Monday, 9 September 2013

New Project: The Reactor

So I feel like its time to reveal a bit of what I have been working on in my personal time while not working hard on Rivals, In an effort to address things I want to get stronger at I have planned to make an environment using only High poly to Low poly Workflows.

Currently I am planning to Develop this environment with PBR which should bring it into the next Gen quite nicely, can't show any of that yet though! I wanted to choose an existing concept so I didn't spend time trying to design a scene. The concept I am using is the following;


This is a concept for Mass effect created by Brian Sum, which I grabbed permission to use but I thought it would be a nice test of High poly skills.

I figured I would stick with standard textures for now, making use of DDO for the main props, once material definition is nailed I can then move onto using the Metallic and Roughness textures, assuming I keep it clean it should be fairly easy to translate. I started by making a blockout that I could run around and then moved into production on the main support beams that hold the centre piece in place. Still not decided whether these should animate yet.

Above is a shot of the High Poly for this piece, uses about 3 textures at the moment. Below is a shot in UDK but as I plan on making this environment for PBR anyway I figured it would be quicker to put it together in CryEngine as its just simply faster (no Lightmaps etc, Better Lighting)



Edit: Thought I show a render with textures, as I was really trying to nail an oily kinda feel for the dark metal, and a worn more chipped feel for the other types. 


Still got some balancing on the texture side, as the greens are looking a little yellow at the moment, and I need some cooler blues in the metals to match the concept. 

I then moved on to creating and floor and Trims texture, which I modelled instead of NDO, following some advice from work, as NDO doesn't create as good results. Baking gives a much better AO as well, and for DDO creating a colour map from high poly is a lot quicker than manually doing it in photoshop. Here are the textures for the floor and trim as they look currently but I have done no texturing, this is purely the baked textures with AO etc



Will Upload a shot of the environment once I have made a bit more progress on it.

Monday, 2 September 2013

Hey Guys,

Got a new portfolio website I have been working on, fairly similar to the old one but using weebly now so I can add Video and don't have an image limit. Still can't figure out how to get the URL working properly.

You may have also noticed I have a sneak peak for a new personal project I am working. Shall be posting some shots of that soon. So stay tuned.



Benkeeling.co.uk

Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Flythrough

Here is the fly-through I made for the presentation, please watch in 1080p :)


Sunday, 2 June 2013

Final Renders

Thought I would share my final Renders for the project, will be posting a fly-through shortly but because there is secret stuff in it for the presentation this will be done in a few days.















Monday, 13 May 2013

Update on Interior

Not a huge amount has changed on the Interior side of things recently just been tightening up textures and unwraps so it is finally getting there now. 

Been working a bit on the centre piece a bit more getting the crystal to pulsate after some crit as well as the smaller floating pieces which move in and out with the power of the crystal. curtsy of Rich Carey's fantastic paint-over. 

Also got little robots flying around scanning crystal which is cool. 









Again not a huge amount left to do for the inside.

Here is a list of a few left to finish

-Finish of some more unwraps
-Finish Rock texture
-Finish track viewing robots
-Pipes for steam and spotlights for beams
-Holds for screens
-Decals

Update on Exterior progress

So been working Hard to try and get this finished to a really polished level. Its definitely getting there now just a few more bits left to populate on the outside. Finally got round to replacing the Skybox with a sky that was a bit closer to the sunset vibe I was going for.  Got a few more textures to finish off as well such as the piece below. 



Working on the transition from outside to the interior which was causing me some weird issues with the Vis Areas and portals and I have finally fixed that with some flow-graphing and now the transition is nice and seamless. Got the Vault style door in and animated too which looks Bad ass. 





Also been getting the exterior base all cleaned up and finished, Now that the door is in place it looks a lot nicer and more finished, always helps when you get rid of a giant hole in the level! 






I have wrote myself a little list of things to finish off now so can almost taste the celebratory pint at the end :)

Here are some of the things I have left to finish off for the outside 

-Finish population 
-Door textures
-Pillar for outside base
-Replace and update some terrain textures
-Decals