Project Conclusion

Hello everyone! It has been a long, tedious, but incredibly educational 10 weeks, and our project has come a long way. Did we get everything done we set out to do? Hell no. But we expected that and planned accordingly. In the end, we did have a good walk through of the level to show and the class really liked it.

If we had more time I would have:

Put a hole in the ceiling and done other things to make it look more post-apocalyptic
Added newspapers on the pillars and ground
Added a flickering light
Finish the subway texture
Add collision to the subway
Texture the turnstyles

All in all, I’m actually glad we didn’t invest more time into this than needed. David and I both learned a lot from this project and have realized that there are some core issues that need to be resolved with the Strewnfield idea in general before we continue on. While creating this small environment it really got us thinking about our game play mechanics and the rest of the world and how we would like to start over from scratch and build things from the ground up again. We are really looking forward to returning to the idea of Strewnfield without a 10-week time constraint and other classes.

No fears though! This blog will still be up and running. This summer, as I said, David and I plan on returning to the idea and working it out all over again. We’ll keep posting updates here.

But without further ado, here is 45 second video clip on the environment.

Week 8

My apologies for not posting in a while! According to my blog stats, there are in fact people checking this blog! Always pleased to see our stuff is getting viewed.

Wow, where has the time gone? This week is week 8, and our rough draft of the project is due this week. So where do we stand? Well, as usual… let’s just say we would have wanted more done at this point. All is not lost, we’ll still come away with something decent looking to show for it, but as the weeks progressed, our scope kept getting smaller and smaller.

I think the main reason we had to take such a hit on the scope was because we were suppose to be a three man team. We knew it would change things, but not that much. Things happen though, and like I’ve said before, we plan on revisiting this idea over the summer again.

Right now I’m finishing the subway station texturing and David is working on some animation. We still have tons to do before Wednesday, so wish us luck!

I’ll keep you posted.

Quick Pics

Some awesome progress has been made on the subway station! I haven’t textured the assets yet, but the environment is coming along nicely. Right now I’m trying to figure out a few package bugs and getting some decals in, but after that, things should resume the normal pace. I hope to have this subway completely done by this weekend.

Good Stuff

Wow! It’s week 5 already! There is still a lot to do, but we have been making some great progress this past week. David has been looking into animations for our characters and I have been chugging along with finishing the subway model and roughing out the subway station itself.

It’s been tough, juggling classes, two jobs, and life, but despite this semester being the most taxing of them all, I think we’ve made some good headway. I knew going into this that we probably wouldn’t get as much done as hoped for, and end up chopping a good amount of stuff out of what we planned on doing, but should that have been a good reason to set our goals any lower? I don’t think. It’s go big or go home. Read our meet the team to see more on our high expectations.

Trouble on the high seas

So… the subway car is taking forever. It looks cool, but it’s not even passed the uv map phase all the way yet. I spent all weekend fighting with a technique called ‘thirding’, only to find out that what I was really trying to do wasn’t thirding, it was just texturing tiling. I had to do numerous unwraps of the model because each time I would get almost done and find an error in the geometry. This wouldn’t have been a huge problem if I unwrapped it in Max, but since I export it out to UVLayout, I had to start over multiple times. I finally finished the unwrapping at 5am Sunday night/Monday morning.

The unwrap looks beautiful! And the texture tiling worked really well. Instead of unwrapping the whole thing, which would have killed space, I’m tiling three different pieces so I can switch up the repetitiveness. However… along with new techniques come new and unforeseen outcomes. Sure, tiling works great, but when you bake your AO map… the shadows tile too. So now I’m left with a wreck of a AO map and I’m not really sure what to do with it yet.

I suppose I could go in and tile the shadows somehow, or just take them out completely, but what a pain… I might rework the UV Map so that the front doesn’t tile and the rest does. At least there would be some consistent shadow near the front, and some tiled shadow on the inside. There are a few options I’m still playing around with.

In other news, I’m concerned about how fast we are getting stuff done. This subway really needs to get done soon so I can move onto the level itself. I see many more late nights and long days a head of us before we even get to something we remotely called a finished project.

From the front lines!

Almost done!

With week two coming to a close this Wednesday evening, we have some decent progress to show for it! As you can see, we have been modeling some of the assets that will be on our map. The subway car is coming along much more nicely than I thought it would; a testament to my ever growing modeling skills. I still have to finish the wells, fix up the front a bit (the bottom is too long) and add in some of the insides. David made that turn style you see up above and it came out pretty nice. The texture baking went a bit weird though. We’ll need to play around with that a bit more. The final image you see is the trashcan! Looks good, but is lacking trash right now.

I hope to finish modeling this subway car by Wednesday so we can move onto other things. Considering the subway car was a big, big deal on our assets list, I’m not too worried about the time it will take to make other models. The subway was a very complex model to make and was a good warm up of things to come.

David is looking to get his hands on a the rigging DVD from digital tutors ASAP. The animation phase is coming up fast for him!

As always, stay tuned for more updates!

Week 2 Updates and Development Phase Start!

With the pre-development phase behind us now, the strewnfield team is in full swing as we move into the development phase. Wednesday we presented our project pitch and the class seemed to really like both the story and the environments we plan on showing. A remaining concern, shared by Randy (the professor) and some classmates as well, is the playability of our idea in using the Unreal Engine. AI just isn’t within the scope of our project, and Randy steered us in the direction of a game trailer. This is an option we had put on the table a couple weeks ago, and has not been out of sight. Simply put, we had decided to get as much done as possible and then during week 8 decide if it was going to be playable or if we needed to turn it into a game trailer of sorts. However, Randy brought up a good point in that if we went the game trailer route, we could fake a lot of environment. For instance, the subway, which I had initially planned to model a complete layout, would only need to look complete, and not actually be complete. With the time crunch and the technological disadvantage we have here, we will be completeling a game trailer for this semester.

But don’t worry! David and I really believe in this universe we created, and think we have a pretty genius story going for us here. We definitely plan on porting this over to either Torque or Source SDK during the summer, using the same artwork, and make things playable. We have big plans for this game after this game trailer! And the best part is, this game trailer will help us get some feedback from people on what they think.

Subway Entrance

Subway Car

Subway Car

Some Concepts and Week 1′s Class

Concept art is an undeveloped talent in me. I believe I have, it’s just a department that’s really lacking because a) I hardly draw and b) I hardly draw with a tablet and Photoshop. I’ve gotten the hang of the tablet it seems, and I’m understanding photoshop as an extension of art tools already existing.

Anyway, without further ado.

Subway Entrance from the inside

Full Image

Meteor shower on city

Full Image

Meteor Hitting Plane

Full Image
The last one is the one I am really proud of. That’s the one I felt the most in tune with my tablet and Photoshop. I had a good rhythm of work going. The first one isn’t bad for starters, and the second one is just “eh.” As far as planning the environment and level goes, the concept art thus far hasn’t really proved to be any help. But as I’m drawing it, my mind wanders and I really put myself in the universe. It’s helped me get a better grip on the world, if not what I’m drawing.

More concepts to come soon.

The Animation III class met for the first time yesterday. The team had a chance to look at what this semester would bring and what sort of things we should be prepared for. Dan has expressed interest in his own endeavors, but wants to help with this project too. This is a bit of a setback, but not by much. We were going to have Dan focus mainly on forest/park environments, which their is only one we have in mind right now, so he’ll still be able to make that small contribution yet remain active in his own as well. David will be concentrating on special effects and animation, and will also be helping with making assets early on. The load of modeling and texturing is placed on me, but that’s what I’ve asked for.

Now that we are getting nearer to starting, we’re starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by the scope of the project. I believe this isn’t due to it being too big, but more so because we haven’t set the scope yet. Once we nail down exactly what we’ll be partaking in for the semester, and stick to it, this bit of stress will pass and we’ll be able to focus on the milestones.

That pretty much sums up what we’ll be doing between this week and next. We’ll be completing our project pitch and design doc, pumping out more concept art, and setting a scope.

My return

After a 9-day vacation to Florida, I have returned. The team has been enjoying their break and rightfully so. However, we still don’t have any concept art to show. With four days out till our first day of class, our goal of going in with something has yet to be met. I have some work to finish up tonight and tomorrow, and then I’ll be sitting down and wiping up a few drawings. I’m going to cut this one short so I can finish up my work as fast as I can. My next post will have concepts!

Forward, March!

The team is in high spirits as we continue to trudge on in the pre-development phase of Strewnfield. The story was posted last night for those who haven’t noticed yet, and the link can be found on the right hand side of this page. With the story in mind, we will all be working hard on concept art for the next 10 days while simultaneously working on learning next-gen techniques. I am excited to see what David and Dan come up with, with all the creative freedom we have in this project and all. The story isn’t that detailed, and I left it that way. I want us to take that ‘back of the box’ snippet of the story and let our imagines run free. We can always weed out things we feel we don’t want after the concept phase.

I think that’s a big mistake newcomers make. They tend to think that the concept art phase is strictly for those things they know are going to be in the game. That’s not in at all. The whole idea of concept art is to pump out everything that comes to mind and then filter through it afterward. Concept art is so important too. Instead of sitting in a chair, starring at 3D Studio Max for three weeks trying to decide what looks good, we’ll know right out the gate what our art vision is and what we want things to look like.

I’m headed to Florida tomorrow for 9 days. I know I should be more excited about that than I am this, but I can’t help feeling pumped! I’ll try and relax down there… but no promises. I want to get to work! At least I’ll have a 17 hour drive down to think about things and maybe make some sketches while someone else is driving.

For all your picture-holics, there should be some concept pictures up as soon as we start putting out, so stay tuned.

//Michael