You are going to enter a control room. Before you get there, however, you see it through the opening to your left. I built all the decoration and lighting here. I wanted to make this room into something that feels "realistic" - like it's manned by enemy soldiers (as opposed to supernatural beings or monsters, which is stuff you get a lot in shooters like Unreal). You can see the pipes n the top running across the hallway into the cooling units inside the control room. A nice corona on the distant lamp gives it almost a TV studio effect (okay, maybe the coronas are a little large at this point). Lots of metal latticework there increases the visual message this is some kind of control centre.

First, you encounter this hallway. Compared to the control room (coming up) I had problems with this hallway: it seemed kind of bland, and I had trouble rationalizing what should be in it. The grid on the right is actually a starship catwalk static mesh turned on its side. I used it because it had this cool pipe running beneath it: so here the catwalk surface becomes a protective mesh that allows technicians to look in and check the pipes while keeping the non-techs from messing up the works.

Lighting, I found, behaves weirdly in the level editor. I know how to light real scenes from my film work - including how to "carve", shape and filter the light, using bounces, screens, flags and whatnot. Lighting here is positively crude in comparison. A lot of that is due to technical limitations in the engine, but it is also inevitable since you can't entirely control where the player looks.

You walk up and turn the corner to the left. The static meshes included in the tutorial I found limited in variety. I wound up digging all through Unreal's many folders of meshes to find ones I felt could exist here in harmony with the rational of this hallway. The control room (which you glimpsed above), demands you walk around it and approach from the rear. Rationally then, this hallway would probably be empty - just a traffic route to get to and from the control room. So what to put in it to keep it from being a bland cubic rectangle? I decided it held the kind of controls that are mainly left alone: that some obscure techs only check up now and then to make sure all systems are functioning.

You can see a nice alcove up to the right, for somebody with a submachine gun to hide in...

Okay, coming up to the control room. The wall panel suggests you are approaching a high-security area (like you need a handprint to get in). The door opens automatically (maybe I'll make it so you have to "use" the panel in the future to open it).

Now, the money shot: the control room.

Through this tutorial and taking on these new-to-me 3D tools, I have learned a fundamental difference between orienting yourself for 3D design and 2D design. With standard 2D design - be it film mis-en-scene, web design, graphic design, maps, diagrams, paintings, photography and so on - the orientation is always from the edges moving inward; the frame makes the image. But in 3D design - certainly in games - the orientation is exactly the opposite: it's from the centre moving outward. There is so much writing on tools and process out there but precious little on this kind of soft, human interface issue. I would recommend any instructor approaching "newbs" in 3D design of any type to begin by teaching this basic fact - it could rapidly orient you and get you up to speed. (A similar common sense tip I heard from one level designer was to place a human actor in your map to give you sense of scale. To me it's strange why tech-oriented tool-developers don't do "human-factors-friendly" things like that. If you download Sketchup, as soon as you open up the workspace, they give you a human figure just as a point of reference. Ergonomics should not be discounted.)

So anyway, when I first built this room, I realized why the tutorial's author had laid it out this way - it had a good centre-oriented balance to it. So, in accordance with that, I followed suit. All the elements I placed in the room - the lighting, the furniture (decoration) and so on - reinforce this essential balance. Turning the corner clearly suggests that you have come to the nexus of power in this adventure. You are at the inner sanctum of control: all of the villainous overlord's decisions radiate from this point.

With this in mind, I also decided to custom-build a static mesh for this space. You can see it up ahead...

Walking in brings you onto a catwalk. These shots look left and right. The sense is there is a pit where staff officers and aides would control various menial functions. I added the bathing blue light to appear to come from the many monitors surrounding this section.

The nexus of power.

The control room, with windows looking out into a huge, cavernous hangar behind it.

I decorated and lit this area to get across the right visual impact and message, but it was problematic.

First, I knew this place was obviously, absolutely core to the "story" of this room. I wanted you to walk in and this part just hits you immediately: you just know it's important to the action. However, the windows, the floor and the ceiling are all one big chunk of geometry - a single static mesh. The problem with static meshes is they can throw shadows when you light them, but shadows cannot fall onto them. (Maybe this is fixed in Unreal 2007.) I had to figure out a cheat to work for that, since I absolutely wanted to bath this area in a stark combination of light and shadow. (More on this later.)

The central table is a static mesh I built from scratch for this room (more on it later).

The units that radiate from the table I think perfectly suit this area. I like the fact that they have visible handles. In fact, I had an internal debate about them. They have these little lights that would be visible when rotated the other way - so if I turned them all 180 degrees, you would get this cool ring of lights effect: also a strong visual impression. However, I sacrificed that, turning them so the handles face inward instead. I did so because I like the handles - they immediately suggest to you the presence of activity here, that these units are important; like they are massive, hot-swappable computer modules or something, housing critical data (like all the top secret, operational data needed by the evil commander to run his planet-spanning military force). It gives this feeling you are in a command post, and if the complex comes under attack, they might drop everything and abandon the base, but they'll instantly grab these units because they are just too important to let fall into enemy hands. I could have put in some huge mesh that looks like an alien dimension door or a weird magic altar (these things appear a lot in games like these and there are lots of those meshes in Unreal 2004), but I find that kind of thing cheesy - not subtle enough. To me, the layout above is much more persuasive to a sophisticated player, much easier for them to buy.

This is how I made the lighting more interesting within the command alcove. I built two sheets of BSP geometry, each 1 unreal unit thick (about an inch in real-world terms), and custom-shaped them to lie on the floor and just under the ceiling. They are visible here: the crosshairs are on them in each shot. Static meshes are nice because you can build intricate shapes using the excellent modelling tools of Maya or 3D Studio, then stick them into a map just about anywhere; but BSP shapes, while geometrically more crude (and prone to "BSP cuts" and leaks [if you don't use them right]), use per-pixel lighting, so fairly detailed shadows can be generated on them, making for more interesting lighting. That's why I did this. (Though, admittedly, you can "bake" shadows into meshes inside Maya.)

Furthermore, I could now use more interesting textures on these otherwise bland surfaces (well, on the floor at least) - I chose to cover the bottom in the same panels covering most of the floors of this area.

Anyway, putting in these two sheets was a small thing that dramatically improved the visual impact of this section for minimal effort.

The Command Table.

I hand-built this "Command Table" static mesh specifically for this room, using Maya. I had an idea to turn this scene into a realistic-feeling command post. Hopefully you can see the purpose of this object just by looking at it. The sides, and the various control consoles, suggest its role as a point of focus for a group of military commanders to discuss strategy and tactics. You can see the generals leaning over it plotting their domination of some planet or whatever. (Unreal players will recognize the texture of the Earth from the Opposing Towers CTF map. However, you could use any image.)

Texturing this object I found the hardest part of making it. Modelling it was pretty straightforward. The central, main screen is made of two separate rectangular objects inside the elliptoid claimshelled housing - one textured with a transparent white line image that phases across it constantly, giving a computer screen effect; the second, sandwiched underneath it, textured with the Earth-image. The blue computer screens on the corner console show up just about everywhere in Unreal as monitor mesh textures, and this one is no exception.

The most difficult part to texture was the racetrack-shaped, metallic exterior. I mean, it was easy because I used automatic mapping for it (and some other parts), but that gave unsatisfactory results when I applied the textures: they often blew up to super granular levels. I made a few textures of my own, with a variety of colours and patterns, but they just didn't feel right when I applied them. Finally I found a nicely detailed, metallic texture that felt right, giving it a military look as you can see. Since texturing is really an entire artform unto itself, I think I'll just stick to focusing on geometry design - which is closer to my goal of using the Unreal editor to define gameplay - especially given how much specialization goes into any professional map these days.

Meanwhile, all the small screens and consoles were planar mapped to give them the right size, proportion and facing.

All in all, it took me about a day and a half to build this mesh, if you added up all the hours. I think it's pretty good for my first static mesh, 8 days into learning Unreal. Having learned all the intricacies (and made all the common mistakes), my next one will be a lot faster.

Another view of the Command Table. Here you can see the other console textures on the Command Table (both borrowed from Unreal 2004). Yes, they are both red and. There were some nice green, blue and white animated textures, but I think the red consoles create a slightly higher sense of urgency if, say, you were in the middle of a single-player adventure and some urgent plotpoint were unfolding as you came upon this scene. Furthermore, all the screens on this mesh, including the main one, use animated textures. I was thinking of making a custom texture for the main map (an aerial shot of my hometown), but since I'm making this mesh available for download here I thought I'd use a standard UT2004 one so you don't have to download a texture as well as the mesh to use it right away.

Underside of the Command Table.

To prevent the Command Table from looking just like an ordinary table (the kind you sit at to meet or eat), I positioned the legs in an unorthodox manner: instead of pointing toward the corners - which would leave legroom for sitting people - they point to the sides and ends. I think this (subtly) persuades the viewer into believing you are supposed to stand at this table (since the legs would interfere if you sat at it with a chair); or that it is some field-deployable device that folds up for rapid mobility. Also, I put in some geometry in the underside that looks like it houses internal circuitry - let's say an integral computer, a communications uplink and a power source. Again, this helps make you believe it's a self-contained machine rather than an ordinary table.

All-in-all this entire mesh is just under 4000 polygons in size. Maybe a touch high for UT2004, but for a nextgen 2007 game that's probably quite reasonable.

If you want to use this static mesh for one of your levels (non-commercially, of course), you can download it from the link below. If you change the Earth texture, you can put in an image more pertinent to your level - such as a topdown screenshot of your level, a topographic map, or a satellite photo. Just retexture the Material 4 (presently textured with "Desp_SMS-Tex.Base.EarthofRog") with the desired custom texture, remembering to include that texture in your map download.

(Download the Command Table here...)

Reverse angle.

This next part extended from the tutorial's completion challenge, which was to build a power unit underneath the catwalk, near the doorway. I decided to go one step further and build a whole room down there.

So overall you would run into this control area, go to the Command Table, "use" it somehow, but find out that is not enough! The reactor is still going to melt down! The enemy is still going to nuke the Earth with an ion cannon! The evil general is still going to wipe out all your comrades who are attacking this base as we speak! Et cetera. You're here, you hit the right switch, but but... it's not enough! Systems are still up! So what's the first thing you do?...

You turn around, and see this view.

Why, look! Down below the catwalk. There's a secret room down there!

Down to the bottom level...

...through the pit where there will be lots o' dead bodies from the evil general's commando guards you've blown away when you first fought your way into this room...

The reactor room.

Yes, here it is! For sure this place looks like the ultimate room you need to get to to finish the evil general's plans off...

The super money shot.

(Maybe you shouldn't go in there? It looks spooky...)

Okay, this shot I wanted to yield ultra visual impact. I mean, you look at this and it's like, "I don't know what that is, but it must be important!" It just sucks you in.

This is the kind of instance where being a film guy comes in handy, because that field gives you a deep sense of subtle lighting. There are a lot of lights in here. Aside from the ones under the catwalk at the bottom, there are about six blue lights to give the effect of one massively powerful blue light that gradually fades from the generator thingy at the far end to where you're standing at the near end. One sharp blue light alone just created this intense blast of blue at the far end, but between there and your position was pitch black, no visible detail about the room. Making sharp, contrasty lighting actually takes a subtle hand - just like in real cinematography (where you layer it with f-stops).

Now all you have to do is go up there, and "use" that energy generator thingy - or maybe you blow it up - and you'll start the self-destruct countdown that will demolish the entire base and bring you to the next mission. Something like that...

Here is a second version of this hallway with a network of pipes running along the rather barren walls. I can't really decide which I like better: this or the simple, stripped down one (above). The simple one has a nice, spare look to it when you first see it from the top of the steps, with the white light shining up from under the floor - but once you walk down into it the spare walls look kind of bland. This newer version with the pipes is either more convincing or more cluttered - though when you walk down into it, you don't have the barren walls (as you can see). Right now I have the "busy" version in the level, but maybe it's overkill. (This is something I'd discuss with someone else were this a real game project.)

[Conclusion of a new mapper>>>]