When I started drawing these top down mazes, I began by looking at real life mazes across the globe including hedge mazes also cornfield mazes. The real mazes I looked at helped show me how to structure a maze, I drew four top down mazes, the first one being one that is very challenging to the mind as it has lots of loop-de-loops in it and dead ends I didn't choose this one because of the complex design and the challenging to the person. The second maze I designed was very simple indeed that was one of the reasons why I didn't choose it because of its simplicity. The third one that I drew was the most complicated of them all, with all the dead ends that I designed in it made it a very complex and challenging maze to go through however I didn't choose this one I chose the last maze as it was near perfect as the simplicity of the maze was great plus with the occasional dead end in the maze made it fun but also challenging to play.
1)
2)
3)
4)
This last maze that I drew was the second level of my project but instead of making it the same as the others I decided to go very far away from it and designed a drop down maze, basically this maze is to avoid the blocks within the tunnel as you are dropping, I got this inspiration from a game within the game "Minecraft" as in that game you have to jump your way down on the blocks so it gave me a idea where you have to dodge them as you are falling. When designing these 4 drop down mazes I found them quite interesting as I had to draw them in various views where some seemed very easy to draw others were difficult, for example the back and front were easy to draw out but when translating them into left and right I found I challenging. I chose the final design out of the four drop down mazes, reason being is it was easy to model out but when going through it in a first person camera it can be quite challenging to the mind. The reason why I didn't choose the other mazes was because some of them were too challenging to model out for example 1 and 3, whereas drop down maze 2 would be easy to model out but it wasn't very challenging to the mind of who ever is playing the game.
First idea for the drop down maze:
Second idea for the drop down maze:
Third idea for the drop down maze:
Last idea for the drop down maze:
Textures:
When I was looking into what textures I needed for my maze I started thinking what objects I had and what I wanted them to look like in my head, so I began looking for textures for my objects, the objects included were: Path, fence, Chinese gate and the maze itself.
Path
For the path i wanted it to go with the theme I had set for the first maze Asian temple theme so I began looking at textures for cobbled pathways, bricks and wood.
First one is Brick Cobbled,
The reason I didn't choose this texture is because when I tried it out it was too stretched out over the pathway so it became pixelated.
Second one is brick
I did like this texture because of how it fitted the pathway perfectly, However this texture didn't fit with the idea of a Asian temple theme that is why I didn't pick it.
Third one is wood
When looking at this texture on the path it just was a really bad choice that I made when picking this texture as it fitted the pathway perfectly without pixelating but it really didn't look right.
Fence
For the fence texture I obviously wanted a wooden fence but I began to look at metal fences as well but I didn't choose the metal texture because it didn't fit in with the theme of the actual maze, the textures I looked are as following:
First one I looked at was the wooden texture:
Second one I looked at was the metal texture:
Chinese gate
When I was modeling the Chinese I was modeling different objects such as the bases, the pillars and the beams at the top, so when I looking to texture my object I had to think of the objects and what I wanted them to look like. When I was looking for the textures for this particular object I was looking in the presets that are provided by ''Lightwave''.
Chinese gate - Base:
This is the texture that I used (Hammered Metal) for the base of the gate, but I had to make some changes to the texture to suit the base of the Chinese gate, what I changed on the texture is how light it was, I made it lighter this makes it show up better when rendered out.
I also looked at this texture (Hammered Chrome) but when I tried it out, It was too bright and the texture reflected the light too much giving it a flat surface instead of a hammered like look, when I made the texture darker it made little difference to the actual texture.
Chinese gate - Pillars and top of beams:
This is the texture that I used (velvet) for the pillars and the top beams of the gate, but I had to make some changes to this texture as it came up lighter than I wanted it to be, so I darkened the texture and also changing the colour from violet to red this gave it a rough look to the pillars and the top of the gate. I didn't try out any other textures as I was dead set on this texture.
The Maze
When looking up textures for the right one for my maze, in my mind I had an image of what I wanted it to look like, I wanted it to look rough like the walls have been chipped away, so I looked at textures of brick and metal to see if I could implement this into my maze, I also looked at textures that were quite mossy but that texture didn't look right when i placed it on the maze walls. The textures I looked at are:
First one I looked at:
Second one I looked at:
Third one I looked at:
3D Perspective drawings
To go along with my drawings I drew some 3D perspectives of the first maze to show how I wanted it look such as how I wanted the front of the maze looked like and when inside the maze and what the player sees
Front of the maze:
What the player would see:
Storyboard:
To go along with my planning I created storyboards to go along with my drawings, this also helped me plan out how long the frames will be, when I was making the maze flythrough.
First Maze:
Second Maze:
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
