Pollock Updated UV Mapped

UV mapping is something some people might assume was done with the modeling... it wasn't I recently learned the modern way to UV map in Maya with the "unfold/relax" tool. Spent 3 hours between Thursday night and Friday morning UV'ing the old way. Daaamn, this process is so eye opening. So many of my areas of knowledge are outdated. Even tho I'm spending lots of hours w/o out big updates, I'm learning a ton in the exciting fun way where its like WOW this is awesome! Love this and that! hah. I've rigged and tested putting the character in engine, but really I need to figure out what the FBX workflow is for importing animations. The rig was temp and more just testing.
Big update on fur with the shell method and using some DirectX 11 stuff, well, just the better AA feature. I'll do a video tutorial on fur since it's pretty fun to see all that you can do with it in the material editor. But for now, here's Pollock UV's and updated, pretty much final low rez.

Pollock tweaked

Even tho I'm posting all this its really just catching up to where I am now so I can use this blog to keep my peeps up to date, anyway as I looked at "Pollock" the main characters working title name. I saw that I tweaked it more since that picture so here's a quick update of the tweaks.

and the enemies

there are only going to be 2 types, a guard and a soldier. Both the same but one is more like the SWAT team coming to kick some ace! All only modeled today and last night actually. Just getting some rough assets made. Not looking to make the most original idea evar, just making my first game. The goal was to no make a game with too much new game play, and try to use UDK for what its best/easiest at. I'm learning unreal script but there's so much work to do I don't want to make more work for myself in that area. So a 3rd person camera game is one of the first things, the cameras and an alarm system are what I'll have to script/program. The game is kinda like... a lot like metal gear/splinter cell. But crappier and much shorter, LOL. hey its just me!

On to the Game

So this is a game developer blog of sorts, well really all things UDK that interest me not solely my game I'm developing. So I got to the point of learning rigging from scratch in UDK and realized I needed a model. First asset. Yay! Fun thing is at work I'm learning Fur techniques and Cloth, so that can come later.

Here's the low rez out of Maya characters. I want to learn zBrush and take these in there and uprez them then into topogun or something and get multiple levels of resolution out with normal maps. Thats yet to come, first lets just get these into UDK running around, right?

UDK FX Tests

More getting up to speed these are the UDK FX tests I did.

http://vimeo.com/15014234
http://vimeo.com/15862026
http://vimeo.com/18816281
http://vimeo.com/19355289

and a dynamic level loading/unloading test
http://vimeo.com/22177603

not that you have to watch these just to say this is where I've been, some things to see...

Learning UDK

Last October I decided I'm going to go all in and learn UDK. My background is FX in film as seen in part on my  other blog agentfx.com along with some video tutorials on various FX topics. First I wanted to get good at FX in Unreal so I could get a job working with it full time (which I have now). So I got well versed in Cascade, Lighting, Materials, Kismet, Matinee, etc sort of the back end of things (vs the front making models, rigging character animating creating assets in maya which I already know how to do).

My Process
I scoured the web looking for all the quality video tutorials I could find then bought ever DVD made (or choose the best option for duplicate topics based on instructor exp). As I learned I got to the point were I felt I need to make a game to really test my skills in every area. Initially I wanted to make it with a team but ultimately choose to start out on my own until I get the game to a point in which people can add a few bits of polish and level design type things. To get my friends up to speed and track what I have and haven't seen tutorial wise I made a google doc where I tried to make a fast track to learning UDK, from what's the best on the web to what DVD's are well worth the money. I'll keep updating it, so post links and I'll check them to see if they are worth adding to the list. The point isn't to have all the tutorials but the fewest possible to learn the tools. Its a little rough looking in the "publish to web" formatting but whatevs its the best method for keeping up on it.