Long time no Write

Yeah its been a while, I apologize.

I've decided to keep with Emerson as a project but I'm gonna revamp it. I.E. start all over from concept up. I'm thinking of ditching melding it all into a single house and trying for a more complex and rounded scene, i.e. a village layout. So basically Emerson is gonna get cut up and redistributed. Also the setting is gonna change slightly. Rather than being English specific I'm gonna broaden the context a bit and think more along the lines of farm settlements. Basically its gonna be more of a fusion of new world and old world stuff.

To get back into the swing of things, I started working on a windmill a couple weeks ago, after buying a new reference book of farmsteads. I THOUGHT it would be a relatively simple construct to warm up with. What I didn't realize is A. that American style windmills are more complex than you think and B. Dragon Age: Origins is a really addictive game.

Based on the research I've been doing on these kind of structures the mechanics in the upper part, that help pivot the wheel and so forth are pretty intricate especially in more modern models. I decided to dumb it down a lot for the sake of polys and can hopefully make it look believable with texturing as opposed to modeling every gear and socket. Not to mention its way up top, where you will rarely see it. All in all, its Just over 2000 tris, which is a lot better than I thought it was going to be initially. It's been unwrapped and now needs to be textured. I'm thinking of trying something interesting with this project in that I'll be doing my usual photo real type textures but I also want to play around some more with hand painted stylized. I really like the details in Dragon Age which is sort of border line between trying to be highly detailed realistic and more simplified and painterly.

So basically. . . double the texturing for objects, at least for a few, just as kind of an experiment. I'm starting to think that probably wont' show very well on such a thin structure but we shall see. I'm mostly excited to get back into photo real stuff though, after doing Rifts slightly stylized stuff and then redoing Bonabba in a hand painted style. I really should go out and take some textures around town in my free time.

Anywho . . how bout some occlusion passes, since everyone loves those! I also want to finally zbrush that well I had started last winter since I still want to use it.

The Campaign Marches On

You may notice a new title to the site. Although ITGM 405 is over for me, the project is not. I plan on continuing my updates on my progress here on this blog. Will not be as frequent perhaps but will still happen.

After almost 2 weeks of resting up and having some fun, I decided to actually get some work done today. I worked on a well that I've decided to put in the back of the yard. Will also be working on vegetation soon. In the picture below you'll also see a broken carriage wheel that I plan on leaning up against the carriage house. All have been UV'd, plan on bringing the wheel into zBrush soon and doing some stone sculpting.

Post #37

Good Job everyone on your projects!



A basic poster I made as a final tweak (it's big, may load slow)

Post #36

Post #35

So I realize that I haven't posted in this all week.

I've been working in Unreal for the past 5 or so days. As you can see in the picture, I'm currently working on sculpting the terrain for my level. I also finally got around to making the barrier cement walls that will help to confine the player to the associated area. In my original plan I had hoped to have a river and possibly a bride. I don't think I have time to learn about water effects and certainly not for a bridge. So that will probably not make into the final cut.



Currently only have 1 texture left to do. I was trying a new technique in order to bake the normals for the top roof part. I've been having difficulties since Maya likes to crash on me a lot, so it remains bare while I tweak other things. After the terrain and that last texture are done, just have to do the lighting (which I probably will go relatively simple with). I'll probably look for a better skydome texture also. The one in the scene currently is an Unreal one and while it's kinda close to the atmosphere I was going for, I'm not really sold on it.

Hope everyone else isn't killing themselves yet.

Post #34

Just finished arranging and exporting objects out of Maya for Unreal. All in all,I estimate there are about 50 separate objects and about half of these are modular and are used more than once in the scene. Many of these objects share a UV space though so its not like there will be 50 texture spaces. In fact, I would put that down more towards maybe 15 texture spaces. There are a few textures I did early (like the copper entrance thingy) that I could have share a space with another texture space, however that would also require resetting some bump and spec maps also. So I'm not sure yet whether or not I'll go ahead and reorganize that or not.

There are a few other objects that I may still make. I will at least need a Fence/wall section to break the line of site in the area. That shouldn't be too hard to do. Don't know if I'll have time to make the bridge or not though. Also there is of course the terrain and skybox. I'm feeling pretty good right now, I feel like I'm back on schedule. So yay for that. . .


I don't have any snazy pictures of my exporting process so I'll just leave you all with this Supper Effective comic:

Post #33

More textures and what not. Currently converting normals and stuff out of these.