Turret finished... post coming soon.

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know the turret is indeed finished I'm just having the final work checked over by Flix before I post it up here with the finalisation of my walk through for the asset in the game. I look forward to seeing you on here soon when that is up. =) On other notes Eden Star has made it début onto Steam Green light so if you have been following our work at Flix or you come here to read my blog check out the embedded video I have bellow. This is the work thats in very early pre alpha that we are mounting up for a kick starter in the near future.

This is a link to our Steam Greenlight http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=166966729 so if you think this is a game for you and you would love to see it on the steam store please up vote the game and show your support for all our hard work =).

Dan

Turret Design WIP for Eden Star

Hey,
I realise its been a while since I have last posted so I thought I would get on with some of the things I have been doing with Flix.I have been working on a turret design for a little while that I am going to write a bit about. I started pretty much the way I always do by gathering references to aid in my designing process.

This gives me a good study of how other designs have formed a strong silhouette and also how they have been designed functionally. I sat down and did a few small drawings to study how the functionality and look of my turret was going to feel in game.

I sat down and in few hours blocked out a a first initial design to present it to my team for feed back on how they though it looked and what they would change to develop it further. I aided this with a small animation of how it would spawn and move to give the animators help them see how it could move and aid them in suggesting changes in functionality.

After getting a massive load of feed back from the first block out I got a better idea of how as a collective we wanted to push this design so I did a few alterations and got some more feedback from my peers. With this 2nd pass block out I altered a few of the shapes to try and bolster the strength of the design. the design was starting to take shape but I still felt that my design was lacking in places. I turned to our trusty concept artist to help me develop it further at this point, Gavin Li. (http://kydaconcepts.blogspot.co.uk/ here is his Blogger address =). )

Gavin has a great eye for bringing out the best of a design and he came back with some mind blowing changes that we all agreed would look awesome. Here is what he produced. Designs, as I have learnt in games, can change at any point as a part of the development process.

Through the development of this design with Gavin and the rest of my team I had already started to put together some of the high poly in 3Dsmax whilst waiting on the final refinements to our concept.

After a the last few refinements had been done I knew how the head of the turret was to look so I got on blitzing that out.

To make it easy for myself when blocked out the head of the turret I set up a plane with the concept image on it. on the plane I used the cut tool to flesh out the main shape segments and used the shell modifier to give the plane segments I was cutting out substance. It looks ugly at first but its the easiest way I found to quickly make a difficult concept out initially before putting in extra geometry to refine the front silhouette.

With the High poly coming together I only had a few extra bits to add before its ready to be baked to a low poly.

Portfolio update! finally after 2 years....

Hi All!

Finally got round to updating my website with my latest work from Flix Interactive. Check it out and I hope you like it!

www.danielrohde.crevado.com

robot love continued

Hi everyone!

Sorry for gigantic delay. Things for Eden Star are starting to calm down as the pitch is getting finalised so all things being well I have a bit of time to get this Robot nice and finished. I have spent a hour or two on high polying this design so far so not really a huge amount to warrant a massive blog post but this is where I am at. I must admit I need to brush up on my Zbrush as my skills are all but non existant when it comes to hard surface sculpting but I find even though high polying in max can be a bit arduous it pays with nice accurate plates that can be transfured to zbrush if needed to add extra details. since working on Eden Star my work flow has changed to much and mostly for the better I think. When Eden Star goes live on Kickstarter I will do a BIG art dump onto here to show you guys what I haver been working on for the last 5 - 6 months. I have been building on my high polying as I will say its not my strongest skill set in my 3D workflow, but as all things you learn something new everyday and every artists work flow is different.

Just taking small details and seeing what you can do with it with some good references it always a good way to build on your skills. I did a quick exercise where I made some cabling and cylinder cog details just to get back in to things.

Making user you keep your geometry clean is always good when Hi poly modelling in max as and dodgy geo normally means pinching and nasty markings in the turbo smoothed results. Flow loops and Swift loops are definitely tools that you should be using for this as it will make creating edge loops and securing lines easier and faster for hard surface panels.

being able to break a complex object down in to subcomponents always really helps. trying to model the whole thing together is unrealistic and will create a really head ache for you.  Modelling things separately and cleanly and with use of lifted geometry is the way to go to give nice results.

I will add up some more images of the drone when I can get more done.... which should be soon but with Eden Star you never know what work is coming and how many late nights you have to put in. AAA games aren't easy to make with a very small team but we do our best =)

check this space to see what's happening with the game http://www.indiedb.com/games/edenstar and when the Kickstarter comes we will be posting a demo up for you so you can play our hard work in its early beta stage. Feel free to ask questions on here or via email =)

Eden Star

Hi,

While I get some stuff together for my next post on the drone, I have written a blog post on Indie DB for my work. Its more or less the first of my work in its first art pass form to reach the public so its a proud moment for me.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/edenstar

Enjoy.

work in progress...

Hi people.

I have been very busy with Flix over the last few months working from 8am till 9-10pm at night on some nights as we are leading up to releasing our IP for project funding (I will let you know when this happens). I am currently working on a High poly variant of the drone so I will post up some tips and tricks for that soon and show some of my process that I do in 3dsMax with turbosmooth and lifted geo. Optimise the model for game reducing the poly and bake off the normal via a cage in Max or X normal will come after that and then Texturing but I will keep you informed on that.

Keep checking and ill get a post up soon. Promise =)

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.