Rooftop - Final

After four weeks of solid work, this is what I managed to produce for the rooftop project. As a quick introduction the idea - the design of my rooftop was a 'Prince of Persia' style palace, trying to emulate how Ubisoft successfully combine fantasy and reality Arabian architecture. Some concepts:

Sultans Office

Walls and Pillars

                                                                            Rooftop Concept                                                                                       

 These initial concepts were a basic illustration for the size and architectural type of the level I was going for. The level was going to be crafted using tile sets, reason being was that last year during our group project I found that building architecture in UDK was so much simpler with static meshes in comparison to using clunky BSP. The tilesets were kept fairly simple, for example floors and walls were generally 128x128 (3dsmax units) planes. The only thing I needed to ensure was to line up more complex architecture like the arches to the grid, so that by instancing them they would snap together seamlessly (modular).
    Once I'd matched the Rooftop Concept in engine, I felt that the level needed 'more'. Using tile sets allowed me to continually push the level expanding in all directions. I always feel there is room for improvement in all my projects so I am never settled, I mean I will be more than happy to accept at this stage the level was decent but I find that I have fun trying to find new and clever ways to improve upon what I have achieved. I guess that's because I was so enthusiastic about this project. I was actually disappointed this project ended but fortunately we have the remainder of our final year to continue working on it. Anyway here is some real-time screenshots of the rooftop.

View from the balcony.

The sultans office was initially supposed to be crafted from more elegant materials like Marble with reflective floor tiles to make it look more impressive. I decided to craft the office using wood rather than marble, which gave it more of a 'office study' feel.

Sun Lounge - with Camels!

View of the palace/mountain backdrop

I guess the only thing left to do now is to render out a fly through, there were a few animated dynamic elements in the level that would be cool to show.