These last couple weeks I finished up our new hospital. However, the textures still are not quite what we are looking for.

It looks nice, just a bit too weathered. That will be put on hold while the person I am working with finds some references so I can better see what his vision for the level is. The layout is fine, though he did mention forgetting some details; that could be covered by other meshes though. Other than that I have went back and fixed some issues with my house variants. Small holes in the mesh or walls not quite meeting other walls. I am actually getting a good system down for checking that now at least!

All in all the buildings should be pretty well finished model wise (probably not all we need but enough for the early levels). The hospital took the longest seeing as it had to be recreated from scratch for this iteration. Better that than trying to modify the old version though. Better still would be having a well thought out plan for the level from the start so a redo is not necessary.

Other than that just working on some props for another game:

 just some torches and lamps and such for now.



 Also I am collaborating with a friend who wants to knock the dust off his programming skills. He was like: okay you won't pay me but I need to do something or I will never re-learn this stuff. Me: alright, I have like 2 or 3 design docs stashed away and even some sprites you can animate, which one do you want to run with? And away he went. Not much to report on that front yet, but be cool if something does get going! Unfortunately I still have a sinking feeling I will need to take some of these projects and at least start them myself hah. Ah well there is always Udemy or Youtube. Then it is a matter of deciding which engine... *sigh I just wanna describe stuff and have a magic programming genie make it work. I am sure I am not alone there hah.

About time I posted again... Today was a bit of a slow start as snow kind of stopped me from going anywhere for a bit. Thankfully a ride appeared in fairly short order in the form of a car I could use that was not stuck showing up.

Anyways, for the last week I have been remodeling, or rather entirely recreating our hospital level. It just didn't fit what we wanted to do with it. Which goes to show that one should probably not start work or tell someone to create something without a proper plan laid out! However, the old hospital was good practice and I still learned quite a bit creating it. I found I was a lot better at catching and fixing errors now. I also knew how to lay out the UV maps for a large building a lot better and faster. Here are some pictures of the new setup with some placeholder textures for now (in unity, default lighting and just a fps control to sort of stroll around and get a look at things):

There is a lot more space to move in, which I believe will make programming an AI easier in addition to providing more interesting interactions. More room is useful for dodging or better chase game play.

Still have the exterior to do, and revising textures, but that should only take about a week or so. So that is what is next on the path to finishing off this level. Well a building with a lot of empty space. We will need to create some more models to make it look a little less empty!

And for my conclusion here is a cow model I whipped up in a couple days:

Turned out pretty good for the style we are working with. A bit of UV distortion on the horns, but that could just be fur. Still have not heard back about PAX, just that they were reviewing submissions. But even if we don't make the cut I want to finish some games and get some stuff out there anyways! There will be plenty of opportunities to show up and demo our game somewhere. See you next time in a week or two!

Over the last couple weeks I have been improving one of my creatures that I created. Both textures and animations. I would like to take a bit of time to look at how this creature evolved from its initial concept:

Initially we had a pretty simplistic chubby ghoul like thing... It was very rough around the edges, but the idea was there. The thoughts were: you know, chubby works but emaciated would be creepier and fur is in the concept so lets try that! The result:

We were getting closer to the concept but it still didn't look very scary or anywhere near real enough for what we were going for. So the decision was made to get rid of all the hair and revamp the texture maps one more time. We also decided to get rid of the mummy head look. In the meantime I had been studying how things were done from asset packs found on the Unity asset store and had learned some more tricks. I had also gotten a better handle on the style we were going for which was closer to realistic than I had initially thought. The result:

Now this guy has a lot of detail compared to the original maps. He looks grungier and there is a lot of wrinkle and vein action going on. Everyone agreed this would be our creature at this time. I did experiment with sculpting some to try and bring out some more subtle details but that did not go so well this time around. There was already a lot of detail there, and more just got lost amid all the other details.

The animations underwent similar changes. Gradually refining to what we were looking for. Through the evolution of this character I definitely learned a lot and improved many skills along the way. Unfortunately most of my time was devoted to one project here, but hopefully I can scrounge some for the other one very soon. See you next time, and hope you liked the creature talk post!

The new year so far

Alrighty, lots of stuff been getting done despite the holidays, though it is mostly filler items to make the scenes look less empty in the game. Stuff like beds, tvs, playground equipment. You kind of don't realize how many little things are around until you move in an environment that just doesn't have them. Here is a progress screenshot of those items:

Still a lot left, but it is a good start. We also have some help from the asset packs we purchased as well. Progress on the game itself is going pretty well, stuff coming together and the world slowly coming to life.

Switched over to my other project, it seems things have slowed down a lot over the holidays. People just up an vanishing for awhile hah. Still, I look forward to seeing more things get implemented there as well. After all the work last year both projects have a lot of the groundwork for a game already in place. My modelling skills have advanced to the point I am thinking about my own game again as well a bit. Just got to hit that coding wall at some point and just start doing things. In the meantime here is a sheep:

I look forward to doing another creature model this coming week along with some more filler.

House interiors, project updates

As the year comes to a close it is inevitable a lot of projects slow down a bit; but it doesn't really feel that way to me! One project I am doing is taking a two week sprint approach, which I didn't quite get if it was two sprint one break or what hah. Basically I just work at my own pace and usually find something to model or texture. The last couple weeks I have been wrapping up some house interiors:

These are some shots in unity with just some standard shaders and unlit textures. By no means does this represent a final look to the houses, just a general idea. Once the shaders are properly set up it looks a lot better. I just have a test ground so I can get a general idea of something in unity (other people have the project set up on their end).
next up are some shots of houses with sections hidden to get a little preview of layouts:

This is where my CAD background comes in pretty handy when it comes to creating houses! Still I am glad house interiors are done at the moment aside from maybe some texture tweaks. I definitely like making creatures a bit better. There is just a lot less elements to a creature. A house has tons of meshes (walls, doors, outlets, stairs etc.) while a creature generally only has a couple (body and head, maybe some clothes/armor). Same goes for textures to apply. Generally a house has around 12-15 textures, I have learned the hard way not to try to cram too much on one UV map. I mean you can put everything you want on it, but you either make it a huge resolution or everything looks like something seen through muddy water.

Finally I also got a snake done. Textures still a work in progress though:

Overall not too bad, the scales look a bit rough and messy though. Too hand drawn without much blending together. Then again, might work out if a player can't view it too close.

Anyway that concludes the rather large update! Trying to take it easy as the holidays and end of year come rushing in. Still learning tons and hitting up Udemy when I feel up for learning new stuff. Just the other day I even got a neat collect stuff type game set up pretty quick with my own stuff in Unity (well aside from code) which was neat. Hopefully I will post before next year but if not happy holidays all!

Another late update... Ah well lol. This time I have been spending a lot of time learning some of the finer points of rigging. I can't rely on pre-built skeletons forever! Aside from that I have still managed to get some models done for my two projects:

Perhaps black is not the best background... anyways a lot of this was texturing using a combination of textures I took pictures of and the freebies on CG textures. Painted some minor details with my tablet in photoshop as well, but for the most part it was adjusting images to work well the the maps I had laid out.

next up was a dog for my less realistic style game:

This texture is hand painted with the aid of photoshop and my tablet.
Still in progress, as I need to get some information on just what sort of animations this guy will have before I can finish up some edge loops. Might have something to do with why I am learning rigging hah! Next on the list is texturing another house and learning some more about rigging. Maybe I can even get something animated with my very own custom rig soon.

Whoops went and forgot about the blog again... I am terrible at this updating thing. It isn't because I have nothing to post but more I am just so busy. Now, some things I can't really show because rather than rendering out animations and posting them on youtube I have been just previewing in unity. Let it be said that there was a lot of animation reworks and improvements on one game. Also, got some more house models knocked out, though they are not textured yet. We got a new guy that may be able to help with some of the 3D work and I am letting him take a shot at that.

So far we plan on getting stuff at least semi decent and possibly going to PAX for a demo. Wish us luck there. The submission deadline will be tight but hopefully we make it.

As for my other project... I can't really say much about the status other than progress is a bit slow at this time. I really hope some decisions get made and we can move forward with some things but alas I am not really a decision maker, I am just the guy who works with 3D assets. Here are some bunnies in the meantime:

Probably not all the variations but good enough for now! This week I will probably move on to another creature and keep an eye out for more animation work. Probably a good idea to check in tomorrow and see what is up.