Week 1 - Independent Study

CUSTOMIZING THE EDITOR:

1. M = Material, DB = Database and FG = Flow graph. When these are opened up it kind of clusters the screen and can become chaotic so to make it less chaotic you can combine these windows into one by merging then, so drag each one on top of the other and all three will be together in one window. Or you can just attach it to the side of the screen. Makes it more easier to use. Works with other panels or toolbars too by attaching and detaching them. Or turn them on or off.

2. Tools --> Customize Keyboard is where you can customize the tool bars and adjust the commands for different keys.
You can allocate hot keys for different things. Example you can allocate the number 1 on the keyboard to move object and number 2 for rotate etc. Makes it faster whilst working on your project. To see if tools have hot keys, you can hover your mouse over the tool icon and if there is a number in brackets next to the tools description then it has a hot key.

3. Tools --> Preferences. If you want to customize your interface further to your hearts content. Things like color of the interface or panels or console can be changed here. Its better to keep it standard and not have unnecessary settings turned on if not needed.

4. Definitely have the preference setting for auto back up turned on. If you dont have a habit of saving every now and then which can be a pain if the computer suddenly crashes. You can set the time interval for auto save. Maybe something like every 5 minutes or so.

5. When importing objects into your environment in cry engine make sure you indicate them with proper names so its easily identifiable.


VIEWPORTS:

1. Keys: W, A ,S & D is to move Forward, Left, Back & Right.
Hold down shift whilst pressing any of these keys to move faster.

2. Right Mouse Click is to change view in view port.

3. Mouse roller button is to pan around environment. Or Scroll to zoom in and out.

4. Alt and middle mouse button can rotate around the screen.


USER INTERFACE PANELS - OVERVIEW:

1. Select Objects Panel --> Shortcut is Control D --> overview of all the objects in your scene. Everything is listed in here and is very useful.

2. DB --> Database is very important. All the entities are located in here. They are like a brush that you can bring into your level. You will be using it alot to design and build your level. You can also tweek each entity as well.

3. Lighting Tool (Sun) - Change time of day, sun direction, hour of sunset, dawn time etc.

4. Flowgraph (FG) - Script your levels from point A to point B, Triggers with areas and anything really. Can be done here. By adding nodes to other nodes and can be simple to very complex scripts.

5. M --> Materials. Pretty straight forward. Set materials for your environment and painting your layers.


WORD REFLECTION:

In the first lecture we were introduced to a new gaming software called cry engine that we will be working with and doing our projects on through out this semester. Different to Lumion and a lot more complex. You can do a lot more in this and it looks really realistic. We were shown lots of different examples and works from previous students and it provides some idea of what to expect and it gets me thinking of what i can do for my first project since we have to create an island using the last letter of our last names and the last number of our student number combined. Learnt that such simple things can be created to look like a whole different level and can be hard to tell the difference between the real and the fake. We learnt Real representation, The Picturesque and The Sublime.