Weekend Update 12_7

Working on the soldier and skeleton with their armor combinations. Just designing and modeling them out right now. Soldier is pretty fleshed out, skeleton is still a WIP. Nothing is UV'ed or anything, also trying to keep their poly count low, as I'd like to have a lot of them on screen at once.

Todd Lo

Thinking about cutting "it" down to the bare essentials, going back a little to say what is this game really about. What is fun about it? I reduced Todd down to 1250 tri's and I think with the camera height we're thinking of using this will be more than enough.

Not saying we need to use this todd or even that I UV'ed and rigged him. Just that I'm thinking about things... yeah things, you know?

Trees03 & 5 Necromancers

Working on a smaller experience for our game that will be part of the larger but something we can show and share before the big picture is done. More on that as we figure things out. Here's the tree look I've been working with.

Weekend Update 11.8

Worked a lot on the colors of the environment and the frequency of the details. There's a lot of changes from water to grass to normals and materials.

This is actually a new rock I made from scratch to test some style ideas I had, its better the other rocks but probably not by enough of a margin to replace the whole other one. Probably change their style even further before all's said n done.

Old Man Farmer Blocking

This guy would be like the land owner of a small farm or something. He doesn't have much but he does have his land. Not UV'd yet.

Fireball_02

Still not in place as a gameplay element, but here's the animation of it as it stands now.

Fireball

Blocking in staff FX for the fireball. Worked in maya to get a look on the sim, now getting it all blocked in and working. Notes on this, too detailed fire. Needs to be clearer shapes, less noise.

Pond and Vegetation Update

Lots of updates, water material lots of improvements and fixes. Most notably for me in the proper settings from the docs to use refraction. Tree's updated trunks, and added water vegetation. Oh also made the blue part of the crop plant larger.

Texture tweaks

Based on some notes from my friend Mark I'm updated the textures a little. oh, and tweaked the light and shadow settings.

3 Houses and Pond

House kit has gotten over the hump. I've marked it "done" for now, but it will, of course, be a continuing work in progress. Moved back over to nature. Made a pond and started getting some water veg. I kinda like how its shaping up. Also re-working the colors of the terrain, but more on that later. 

Notes from a friend:

• Stronger edge wear broken up
• More saturation 
• 1-2-3 tones per texture
• Push roof tile rand tones
• Push cooler colors in roof darks
• Subtle rock tonal shift between stones

House Kit Testing

Well the going feels slow, but every day I progress forward. This is a small sample of the kit. Making another 2 houses out of it. The crane and white wall textures are not done, no collision meshes etc. Still work to do but getting much closer. I think my mistake was thinking this would be fast. 

Previous Building

Just for reference this is the previous style. Roof was working to some degree, and I liked the architectural style, but it didn't match the character in his unusual proportions, textures were not "there" either.

House/Building Kit WIP

Building kit has been a bear to finish. Its moving forwards, but woohf lot of pieces, lots of UV's lots of textures to manage... getting there. Now doing high rez bakes for all objects. Doors and Windows done, Roof Tiles done. Stone work to do, and walls to do yet. Here's a sneak peak at one of the houses as it stands in Maya. New proportions from the old style that matches the character much better I think.

Now with Axe!

Skeleton Update

Needed to get the skeleton game ready. Updated proportions, rigged, and textured. Next up his 2 handed weapon.

Weekend & Sprint 9/4 Update

Sprint ended with me just not making it on all that was listed. Got a lot done as you can see on the trello, but not the 3 buildings. I'll change that to the building kit and move it to the next sprint. Also Andrew will start taking part in the sprints helping to get more momentum.  

Terrain Test

Trying out the terrain material, which shows me a lot of the good, but more importantly what all need work/re-working. I have a lot of comments on this, it needs

• rock textures
• dirt texture
• a paintable dense rock/pebbles
• sparse grass either as a swap or in a addition to (might be a wish list)
• material parameter collection is erroring for me right now, but need that for rock/terrain color testing. 
• smooth some edges on the road and path rocks, too "poly" looking
• terrain material needs height lerps to get rid of the soft blends.

I have more to say, but for now, those jump out at me. I also need to get buildings in there to see better scale between the two. Also buildings are in the sprint, so this might have to do for this sprint, and fix it in the next.

Terrain Mat 01

Initial work on the terrain material. No paint-able layers yet, only slope based, which is why everything is rocks right now. I did learn that I don't want the "pebble" layer. Just going rock to dirt.

 Also need to re-work the grass to be more solid clumps.

Terrain Textures

Finished the major parts of the terrain textures this weekend. I was worried about that task for the sprint. I haven't made the terrain material yet so I don't have an example of it all working just yet, which means there could be tweaks to the textures, but its all ready to bake down so hopefully the heavy lifting is done. I actually spent most time on the road and path textures, which are not show.
I can show you grass material which I have as a simple test. Some things like sand and dirt are going to be one color only, other things are going to be super detailed like the grass here. Potentially I may make another grass that is completely solid. Not sure yet. Texture tiling, is kinda small for the grass, but whatever its just a test

Also needed to give the rock kit some love since it needs to blend into the rock terrain material. Again, props to Arid Desert on the marketplace for giving me a base to work from.

Veg Kit & Map

Veg kit complete, including collisions on trees and stump. I will add more to the kit to build variety but this is the kit for the sprint that ends 9/4.

 New is Fern and Crop which currently is the blue plant.

Something I haven't shown but made it a while ago in the "dark time" when I wasn't very good about updates is the map of the world. This is the kind of thing that changes a lot but has been in a stable state for some time, so I think I can share it in its current state.

Tree02

Veg kit moving along. All I need to do now (for this sprint) is another variety of Bush and a Crop type... by tonight, hah.

Trees01

First round of trees, this is only 2, and the material needs more work to get the colors right. But the shapes are "there". This week is finish veg tasks. So these need to get a move on, and out.

Weekend Update 9 14

Started a sprint end of last week that goes for a month. Goals are to have am area of the level with houses, terrain materials, rocks, plants, trees and the player character able to run around, possibly fire his weapon.
Starting to put together the actual game part of the development. Building project, making class for character, getting animations together for the new rig... workin' it.

2 Steps forward...

Building the controller for real means bringing in the animations for the anim tree, which means bringing in the real Todd, which means rigging him. While I've gone through that process a few times now I knew the deformations were garbage and I had to rework them. At the time I didn't care b/c I was moving forward. Well now I needed to take 2 steps back to redo the topology of Todd, which gave be pause to tweak a few proportions. Nothing major just giving it another once over, and studying what I've done with a critical eye. Todd v07, also re-UV'ed, but that was easy.

I also went from T-Pose to relaxed arms b/c the edge loops were too hard to imagine in the extreme of the T-Pose.

3rd Person Camera & Controller

I'm working on the player controller and 3rd person camera height, rotation, and FOV. Trying out different configurations playing a bit and seeing how it feels. This is the last one I was trying, where I liked it for a number of reasons. Its always a give and take, closer up we get to see more details of the character, further away we can see the environment, rotated camera we can see forward, but then does the camera rotate to see behind you? So while it may seem simple there's a lot to consider, and I'm trying to find what/where that is.

Back

I admit it. I've been lazy. Luckily not lazy about development but about posting updates to my blog. Tons of writing, a game design doc, a narrative doc, lore, world info... I figured I had to understand the world/game before I just blindly made assets.
Then/While I did that I spent quit a bit of time re-working and refining the look. More on that to come. A friend of mine is about to ramp up into the project and will have a large role in helping define the visual art style. I've re-organised and set up a sprint for the next 4 weeks (well plus the weekend) Anywhoo so right now I'm attacking a few things but specifically I'm reworking a rock kit I bought "Arid Desert" from the asset store. I liked the set up, might add a few more small bits but overall, trying out a new look from them. Here is an image w/o any albedo texture just trying to get the feeling of implied detail through the mesh and normal map. There's still some refinements to do of course, as always but here's a quick screen shot.

So much more to say to catch you all up....

Todd Look Dev v04

I've been hard at work doing look dev on Todd. Not a easy thing as I've gone in directions that I ended up coming back, like add a nose, or turn the robe into a cloak. Right now I'm trying to find the look and feel of todd and the materials. Also not an easy or should I say fast. Goal is to make something that will fast to produce an asset.

New on Left old on Right

This is san any real texture, altho it could be the base if I go clean style images like Star Wars: Twilight of the Republic. I'm working out what and how much there should be. Look dev continues.

Example of light texture:

Also been working on placing rivers in the world. Thats a huge pain, but it will be worth it... eventually. Kinda slowing down on that specifically since I spent all last week on it. I'll get an image of that soon, but its just water in that map... I have to hand make each river so... yeah. It will be a much bigger task than I thought, but once its done it will kick ass.