I’ve been long done with Team Game Production, but have volunteered as a consultant for my last quarter (meaning I’m “in” on the project without being enrolled, and doing work outside of school). I haven’t posted about this project yet because I’ve been the sole custom vehicle scripter for six months, and code doesn’t make for the prettiest of posts. I am however producing a massive tutorial (or potentially a book) covering all that I’ve done, as I was able to really dig into UnrealScript for vehicles. Something is going to come of that, so keep an eye out!

Currently I am the lead of the Vehicle Team, and guide teammates in the creation of vehicles for the game. Beyond scripting work, I am also charged with modeling and texturing the one fully functional vehicle that will be playable in-game. It’s a futuristic beast known as the Medium, originally conceptualized by classmate Max Davenport, and recently redesigned by Keith Rice. Up until last week we were using a mock-up of the model I made at the beginning of the project, and getting the scripts working was more important than making it pretty. Now that we have official concepts done by our Concept Team, I’m finally working on the actual art side of things. The only downside is that I have a very short span of time to complete a high poly version for an in-game model viewer (Forza-style), a low poly for the game, textures, scripting cleanup, and damage morph targets. I’m hoping to do all of this in about a week, as I want to have my portion of the project complete before I leave school (partially so I don’t dump it on my teammates, and partially because it’s my baby). I also need it modeled and working for my demo reel, which is due to be complete in about three weeks, and there are render times to consider.

So! Here’s a few quick renders of the model after one day of work.

To see more about the DGPX project, visit our class blog (TGP – DGPX). It’s updated by each team at least once a week, and production is really ramping up. To see the work that I’ve already done on the Medium, including vehicle scripting and the beginnings of that tutorial I mentioned, check out the Character/Vehicle Team in particular, as well as the Engine Team (which I’m not technically on, but work closely with).

This was as much a technical study as it was modeling practice. I spent a lot of time researching brake assemblies and attempted to correctly model each piece, and that happily lodged some of the part names in my head. At times it felt as though I was working on at least three models instead of just one, and it took up more time than I had anticipated, but I got a lot of good knowledge out of it both technically and artistically.

The textured models above are screen captures taken straight from the 3ds Max viewport. I like to use Xoliulshader when texturing, and lately have been using it instead of scanline rendering for showing off stills since it gives a better idea of how the mesh would look in a game environment. Grabviewport is an excellent pair to Xoliulshader, though it can limit the size of your images a bit.

Above is the high poly mesh. There is something oddly zen about making nice, sub-div friendly text…that or I’m just a crazy person.

This is a walkthrough of the level, as well as a few recorded clips that a fellow student collected on my behalf during our final playtesting session. It’s a treat to first be able to walk around something you’ve designed and built, and then to see others play in the same space!

Another project done around the same time was based on the concept of a Russian prison. We were asked to create both an interior and exterior space based on a few proffered options. These were created completely within 3ds Max at the time, but it was an optional plus to play around with recreating one of them in an engine as well. Most of the scene was unplayable due to my limited (read: nonexistent) knowledge of UDK scale and collision at the time, but I recently went back and reworked a few things. I also experimented with weather and atmospherics, which you can see below:

The overall objective that I wanted to accomplish was to make the glyph meter (at the bottom) a bit more noticeable without getting in the way, and to replace the ring that told the player health and the status of “superstyle” abilities with something that still matched the game but was easier to read at a glance.

This was the complete menu system and new HUD, on top of an existing Heavenly Sword trailer. Be aware that the concept art, soundtrack, and video are all property of Ninja Theory – I am only responsible for the menu system and the replaced animated HUD. If you haven’t played the game, I highly recommend checking it out! Here’s a link to the official Heavenly Sword webpage.