistic. Unfortunately, the texture quality could not be salvaged, but I tried my best to mask it with effective use of lighting and geometry.
This course was a refreshing experience in a new set of tools I'd never have considered using otherwise. Using CryEngine has been a wonderful way to learn the ins and outs of a complex graphical engine. This EXP2 project was quite fun and I was able to learn some new techniques and tricks for use in future level designs. Overall, it was a very positive journey and one that has taught me a new method of thinking.
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