Summer 2019 progress

Between now and my previous post in March, 2019, I have indeed worked on the UHS:1914 project, but not entirely in a way that can readily be presented in the blog. A majority of the work has been to write original music for the v9 video, and although the music is completed, the demo recording is not ready to be shared. There have been numerous items to correct/fix/add to the project, but since the music is complete, the timings for the camera cannot be changed. This means anything I add in the meantime will be fixes or additions that can be seen in the v9 video. These are some of the items added this summer:

Side and rear gable ornaments for the tower, including editing the stonework to look correct from the rear (it can be briefly viewed from the art room skylight in the video). I created a new version of the brick texture (originally from Polypixel) to make arranging fancy brickwork faster:

Side/Rear gable ornament traced in Blender using a newly created version of the brick texture

Brick ornament as seen imported into UE4

I finally found a solution to the square around the doorway arches. Previously, I used a square mesh that had one edge matching the arch, but this resulted in rendering errors. Now, the wall is seamless:

Wall above doorway arch before

Wall above doorway arch after

Cast iron balustrade remodeled to be more accurate:

Based on a photo from within a storage closet built in the former light well, I modeled the brick ornament on the exterior wall between the windows:

Balcony brick ornament in Blender, with reference photo

Balcony brick ornament imported into UE4

 Shower hardware rods in the Girls' Shower completed:

Screenshot of Girls' Showers from v9 video

Shower hardware completed

Gym balcony rail added around the entire perimeter:

Balcony rail

A redo of the brick texture on the gym stairs no longer results in bizarre streaks:

Brick around gym stairs before

Brick around gym stairs after

Bookshelves are added to the Board Room (not completely accurate, but these did not require the creation of a new bookshelf model):

Photo reference of the Board Room from the Rosemary
(this is the Echo staff posing for their yearbook photo)

The Board Room in UE4 with added props

Because of the automatic LOD (level-of-detail) creation, the proscenium always looked "spiky" from a distance. I corrected this by optimizing the original mesh, which turned out to include the unseen (but still rendered) backside of the arch. With over 1000 fewer vertices, there are no more spikes! Also seen in the following before/after screenshots -- the crest used to be "floating" from the proscenium, and now is attached.

Before, spikes from the LOD 01 and 02

After optimization, no spikes!

A bug cropped up in the UE4 project files causing the editor to crash unexpectedly when copying actors. My intention was to update the gym portion of the project by adding exterior details from the 1914 side of the building (trees, houses, corn, etc), but this kept making the editor crash. A time consuming solution fixed this, but it involved splitting the building into multiple sections. This meant copying every actor (UE4's name for separate items) to new levels that are ultimately viewed all at once, but can create cool/unsettling views mid-way. For example, below is a screenshot of the building with the exterior walls peeled away: 

Front facade hidden

...and here with the auditorium in various states of hidden-ness:

Exterior auditorium walls hidden

Entire auditorium hidden

When the music demo is ready, I will post it, along with the updated video. 

Gym entrance details

I have been holding out on completing the gym entrance because I hoped I would find a better photo of the stonework. Sadly, this photo is missing. I instead used a very low resolution photo to model the stone finials, and repeated the foliage from the Race street entrance. In addition, I cleaned up the indoors part of the entrance by modeling the wrought iron bars on the stairs and brick arch. 

Completed gym entrance

Stonework copied from the Race street entrance

Stone finials modeled after those on the Champaign County Courthouse (also a Royer building)

Ironwork, marble, and brick arch for the interior

Footlights

The original blueprints show a metal conduit for footlights in the auditorium. I remember that these were in place, but have little photographic evidence of them. This took a lot of guesswork, but the result is acceptable. Dimmers for theatrical lights had been invented by 1914, so I may add functionality to turn the lights on and off. 

Footlights as seen in 1914 blueprints

  

There was a free pack of fabric materials on the Epic marketplace , so I used that to update the fabric on the teaser to a more realistic velvet. The color also ended up being less saturated, and therefore more realistic. 

Finally, I added the correct trim to the science demo room, based entirely on photos from the Rosemary. 

Photo reference from the Rosemary.

Tree billboards

In gaming graphics, a billboard is a type of 2D image that always faces the camera. I found some high-quality free images of trees at CGBookcase.com, and created several billboards of trees to fill in the edge of the world map. They are only visible looking out of the 3rd floor windows of the school, so it is hardly noticeable that they are rendered at a low resolution, or are rotating to face the camera. There is also enough variety that, from a distance, it is not apparent that there are only 4 types of trees. 

Oh Hi, 2D sprites!

I also used a set of textures (https://cgbookcase.com/textures/polished-concrete-01) from the same website to replace the basement floor material. It now looks more like how it should. 

Blackboard and bicycle props, and stair details

I spent some time making props that will be seen in the next version of the flythrough. First was a free-standing blackboard based off a blackboard I saw at a local church.

Reference photo of a blackboard in the basement of the Wesley Foundation

Same blackboard modeled in Blender and imported into UE4

Bicycles for the bike rack, using Epic's Automotive Materials pack:

Finally, I completed the tedious task of adding marble trim, green paint (decals), and treads to the stairs (this took most of President's Day). The tedium came from my use of BSP brushes, which are old fashioned and very slow, but allowed more flexibility with sizing and textures. Because the level is so big, each time a BSP brush is moved even slightly, the editor stalls for several seconds. 

MIDI keyboard animation demo

I've been playing around with UE4's possibilities for triggering events using MIDI (a language for communication between electronic musical instruments). At first, I thought there might be a Blender plugin for this, but the Python script I found online doesn't seem to work correctly in the latest version of Blender. 
Instead, I'm using the "Procedural MIDI" plugin by Scott Bishel available on the Unreal Marketplace, and a piano model I purchased several months ago. The keyboard that came with that piano had the keys fused together, so I had to separate them first in Blender, then import them into UE4, each with unique names for each key. The Procedural MIDI plugin allows the data from the MIDI file to be accessed by Blueprints, which in this case changes the position of one of the 88 keys. Several hours later, and after coding an extremely laborious Blueprint, I have this video:

Here is the basic Blueprint to run the key movements:

The first half essentially opens the MIDI file, and plays it. The second half siphons off the MIDI data as it is played, and assigns the note data to a single variable. A function in the middle (see below) translates that number to a specific key on the keyboard, then whenever the MIDI file triggers a "note on" event, the key referenced by the Receive Note Name function is rotated by -3°; a subsequent "note off" event returns it to 0°. Here is that function (the "Are we there yet?" function), which goes through every note on the keyboard, and confirms if it is the one that should be moved or not:

And this is as much as could fit on the screen at once:

Believe it or not, this works because MIDI data is sequential, meaning no two notes actually play at the same time. The human ear perceives separate MIDI events as chords because it happens very fast!

Classroom props and game coding

Working on the to-do list this past week meant creating some props in classrooms and re-doing some earlier models. Also, I tried to fix some bugs in my coding, which was only partially successful. 

Classroom desks, modeled after photos from the Rosemary and a vintage desk online:

A classroom full of desks, modeled by me in Blender

 

Classroom desks as seen in the Rosemary

Similar model of a vintage desk from an online auction site

The vents on the face of the stage apron: 

This photo from the 1923 Rosemary is the one I used to reference the wood wainscot, and more recently the vents

Finally, I spent many hours pouring over my code for two items: Gamepad functionality and the guided tour that unlocks when the player puts out the fire in the coal bunkers. While the guided tour will need additional work, I finally got the instructions for a Gamepad to appear on screen appropriately: 

I noticed in numerous games that if the mouse is used, on-screen instructions and icons show keyboard/mouse icons, but if the Gamepad is used, the same instructions switch to Xbox 360 icons. Unreal has limited Gamepad support, so all the coding has to be done manually to support a Gamepad throughout the engine, especially on menus. I finally made it so that the correct icons display at the beginning of the game, and in several of the menus. This may seem like a small victory, but it was very exciting when it actually worked! 

Additionally, I allowed both the left Gamepad trigger or the mouse wheel to zoom the field of view from 90 degrees to 30 degrees. This, of course, resulted in lots of fun zooming in on things!