I’ve got videos working as previously mentioned. While the BINK files have encoded the sound information as well as the video, I can see no evidence of sound in the editor. I am told that sound will not play in the editor but will once in the actual game.
I’ve made matinees for each video. Each video is playing on geometry in the level, with a camera pointed at each one. When an origami step is triggered, the matinee sequence begins allowing the player to viewed the selected video. The matinee is the same length as the video(give or take some milliseconds) so that when the video is over the players view returns to the game world.
While my original plan was to convert my videos to flash movies then incorporate them into scaleform, I’ve had to change my method. I found out quickly that UDK refuses to deal with large file sizes in scaleform, resulting in crashes on import. Once I figured out what was causing the crashes I set out to find another method of getting video content into the engine.
I’ve decided to use BINK-encoded videos. BINK files are the only video encodes that can be directly imported into the engine. UDK treats the videos as textures. Once incorporated into a material these materials can then be placed onto geometry. Through my research I believed that BINK materials could only be placed effectively onto BSP geometry. While this is true, that BSP can then be converted to other types of geometry.
After placing the BINK material onto a BSP surface I had to make it tile properly to line up correctly. After hours of headache trying to get my numbers right I discovered, quite literally, the easy button. The FIT button in the BSP surface properties scales the size of the material to the given BSP face.
That problem solved, I encountered another. The problem of controlling playback of the BINK materials. I know this can be done with simple code, but I am oblivious as to how to get actual script into UDK. Supposedly playback can be controlled within kismet using the CONTROL MOVIE TEXTURE node. After working with the node on a couple occasions I could not get it to control the material’s playback.
In an attempt to circumvent the problem I’ve told the geometry that is to hold the video to switch materials. The thought process behind this decision being that the material will not begin playing until it is loaded into the level. While this seems to have done the trick, switching from a static material to the BINK material and back on a timer set to the exact length of the video, after the first playthrough the timing is screwed up.
I realized after-the-fact that if I’m going to have a garden on the interior of the museum then I need to have as much light reaching it as possible and access to rainwater. I cut a hole in the roof the same size and shape as the garden.
The display stand for the lessons has changed as well. I’ve widened the base a bit. I think it looks much better.
I’ve modeled the flower/tree components. Here’s a comparison with the original concept. The rose would’ve been a pain in the ass to model and get to look right in a paper world so I swapped it out with a four-petaled iris.
This represent what I’ve come up with for the stands that the user will interact with. Hovering above each of these will be a mesh representing one of the steps toward folding a completed crane. I am not happy with this mesh so I doubt I’ll use it in the final level.
At the end of last quarter I was able to get a scaleform menu running in UDK. For this project I will convert my videos into a swf to be activated when a user presses the use key at a podium.
