Tech Art | Youssef Fahmy

Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints: Infinicity

Infinicity

This is my final project while studying Technical Arts in BCIT.

I drew inspiration from city generators, but though: "What if I want to randomly generate a city which stretches forever?"

The issue to having a map generate more map endlessly, is that the level risks getting too big, slowing the game down drastically. My solution was to create a grid system which generates more city as the player moves along, deleting the farthest blocks to save space.

Unreal Engine 4 Blueprints: 3rd-Person Shooter

Third-Person Shooter

During my studies at BCIT, I learned several software, including Maya, Substance Designer, Houdini and Unreal Engine. As part of the programming for Unreal Engine class, we learned how to use Blueprints to make a wave-based third-person shooter game from scratch. In doing so, I learned how locomotion works, bringing in animation, sound effects and Niagra visual effects into a game. This also involved programming controls, weapon swapping, exponential difficulty, health, death, ragdoll and UI.

Substance Painter: Hand-Painted Baked Light Smart Material

Hand-Painted Baked Light Smart Material

For the Frodo Baggins project I worked on, I wanted to use a hand-painted style of texturing, using only the base color. To simplify the process, I made a smart material based on baked lighting, which offered the perfect base for the desired look.

I also made a smart material to set up lights for a more dramatic look while relying solely on base color.

Maya Python: City Generator

City Generator

This was one of my projects during my Technical Art studies at BCIT.

There are three sections to this script, which is aimed at generating a city quickly. In the first section, the tool takes existing geo (buildings), and randomly positions them either on or around a curve, depending on the settings. In the second section, a road can be generated along the same curve (or another), textured, and tiled. The third section generates either an animated sunlight, or a fixed light depicting the time of day.

This taught me a lot about Python scripting in Maya, and openned my eyes to the possibilities for those adept in the field. After completing this project, I created other quick tools for quick lighting and camera set-ups, quick material makers and so on.

Maya Python: Nudger

Nudger

Having been given the task to model a messy room full of stacked boxes, I wanted an easy and quick way to add randomized variation to the transform and rotation values of multiple objects at once. I then decided to write a script to save time.

I realized that this tool could come in quite handy for sets, and even certain props. As a result, I decided to turn the script into a simple tool and shared it with co-workers.

Maya Python: Rope Generator

Rope Generator

This tool generates rope along a curve. I wanted to showcase it, as it turned out to be quite useful for me in my set modeling experience.