Holidays killed my teams!

Well not really, but radio silence seems to be the norm in terms of projects atm. However, I have been using the free time to improve coding/unity skills. The end goal of course being able to create some small projects or prototype some level/design concepts on my own. Small steps, but with the help of Udemy, youtube, and google I hope to get there! Here is a small update of what I have been doing with a Udemy course:

You may or may not recognize some of the assets are from a site called Glitch the Game. There are a lot of pre-made assets from a game that failed a few years back but went public domain. A good place for resources or simply understanding things that go into such a game. This pic is just a small level setup/game asset animation scene.

As for the course it is still focusing on 2D games mainly but I have learned a lot about menu systems and general C# programming tricks. Definitely recommend it if it is still on sale: Learn to Code by Making Games - The Complete Unity Developer.

See you next update and thanks for reading!

Work updates

While I was caught up on things it seems a model got lost and was never sent to us awhile back so I had to start it over from scratch. Still it was a pretty cool concept I was working off of. Here is the pre-texture version:

And some initial textures, I think I need to scale them up to make the details pop a bit more though:

Still, looks pretty good from far away! Quixel makes testing textures a lot quicker as well. As the year draws to a close I am happy to have come far as a 3D artist, but still realize I have a lot to learn as well. The other cool thing is I am starting to learn some programming concepts and even make some quick games. However, I am still a little impatient to get a nice project out there that more than 20 or so people see and download. Just got to keep learning new things and ranking up the projects as I do so, and hopefully my teams do the same!

Near years end!

I can definitely say I grew a lot in my skills this year. I can even say my workflow for 3D modelling changed entirely and probably for the better. For these last couple weeks I finished up quite a few things from the usual props to larger projects like a memorial and re texturing a cabin.

Here we have the memorial setup... You should recognize the statue which sits in the center, was finished a while back. This is just what I imagine it might look like, but I also have a clean platform for any changes we might wish to do.

For the other project I rigged up some arms in blender:

Might need a bit of refining when it comes to weights but for the most part looks like it will work.

I also revisited an old model to apply textures with Quixel and up the detail some:

Looks a lot cleaner than before and less fuzzy. Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The textures are better organized too so if we do decide to change stuff it will be a lot easier.

A decent amount of work done the last couple weeks! Looks like I even caught up on all the work and am mostly on standby until someone needs some more models. In the meantime I plan to keep following a udemy programming course and see if I can't get a little closer to getting a nice 3D prototype of a game I have on my mind. It will be inspired by some other games I have played but just some general setups. The story and design would be unique. To truly finish it will take a bit of luck and hopefully finding others to help move things along but I think a good starting point might help with that too. Or it could just be another crazy dream but meh those are the best anyways.

more houses, new text game!

Alright right on time with a two week update! I finished a couple more houses with some very basic interiors and exteriors, but that can be spiced up with props and textures.

I have gotten to the point where I can do a model like these and map it within a day which is pretty cool. As for textures I will probably make or get an atlas at some point. For now a set of base models will do. A lot of neat things happening with that team so be sure to stay tuned to the AoA facebook page or forums for updates.

Next up I created a text based game with the help of a Udemy course. Their story did not have tons of endings, a shop, and four character paths though lol. Check it out at game jolt

A lot of the text parts were pretty easy once I got the format down. It was basically like filling in a text bubble. You had to check the space available and shorten things but each bubble could be connected in before anything was written. Knocked this out in about 4-5 days, but still probably some mistakes here and there. Let me know what you think if you got a few!

Anyways that is about it for this update, hope you all had a good thanksgiving and see you again in a couple weeks!

Work updates

These last couple weeks I have been working on quite a few things 3D model wise. I have gotten a lot faster and actually managed to get ahead of my work for the most part now. There are still a few items on the backlog, but I am going to wait on those and work on some programming courses in the meantime. What I want most of all is just to see more prototyping of the games I am working on. I know it can't be that hard because I have been learning how to code stuff and I can get at least some sort of playable game fairly quick... I think these teams focus too much on making really high quality work and just get nothing done because of it. Yeah quality is important, but getting something playable even if it fails or looks a bit rough around the edges will teach you a lot. If the base game is good support should be pretty easy to get. Anyways enough of my rambling and on to work screens! I took these in unity just as import tests... some other random buildings there too:

this is a old wood cabin model with some furniture. Worked with blender and Quixel to set it all up. Quixel workflow is actually pretty nice to let you know where everything is with color codes and also has a good library of textures to apply. Even has a normal map creator! I do not regret learning this program so far!

rocks, stumps, hospital sign. These will help fill out some scenes. They are in front of a church model that is still in progress.

some docks that finally got textured. For AoA, so the textures are supposed to be a bit less realistic here. We even got some ships to put around it! For more updates or screens of that game just go check out the Age of Aincrad forums or facebook page.

See you again in a couple weeks!

Whoops I went and forgot to post again

I tend to get busy and buried in my work and just general things sometimes. I really should keep this updated a bit better but alas correcting a should have is often impossible. At any rate lets kick this off with what I have been up to:

As you can see a lot of houses in the works. Just models to fill out towns and neighborhoods really. Quixel is making texturing a lot quicker, though we still have some kinks to work out of textures overall. However, I am happy to report that we are moving more towards a dev art mindset than having everything be perfect as we create. Graphics might not be top notch, but at least we can get an actual game in the works a bit faster hopefully. It only took me a couple years to convince them to try that approach!

We are also talking a bit about GDC but it probably wont be this one, maybe the next though. I would love to meet the team in person and I think it is a necessity at some point to do so! Things are still moving pretty slow, but hopefully with these new ideas of doing things we can move forward quicker and get a game produced! In the meantime I keep kicking out models and learning a bit of programming on the side. Sometimes I get a little burnt out and turn to the games or side projects, but I think breaks are important to keeping your head up and continuing to move forward.

Until next time.. hopefully not a month this time between posts!

This last week I have been learning quixel and I think I got the basics down. I can set a model up and use the program to apply textures quickly. Quixel is great for being able to change textures on the fly and add a lot of small details quickly with masks and a fairly good library of textures. Still I did run into a couple crashes and one annoying thing: it kind of sucks at updating a model. Like if you set it up a little wrong with material IDs and need to reload an update it tends to fail at that. The set up is key and I would say double check it.. but even if you have to reload applying textures is so smooth it almost doesn't matter time wise if you have to restart from scratch (as long as you haven't gone too in depth in making really unique materials). So I would definitely just keep textures in a draft form until the model is fully textured to make sure everything is working how you want before you get into the small detail work. So here is my first quixel result, with a couple of my own textures and some of the built in sets as well:

Other than that I have been finalizing Sundered Arvena and renamed it to Knight Quest just to make it a little easier to find and remember. Overall The game does not seem too popular. I think the main mistake I made was making it too hard from the start. You open the game and right away you are bombarded with enemies. Which would be fine, but I could see how it might get frustrating pretty quickly. From my standpoint I like the challenge, but I suppose a lot of people might find it very discouraging. The other theory I have is maybe the combat just isn't fun enough. I mean you tap and stuff dies but that is about it... I don't have any cool skills or powerups. So that aspect may be too simple. Even Mario has to hit an enemy a certain way to defeat it or have a certain powerup.

That is about it for this update. I am thinking of some other game ideas to try and implement and also keeping up with my other two projects. See you again in a couple weeks!