Image of the Sublime

Week 3 Lecture Reflection

As a landscape architect it is very interesting to link the works of people like Capability Brown to the digital landscape. The idea of 'constructing' a landscape as being a kind of virtual unreality was very resonant.

Texture Applied to Island

Second Island

Custom Terrain Texture

The texture I developed was a sedimentary eroded rock texture with a reddish hue, suitable for the canyon-like landscape of my second island.

Week 02 Lecture Reflection

The idea of extreme realism in full cgi as shown in Alex Roman's work is very interesting to me personally. Within a decade its likely that this level of detail will be achievable for a much wider range of applications. I hope to be pushing this boundary in the field of landscape architecture.

Framing Views / The Picturesque

 

Humphry Repton
This image tries to capture the drawing of the eye up the river/path to an elevated focal point.

 

JMW Turner
 The layering of fore, middle and background elements across the page.

JMW Turner
The vertical dominance of the lighthouse drawing the eye up.

William Gilpin
The conditions at the edge of a form and its sharp return.

                                  

First Images of the Island

                                                                           Exploring

                                                                          Expansive

                                                                          Exposed

                                                                          Sheltered

                                                                         Emerging

5 Landscapes for Crysis

1.  Basalt Formation Coastline

 Hard edged geometric basalt structures. No vegetation. Near midday overhead lighting, hard sun on a bright day.


2. Cliffs of Santorini

Vegetation is grass or scrub, only existing on slopes of less than approx 45 degrees. Possible afternoon sun providing shading on cliffs. Tiered erosion and scree with a lot of scree/sediment pouring down slopes and smoothing them.

3. Field/Forest

 Smooth gradient with heavy grass covering. A few scattered rocks with smooth edges. Dense stands of upright trees. Soft overhead lighting, midday.

4. Canyon

 Hard eroded layers of rock provide bands of colour. High gradient canyon walls, possibly eroded by extinct river. Vegetation is sparse and limited to relatively flat areas.


5. Smooth Rock Beaches, WA

Smooth coastal rock erosion. Probably has been eroded over a long period of time after formation. Dense green vegetation on slopes <70 degrees. Midday sun lighting, no clouds in sight.

5 Useful Cryengine Sandbox Shortcuts

1. Snap to grid is toggled by pressing the G key.

2. After selecting an object it can be moved to the cursor position with ctrl-shift-click.

3. Camera positions can be saved with ctrl+f* and recalled with shift+f*.

4. Pressing ctrl-C will create a clone of the selected object.

5. ctrl-g takes the user into 'Game Mode'.

Reflection: Week One

A key theme in the first lecture following the subject of the island assessment was the boundaries between the real and the virtual or the unreal. Coming from a landscape architecture background and looking to apply real-time tools to that profession one of the key questions for me is what affects our ability to distinguish between the two.

With new hardware like the Oculus Rift creating the potential for a more immersive virtual world, we need to follow Russell's example of looking closely at the real world to inform our virtual creations and gradually erode the boundaries that separate them.

3 Ways to Move Around the Sandbox Editor

1. Fly Around (Mouse and Keyboard) - WASD Keys are used to fly around the scene. The right mouse button is used to control facing direction. The middle mouse button is used to pan.

2. GoTo - Coordinates entered in the fields at the bottom of the screen will take the camera exactly to that position in cartesian space.

3. Spawn In Game - Ctrl-G spawns a player actor controlled by the user. WASD can be used to walk around on the terrain using current game settings. This can be very useful for testing.

5 Ways to Customise the Sandbox Editor

1. Multiple windows can be dragged and dropped to combine them into one. You can then navigate between sub-windows using the tabs at the bottom.

2. Existing toolbars can be turned on or off if they are not used frequently.

3. By accessing the tools/customise keyboard layout we can create custom mapping of functions to keys as well as custom toolbars to contain new buttons.

4. The tools/preferences panel allows us to set up a variety of options for the appearance and function of different parts of the editor.

5. We can add user script macros to perform common functions eg disable sound, viewport information. These can be accessed either from tools/user scripts or bound to a key or toolbar button.