Vehicle Texture Finally done

It has taken me a good few days but finally I have finished the diffuse for the vehicle (well mostly), I have got it to the stage where I am happy with it, there are some small little decals and badges here and there that I shall probably add at the end. But for now I shall start on texturing the environment. I don't know how the people who made borderlands had the patience 

Environment progress

Been working on modelling the Vehicle environment the last two days, Wanted to get this out of the way and revisit the texturing on the vehicle at a later date.

I decided to go with a circular environment, the basis of the environment is a fuelling and loading platform which also acts as an underground garage. I have animated this in max to go from the bottom to top with raising ramps and hand holds for around the platform. Level with the ground means it can drive off, just below means it can be loaded up for transporting goods, then at the top most level it is fuelled.

I also made a few quick camera placement shots which I will prob tweak for final hand in:

Baking and Ambient Occlusion

Been making a High Poly over the last day, which you can see below. Then been baking this down to the low poly one and applied a quick colour mask to some of the low poly Mesh to see what It would look like. Bake came out pretty clean but there are a few errors I need to clean up. 

Progress Update

Bit of an update on the vehicle, The mesh is mainly finished now, got a few little bits to tweak and I need to lose about 50 tris somewhere as well. Pretty happy with how its looking at the moment, reminds me a lot of the dinotopia vehicle which is cool.

Vehicle WIP

This is the current progress on the vehicle this week, not had much time to work on it as I have been busy with FMP stuff. Below is the first block-out based on a mixture of the concepts I did. After getting to this stage there were a lot of aspects I was unhappy with. After sourcing some feedback, the most obvious issue was the vehicle had a mixture of functions, I was combining a fast speeder buggy with a more truck like design. This posed questions such as what was its function, where does the driver sit etc. 

After the feedback I decided to work out what function I wanted to opt for, I decided to go for a transport fairly fast moving all terrain buggy type of thing. I refined a section at the back to carry stuff and the middle section to carry extra passengers. I also added an open cab at the front (now obvious were the driver would sit) This was inspired a bit by the dinotopia stuff. I also decided to fill out the wheels and am planning to make them big gripping tyres. Still got like half the tris left so got loads left to model.

Concepts for Vehicle Project

Been working on some concepts for the vehicle project today, My initial idea was to either do a dune buggy type thing or some sort of all terrain truck vehicle.

VideoFlythrough

Final Screenshots

Minor Assets and Decals

Created some more minor assets mainly to put on the bars and tables, including beer mats, bottles and taps. I used UDK to create a shader which allows me to change various parameters to pretty much make any material I wanted. 

 I also created a decal sheet with some logo's, I then applied this to meshes (consisting of planes) and to existing assets such as the bar (Below).

Screengrabs so far

Here is a current screen-grab, Not managed to get any of the minor assets placed yet but started working on some strip lighting underneath the exterior buildings as well as underneath the water feature thing in the middle. Got some little pin lights that run down the exterior parts of the level as well. 

Got to this stage about the 2 week mark so decided I would do some of the extended scope stuff. I added this small section at the back as a seating area. Originally I had it just faced across with building which was a bit boring so added this section in.

Also added some more playability with a side section at the bar to gain access to the roof. 

Minor Assets

Made some Minor Assets for the level, these include plants and pots, multiple chairs and tables and trim sections

Major Assets

Been working on refining some of the Major assets, my plan was to keep replacing the placeholder meshes until the major assets were complete. I chose to go with an angular architecture with a lot of slanted 45 degree angles complimented with the more cylindrical shapes.

Trim and glass panelling for outside level.

 Initially planned to have heaters instead of water fountains but after some feedback replaced them with a more upmarket sleek fountain.

 Surrounding Buildings

 Main Bar focal Area

Texture Start

Started some work on the texture after the Blockout, I knew from my plan what materials I wanted so this was pretty easy. I also wanted to create one texture sheet as a little technical challenge for myself. Used this grey-scale blockout and NDO2 to create a simple Normal map.

Started to unwrap a few of the placeholder meshes to see what the texture would look like and work on the colour schemes, here are some screengrabs trying out the colour schemes in UDK

Rooftop Progress

Just thought I would post some progress for the rooftop here are some of the initial Concepts and the blockouts in Max. I also have been introduced to a website called Pinterest which basically allows you to create mood-boards where you can pin images of the internet too for reference  I tried to show it to Course mates but through much mocking it was perceived to be a website just devoted to collecting Images of Cats.

I created a folder for the rooftop as I went along: http://pinterest.com/benkeeling/rooftop-design/

3rd Year Blog

Hey Guys this is my new Blog for the first few projects and the FMP later next term. I shall be posting concepts and work in progress as I go along. So keep checking back for updates