TOYS

Here are few of my prototyped toys. I made a jetpack, some trampolines, and a gun that spawns AI wherever you're aiming. Eventually, I would imagine these 'toys' being made into a vertical platformer. The goal would be to climb as high as you can using the trampolines and jetpack. If this was made into a mini game, I would have the jetpack cost health or juice so you could only use it for so long before having to recharge. Spawning the bodies was more pure hilarity than anything. The same theory could be used to spawn anything in the Actor Factory. I chose these models to spawn because of the way they bounce all over each other (See video below), which reminded me of Plinko. So, if I couldn't find a way to incorporate the bodies into my vertical platformer, I would just make a Plinko type game with some filthy peasants. Although, I think I could, in fact, incorporate the spawn bodies into my vertical venture. Instead of live AI, I could spawn some dead bodies to climb up, aiding me in my quest to reach the high heavens, or whatever. Enough text. Time for videos.

The jetpack video shows off the jetpack and a little bit of my trampolines. The jetpack was all made in Kismet using a keybind, comparison of some bools, and a couple set physics nodes.

The trampolines are just trigger volumes the get, then set velocity of the player. The set velocity adds a tiny bit to what it recieved allowing you to go higher and higher with more momentum you have.

The body gun uses the trace node in Kismet. If the trace is obstructed if spawns whatever I tell it to at the location the hit was obstructed.

Toys

EDIT:
Made a jetpack. I want to make it so when you use the jetpack it drains your life so you can only use it for so long.  That should be a quick addition. This picture doesn't really show off the jetpack, but everything's better with pictures. I suppose I need a video...

Makin some toys for game design. Not so much luck at the moment. I tried doing a grappling hook, but then switched my idea to a gun that would teleport you wherever you shot. I almost have that working, I'm just having some trouble with the trace and setting actor location. Today I'm going to make a little jetpack and some sticky shoes that let you walk on any wall. I did, however, make a trampoline thing that's pretty fun, mainly because you go so high. I'll update this post with some finished works.

Modular Assignment

Here are some quick beauty shots from my modular environment in 3D class. My environment was an old school command station/ nuclear power plant. Almost everything is parametrized, from colors to timing of lights flashing, to scales of textures. I received an extra credit award for most optimized package while retaining the highest visual fidelity. Eventually I'll have some more pretty beauty shots and a fly through. I'm going to touch up my normal maps and the edges of all the computer stations.

Game Mechanic Ideas

There's a storm in mah brain, and its producing some ideas for game mechanics. Game mechanics that would best be used in an obstacle based/ puzzle environment:
1. Slingshot/Lasso/Leapfrog. This could work between players or just a player and an object. Think of hurling a ball that has a bungee cord attached to it. When the ball lands it sticks and you are pulled to it.
2. Rubberband/Bounce. Iteration of number 1. When the ball lands and you fly to it you get launched in whatever direction you were traveling.
3. A gun that shoots trampolines.
4. High speed grappling hook. You have to stay airborn and detach/reattach the grappling hook while in the air to climb up obstacles.
5. Hold onto something only for so long. This can be something needed to clear and obstacle or finish a puzzle. You would have to manage your time spent with this object wisely.
6. A room that revolves every 30 sec. Different obstacles on each side of the room:

7. You are tethered to an anchor with a limited amount of running room. The anchor moves every X seconds.
8. You can produce a wave. Charge up a 'wave' that moves forward knocking things up into the air.
9. Sticky shoes. Walk up walls, etc.
10. Time bomb. Control where it goes. Can be used to heal allies, destroy walls, hurt enemies.
11. Series of boost pads needed to navigate a course.
12. Essentially a timed level, but something that forces you to advance the course or else it pushes you into undesirable obstacles.
13. Steal/absorb energy. Energy used to activate any aforementioned movement mechanic (grapple, slingshot/ bounce). Energy could be hidden in the course.
14. "Bop It". Something will call out an action, or actions will cycle through a menu randomly and you have to choose one. The actions will help/harm you through the course.
15. Propulsion gun. When you shoot you move in the opposite direction you were aiming.
16. Direct an orb/ball that can build a path. Orb only last for so long or can only be directed so many times.
17. You can bounce 5 consecutive times. Each bounce is less powerful than the last.
18. Summon a pillar that degrades over time. You have to climb the pillar to advance upwards in the course. If you reach the top of the pillar it stops degrading and you can summon another smaller pillar on top, allowing you to climb higher.
19. Levitate over gaps/obstacles for a percentage of health. Use other aforementioned mechanics to find health packs and advance through the course before you die.
20. Timed pillars that come out of the wall and create stairs. Shortly disappear. Emphasis on climbing:

Modular Kit

In 3D we are making a modular kit that will be used to create at least two constructs that are significantly different. I chose a retro computer command room. Here are some inspiration pictures and a blockout of some items I intend to make up most of the kit:

Iterations of the wall panel/ buttons/ switches/ screens

Iterations of these workstations and the reel-to-reel machines.

I modeled some proposal models and threw up two quick rooms to check the diversity of the modular kit.

Summer Prepro

I have been, very casually working on my summer project. I gathered some reference and did a quick concept, for a concept painting.

Here is some of the reference I gathered. I want the walls of the cave and the walkway to be some kind of granite. I really like the black granite for the color and the more cloudy pattern. Ideally I would like to blend the two big images on the left together for the walls of this space and the walkway.

As far as shapes on the walls inside of the cave space I would to go along the lines of this:

Some more shapes I found interesting:

Here's the quick concept blockout. I am trying to get better at the readability of my paintings. I treated this kind of like a thumbnail. I started with a blockout in UDK that I threw together last week. I quickly painted over it to try and get a readable image. The bridge spanning the abyss is coming from the left. In this shot you are inside the alcove, near water level, looking up at the rotating harvester device and the collector door (on the right). I am going to try and mess around with the composition some more, but I'm getting close to something I'd like to spend a while on painting.

Final Car and Character

Here are the final turnarounds for my car and character. His name is Gunnar and he drives a 1974 Gremlin X.

Here are some turnarounds:

I tried to get APEX cloth to work to give my character some sweet greasy long hair, but apparently there is a bug with the APEX plugin in maya right now. I tried dozens of workarounds, but couldn't get it working. I got pretty close, so I'll probably revisit the hair and get it working.

Attract Trailer

Final edit of my attract trailer for Sophomore Spinout 2013.

This video is a compilation of action shots from many of my fellow classmates tracks.

Tattooooooo

Another sketch and almost finished tattoo for my character. Classic grim reaper to be placed on the shoulder.

Summer

I started concepting a little project to keep me busy and fresh over summer. All I have now is some rough sketches and a bunch of notes and ideas. I'm just about ready to start a nice concept painting to work from. It's looking like I won't have the painting done until school gets out, but that's fine.

So the project I'll be making is a small environment using the same Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, UDK workflow I've been used to. I may try and throw some 3DS Max in there.

Short version explanation: A huge cave space. In the cave space a smooth granite bridge spans an inifinite chasm. Across the bridge, an alcove houses a giant fragmented shard that is mechanically harvesting the essence of this cave, which is being absorbed into and body of water underneath the shard and then into carved grooves in a flat section of the granite wall.

Long Version explanation: The idea of this environment is a granite, cave-like space. The walls of this cave will be organic and jagged granite, with a transition to a super smooth, highly polished walking surface. This surface leads to a bridge, made of the same highly polished granite. The bridge leads over and infinitely deep chasm and into an alcove hollowed out of the side of this huge rough, granite wall. Extruding from a hole in the ceiling of the alcove will be this huge shape made up of fragmented pieces of this granite stuff, arranged in a cone, or wedding cake layered style. Each layer will be abruptly rotating in opposite directions. They will rotate a quarter-turn and stop, then begin again. I want that movement to be very harsh and mechanical. I want this object to feel like it is harvesting this essence stuff from the granite. This big fragmented shard will be suspended above a small body of water. Out of the cone, shard thing this essence stuff will be absorbed into the water, which it will then travel over to a big smooth piece of the granite wall with grooves carved into it. The essence will be sucked up through the grooves into a receiver of sorts. So this big cone object will be harvesting this essence which will be collected by the flat section.

It is probably pretty convoluted right now, but I'm still working some stuff out. I'm setting this project up to allow me to spend a lot of time on the shaders and in matinee.

Here are some rough sketches, which are also probably pretty convoluted:

So you can see a semi-thumbnail in the center of the page of the bridge leading into this alcove space. Also, some ideas of what the shard extrusion will do and possibly look like.

Another thumbnail of pretty much the same thing. A little bit more detailed than the other, but it's pretty much just a re visitation of the previous page of sketches. I think it's a little more clear what's happening in this 'thumbnail'. I really need to work on the read-ability of my thumbnails...

Once I spend a little more time on the design of everything and get a solid painting started, I think a lot of this will be more clear.

Programming - Exploding Crate and Barrel

Here are my finished crate and barrel meshes we had to make for programming. I ended up using these in my race level quite a bit. 

Check out the attached video to see the panning textures. In this material, and the crate material, I continued using sine, cosine, and tangent waves, along with competing panners to make some cool stuff.

 The first image is for the front and back of the crate. The bottom image is used for the remaining 4 sides of the crate. Same ole song and dance with masks, vertex math, and panners. I've gotten into the habit of making everything into parameters, so I'm able to change color, speed, size, and tiling of everything on the fly.

The basic kismet hookup for the barrel explosion is:

Damage threshold parameters to start the event on a trigger encompassing the barrel (If you shoot the barrel twice it explodes intead of 'charging up' for a few seconds). MIC on the barrel to change color and speed of the panning textures when damaged. Smoke particles activate on damage. Then the mesh is destroyed after a few seconds of 'charging up' and an explosion particle goes off. There is also a radial impulse that goes off with the explosion, damaging nearby actors.    

The crate is a prefab of rigid bodies. A trigger encompassing the crate activates a small impulse actor inside the crate prefab. When damaged, the trigger fires the impulse actor causing the crate to break apart, or explode. There are rigid bodies, in this case the little crystal things, inside the crate that also are activated when the crate explodes. These crystal rigid bodies are destroyed on collision with the player and a custom HUD counter appears, with an image of the crystal, in the corner, making it seem like the player picked up the item.

       

New Beauty Shots

Here are a couple more teaser beauty shots from my level. I'll have a sweet flythrough and an attract video up here soon. For now:

Here's a tattoo I finished for my character. Pre-grunge pass.

And the finished Murder Wizard patch. I'll probably revisit this and touch it up. Again, pre-grunge pass.

Finished Level

A little peek at my level.. Ebethronis Circuit. Everything was made by myself. I wanted to see how much I could get done alone. I would have liked to have more set dressing and lighting done, but I am pretty happy with how much I got done and how much I learned. More good stuff to come.

Murder Wizard

A little WIP of my character textures. I still need to do a  grunge pass, add some tattoos on his arms and neck, give his jacket some patches, and get his luscious locks working with that sweet, sweet APEX.

Here's a little preview of the kind of good stuff that will be on his jacket. This one will be the biggest patch, right in the middle of his back.

I made up a bunch of metal band names for my character to worship. This is the WIP logo for Murder Wizard. The 'Wizard' text will be down in his great beard.

Attract Video

Pretty soon we'll be making an attract video for our tracks. For now we are supposed to research some videos of existing racing game attract videos and get an idea of camera moves, mood, etc.

http://www.gamespot.com/f1-2012/videos/f1-2012-attract-mode-trailer-6396221/

The formula is basically the same for all these videos:

Short shots, action packed gameplay, and some nice vistas. Pretty much just showing off all of the coolest parts of the game.

Fascist Scum UDK Vertex Paint

Not cool UDK...

Programming - Particles

We need to make two unique particles related to our racing game for our programming class. I am going to make steam and an energy beam aura. I studied some of UDK's smoke particles and I am going to use some of their concepts as a base for my steam particle. Steam is pretty simple. All I need is a good cloud and distortion map to make it look nice. I want something almost exactly like this, but with a little more distortion:

The energy aura will be a little more complex. It will look like the areas around the energy/ laser beams in these pictures:

It will be an aura so I want to make the particle light and wispy.  I think I will be able to change some parameters and reuse this particle around the big spotlights in my level to add some atmosphere.

There are a few 3D Motive tutorials I have watched a bit of that use some elements I would like to incorporate into the energy aura.

The small little bits floating around in this video are what I'm interested in:

In this video I'm interest in the vortex in the upper right corner. I think that particle, slowed wayyyy down is in the ballpark of what I'm looking for.

Programming - Crate

Same thing as the barrel: We need to come up with some concepts for a crate, incorporating the theme of our level. I didn't do as many sketches because I had a better idea of what I wanted with the crate.

And here are some models I found for some reference/ inspiration.

Programming - Barrel Model

First pass on my barrel for programming class. I think the polycount is a little high, but I think it should be fine because, hopefully, I will be using it around the level, scaled up, for more than just a simple barrel. Should have it textured and into UDK by tomorrow to start messing around with the energy goo stuff that goes in the center chamber and all of the rest of the lights, etc. Will update with progresssssssss

Front:

Side: 

3/4: 

Programming CH8 - Barrel Sketches

We are making an exploding barrel in programming. Here are some really quick concept sketches and some reference for the design of my barrel. The barrel has to fit with the theme of my level, which is near future, dirty sci fi. So I'm making a sci fi inspired barrel with a lot of panels, grooves, and tubes, holding a tank filled with some kind of goo/ liquid/ toxic space stuff.

Sketching this batch I was trying to think of how these barrels were actually put together instead of just arbitrarily placing nozzles, hoses, and panels, etc.  I kind of envision the goo/liquid center canister would be something that would be replaced often. Maybe these goo canisters are a source of energy and the exterior parts are what extracts or converts the energy.

HUGE ART DUMP

Huge art dump below.  I needed to get back in the habit of posting regularly so I figured the best way would be to post everything I missed out on. So there it all is. Enjoy, and come back for some more fun.

Updated Beauty Shots

I added some stickers and tweaked the grunge, spec, and reflection on my car material a while back. Here are some updated beauty shots.

And here's a close up, without so much perspective, of all the heavy metal band stickers I made up