3DS Max Modelling – Pub

 

So we have been working on “The Street” for a while now, models have all been submitted for the project now and I thought I had held off putting my renders up for long enough. So here they are, my building and asset.

I built a pub for the building portion of the project, it doesn’t look overly like a pub in the render underneath unfortunately which I am a little disappointed in, I will need to be more savvy on the look the next time it comes to building something like this. I found it difficult at times creating parts for it as well such as the windows, and then applying the textures because I kept doing the texture map wrong, but I got there in the end, which was good because my patience was wearing a little thin towards the end.

The asset is the pub sign, which was easy to make and simple to render once I had gotten the hang of texturing the building. The sign is nice and simple and looks like a sign. It fits onto the building with no problem and looks fine. It would have been better if I had taken the time to create a hanging sign to hang over the door instead of a wooden sign that sits above the top window of the building and this is something that I shall be doing the next time I have the chance to work on something like this.

Photoshop Collage

Yes this is looking pretty basic, but with an interesting premise behind it. Following up with a different version of Star Trek, the team aboard the Enterprise were in fact sucked into the Black Hole they created that consumed the Romulan ship. However the emerged from it to find an alternate world complete with Earth and starcraft. However, floating in place of the Earths original Moon, there is now a massive Space Station that isn’t looking too friendly. Suddenly without warning, X-Wing fighters come abounding, aiming straight for the Space Station that starts to fire on them. So the Enterprise observes and soon comes under attack itself, so it pitches in with the X-Wings to destroy this alternate world Death Star.

Break and Make Model

I started with a simple car, more specifically a 4×4 jeep type vehicle. Then by breaking up the model of an army jeep, I have kitted out the car with parts from the jeep like the rear mounted .50 cal turret and the guns on the sides of it are the turrets that were mounted on the top of the army jeep.

Character Sketch

So this is my most recent sketch of my character. I would have done a full character sheet with the character standing at different angles but I still suffer from noobie drawing skills and cannot draw well enough to do an entire body without having to resort to some stupid looking cartoonified character that doesn’t go with the image of the character I had in mind. Then again this character sketch doesn’t either but this is as close as I am going to get for the time being.
He does look pretty out of it at the moment, I haven’t really gotten the hang of eyes yet and when I checked on him from a short distance his face wasn’t completely on center and was actually wonky if I am honest, but that is learning for you.
The hair is annoying me as well, I cannot draw hair properly yet either but this in my opinion was a pretty good attempt, I just need to get more practice in, look at some tutorials and kick myself into gear so that I can draw better. Practice is all I need and practice I shall.

Interactive Controller Ideas

Ok then so when it came to interactive controller ideas. I hit a barrier, because there are controllers for everything these days. However I have come up with three ideas that I wanted to get down. The first thing is minor, it is a game console controller, a cross between an Xbox controller and a Nintendo Gamecube controller in appearance, but works with both of them. It is wired and felt like quite a weak idea to me, so I left it where it was on the page as just a beginner idea to get the creative thinking flowing.

The second idea I came up with was a Nintendo Wii tablet, this was mostly an idea that came about through the Nintendo Wii-U design, but this is solely for the Wii, instead of a brand new console. This tablet has the usual analogue stick and D-Pad of the Wii controllers, but the player can sit back with the tablet and either use the controller or they can use the touch screen to direct the character the same way they would control a character through the Wii Nun-chuck and controller.

The third idea was one that came to me out of nowhere. I was sat thinking about games console controllers along with the fact that gaming seems to be moving away from consoles to mobile phones. I also had the thought that since mobiles are becoming the focus of gaming because of smart phones and the potential they carry in terms of power for games, I came up with an idea for a smart phone that can double up as a console controller. By using wireless technology within the phone, the console could have an updated application that would allow the phone to connect to it. Through this connection the player could then choose the controller option on their phone and the touch screen on the phone would then change, storing all of the phone applications away and bringing the analogue sticks and buttons that could be found on an ordinary controller. Through further development, the player could then also use the wireless technology to project their phone games through the console onto their television, thereby giving them a bigger and better screen to play their games on. Then once they are finished, they can simply disconnect and their phone becomes an ordinary phone once again.

Construction Lines and 3D Objects.

Construction lines are something that I hadn’t really come across before so I didn’t really know how to do them. Through practice (Which led to a lot of frustration and corrections) I have managed to come up with a couple of practices that look marginally successful even though I feel that I could do better with time and more practice because these are pretty basic and rubbish if I am honest. I also tried to do a 3D object at the bottom of the page, which was a bit of a failure as it curves in on itself a little, nothing to do with the curve in the object of course, but it leans in on itself on one side which is frustrating but as I said, my drawing skills are relatively new and I need to keep working on them.

This second image is a mixture of things I tried. The first one is a failed attempt at drawing a car using construction lines, I tried to create one side of the car and then giving it construction lines, tried to create the 3D effect that they usually give. As can be seen, it fell a little flat and looks very little like a car. The top right drawing on the page was my attempt at creating a crated image, a shape within a box. It was more successful than some of the previous drawings as it looked like what it was intended to be but it is still far from perfect so it is something else I need to work on. As the top left image is showing, I had a second attempt at the 3D object drawing again and it was only very slightly more successful than my first lopsided attempt.

3D Victorian House in Sketchup

This is the model of the house I had to create for the group project of Little Red. We each took a building and created a 3D model of it in Sketchup. Then we worked on texturing them as well. This is my model of a basic Victorian House. These along with the buildings done by Scott, Ryan and Mark will all be dispersed throughout the level, duplicating them and placing them beside one another to create our street and back alley level.

Face Drawing

Ok so I am a less than accomplished artist, even going so far as saying that I am in fact a complete novice and I cannot actually draw to save my life. I have been practicing for a while now, learning to draw several parts of the human body, but in particular faces as they tend to be one of the hardest parts of a person to draw. Here are my practice results as the weeks have gone on. I tried several different faces, but in one way or another they all look the same. I aren’t particularly happy with these sketches but then they weren’t meant to be anything special, just some practices so that I could learn to get the basic shape of the head right along with the startings of understanding the structure of the face a little better.

Something I did find especially hard to get right was the hair on the characters, the female in the picture on the right in the top corner is the only one that I am actually happy with as the hair doesn’t look too bad. All the others annoy me because they don’t seem to have that much about them in terms of look or personality. I might expand on the character of the female and bring her into being a character with her own concept sheet and back story. But that is still something that needs to be considered.

3D level map in Sketchup

So this is a rough drawing of my level design map, created in Google Sketch Up. The final model will be created within either UDK or 3Ds Max.

The level map is currently untextured, the textures and security doors and all of the small final details will be added to the final model. This is just a rough draft of the 3D level to see what it would look like, small changes will have to be made to it to make it a good looking level with some challenges for the player, such as a replenishment of security guards every time the player enters a room to search it and security cameras in the hallways that the player can destroy so that the guards aren’t alerted to the players presence within the facility. There will likely be more rooms added as well along with multiple floors for the player to explore and additional items for the player to collect before they can enter the boss room.

Level Map Drawing

This is the drawn draft of my model for a security breach level, the player starts in the bottom center room and has to work their way around the level, taking out guards in any way they like, to the bottom left room of the map to retrieve the security code key for the room where their friend is held hostage by a group that wants to experiment on them because of their magical powers. All of the rooms are explorable and items can be found in the cabinets and storage areas.

Once the key has been acquired the player needs to travel back to the locked security door and fight the boss of the facility. Once he has been defeated, the player can free their friend and flee from the facility, choosing to set off times explosives if they wish to flatten the facility at the end of the level.

There will be a 3D model of this map as well, then there will eventually be a finished version of this level with fully finished textures and lighting.