Back to Work

Having been somewhat under the weather for the past couple of months, i have finally returned to work. I started with the summer project modeling a car and have produced two basic low poly models, albeit with many flaws, but im happy with what I've produced and what I've learnt from the process.

Porsche 911 GT2 2003

Dodge Viper SRT10

drip.

 have been spending some time photoshopping some textures together for the level rather than the meshes. I started by adding a kind of worn effect to the elevator shaft where the moving parts would have cut away at the concrete. Which led to the morgue above were I laid down some tiling to give it an easy clean appearance with some tiles missing, and im going to model some to place on the floor. In the staff room, or living quarters, iv pasted some green 70's paper down to make it a bit less industrial, and added some timely posters up of which i might add a couple more.

 

A Bit Meshy.

So heres my holding cells including bed sink and buckets. The wall has a simple uvw map on at the moment but i may wish to dirty them up a bit in which case ill unwrap it. The cell bars and sinks have been attached into a single mesh, along with the beds, and the doors. I did this to make it easier to place within the editor because my level was getting a bit busy and i was struggling to get them into position as individual meshes.

Death Row

I was inspired from playing arkham asylum to create a mortuary type wall where bodies would be stored. Unfortunately ive been unable to find any images of the exact part i am referencing, but for anyone who played the game remember when your on the scarecrows drugs and you find 3 bodies in bags which appear to be his parents and himself. Im unsure whether to add the remnants of a corpse in one of the open doors but im going to make sure ive come closer to finishing the entire level before adding anything like that. Apart from that ive only spent some time removing all the lights to replace them with a cold blue-ish ambient light, and then i can add brighter lights like lamps and torches with assets too.

I like pacman. Cant you tell

Past few weeks i have neglected my blog which is mainly down to the assets ive been making, theyve all been rather dull mundane objects in comparison with everybody elses. But i keep telling myself that if i go putting crazy things in itwould look daft..

Anyway, ive moved on to working on a kind of living quarters a staff room of sorts, and i wanted to create some assets that would be in keeping but totally different from the rest of the level. So i modelled a boxy old-school arcade games, the type found down at a dodgy money laundering hall or kids arcade. Like most of the assets so far its a pretty simple modelled box, an inset here a bevel there. I made the texture from scratch from some old pacman work i had done, which was part of my rather small portfolio to gain entrance to the course. I had to use the transform tool to align the dots, wall and characters up by eye but it only took an extra couple of minutes compared to the extra 30 for re-wrapping.

Lift Off

Im not even sure if i was supposed to be in college today but due to oversleeping and more importantly the weather i stayed home. I wasnt feeling quite in the mood as my brain was elsewhere sledging, so i eased myself in with this pretty simple torch. I wanted a directional light source mesh that could be placed around the level casting atmospheric shadows. I cant decide if its too big or not as ive had to put blocking volumes over it as you get stuck manouvreing around it.

3 IBM PC's

The festivities are over and ive finally got back onto the mountain of work left to complete this module. I quickly finished texturing the blasted hole with somewhat of a bodge job. I couldnt figure out how to merge the static meshes texture seemlessly with the floor texture, so i havent. I matched the size as well as i could and have positioned it to the best of my eyes ability. Hopefully with the darkness of the area it wont be too noticeable.

Steady Eddy

I was looking through the models id started already to see what i could finish and i found the vent shaft and fan for the main room. It needed some altering to fit in the level and unwrapping ready to texture, whilst doing this i was considering changing the shape of the main room as is pretty much just a glorified torture box. Considering a few factors i decided that if i extended the vent shaft out into the room and then model in the ceiling to be angled i could create a bit of shape. After a weekends work ive managed to produce a decent textured asset that drastically alters the rooms appearance.So much for working on smaller objects this weekend..

Changing Rooms.

Its been a busy couple of days but ive managed to produce another asset this time fully textured, i am pleased with my discipline. Being un-efficient iv decided to work on one room at a time so that my mind wont wander as much when im modelling, or at least it will be contained to just the one room. The main room is a fairly key area in the level and will have alot of focus on it, as all the other rooms stem from it, so ive started here. Originally i wanted to model a tank of some sort to place in the middle of this area, containing a purple liquid and some kind of body. I realised this was possibly a bit too complex for my ability and chose a torture/experiment table, taking my main inspiration from Goldfinger's laser table. The whole process took only two days from designing to texturing and at 1043 polys i cant complain. Now i just need to continue at this pace and come the hand-in ill have finished with plenty of time to spare.

Asset Generation.

This week we were given the task to research and design a generator to include in the environment with a 1500 poly limit. I was a little over the on the poly count, but i felt that reducing itany further would remove too much detail leaving the asset all the more box-ish. I havent  fully finished texturing the engine block, and im not entirely sure where im going to go with it but it may be a case of starting it and seeing how it turns out.

Sketchy

For some reason this week seems to have flown by and i feel like i could have acheieved more, but iv really had to bully myself into doing any work at all. What i have acheieved though has been a start i suppose, i finally textured my staircase i modelled last week and it has helped to develop the levels image in my mind. Quite by chance I stumbled across a grate texture that was perfect for what i wanted. I had originally modelled the grate with single boxes, cutting and target welding them together and thinking about it, it was the hard and unneccessary way.

A Sight for Sore Eyes.

So this past week we've started the new module of spatial awareness, our task is to design and make a playable level for Unreal Tournament 2004. We began at the beginning learning the controls and techniques used to build a level in the editor. Whilst we were gettin to grips with the new package, i had a few ideas for my own level and started to jot them down. I am theming my research facility on a disused underground lab used for inhumain testing to create weaponary based in the 70's or 80's. I quickly blocked out the level to get a feel for how it would play and made some changes and re-sketched a plan for what i hope my final level will look like.

Starting with the basement level this will be a holding cell of sorts in a single large room. With an elevator in the far left corner for prisoner transport to the lab room linked to the level above. Some signs of a breakout or catastrophe however I need to conduct more research for this part.

The middle layer will contain a lab room, living quarters and the "main room" which will house some kind of tank system and the "water feature", although currently im uncertain exactly how these will look. All three rooms are connected by a corridor which links to the stairs and will have signs of major damage.


 The top layer will have another corridor running in line with the one below. Two main rooms here, the control room and some kind of office. The control room will have an almost bay window-ish feature protruding into the main room with a window into it. Yet more signs of damage with possible blast doors scattered on the floor and so on.

Rendered Useless

I spent some time creating a little runway environment to animate my model and like usual got a bit carried away. I drew a sphere, halved and iverted it so i could apply this 360 degree skyscape i downloaded and textured a simple runway. I then started modelling a hangar with opening doors which i made somewhat more of a meal than i should have, but got there in the end. I also found this image of an air traffic control tower which inspired me to go forth an model one, however mine looks rather box-ish but it does the job.

Let There Be Light.

Almost finished. All the hard graft is done, and it is now time to get the camera out and shoot the bugger.

Pixel Patience

I was anxiously awaiting texturing, as this is something i could see my self pursuing in the industry but was unsure how i would fare. And as it turned out i dont think i did too badly, there are however some errors which i havent had time to rectify due to the approaching deadline but may get round to over the weekend. It's been two weeks since my last post and i reckon the largest proportion has been spent solely on colouring pixels and image overlaying.

Unwrapped Like a Gift.

The model is finished, well to a point but being a stickler for detail i have a funny feeling i might revisit the modelling stage later to add some obscure detail i missed or maybe just tweak a single vertex. The time has come to unwrap it, which turned out to be a mind melter, I was seeing grey and white checkers for several days after the first day of it.

Yet Some More Detail.

Time to add the fiddly bits to the aircraft, not much left to do but it still took a proportion of my time which in retrospect could have been spent more wisely. In my opinion hindsight isn't a wonderful thing merely something everyone should use to learn from and just maybe the world would be a better place if that was the case, fat chance. With only the wheels, exhaust, guns and antennae left i cracked on. I constructed the wheels from 3 basic cylinders. I started with the mount, which consisted of two of the cylinders. i bent the lower of the two and welded it to the other. Then with the third added a couple of cap segments and manouvred them to cause an indentation, giving rise to the wheel's shape and then attached this to the mount, and add a simply guard.

Intake all the Detail.

After i had found out less was more, like so many things these days, I was left to do some poly removal and tweaking on my overcomplicated box. After several hours of trials and errors, what i ended up with was a tidier model weighing in at just under 800 polys, that in my opinion looked better anyway.

Strap on a Pair.

So far the model seems to be going well, at least for a first time effort. I have the fuselage boxed out and its time to allow this bad boy to take flight, it needs a pair of wings. So only one wing need be modelled, as symmetry will do the honours of making life simple. Again a box was drawn up and edited in poly mode. Using mainly the scale gismo to shape out the initial shape and the move gismo to tweak a couple of vertices i ended up with a pretty decent looking wing shape.

Buckle Up Lets Fly.

So I had constructed my stage from which i could model off, now it is to the interesting part. With no more than a cuboid which at the time i had images of turning into a kellogs box and running rampant ...

Start Your Engines.

The assignment was to construct a low poly model of any World War II aircraft texutre it and provide a simple animation. So i have my first assignment, the door to the virtual world awaits and i want to make my first model worthy candidate. Not knowing all that much about the old crows of World War II I perused the web looking at different types from bombers to dogfighters, Mikoyan-i-Gurevich soviet styled attack planes to the Japanese kamikaze aircrafts i finally settled on the American Equivalent of the Spitfire, the P51 D mustang...

Day One on the Job

They say "drop 'em in the deep end and watch 'em swim" and quite rightly. Our first assignment has been pretty much like that, to model a World War II aircraft, unwrap and texture it and then provide it with a simple environemnt and produce a basic animation. The first week was pretty much a crash course in 3D Studio Max and its essential tools and gismos, and how they can be utilised to produce and manipulate various shapes..

Life Changing..

Ok so it all started with a change of heart. I got stuck in what some may call a bit of a rut, and needed a drastic lifestyle change. I eventually enrolled onto a computer games design course on no more than a whim and a love for playing computer games, for which i can honestly say i had never imagined myself pursuing a career in the games industry. And what a gut instinct it has proven, i had never appreciated what went on behind a game, weve been modelling our first assignment for no more than 5 weeks now and im loving every minute of it. It has changed my entire perspective on life, ordinary mundane objects are now endless possibilities for incoproration in games. When i was at college, i had conversations about how good it would be to go paintballing around my college, i think in the near future i may be able to bring that to life by creating a playable level for the unreal or source engine.