Andrew Dowell

Oh how I love Ansel.  Every few months I come back to it to have a play, take some more stereo 360 environment shots and keep tinkering with it. The following documentation has helped incredibly  and hopefully will help you too! Source: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Plugins/Ansel/Reference/ConsoleVariables/index.html The following console variables are available for configuring the behavior of the NVIDIA Ansel Photography Plugin and can be set manually from the console, through your .ini files, or dynamically by a Blueprint. Most of them should be configured during development instead of at runtime, though  r.Photography.Allow  is useful to set dynamically. r.Photography.Available  (Read-only) If 1, the photography system is potentially available to the user. Otherwise, a functioning back-end is not available. This is set to 1 when the plugin is enabled. r.Photography.Allow If 1, allows a photography session to potentially be started by...

Finally upgrading to SP2019 last week encouraged me to be a bit more creative with some lunchtime renders. These are just two of my current favourites with a great one still in the works. Update to follow soon! These are material exercises to understand some new functions and make some strange stuff! Not the project I am currently working on, (think I might have bitten off more than I can chew) but an lasergun I made for a VR project. Pretty fun though.

So this is a quick one as It's a busy time with lots of game stuff happening. However, I recently spent some time in Unreal and Substance painter trying to get a nice soft edge to my materials to fit in with the current game art style. After trying out ambient occlusion maps and reducing normal map intensity, I found this little gem. Really simple and quick solution but works well enough. Use a Fresnel node with a scalable parameter and a pixel Normal WS expression. Lovely stuff.

Having done so much in a day, I wanted to continue this project with an immersive 360 image. Still using the same scene and adding some new elements behind the camera. Luckily, this months free assets in the UE4 marketplace provided the perfect resources. I used the Ansel 360 8k screenshot, but decided not to use the stereo option. Although this can look great it still has some issues with dynamic lighting and shadows. I want the image to have maximum resolution in each lens. The ruined temple assets look great. Reminds me Skyrim. A quick render test of the deer. And the finished 360 image. Post processing, auto colour and clean up all done in photoshop. Click here to download the large image and try it out if you have some a VR headset. Edit. A few times as I'm explaining this scene to people it's difficult to comprehend a 2D image being a 3D scene. Hopefully this screen image will show how I built the scene.

I wanted to challenge myself to see what I could make in a day. I recently introduced my daughter to Princess Mononoke and realised instantly I wanted to make a forest scene. But one of colour and texture. The scene below is build in Unreal 4 with only one dynamic light source. The light rays and RGB rays are all faked, and the scene uses a mixture of pre-made and bought assets. The particle effects around the stone shine on the island and around the tree edges were taken from a laser weapon charging effect before firing.  An issue that 'pops up' now again is that the procedural foliage is floating after environment sculpting. This can be easily solved using the command prompt and entering either "removelandscapexyoffsets" or "grass.flushcache". I'm a big believer in using natural light in a scene, and creating immersive world that not only look great but feel exciting to look around. Lighting is a big part of that. Forest lighting is...

As my journey into Game Development continues, I often break down games, test and try to find weak points, understand the game mechanics and work out ultimately what makes it fun, rewarding or frustrating to play. These are my top favourite games, ever in no particular order: Firewatch - The colour pallete for this title is amazing, the artists did a wonderful job of turning the environment into a beautiful journey. The gameplay is simple and the storytelling between Henry and Delilah is just pure romance. I would love a second Firewatch game. Bishi Bashi - Way back in the day this was my Smash Brothers. We played this game hard, for several years and I still love it. This was my first real insight into how games don't need to be high end graphics to be good but rather game play and fun are still a major pillar. Bishi Bashi VR, yes please! Skyrim - Ye gods! I seriously lost myself in this game. The mods took over and I even started making my own. Nothing ready for the 'Nexu...

So Death Race '89 is a combination of several game mechanics.I aim of the game is to be the first to cross the finish line. However, you must push two alternating keys to move, and have a chance of automatically dying and returning to the start with every keystroke. Combine with with four players and let the mayhem start! It's called Death Race '89 because you have to press the alternating keys 89 times. This is the blueprint for a single mesh object to move along the spline using a timeline, duration and a track reference. Two inputs nodes which use a branch condition to alternate adding a movement value. The the rest of the movement spline blueprint is the same. So once you get to the finish line, we need a winner. This blueprint uses a collision box to display the winning text and then 8 seconds later restart the level. Finally, use the disable input command in the level blueprint for all players! Fun times!