Client Work – Creating assets for Shane’s FMP

It’s no secret that I’ve had help from a fellow student, Shane Pengelly, with programming my FMP. To return the favour we wrote up a contract between ourselves, the contract detailed that I would design any of the weapons and assets requested by Shane and in return he would continue to help me programme my FMP.

The asset that I was commissioned to create was a throwing axe that can be thrown by the player in his game. I started out by looking at other throwing weapons, such as: tomahawks, Steilhandgranate (M24 stick grenade), throwing knives, etc. After looking into the shapes of throwing weapons I asked Shane what style he wanted the piece in, he told me he wanted it to have to look stylised, having a Tolkien-like design, with realistic textures. So I drew up a few rough designs and asked Shane to pick his favourite.

With Shane’s design chosen I drew up a couple of different variations.

And then set to work with the model. For the modelling process I used 3DS Max to get the low poly model ready first, adding all of the necessary details. Once I was happy with the shape I took the model into ZBrush to get a high poly model to more accurately bake the textures in Substance Painter later, Shane told me he wanted the model to have hand drawn normal maps in the wood grain, so I decided to sculpt them in with ZBrush.

Once I was happy with the sculpted model I took the low poly model into Substance Painter 2 and used the sculpted model to bake the wood grain details, ambient occlusion, and curvature details onto the textures of the low poly model. With the texturing process I used custom alpha maps created in photoshop to add the engraving details found on the hilt and the head of the axe.

Below are the final renders.

The biggest difference from the chosen design is the lack of a bend in the handle, I chose to remove this because throwing weapons don’t tend to have warped shapes as it affects the flight through the air; I made sure to get the ok from Shane before making this choice.

FMP Update – A working Prototype

Over the past few weeks the progress on my FMP has been very substantial. In this post there are two videos detailing what the game involves and what I hope to have by the end of the year.

Video 1:

The next video was made 3 hours later and it details what I managed to achieve during that time.

Video 2:

Jason Rubin – A man after my own heart

With my current investment in VR it’s no surprise that I am very much interested in the professional development of the platform. Today I stumbled across an interview with the man who co-founded one of the greatest gaming studios to have ever graced the industry, Naughty Dog. The man in question was of course (as you have seen in the title) Jason Rubin. Jason is currently the head of content at Oculus, and is in charge of the experiences that are produced for the platform. In the interview I mentioned (with IGN), Jason talks about starting in the industry, starting Naughty Dog, leaving Naughty Dog, his role as a key speaker in the industry during a time that wasn’t pleasant for developers, his current role in Oculus and his predictions and hopes for VR as a platform and a development tool.

Rather than gushing over and over about this guy I will leave the video below and let you find out for yourself.

I will say this however that in a very controversial speech at the D.I.C.E summit in 2004, Jason highlighted key issues with workplace ethics in the industry, which is the main topic for my dissertation so that speech is very important to my research and bibliography. WIN!!

So what does this discovery mean for my project? Well one point is that it has inspired me to be more creative and experimental with how I use VR, knowing that industry veterans have taken major roles in the platform and are working to produce experiences that can define and cement VR as a major development in gaming. Another point is that with the constant improvement and development for the platform, any issues that I may run into with production will have a higher chance of being experienced by others who know how to fix it, hopefully making it easier for me to deal with the problems too.

FMP Update Thoughts

So, over the past week I have managed to make large strides in the development of my FMP. I have decided to go with multiple platforms in my environment, this has added a vertical aspect to my game which, in VR, is spine tingling. However, at this moment I’m not 100% sure how to effectively integrate it with my gameplay; for now I’m using it like a resting space for the player to regain their composure before throwing themselves back into the fray.

For now I need to focus on the more visual aspects of my game. The environment is going to have influences from the Romantic era (late 18th century), with hints of New Romanticism (formed around the 1980’s). The characters will also be in the New Romantic theme, focusing more on the punk aspects of the movement.

Developing for VR

Yesterday I started the development phase of my FMP using the HTC Vive; already I’m running into issues with the motion controllers. My main issue right now is getting the models I’ve created, to represent the controllers, aligned with the actual controllers in the way I want them to; it’s not a huge problem, but it’s still a problem worth noting as it will take some effort to fix.

I already have a potential fix in mind. If I take a model already aligned for VR and then align my models to that it may fix the problem, hopefully.

There are a few other issues but one problem at a time.

Experiencing Virtual Reality (HTC Vive)

So recently we were lucky enough to get a HTC Vive (Steam VR) in our studio; and I must admit, the experience is amazing. I’ve mostly had experience in the design program Tilt Brush, which for fast, easy designs that can be made to scale, it’s amazing. VR as a design tool can be developed to become something incredible, and I hope it gets a much wider adoption in the digital art community.

I’ve also had a couple of experiences in the gameplay possibilities of VR, the immersion is unbelievable, whilst playing you really get invested in the environments and the interactions you have in each one. However, with this kind of physical immersion comes the physicality of the gameplay; whereas with a normal game the worst injury a player can get is carpal tunnel, in VR the amount of physical exertion required to play the games means that players will most likely have to warm-up and stretch before playing for a long duration of time. If VR can become more accessible to more people then I believe we can truly have an amazing development in technological capabilities, and a definite increase in quality products/design pieces.

We just have to be careful not to end up in a situation like The Matrix!