The Mid boss has been defeated.

This will be my last trailer cut for a while because the semester is over. I'm actually pretty happy with it. No doubt it needs some polish here and there, but it's mine and I know I've done my best on it.  Next up, monster modeling! But first, I'm goin home and doing nothing for a while.

Attack at the drive in

How I learned to stop worrying

Just a shout out to my favorite film of all time <3
It's also kinda true. 

asphalt spec

After mock crit I attempted to add some spec to my ground plane, which worked except you can't see it anywhere in the camera move because of the direction of the light...I tried moving it but the only way you can see it casts everything else in shadow so that isn't really an  option. It's unfortunate because I think it looks kinda cool. It doesn't look as cool as a still image.

The top image is an angle you can see it from, the bottom is the angle of the camera.

Last mock crit of the semester

Lookin sultry

I finished modeling, sculpting and uving my sultry beauty today. Right now she has ao, normal and a base texture that I will work off of to complete her.  I tried not to get too hung up on it, mainly because of the time constraint, the semester is over in a week, but I think it worked out pretty well. I thought she looked cool with the lair lighting so here are some work in progress shots in there.

And this is how the sculpt/modeling turned out

"Sculptry" Beauty

70% of the reason I'm making this post is because I wanted to use that pun.

har har har

I started sculpting the sultry beauty. I'm trying to make her look more mannequin like, and to do that I've decided to break her up into pieces like an actual mannequin. I feel it would be easier to get the mannequin effect that way when rigging her.

 

I also just noticed that her head doesn't go up far enough...I'll fix that.

I've been experimenting with the legs so far.  The thing with doing that though is that I need to put gaps between the pieces so that when they pivot they don't intersect. It'll be interesting to see how this actually works out in the end, it's been a game of puzzle solving so far.

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Wings

In an attempt to lessen the amount of rigging and animation I have to do I came up with a fun way to get my spawn's wings flapping in udk. It works sort of like an animated neon sign where I have multiple sets of wings and the texture switches on and off on them sequentially. I used a flip book with opacity to do this in udk.

 

I made a video of them not moving around so it would be easier to see.

 

I also added a pink version of the car :)

New portfolio

My new portfolio site is up and running. The images are subject to change as I complete my thesis, but it works and it is there.

Landestroyer.com

It's the way to drive in '55!

The name of the car is subject to change if I can think of something better. This is the first of a set of mock 1950's ads I'm creating to place around the city area of my game.

Goin to the drive in

 The car has been a labor of love and hate and it still needs a bit of work on the lights, normals and a few other areas, but this is the happiest I've been with it so I thought I would share my progress. My favorite part is the license plate. 504 for the day I graduate, Pennsylvania 1950 for my lovely home state and of course SR for Single Rider.

On the opposite side of the coin is this drive in speaker set that I modeled and textured in a couple of hours today. I kinda like it but it isn't a major focus of my piece like the car is so I didn't stress out over it.

some tweaks and a sound fx test

another crit

Haven't updated lately because I've been texturing away...I still have to finish the car, the girl and the spawn textures and touch up some other stuff, but I'm almost done with that phase. I'll start working on effects and better lighting next.

Getting closer to the grand opening of Atomic Funland

I've started texturing. For the midway booths I hand painted a tile-able painted wood texture and created a material instance in UDK through which I can change the color of the paint for some variation. I also hand painted the tile-able accordion screen texture that is on some of them, the wooden planks and the shingles on the roof (minus the leaves that came from a photo.) I added the leaves on the roof to incorporate them into the environment more. I'm trying not to use too many photo textures because I really want to build up my texture painting skills. Texturing is something I have struggled with in the past, but it is so important. I'm making a lot of my textures tile-able because I have a lot of ground to cover texturing wise and it seemed economical. My more unique props, like the car, will have more specific textures. I then created some decals to put the signs on them and vary them up a bit more. I still need AO and some graffiti decals to really finish them off.

 

As you can see the space has also expanded and morphed a bit. I did this to help the park feel bigger and so I could more slowly reveal things in the trailer.

Gameplay Gameplay Gameplay

So I've been having a lot of fun with my playable space. All the invaders are kill-able now and there's even a cleverly placed ammo pick up. Its been a nice distraction from doing less fun things (uving...). I also found a way to keep the player in the car, there are still times where he fights with the collision, but at least he stays in! No more inexplicable floating. It is starting to feel like a game. I still need to design the boss fight at the end and add player damage indication. I think that the sense of 'Oh no I have to kill this invader before I get scorched by its beam!' will add some intensity and challenge. It was really helpful to me to have other people play it because I tend to find myself just going through the motions when I am recording and not really experiencing it honestly. It helps me see what is fun and what needs to be fixed a lot more clearly. I want to keep it simple and fun, but still a bit challenging.

Crit-eeek

"whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!"

Glitchy gameplay, another take and some model shots

So I've been working on my playable space and it works fine for the most part, the collision still breaks on occasion, but it seems to work okay unless I'm trying to record it. This is just a block in, I still need to create health/damage and ammo somehow. I'm having fun with it though. Abductions and angry Ufos.

 

 

Take 15 and some modeling progress

I did some rough poses for the monster at the end to sort of block out how I plan to animate him eventually. He is my second semester project, so with so much time focused on him he's going to be awesome. But for now, planes with rough drawings.

Still modeling too of course...crit on models is a week from today, I think I'm in a pretty good spot. Just a few more to do and some Uvs then I can start texturing.

Been detailing the buildings too. I plan on keeping them pretty low poly and getting the detail out of normals and AO as well as some material tricks on the windows eventually.

 

hi an low polys

 

with AO in udk, needs tweaked a bit but this was my first try.

and now your feature presentation:

Take 12...

popcorn

I was inspired to do something quick and fun today so I designed a popcorn bag to place around the exterior as trash. I plan to mess with the texture a bit to make it look older eventually.

I'm pretty much done with the high poly of my car too so I did a quick AO render in Maya. 

 

I'm excited to get the low poly done and texture it, I found some great reference from a photographer named Ellen Yeates.

Car Progress

The next step after polishing up what I have here is adding some mechanical details to make it look like a ride car that functions on the rails. I'm also trying to think of a good name for it, sort of like the ray-volver, but for a car. It's not really all that important but I want to make some advertisements to put around the city and I thought one for the car might be nice. I'll be doing one for the gun and movie posters for the double feature (Invaders from outer space and radioactive creatures from beyond) I also thought that the billboards might be a nice way to illustrate mechanics, such as having one say, 'U-92 ammo, pick some up today!'

take ten

There are a lot of changes in this one, shot wise and other wise. I have been experimenting with the new landscape tool in udk for the exterior environment, I think it will work well for my needs. Still having some issues with the game play spaces, mostly just in recording them.

Spawn sculpt progress