robot creation

Hi followers and welcome back,

Its been a mad month at Flix Interactive as we prep our new game for something special so keep a eye out here or alternatively check out this link http://www.indiedb.com/company/flix-interactive and that will give you a sneak preview of what were doing.

 

Carrying on more or less where I left off I began to model the interior frame which the outer plates would sit upon and the legs attach. The form and function were more or less done so the remainder was now to bolster the believability by having clear attachment and movable parts for the plates to connect to. I added a few extra features such as to the feet with a mechanical foot

 

 I also did a few redesigns to make the whole model conform throughout by changing the tail design (I did a few before choosing one I liked).

  

I took some time making sure the whole models geometry was cleaned up getting the whole model around the 13.5k poly count. I played around with the model also makings sure it fitted nicely with its extremes of movement. This is a good idea to let animators know what kind of movements you intended for the model when you were designing it 

rather than just leaving it to them to guess.

Take the time now to sit back and stew on what you've done. Ask work mates and friends their opinions as its good to know its heading in the right direction. and also that the model is right before heading towards smoothing groups, unwrapping and normal map creation.

Robot love cont.

Welcome back and greetings to all new readers. Continuing where I left off from my previous post I had been looking at the functionality of movement for my model. The silhouette also needed some work to benefit and extenuate the robots character.

Like most aerial vehicles most tend to include fins that give certain characteristics to their shape as well as adding functionality. If we were to look at a model of Concorde, a guided missile and a old 1950's style Cadillac each style of shape given by their fin characteristics and styled shape. With that in mind I set out to design some fin like additions to my robot. With the addition of fins to the top and sides it should markedly increase its characteristics to players from the underneath whilst it would be flying as well as front and sides when landed. 

 

 

I wanted to give the drone some flying combat options so copied out the top gun and modified it for the under carriage. I used the space I had left by adding few plating variations that flowed in direction of the face. I hoped this would help in creating a focal point in the over all model in the eyes of the robot.

With the exterior done to at least a good first standard I wanted to block out some of the interior. This would be where all the computer and power reactor would be housed for the robot. With the model I had so far I knew I didn't have to go over the top with core interior geometry as the player would only be seeing this through gaps in the armour or if the drones plates of armour fall off when being destroyed. Any extra details that I would like to include could just be added via normal maps or clever texturing.

 

When modelling the interior I was constantly checking how what I was doing fitted with the current design. I modelled parts that would like to see in the model externally then merged them in the model where they fitted. I built the interior as I went along rather than worrying about extensive designing by paper. At this point in the robots design I had a lot of reference imagery from the model itself so used that to aid the flow of its construction. The images above show the progress of blocking out where the main shapes were going to be to where it finally ended up. I had left enough room in the interior to add a structural frame over the inner body that would provide points for the plates to sit on.

On the whole I am pretty happy with how everything had gone so far so I did a few tweaks to clean up the topology, removed some unnecessary objects that werent benefiting the model and then did some rearranged to a few elements to aid the robots movement qualitys. The model at this point is around  the 14k poly mark. The final game model I guessed would be within the 16k poly range considering the extra additions left to be put in. This wasnt bad for current gen purposes (this also meant I wont have to go back later and rigorously remove geometry and details I would have liked to keep). Its pretty good to set yourself a realistic poly budget when modelling for games as it will only kick your self later if you just go crazy and model every last detail. Most beginners do the mistake of creating over the top geometry. I know I did when I was learning but then I burnt out a laptop so had to learn pretty swiftly after that. Good knowledge in how your geometry positioning aids your texturing is so important when creating assets for games so  to dedicating a bit of time to your understanding if pretty much vital as a beginner artist.

 

 

This takes me up to date with what I have done so far but keep checking up for more updates.

Robot Love...2

Hey all, welcome back!

From the time I have had spare from working (which isn't a lot) I have put a few extra things in to my robot/drone that I want to share. The last post I put up went over my concepts and some of the fleshing out of the main body. I also talked a bit about the importance of silhouette and the players need for quick recognition with enemy types. I will show you what I have done so far and talk you a bit through what I have done and thought about as I progressed. I apologize for the lack of stage by stage images, I just got cracking with it when I could and took images towards the completion of each stage.

Now I had the main body shape more or less figured I wanted to start putting in some of the main functional points of the drone. Modelling something like this you may find that if you don't account for functional parts you may accidentally start modelling things in areas areas of movement.

After playing about with the sketched gun concept in 3D I settled on a more organic approach using a scorpion stinger and also some references from a Anime called Zoids to create a gun with pop up guns. This was in a effort to reduce on the over all length of the gun as I intended the gun to be picked up by the tail. It would need to slip out of its mounted position pretty easily so that design decision would help that. Here are a few images of the modeled gun.

I also had to look at the gun from all angles so I could make sure I would know that the players recognition with it would definitely be an aggressive weapon and it would be time to take cover.

The next major moving part will be the legs. Legs for mechanical characters can be created in many ways as they don't have to conform to the ideals of organic structures. They can extend and spin in 360 degrees if the designer so intends. In my drone I needed the legs to fold up neatly to accommodate a flying model of a sort of manta ray like shape but also retain enough mobility to create believable walking movement. I pulled some more references to aid me deisgn how the legs would work from spiders, Final Fantasy 8's spider drone (http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb57887/finalfantasy/images/c/c3/FF8_X-ATM092.png) , Gundam (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE095vYEJzwJH7tv-ZpruEZOTuUTgBvjewQvNCw01W8nQVM_8BXbaMot2-ch4BJFuwVfjE-7ec2yaWBjJL8b0EAUp10zv-dgvJ-pSDi4ZLtSwo_bD3Fht-zU2EPphDymgCtfnfOnareO95/s1600/5.jpg) and from Zoids as a solid starting point.When got into modelling the legs I did so in their extreme positions so make sure that at all extents sat nicely with each other and didn't cut.


Once happy with the shape and design structure I had created I did a quick Hierarchy Rig on the legs and played with them to see if the design was lending as much movement as I wanted.


I then attached the leg plating onto the mechanics followed by attaching the whole legs onto the model itself. Its pretty important to keep things simple until you have the main moving parts in. Adding extras to bolster the characteristics before this will only ever lead to problems further in to the modelling process.


This is all I have at this point but keep checking back for more at later dates and I may have posted more. Thanks all and feel free to comment or leave constructive feedback. I am also free if people have queries or proposals for tutorials they would like as well. Cheers =D.

Robot Love

Hey,

For those that have been following I haven't really posted up much work lately to show you people what im actually doing with my life. That is about to change at least today.

I have been very busy working at UR, or rather Flix Interactive (http://www.flixinteractive.com/) after the company was closed down and reformed under a new name. I have however been very active working away, designing, building and testing all of our up and coming IP's as well as helping with the concept development of all our current contract work. With the company also having moved location its been a great new change for all those involved in our team and a exciting one too.

As I mentioned earlier in my post I was going to give you guys a update as to what I am doing with my own work now and here it pretty much is. It is a concept I begun to build as a side project to what im doing at Flix. Doing my jeep side project I realized the importance of really push your boundaries with each project to try and learn as much as you can about technicality of building and refining in different styles. Most of my work has been very rustic so I think its about time to shake things up and start doing some nice sci fi to start bolstering my portfolio and show how flexible I can be with my work. I like to share with the community that follow my blog what im doing and how im going about it as I struggled with a lot of things when I began in 3D and its good to see other people's work flow.

This is a design I drew up after working with UR and began doing my own designs in my spare time. 'The Spire' had a robot incorporated that really inspired this design. I wanted to put my own twist on things to give  the robot a real organic feel as well as keep the silhouette in something a person could relate to. I think its good practice for a 3d artist to be able to convey their art work in lots of ways especially in drawing. Drawing is a great tool for cracking out ideas in a preliminary stage and figuring out in your own mind how to create things in 3D that will have functionality. Many new 3d artist fall into the trap where they lack the skills to draw or intentionally skip this essential step. Its good practice to get into a life drawing class or doodle at most opportunities you have. It's all good practice in the end.

Having done some drawings and selected a design style I took this straight into Max to start fleshing out the basic design. I normally go through lots of trial and error at this stage to get the right direction for my work. The greatest thing about computers at this stage is definitely the undo Ctrl+Z =D. I normally make tons of decisions that I like to change and change again so if your doing work keep in mind that blocking out doesn't need to be perfect at first.

After a bit more blocking out and decision making I look at the over all shape in 3d to see how the silhouette is shaping up. In designing for games its important to remember about the silhouette as this is what the player will relate to when a enemy is approaching. It helps the player determine the threat and also their strategy. As a designer in any respect this will help in developing your designs too. I can see at this point the shape is slender and long but I will end up having to put more defined features such as spikes fins to increase its flying silhouette.

This is as much as I have so far so I will post up more soon as I have more to share with you. I hope you liked the post and feel free to leave feed back, suggestions or ideas in the comments segment under this post.

Thanks

Show Homens Luzes - Wrecking Crew Orchestra from Eddie on Vimeo.

This was so cool I had to put this in a blog post

Late and Never. Undrawn Reality!

I seem to be writing my posts few and far between and I believe that my latest blog has been far overdue... so what have I been doing lately? For those that have been reading my sparsely spaced posts they would know I have been on a 8 week placement at Undrawn Reality to whom I can happily say now I am a 3D environment artist for. The company to be honest is in its infancy at the moment but has been very active over the last 6 months developing a very exciting title. I expect within the next 6 months we will finally be able to talk about it once it is announced. I have been very busy modelling up loads of placeholder models. When you get a job your productivity seems to shoot through the roof and all the information from others in the office seems to travel to your head by osmosis. I am definitely an infinity better artist from spending my time at Undrawn. Matt Clarke (http://clarky.carbonmade.com/) is one of the best artists that I have come to know. Being not much older than me with a ton more of 3D years under his belt (over a decade), he has really helped me to progress as a artist (So thanks if your reading this and I'm sure this will hit me in the butt for saying so!).

 

Working in a small indie studio definitely has some great potential. I can't imagine working in a large company would give me any responsibility with making decisions that would change the game dramatically. Small teams such as UR are great in that respect and I am really enjoying the freedom to express my opinions, ideas and even argue my points with the head honcho's of the company. All to which you get respected for rather than getting looked down upon. 

I can say that I feel pretty at home among all this creativeness and also that I still hate unwrapping... but hey you can't have it all =D. I have a few things that I am working on at the moment that I will be sharing pretty soon to get me on the swing of blogging again.

I have been playing a lot of games also in my spare time (yes my life consists of pretty much games in every respect atm) one of which has impressed me no end. The is the very big World of Tanks (http://worldoftanks.eu/ , http://worldoftanks.eu/media/show/328/) that has a impressive 20 million+ players. you start off with a simple tank and work your way up some serious tech trees so some hefty metal behemoths (Google the Maus tank). The game is cleverly designed and balanced to work with player characteristics and game play style. Even a nimble light tank can run circles around a heavy tank or tank destroyer if the player is good enough. As a free MMO game its got massive potential as the developing company Wargaming.net is getting ready to release a dog fighting plane counterpart, World of Warplanes (http://worldoftanks.eu/media/show/327/.The quality in these games is certainly there so I highly recommend downloading it for a good try.

I think that's all for now but check here regularly as we start ramping up the productivity at Undrawn Reality!

Work Experience.

I have finally started my work experience placement at Undrawn Reality (www.undrawnreality.com). I think I'm actually in love with this industry and where its going. Its good to know that my insuperable desire to work amongst creative practioners isn't going to kill me mentally. I cant post up anything im doing at the moment untill I have been given permission ( which is unlikely with a game currently in its development) however I can post up the tutorials I am using to learn the things needed to get up to standard.
I will try to keep you guys up to date with what's happening but this will be very limited due to a N.D.A.
Enjoy.

Ammo shortage!

For all the people following this blog they will have known I have been working on the outside area for the building I created a while ago. I have been working on the texture getting it to tile and its starting to take shape and im just feeling my way round the getting the characteristics in that I like. The whole struggle for jobs at the moment has been a real demoralizing time for me and I am sure others that have been forced into the unknown of unemployment at the current economic state. If work seems a bit slow that is more than likely why. It is however important however to keep optimistic and push through. I thought for the mean time I could work on producing some models at the end of my day for turbo squid to keep me financially going for the mean time. A hour or so at the end of the day to crack out some small models that are easy to model and texture to get a nice outcome. This will few extra props for my portfolio and also varying my workflow to keep me motivated. Heres a quick ammo crate that I have modeled in high poly and also a beginnings of a tree.

final jeep renders

Well after a few days of tweaking and adjusting I think I can proudly close the jeep project and add it to my portfolio. A few extra adjustments to textures and modifying the ambient occlusion bakes on the mesh lead to these images. Enjoy

Willy Jeep (pretty much finished.)...2

After playing around with the Ambient Occlusion and vertex colors I managed to crack out a few more test renders like this today.

Willy Jeep (pretty much finished.)