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.

The ship.

Im currently building the ship in 3ds Max and it started me thinking about how it will be positioned in the water/on the ice and decided I couldnt carry on modelling the ship until I know exactly how much will be visible.

So I have started painting a scene that I will help me positiong the ship and figure out how to model it more efficiently. 

I keep painting the ship into the water but think I need to take a step back and think more about the compositiong of the painting, I wont get a good idea of the ship's resting place with just a side view of the scene.
I have been sketching some ideas but think i need to just look at more ice. I'm obviously not familiar with arctic environments and dont know where to start. Im going to watch frozen planet sketch at the same time :)

Quick Update:

First of all I have read my brief back and realise the tri limit is far too low. I will have to discuss changing this with Heather on Thursday.
Second of all everytime I have been stuck on a set task I have just sat around pondering them, this of course has been a massive waste of time, so, I have made the asset list for the Wardroom and cabins so when I do get stuck can just start modelling.

1st floor

I have extended the plan to fit in what I considered to be the most interesting rooms on the ship.

The I have been building one room at a time and then running through the whole level to get a players feel for it. They have changed some decisions as a result and this is my final plan for thus floor.

Although I dont think there will be time go add the kitchen area, I have built the room because I would like the character to look through the door window and see a flooded room.

Scaling

The room now feels like the right size when i run around as the character but to make sure i am going to make a quick model of the table and chairs and the bunkbeds for the rooms, and see if it still works.

So I made the table, chairs and bunkbeds and scaled them to the block I made in UDK to resemble the height of a character. The level was totally the wrong size and shape and Im so glad I took the time to do so and I feel I have already avoided the biggest mistake I made with the Rooftop which was the scale of the level.

Plan for the Wardroom.