Antony Gormley Research

I would like to spawn objects as part of my assignment, and after looking at some of Antony Gormley's work I have decided that I would like to incorporate some of his concepts and the shapes he uses into the objects I will be spawning. I was particularly interested in the APERTURE and FRAMER sculpture series', and his exploration of the body through new kinds of structural complexity.

The FRAMER works refer to the "masses discovered within the total body volume", and use architectural volumes to describe and extend the body.



The aim of the APERTURE works is to "turn the body into an open framework of tetrahedral, cubic, dodecahedral and more complex polygons", and the outer edges of the works seemingly "grasp the air and indicate, in the metaphorical sense, the moment in which a body opens itself to the space around it".



Gormley states: "My work has always explored the body as a place rather than an object", and this is interesting for our experiment brief because I would like to explore how the body moves around a place and explore the ways in which I can use architectural volumes and masses to portray this movement.
I plan to use the types of volumes that Gormley uses in his FRAMER works in particular as the objects that are to be spawned as I (local player) move around the environment. This will be the beginnings of my Porosity Lens.

I have visited many of Antony Gormley's Exhibitions in the UK, including 'Event Horizon', and more recently 'Another Place' which I visited in June this year with my family.


(it was a pretty horrible English day!)

S.W.A.T Analysis

entity:ProximityTrigger (from Turn Light On When Player Gets Close Flowgraph)

Strengths: has lots of inputs and outputs, so can be enabled and disabled and can also enable and disable other parts of the flowgraph and nodes.

Weaknesses: limited in terms of using it to trigger things from far away as it will only work when player is on top of it in the game.

Opportunities: easy to use for things like lights that turn on when you get close to them, or move an entity when you get close to it (really anything to do with being within a certain range of the entity in question).

Threats: good to trigger things with, but if too many are used they might overlap and then the movements might not work as intended originally.

Entity:SpawnArchetype (from Spawn Entity as Local Player Moves Around)

Strengths: can spawn any archetype (and make custom models archetypes to use), has many inputs that relate to properties of the archetype (pos, scale and rot) and has outputs that can be used for when the task of spawning is completed or when it has failed.

Weaknesses: had to download plugin system which meant I had to make a mod and a new level too, have to link quite a few more nodes to specify settings for properties and things like time between each spawning, requires moderate knowledge about flowgraphs and how nodes work together.

Opportunities: this will be a useful node to use for showing where a player has moved by spawning objects according to the player's position, leaving behind a pathway of objects like footprints.

Threats: could potentially go wrong if did not know how to make mod version and levels, a bit complicated to install, a bit complicated to turn custom model into an archetype to get the name to type next to 'archetype' in the node settings.

Entity:EntityPos (from Scale Entity as AI Moves Around It)

Strengths: can easily assign entity by right-clicking for selected entity, many outputs with lots of properties that can be set using other nodes, input 'get' which finds assigned entity's position, good for moving objects/players/AIs.

Weaknesses: needs a lot of extra nodes to link to in order to actually set or use any properties of the entity in some way.

Opportunities: can use this to find player's position in the game and when the flowgraph 'gets' the players position I can use this to assign the spawned object/archetype its position.

Threats: if don't understand the communication enough between nodes this node will be useless because it requires some other nodes in order for the position of the input entity to mean anything in the game.

Three FlowGraph Nodes

Make AI Walk Towards Tag Point and Do Action:
This tutorial is from http://www.veoh.com/search/videos/q/sandbox/offset/40/searchId/9e96e75bb22461d76d60e24aa9dd1b70#watch%3Dv17308205SRsWdN2E (accessed 22/9/10)
Here are some screenshots of the flowgraphs I created. (THIS NODE IS NOT ONE I AM CONSIDERING, IT WAS JUST TO START OFF WITH FLOWGRAPHS SO IS NOT INCLUDED IN MY 3 CHOSEN ONES!, AND WILL NOT BE ANALYSED BY S.W.A.T)
For my action I made the AI walk to the tag point and Salute.
This one was the new AI action flowgraph:

This one was the one that is connected to the AI itself:


This is a screenshot of what the set-up looks like in the editor:


This video shows the result of the flowgraphs together:





Light Turn On When Player Gets Close, and Then Turn Off:
Here is a screenshot of the flowgraph I used for this:
I used the Proximity Trigger so that when the player is close to the light, the light will turn on, and when the player is not close anymore, the light will turn off again after 1 second.



Here is a screenshot of what this set-up looks like in the editor:
I used a custom model for this example as when I was first testing out if the flowgraph was working it was hard to see if the light was turning on because you could only see a small change on the terrain floor.





Spawn Entity as Player Moves Around:

I had to download the plugin system for Crysis to get this node (Entity: SpawnArchetype). The flowgraph shown below depicts the node working so that when the game starts, every 0.05 seconds the position of the local player is checked and a chosen archetype is spawned in the position of the player (in this case I chose bananas).

Here is a video of the results of this flowgraph. I plan on investigating the possibilities of this flowgraph in more detail for the assignment.



Scale Entity as AI Moves Around It:
For this flowgraph I used the Entity:EntityPos node for my flowgraph in particular as this allowed me to use the scale input for scaling the basic entity as the AI moves around. This video shows my progress on testing scaling when working with AIs and entities. I had planned to expand on this and use this particular node in my final assignment. However, I am now planning on spawning objects instead.
I got the flowgraph from this blog in my tutorial group: http://terrencewong2423.blogspot.com/ (thank you!). I am interested in finding out more about this node and how I can use scaling in my assignment.
Here is my flowgraph for this node:

Re-arranging and Investigating Town Hall Model

This is the Town Hall model without the long flat components (I am assuming these are the tracks?) and I like the model this way as it is repetitive and plain, so then I will be able to add my own models to it easily and they will stand out more. I would like to use this model as a sort of 'grid' for how the city I build might be arranged.


This is the Town Hall model untouched, in its original form.

Here I lifted the layers from inside the model and put them above the main frame, and then angled the longest components at 30 degrees to make a strange shape. With the angles I am thinking about testing out making a more Tipi-looking building perhaps, but maybe that would only be created when the player moves towards the components. This might be an interesting thing to continue investigating.
This is what the Town Hall model looks like with all those horizontal components having been moved to above the main frame.
This is just one of the components of the main frame.

This is a shot looking through the main frame, which I found interesting as it shows the shape of the structure to be very repetitive and square, when really we can see from the single component of this main frame above that it is not all that repetitive and contains many different sized rectangles. It is however, a very strong shape.

Investigating AI

After watching a few tutorials on youtube, I can see that it is quite hard to distinguish videos that just make the AI do something using AI points and navigation, and ones that use flow graphs.

Making Terrain

Terrain Ideas

http://image10.webshots.com/11/4/87/60/130448760AoOoHU_ph.jpg
This image I found is interesting as it shows a kind of mountainous range, but it is really made up of a series of valleys, as the mountains are flat on the top. There are also some interesting textures.




http://www.beachwallpapers.in/wallpaper/Sandy-Cay-Caribbean-beach/
I like this landscape as it is quite simple and wont distract from what is the real issue in the video I will make for this assignment. It is also quite limiting though, as it would be quite hard to use the landscape in any way in my research as it would really only be flat land with some texture on it. It is very attractive and simple though.



http://www.wizardnet.com/musgrave/cool2.jpg
This is my favourite of the three landscapes as it combines water and mountains, without using the beach concept. I like how these mountains seem to just appear out of the water and the landscape is very harsh and dynamic.

Research

Information about categories of nodes, and general information about what flow graphs can be used for found here:

http://doc.crymod.com/SandboxManual/frames.html?frmname=topic&frmfile=contents.htmlThis is from the EXP2 brief:

Note: In simple terms a Porosity Lens is a way to understand peoples navigation through an environment. A key aspect is that it takes into account how long people spend at certain places. This reflects on the public/private nature of those places. The use of the term 'lens' in Porosity Lens is metaphorical; in other words instead of using a glass lens to focus rays of light into an image (as is the case in a literal lens) students in BENV2423 are using flowgraph nodes to focus information to create a real-time interactive environment.

Flowgraphs don't exist in a vacuum; depending on the students concept they will need to link/embed flowgraphs in objects, spaces, vehicles, characters that in some cases will need to be custom designed and built in SketchUp.

Porosity According to Richard Goodwin:

Porosity: the revision of public space in the city using public art to test the functional boundaries of built form. - Richard Goodwin."The marginality of public art makes it ideally suited to the task of commenting on or contradicting the main body of the text of public space in the city. This contradiction is central to the work of this thesis.""It can be argued that the social construction of a city is as important as its physical manifestation as buildings."

Information above is from website: http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/unsworks:1616#datastreamsView (accessed 22/9/10)"Pores are minute openings in a surface through which fluids may pass. To be porous is to be full of pores. Porosity is the state or quality of being porous.""... it has been possible to create images of 'what a building desires' to do next or how it might connect to other structures. In so doing, the designer can accelerate the flux of architecture. This flux or viral growth is or has been to date inevitable, but so slow that the public do not detect it.""The study claims parts of private space in the city as types of public space, and then sets about to catalogue, characterise and test these spaces through public art.""Central to my belief is the following measure: 'If one can visit a toilet adjoining a corridor leading from the lift lobby at level X of building Y and stay within that space comfortably for one hour then that constitutes a one hour public space'. In other words, the city is full of spaces of transition, connection and bodily comfort, which have yet to be claimed or classified as types of public space within the city. Clues lie within the networks of these spaces for what cities might become.""This three-dimensioning of public space enables the possibility of both more public space opportunities and also access to valuable facilities...""Porosity also seeks to engage in the continual flux or state of becoming which constitutes the edge condition of architecture now and architecture in the future.""The aim... is to accelerate the process of making public space by re-negotiating corridors of private space, which facilitates 'the public' on its journey from public to final private destination space."
Information above is from website: http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/vital/access/services/Download/unsworks:1616/SOURCE02?view=true (accessed 22/9/10)


THESE ARE SOME NODES I HAVE BEEN EXPLORING WHILE MAKING MY FIRST FLOWGRAPHS:Game:LocalPlayer
This node outputs the local players entity id, and there are no inputs on this node.


Misc:Start
This node is called when the engine is initialized.
InGame Port: Start will Trigger in PureGameMode
InEditor Port: Start will Trigger in EditorGameMode


Movement:RotateEntity
This node rotates the selected entity at a defined speed.
entityId Port: Changes the attached entity dynamically.
Speed Port: Speed (degrees/sec)
Paused Port: Pause the motion when true.
CoordsSys Port: RotationAxis in World or Local Space.
Current Port: Current Rotation in Degrees.
CurrentRad Port: Current Rotation in Radian.


Movement:MoveEntityTo

This nodes moves the selected entity to a destination position at a defined speed.

entityId Port: Changes the attached entity dynamically.
Destination Port: Destination.
DynamicUpdate Port: Dynamic update of Destination [follow-during-movement]
Speed Port: speed (m/sec)
EaseDistance Port: distance at which the speed is changed (in metres)
Start Port: Trigger this port to start the movement.
Stop Port: Trigger this port to stop the movement.
Current Port: Current position.
Done Port: Triggered when destination is reached or movement stopped.


Time:Delay
This node will delay passing the signal from [In] or [Out] for the specified number of seconds in [Delay].

In Port: Value to be passed after [Delay] time.
Delay Port: Delay time in seconds.
out Port: Out.


AI:AIAnim
This node plays the animation, perhaps a previously made flow graph for the AI to perform.

entityId Port: Changes the attached entity dynamically.
Sync Port: for synchronization only.
cancel Port: cancels execution (or stops the action)
animstateEx_name Port: name of animation to be played.
Method Port: which method to use.
done Port: action done.
succeed Port: action done successfully
fail Port: action failed.
start Port: activated on animation start.


This information is from- http://wiki.crymod.com/index.php/Flowgraph_Nodes (accessed 23/9/10)

THE FLOWGRAPH NODES I AM USING TO SCALE MY SPAWNED OBJECTS:

Math:Random

This node selects a random number between the limits that I can choose.

generate Port: generate a random number between min and max
min Port: minimum value of the random numbermax Port: maximum value of the random number
out Port: random number between min and max
outRounded Port: [out] but rounded to next integer value


Vec3:Scale
This node will scale the number that is chosen by the Math:Random node on its x,y,z axes.

vector Port: holds x,y,z values
scale Port: connected to 'out' port of math:random to activate scaling
out Port: connected to 'scale' or 'rotation' input ports of Entity:SpawnArchetype


Entity:SpawnArchetype
This node is in the plugin system which I downloaded. I am using it to spawn objects behind me when I (local player) moves around.

Spawn Port: connected to Logic:Any node which means in my flowgraph that an object will be spawned every 0.1 seconds
Archetype Port: shows identity of object to be spawned
Pos Port: specifies position of object
Rot Port: specifies rotation of object
Scale Port: specifies scale of object
Done Port: what to do when spawning finished

EXPERIMENT 1 FINAL SUBMISSION (BETTER QUALITY!)