Major Project Production Rider (Character) #Goggles

For the goggles I used the mesh I created from second year as a base to start from.

I then added an FFD modifier, This allowed me to bend the mesh slightly around the head to create a more natural look.

From this I created a plane that created the strap that goes around the helmet, created half then used the symmetry modifier. After that I edited the right side to make it different. 

I was then recommended to change the way the visor was made as I made it join onto the goggle frame and it was to dense for its purpose. For this I just detached it and then stripped the topology back a little and reshaped it to fit within the goggle frame.

Company Research: The Chinese Room

The Chinese Room is an award-winning game development studio based in Brighton, But working remotely across the United Kingdom. We released our first game, Dear Esther, in February 2012 to critical and popular acclaim. Dear Esther went onto win ten major awards in 2012 and was nominated for many more, including 5 BAFTA’s. We have just shipped Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, a sequel to the cult horror developed by Frictional Games. We acted as a third party developer in collaboration with Frictional to create this game. We are now working on our new game, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, an open world, post-apocalyptic adventure to be released on PlayStation 4.

The Chinese Room is a small studio with core values of passion and innovation. We love games and this drives every project we undertake.

Even though I haven’t played any games from the studio YET I have heard a lot of good things about them, I would like to see myself working at the studio working on their latest title as an Environment Artist making. 

Dear Esther is a first-person game about love, loss, guilt and redemption. Driven by story and immersion rather than traditional mechanics, it’s an uncompromisingly emotional experience. Starting life as a cult mod in 2007, Dear Esther is recognised as a major title in pushing forward the boundaries of game design and storytelling and was one of the standout independent releases of 2012.

“This World is a machine. A machine for pigs. Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs.”

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a terrifying journey into madness, industrialisation and the darkest secrets of the soul.

“…picks at the darkest corners of our subconscious and society as a whole.” Polygon

“…tense, and disturbing… this is a marvellous, revolting, disturbing sequel to Dark Decent.” Rock, Paper, Shotgun

“Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is extremely disturbing, more than a little disturbing, and impossible to stop playing.” GameSpot

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

Major Project Production Rider (Character) #Helmet

To begin the Helmet I gathered references and luckily came across this image of a helmet made in Maya From that I created a reference plane to the same scale of the image pixels. 

The Image size was 1920x1080.

To begin the helmet I created a box and added a spherify modifier, this makes the box into a sphere however keeps the topology quads which don't go into a point like the default sphere does. From this I then scaled it into shape.

From that I deleted half so I could focus on one side of the mesh. From that I then started to add in more edge loops and pull the mesh more into shape.

The image above shows further edge loops being added and also the lower part being extruded out.

This is a back view of the helmet it at its current stage.

This image shows more extrusions was made from the lower section to create the mouth piece.

Front view of the current stage of production with the mouth piece done. Also done some tidied up the mesh a little.

Then went onto adding the inside foam parts but creating an extrusion from the open edges.

Final image shows the helmet done and also Visor modelled. The visor was tricky to model and as you can see the mesh isn't completely clean, however this is how it would be constructed in the game industry. As its a rigid body and doesn't require to move it doesnt need to be clean. 

Major Project Production Rider (Character) #Base Mesh

To start my character I first created a base mesh to work from this was done by using reference planes as a template and then the hand part was a quick repo from another mesh I worked on. Sadly the hand was then removed as it was to dense of a mesh and didn't work well with the current mesh I created. 

Throw Back Thursday #3

It's this time again and another Throw Back Thursday has come around. Here Is a video of some of my work I've done, It was created in second year of uni the project was simple create a low poly character and get it to run around a game level as a playable character. For this I followed the digital tutors tutorial to create the character itself, through this I learned many new techniques to modelling and especially hand painting textures. I decided to call Him Axel due to the Axe on his back, For this I also needed to rig the character, I used the Biped system found within 3DS MAX and also tested the rig with a number of different motion capture data to ensure my rig was at a high enough standard before going into unity. Once in unity I followed a tutorial found on their website about setting up playable characters with their animations using a node based approach. What you will find below is a Video showing off the character and a download link for the level for you to have a play :).

Download Game level Here:

Major Project Production Bike Parts #Frame

The final part of the construction stage of the bike. And in fact the most important part the frame. 

To start off the frame I blocked in the back end of the frame using simple shapes.

This then led into creating the main body of the frame, started off with a two boxes one for the top tube and then one for the bottom, The top tube was then cut down the middle to allow me to symmetry it later on.

This image shows the top tube with the symmetry modifier applied, I also added some edges around the harsh edges of the box mesh to add more roundness to the mesh this was done my selecting the edges and applying a chamfer.

I then went back to the rear end of the frame and added more detail to the blocked out meshes.

The top rear section was then mirrored to the other side using the symmetry modifier, then collapsed into edit poly, while the lower section at the back was duplicated and mirrored.  Then went onto adding in the fine details, such as the bolts done by creating a cylinder with multiple extrusions.

Then went onto creating the headtube this was done by creating a cylinder and aligning it up with the image. While also finally merging the top tube and bottom tube together creating the main body of the frame.

This then got attached to the main body of the frame by adding in extra loops around the headtube.

Created some low poly bolts for the frame to then be baked onto at a later date. This then lead on to fine tuning the frames topology.

To finish the frame off I created the very lower part of the main body to close the gap from the top area. and creating an inside to the mesh as well. This was a tricky part and required me to think about the topology a lot.

This image shows the Final design with the seat post area finally attached to the curved tube section.

Major Project Production Bike Parts #Handle Bars & Brakes

Next section on the list was the handlebars,brakes and gear shifter. For this I decided to use splines as it was recommended to me from my lecture to use spines to create the bike frame, I saw this as an opportunity to get some practice in before trying something complex. 

So to begin I again got a reference plane with a image set up and  created a set of circular splines lining up with the image. 

I then created a cylinder to work out roughly the length of the grip.

I then used the tools I was recommended to create the outcome of the image above. by connecting the circular splines with the connect tool and using the surface modifier. However this resulted in a bad outcome with edges overlapping each other. 

For that reason I resulted back to creating the bars using a cylinder with a set of extrusions. I only however modelled half of the handlebars and then used the symmetry modifier to complete the object.  

I then collapsed the modifier list and then smoothed the mesh out using the smoothing groups. Also decided to add more detail to the grips. 

The Stem was made up of two objects one at the front created from a box and the wrapped around the handlebars. Then the second part at the back was created from a cylinder with the edges flattened and extruded.

I then went back and added some bar ends to the object this was a cylinder which was bevelled in slightly. 

To add the final touches to the handlebars I added a headset cap on the top of the stem. This was done using the same technique as the bar ends.

For the next section I created the brakes. For this I got reference of an old brake set known as avid codes. Started by blocking in the unique areas of the brake with simple shapes to help me rough out how I was going to go about creating the complex shape.

This is was I finally came up with tried to keep it very simple as not going to be seen on screen much in gameplay respects. 

For the gear shifter I created a cylinder and bevelled it slightly. And used the brake lever and edited it to suit the shifter.

This is the other side of the mesh.