Texturing... FUN?

Sooo, I've got that Drone fully textured.

This is the low poly model you see here. Its only about 7 thousand triangles, which is a big cut down from the hi-poly (which is about 100K). Now that the model is finished I'll be able to move onto rigging and animating. 

Although this model is an excellent box to check off on the todo list, I would like to talk about some other models and the process that they're undergoing before they are considered complete unity props. 

This is a giant pipe model. From top to bottom this image contains;

• The collision mesh
• lo-poly game mesh
• Hi-poly bake mesh

Normally it wouldn't be that important for the collision mesh to match the silhouette of the low poly, but physics is an important part of our game, so accurate collisions is a must.

When uving this mesh, I did my best to retain texel density (amount of the grid squares you see in one area) in the parts where I would like to sculpt normal detail later. These details would be things like screws, bolts scratches or even special albedo textures. 

Here is a closer image of the uv map. In order to help make sure that texturing goes well, I did my best to keep the uv shells as straight and organized as possible. The shell borders are straight and flat and all the pieces have a decent amount of space between them.

Here's a snapshot of the pipes after they have been added to the game.The textures on the rest of the models and terrain are only stand ins for now. Although this is a work in progress, This image is a close depiction of the kind of ambiance I was hoping to set for this game.

This is all I have for this week. Soon we'll be piecing together levels with final props, and I'll be working on the large mecha cannon I mentioned in a previous post. Hopefully I can show some progress on both of these subjects.

chow,

Dan

Drone Time

In hindsight, its been a pretty productive week. We have a finalized narrative and a much more refined scope for our future plans in development. As always I've been doing more research into tools that will help speed up our workflow (Such as substance painter and designer).  Besides research I've finished the Hi-poly version of our drone figure.

Drone: Front View

Drone:Back View

 When Modeling this I focused on creating parts that could transform or return into the main hull of the drone. 

There is still much work to be done before this model can be considered 100% complete, but this is good progress. After constructing a low poly model to bake the details of this hi-poly onto, I'll have to UV and triangulate in preparation for the normal map baking Afterwards I'll bring the low poly into substance with the newly baked normal map. Between rigging and texturing, order does not matter. Either can come before the other, its just my preference to complete texturing before rigging. After texturing I go back to Maya to rig out the more intricate parts that are expected to move once in unity. When I have the rig I need, I key frame all the animations. In May I'm able to create all the need animations on one timeline, its not until its brought into unity that I split the animations into sections.

I'm planning on spending the week finishing this model, then hopefully I can move onto the large mech cannon that shoots this little guy. 

Stay classy,

-Dan

Fancy Rock

Besides the conversation our group has had regarding the design of our game, I've been working more on the model of our cannon as well as finding ways to speed up workflow since its been slow going these last few weeks. The biggest thing I have to share is that.....

Another work of art by Aram.

our main cannon is going to have mech legs :)

With this news I have more to anticipate for this model like how the limbs will be rigged and animated. Modeling shouldn't be as tough as those two things. Whats more is that this rig will be entirely mechanical which means I won't need to do anything with skin weighting, so a small plus.

As for texturing progression, I've recently received a hi-poly rock for one of our caverns. It came to me with something like 2 million tris and I was able to make a 600 tri lo-poly model. To get a feel for the colors that will be go onto this model, I created a mood board.

 After that I brought it into substance painter and went at it with the texturing. 

Before

After

It looks pretty small in this scene thanks to the large sky-box, but don't let that fool you. This rock is something like 50 meters in height. 

I know I mentioned I'd eventually share the game design document and narrative document, but

The game design doc is constantly being updated and the narrative doc is still in being polished.

Next week i'll share my progress with modeling and hopefully I'll have something to share in regards to level design.

Cheers,

Cannon Critiquing!!!

This last week was used to finish a method of organization on how we will approach our game assets, mostly boring bureaucratic stuff.

Never mind that though! look, a cannon!

This is the main cannon drone I've been working on. Its been mostly a process of blocking out the main parts, and after that comes the much more complex shapes. I took the concept art and separated the pieces through color.

After getting the general model roughly pieced together, I use the renders to see where the model needs the most improvement, or figure out what I could possibly be doing right.

By the end of this sprint, I would like to have this model completely finished and possibly textured.
Untill next time!

Wooooo! Mondays!

Since the previous post I've been creating a much more organized way for us artists to handle prop production and assignment.

For each prop there are different pieces such as;

• High Poly Model
• Low Poly Model (Model actually going into the game)
• Texture Maps (Albedo, Normal, Roughness ect.)
• Rigging (for models with intricate animation or physics needs)
• Animations

To keep track of our progress and to project how much we can expect to accomplish, I've assigned points for reference off a scale of 30,  (30 = more time or effort, 0 = less time or effort)

• High Poly Model (30 pts)
• Low Poly Model (15 pts)
• Texture Maps (Albedo, Normal, Roughness ect.) (10)
• Rigging (20)
• Animations (30)

Once we have decided on a asset list we can assign points to every prop and the sum of those props gives us a rough idea on how much work we have ahead of us. Having these points also gives me a better way to measure how much work each person is putting in each week. 

If I graph the total points completed each week not only can I get a better understanding on whether or not we are on track, but this method also helps me locate where we need improvement. 

Regarding our progress on the game:

We are still Discussing the information gathered from our game test session and using it to improve our game for another test. 

until next time..

Prototype Testing

Hey again,

Its been a little over a week since I've posted, but much has happened.
On Wednesday this past week we had our first public game testing.

. 

There was quite a turnout and we received a lot of excellent feedback. I also wanted to share some screenshots from our current prototype.

Before testing these levels, I was able to add simple stand in textures for both the cannon and environment. This cannon you see is a prototype for the main cannon, and the final will be similar yet much more complex. I was also able to adjust the lighting for a much more interesting effect.

A level design by Jon.

Our lovely cannon prototype next a jet pack pick up.

A pipes level created by me. 

A sub drone flying... no, soaring through the air.

A interesting cavern level created by Aram.

Just cruising on a mining train rail.

We are getting much closer to a more linear form of development. Most of our feedback was in regards to our controls and level design.

I understand that from these posts it may be a bit difficult to understand what can be done in this game, so by the next post I'm hoping to share our game design doc ( or parts of) after its been revised and I would also like to share our narrative once that's been polished. You might be thinking "Dan, THESE ARE CANNONS! how on earth can there possibly be a story here this is re-do-diculous!", and you are wrong for thinking that because we have something pretty clever developing that might tug on your feeling strings.

I'll have a new post on Monday, so tune in around then (If you care. I kinda hope you care.)

Chugging Along (Week 2)

This may be a little late, but there has been quite a few developments since the first post. Just as a reminder, this blog will do little to touch on the CS side of this game (besides the shader code mentioned earlier). If code is your interest, the coders in our group also have their own blogs that they are updating regularly.

The main items that I want to touch on this week are;

• Game Design
• Level Design
• Concept Art
• Logo Design

First off, there has been a lot of confusion with how this game is suppose to work. Even with our own group mates. To counter this Aram has made an illustration of how power-ups work with our cannon.

To help flesh out some level design, each of us have white boxed our own concepts in our own mediums. Some were created via Maya and others were illustrated. Aram designed a layout in illustrator that can be used for future level design (bottom image).

My little render.That little red thing is the cannon. :P

Sihneng's (Neng)  handy sketch

Jon's White boxing.

s.

Our main concept artist Hue has made some awesome paintings to flesh out the feel of our game.

As for the main cannon concept, we all made our own sketches and from those we picked our favorite to further develop. Aram created some of our favorite designs, and we decided to further his hover version of the cannon. 

Hue took this design and created a color version (Hue would want color ;)  ) for a character sheet that we can then use for modeling. In the end neither of these sheets will accurately describe the final model 100%. Chances are its going to be a mix of our favorite aspects.

To help those who haven't really worked on a 3D game before, I developed an illustration for the asset pipeline. Its not final because I'm bound to add something to the list at some point.

Finally, all the artist worked on logo designs for our game. These ones are my doing.

After considering quite a few logos, we wanted to explore a new title for our game. After taking a group poll to decide on a new name,  "A.I.M.LESS" became the obvious choice. Its interesting not only because "A.I.M." could stand for: Artificially Intelligent Mechcannon, but the feeling of aimlessness in the caverns of a distant world felt right. So, after some discussion I set out for the final logo design. Here are some sketches (excuse the poor photo quality).

After speaking with the group I was able to create these.

From these I created the final logo.

Depending on how much content is in future posts, I might start splitting these up into two rather than just one. 

Hopefully by next week I can share some early renderings of the final cannon model, and final prototype levels (maybe final levels?) 

Cheers,

Dan