After an exhausting finals week, I decided to take the first week off and take a break. When I started work on the second week my hard drive crashed halfway through the week, so I spent most of my break trying to fix it because my hard drive wasn't the only thing that broke apparently and I'm wasn't going to pay apple to tell me what's wrong with it. (take that capitalism!)
Luckily I was able to fix my laptop and recover all my data last week (thanks 2017), but I lost a lot of time in between. However, before my laptop died I did squeeze in some work before everything crashed and burned. I started modelling a newly designed male armor for the final build. For now the alpha model is fine, but I plan on replacing it with a more professionally polished one later in the term. I also started modelling island hexagons with more detailed rock and roots on the bottom. I also helped Healthy and created a base dragon head that I plan on helping her finish this week. Overall although I didn't finish what I started, I'm glad I got the ball rolling. *Will add pics later* Did I mention I have no production classes this term? I'm so happy.
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After our previous presentation, I made sure to address as many concerns about our game as I could during the thanksgiving break. I think I could’ve done even more, but as an animator who has little experience with games I did spend a great teaching myself more about substance painter, zbrush, and how to transfer maps to keep our game relatively low poly than what I’m used to. Pros: I added alpha textures, normals, and ambient occlusion onto the characters. I made some environmental models such as trees and a new island that I quickly threw together. I was also able to texture Healthy’s existing buildings although everything is still very rough people can have a better idea of what to expect our game to look like. Cons: Spent time learning programs set me back a bit. I think about a fourth of the time spent on the game this week was just getting comfortable with the programs, but now that I understand them a lot better production will become more efficient. Also I think my mom hates me now because I didn’t go home for the holidays and I didn’t answer her calls because I was working on this game. It’s great for the game, but bad for me... Total hours: 35+ hours (I didn’t track my hours accurately this week because I was just working constantly on the game throughout the day)
Moving forward towards the Alpha, it was essential to start incorporating the models into the game. I spent these two weeks continuing work on our characters towards their final stage and importing the latest versions into unreal. Ricardo gave me a reference to rig the characters with the male model and I was able to rig the female model for mocap and import both into the game.
Pros The characters are in the game and the base models are finished with a final skeleton. This way I can constantly replace the models without having to re-rig the entire model and only have to worry about weight painting. I also UV-ed both base characters and since they are heavily armor based I can easily add on or replace existing armor to alter design changes. Cons While the female alpha is finished, I need to work on the male character some more to raise it to the same level, but I am sure I can get it finished before the next meeting with our advisor. The weight paintings are slightly rough in some areas and the texturing is still just base colors. Mocap work still isn’t finished yet and I’m anxious to see them in the game. This week was pretty productive for myself personally. Toggl helped increase my time spent on the game, so I can manage between class and work better. I’m looking forward to implementing texture work in the game. This week was less productive than I would have wanted. Between classes, work, and our game, I didn’t put as much time into modeling the character as I could have. I finished shaping the basic armors onto the characters. I was able to rig my existing base model and hand it off to our Mocap team for testing, but I made some mistakes with the rig and model and need to redo them so I feel like I was a bit counterproductive in that department.
Pros Luckily I started my model in the summer, so I’m not totally behind. My base shapes are finished, so I just need to finish integrating them into the model. I talked to the Mocap team and have a better understanding of rigs and am able to help out with that. Cons I didn’t finish modeling the character and I need begin skinning and texturing soon. I made it a priority to finish the first pass final model to showcase to Wagner before our meeting on Friday. All the remaining armor and accessories will be modeled and shaped without the extraneous details. These next few days will be crazy, but I have to get it done to get back on schedule. During the past two weeks not much artwork has been done as our group is focusing more on finalizing the game mechanics and getting the game build ready. Despite this I still decided to spit out more character artwork and improve on the last iteration.
Pros: One of the good things to come out of this week is that now that we’ve decided that our game will be 2v2 team player game. Knowing this we thought of how are we going to make these two teams distinguishable from each other and if that goes well how will we make it possible to add two more teams? Before I’ve been playing mostly with color, but I thought if these characters were going to be on dragons and significantly smaller the players should be able to identify who is on their team easily. I think from the very beginning I focused too much on detail when I should've started simpler and came up with these rough ideas. I also played with particle systems in unreal to create a character design we’re attempting. Whether or not these designs stay in the game, I learned how to make basic particles that can be used for other aspects of our game like player attacks and our environment. Cons: We’ve been a little set back on the art side of the game as we focus more on the coding and gameplay, but I’m not too worried about this. In the meantime I’ve been getting familiarized with ZBrush and staying active within maya. I created base meshes over the summer, so I have a starting off point when our character designs are fleshed out. This week was a productive week for me as I worked on a ton of concept art for the characters and enemy designs. Pros: On to the good! I created character sheets with a range of armor designs to narrow down which one was closest to what we wanted. In our game, we decided we’re going to have both female and male characters. We chose to go with a short robed medium-armored design. I also started concepts on face and helmet designs as well. Since we wanted to have a realistic feel to the game, I experimented with some faces. In the end, we chose to go with a hooded character for our game to save time and steer away from a full blown human character and towards a ominous magical being that emits a smoke-like substance. How fun! Particles are fun! Dying is fun! Cons: On to the bad! Last week the other members were also busy, so I stepped up and started creating concept art for the enemies. As each team will be different, I created ice yetis and rock-like monsters to be the outside forces in our map. Our initial designs for the enemies were that they were creatures that could be one with the environment, so they’re gonna be small in size but large in number. We also revamped our whole gameplay structure so there's that. Healthy, why did you steal my "a picture is worth a thousand words" joke. You're a thief. Anyways if anyone here is an overachiever it's me because I have at least four thousand words. -Sally
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