Final

 Some more progress:

 I have thoroughly  enjoyed this final project. I did find it difficult but I have learnt more than I imagined I could. It seems I underestimated the time it would take to build such a large map and was forced to scale it down in order for it to appear as complete as possible.

A lot of time was spent attempting to learn new tricks and failing, like making an animated flag for example.
There is so much I would change if I could go back with the knowledge I have now, and even though I have progressed at a slower rate than most, I am determined to see this through. I'm sure If I just keep climbing this same game ladder, then EVENTUALLY I have to reach the top.
Well that is all I can keep telling myself.
Before this project, I wasn't sure if the game art was really for me. I do find it difficult and even though my work has improved, I haven't yet met my own expectations let alone anyone elses, but I love doing it so much that I have to keep trying. I am more sure now than I have ever been that this is what I want to do.

After Presentation

At this point I realise I need to downsize. I wont have time to do as much as I first thought but I do want my level to look finished. So my plan is to concentrate on getting the deck finished and then the finished level can be confined to just the ship.
I have also deleted my terrain as it was taking too long to build (3 hours) and slowing me down.
The photos I have of the deck are all too close to the buildings for me to get a good idea of what they look like on each side and the distance between each large asset.
I tried to use the blueprints that came in the information leaflet but they are inconsistent and show the ship before its reconstruction. 

 I also tried to get a google earth shot but that didn't work out
either.

I decide to take the photos and video footage I took to figure it out on paper.          

Deck Assets:

I downloaded some lighting tutorials from the UDK website and deleted and rebuilt all the lighting I had set up in the ward room after learning about emissive lights, lightmass and lightmassimportancevolume bsp.

This is the deck with only a dominant directional light. As you can see the shadows are not working.
I googled the problem as much as I could but finally resorted to posting it on epicgames.com and asking for help.

The deck seriously lacked atmosphere. I decided to change the lighting and time of day.
The main light is a shade of blue and I have chosen a subtle orange for the shadows to compliment it.
I have changed the colour of the skydome to match, and made some smoke particle effects to give a more enclosed feeling.

I think at first the smoke (being used as fog) comes of a bit strong and over the top and is constantly reminding me of resident evil, but when you actually running through the level, the fog disappears as you approach it and seems a lot more subtle and realistic.

I don't know why and I don't know how, but my textures (especially tillable ones) look wrong and don't fit together.

 Eager to once again take advantage of the "EpicGames" geeks, I posted another thread to try and tackle this problem.

I got some answers the next day, but didn't understand one word. Such a humbling disappointment, I have learnt so much in UDK over the past few months, but it seems I still don't speak the language. Not fluently at least.

 I finally found a tutorial on how to adjust the specular maps in UDK to give them a more specific material quality.

I have been working on the terrain whenever I need a break from texturing/modelling. There have been dramatic changes in the scale of my environment after looking over the Frozen Planet screenshots.







































I used the static mesh of the ship to build the deck.

So I have just been working through my asset list and populating the Ward room.

I can never seem to get the size of the rooms right. In the actual ship, the rooms are just big enough to fit the beds in from wall to wall,

 but if I scale my room down to the size of the beds, the space seems way to small, but if I size the room and bed up, the bed seems way to large, so I have finally settles on a size and although the beds seem a little bit too long, It has to be that way as I cant possibly make the rooms any smaller.

 Here are some progression shots showing assets and lighting ideas.

 I have decided that it all looks way to warm and cosy to be a frozen ship and I need to change the lighting and colours. I have taken a screenshot into photoshop and played around with the colour balance until I decided on this.

 Here are the lighting results in UDK.

 I have kept the orange lighting in the rooms. I like the contrast between the colours and think it draws the player in.

So I went through every episode of frozen planet
 (skipping the seal bashing parts as my tiny heart
 cant take it) and now how hundreds of icy screen
shots and a better understanding of the weather. I
 have had a quick look for snow storm tutorials but
 have been busy building the scene.

 My plan with the ship was to build the shell as a static mesh and position it around the UDK brush. Well, Its kind of working. I need to add a 2 sided texture to stop it from disappearing in different views but also there seems to be a problem with the collision mesh which is preventing the player from walking on half of the ship. I have tried re-exporting it and even removing the collision mesh in Max and the re-exporting it but nothing. It is on my list of things to sort when I come in.

 I moved on the the cabin. For this I collected a library of pictures of Shackleton's and Scott's cabins and used them to roughly decide on the shape of mine, the reference is mainly for ideas for props to clutter the inside and outside of the cabins.
Oh, and I also watched a programme on Shackleton's Whiskey, It was good for telling his story but unfortunately meant listening this this imbecile.

 At this point I was watching tutorials and learning how to use the terrain tools so I made this crate so I would hate myself less for not producing any work.











 Terrain.  Using the Frozen Planet screenshots to help here, kind
of getting the hang of it, working progress.

I applied a test snow texture but when have since been having problems, I get an error when importing textures that says there are...well...this happens...

 So, stuck there, no-one seems to know whats going on so its on the list to ask Heather.
Also I found a tutorial for glittery snow material that looks good but I dont understand it well enough to use it, another thing on the list. Im posting the link here so I dont lose it.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialExamples.html

Sky-dome. I have been really picky about this. I did a quick test to see if painting the mountains on the horizon would give more depth and it worked OK but I am yet to test it with the terrain included. I have an idea of what i want the sky to look like and have been saving a couple of images that I like: 

 So I keep an eye out on the sky and take pictures when I think It might work.

Currently painting the Sky-dome using some of these pics.