Fourth Milestone

Cinematic has finally been glued together after all this time and in order for me to achieve this I have had to put in double the time in order to be ready to render at least one day prior to the deadline just in case any errors are encountered.


From everything I've mentioned I now had to bring it all together as one cinematic scene including animations, models, lighting and even compose a soundtrack and record dialogue with to be layered on top of the final rendered piece.

Below is a screen grab of my scene and the final rendered cinematic

Everything went according to plan as far as rendering is concerned, but when it comes down to my dialogue and soundtrack I feel like I should have put more time into them as the dialogue doesn't quite deliver the right feel for the kind of character Zak is. Where the soundtrack is concerned there isn't anything specific that I dislike about it and it expresses exactly what I was aiming to, but it's because I only got it done this week alone when I've had all this time.

Milestones Updated

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

Next Post 

It's come to that time again, another set of holidays, but this time its the Easter holidays and I hope everyone has a good one and relaxes unlike myself as I have the game level still to complete. This time my next post won't be next week it'll fall at the end of the 3 week Easter holidays with all the relevant information about the development procedures that take place.

Third Milestone

My third milestone is here, how time flies and this milestone is the one focused around the press pack to promote Outer Eden as a product but I will have to tell you this I'm not personally excited about this milestone as I feel I didn't have enough time to commit as I felt as if the cinematic has been taking precedence. Anyway I took some time out of 3D to create a few design ideas for promotional products to push the sale of Outer Eden which feed directly into a press pack. Below are a few designs for various products from T-shirts all the way to posters

When all of these where created I had to shift back into 3D as so far I had compiled enemy character, main character, vehicle and environment. The only thing I was missing in order to transition Outer Eden into being a 3rd person shooter and yes that is of course the weapon model, which is displayed below alongside the texture map I put together for it.











It's design is influenced by that of Halo's assault rifle with inspiration from the Gears of War lancer for the rear end just because it's design heavily suits Outer Edens appeal, but I have made adjustments to its overall design in terms of the energy powered style instead of using bullets as the Gears lancer and Halo assault rifle have.


Overall this week has been productive even is I didn't feel fully satisfied with my press pack milestone it's still been hit according to plan.

Milestone Update

Friday 14th December - Character both modeled and textured 

                                     - Game design document complete

                                     - Audio proposal

Friday 15th March      - Press pack for Outer Eden

Friday 22nd March     - Outer Eden cinematic completed with audio

Friday 19th April        - Outer Eden level completed

Friday 26th April        - Outer Eden Production Blog conclusion

                                    

Next Week

• Apply animations
• Render Animation
• Compose Soundtrack
• Milestone

One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Last week as you know I was in the process of UV texturing my tank and this week I have decided to revert to using the arch and design presets built into 3D Studio Max alongside the multi-sub object texturing method in order to keep myself on track. I undertook this action half way through the week when I realised that UV texturing the Tank was taking far too long due to poly count as you can see from image below there are far too many UV's to organise with such little time.

The image following this is the method in which reverted to for economical purposes and it took me about 30 minutes and had I done it the other way I may not of finished it by now.

Having finished the tank at the mid week point I was able to progress onto getting my landscape environment together by the way of a height map and skydome which isn't anything particularly fancy but it provides me with that scene I long to build. Below presents both skydome and height map alongside the height maps final result. 

Everything in this post so far has been positive in yet my post title invokes a different attitude and this is because I came across problems with how I was going to choreograph my entire set of animations within 3D Studio Max as I'm not yet as that level of experience, so I decided to make it a where the main character looks out to the vast lands to see the patrol marching by. giving me less animations to work with.

Next Week

• Model and Texture Weapon
• Press Pack
• Milestone

Tank Part 2

Further developments to the Tank model from last week have led me to the final result of it's structure you see below and It's been hard at times thinking about how certain parts of its body shape, but using designs from both Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Transformers:War for Cybertron as heavy influences do benefit because they possess the style in which I want to feature in Outer Eden. An image of a tank from Transformers games is seen below.

All Elements of the tank are grouped accordingly in order to animate them as required for cinematic


Next Week

• Environment
• Applying animations to characters
• UV Texture Tank