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,