Description: An interactive, standardized, evidence based training simulation for both licensed and unlicensed health-care professionals.
UNDISCLOSED TITLE | Centre for Digital Media (Jan – August 2010)
Authority: Technical direction (Engine), technology research, integrating animations (cinematic and character), mentoring interns (programmers) to studio, assisting 3d artist and animators with pipeline bugs.
My role: Game Programmer, Technical Artist (Unreal Engine) – [INTERN]
Gameplay and UI:
I was assigned programmer and I am incharge of in-game HUD and UI functionality using UIEditor (which later got converted to Uscript based frontend with the help of additional programmers to our team), working of Animations using Unreal Matinee in Kismet. I controlled majority of the cinematic and character animation (Animset, Animtree, Mirror tables) programming involved. Lastly I guided the Art team for proper creation of art assets for optimized gameplay, helped art director in troubleshooting level lighting which was again without much detailed documentation.
Technical Art:
Bringing in animations from Maya and 3D content from Max (troubleshooting involved in either), assistance in creation of proper pipeline for all Unreal engine (textures, static and skeletal meshes) related content creation and primary go-to person for problem-solving for the Art team.
What I learned | Challenges:
My primary challenge was Unreal Engine’s steep learning curve, which took a heavy toll on me and specially when I had to learn everything by pure trial and error (since no proper documentation was available), since Unreal Development Kit was low on references and tutorials on UScript, I did most of the tasks using only Unreal Kismet. This was easy and difficult at the same time cause Unreal Editor’s programming functionality is very limited and very buggy. A ton of Unreal crashes and loss of precious work was another annoying aspect which after some 50-60 crashes I got used to later. (most of these crashes were during saving!).
Tools Used: Unreal Development Kit – Unreal Engine 3, Autodesk 3Ds Max and Maya, Pixologic Zbrush
Team Members: Conrad (Texture Artist | Zbrush sculpting), Patrick (Studio Head and Founder | 3D modeling | Level Design), Liam (Game writing | Animation), Sonu (Ex – Programmer), Caloy (Founder | Business Specialist)
Interns: Myself, Shahrzad (Animation | Maya), Azhar ( 3D modelling | 3ds Max), Michael (Frontend graphic programmer), Daniel (Frontend and Camera programming ), Evan (Backend Programmer)
