Ambient NPC Population

Ambient NPC Population, a continuation of an idea ...

CryENGINE 3 SDK

A Free CryENGINE SDK for everyone in August 2011? ...

Adventures In Textures

Seeing just how low you can go with the poly count by offsetting a lack of geometry with normal mapping and hand painted textures ...

UDK - Hawken

Indie development at its best ...

Unreal Engine 3 - Environments Features Overview

Gorgeous tech demo trailer showcasing the features of Unreal Engine 3 and its free counterpart, the Unreal Development Kit ...

Thursday 19 January 2012

Revamping A Modular Asset Idea.

I have dabbled with modular construction for 3D scenes, my last efforts where for a sci-fi based corridor which was essentially to test out some texturing methods with heavy use of bump mapping.




From Blog Entry Scale to the Chief
From Blog Entry Bumping ..... Adventures in Textures

Now, I have recently built a new Development PC so most of my development code and "stuff" is on storage drives that I am currently going through. Whilst doing this I came across some of my very first modelling and texture tests.




From Blog Entry Textures

 Kind of makes me shudder although I don't think I have improved that much with time, but it got me thinking about assets I will need and the different workflows I could use. The original "Jetty" was a place holder model created in 3DWS to try out some textures I had made from photographs. It was also my very first attempt at a modular asset, which did not go so well in the area of "snap to gridability". So using this original concept for an asset, I decided that the place to start would be with a base model, which would be kept as simple as possible in regard to geometry and from which the higher and lower level of detail models would be derived. Also, I decided that the individual sections of the model should also inherit this modular aspect.

I started by modelling a basic revamp of the original jetty design.




Then I added more detail, but still keeping the poly count low and the geometry simple.





I managed to get good grid snapping with some careful modelling constraints on the overall volume of the piece and careful placement of the centre of origin.

Now what I can do in Silo is to save segments/objects out, such as posts, planks and roof types, to use as custom primitives and from there simply "blockout" ideas for different things:





So for a few hours work I think I have a fairly good work flow going to at least assemble a modular Bridge/Docks/Jetty "construction kit".




Wednesday 18 January 2012

UDK - Water with Flow Map


This is a rather impressive technique to control the direction and movement of water in UDK via shaders. This has been done by Phill Johnson, who also kindly wrote a tutorial about how to implement this in UDK, along with a downloadable example map. It uses a 2d vector field and vertex colouring.




Respect to Phill Johnson and I look forward to more UDK "watery works" from him.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

Quick 3rd Person View Character Test.


Ok, its been a while since the last post, took me a while to regain access to my blog after Blogger was taken over, seems Google had some issues in the "not so smooth change over". Anyhow happy new year.

This was a quick test of a character I purchased from a relatively new 3D asset company, 3dFoin, currently they are having a new year 40% off sale so I though I'd check out one of their character models. I have recently built a new PC so most of my development code and "stuff" is on storage drives that I still need to go through, so I quickly coded a script for "her" and a 3rd person collision cam rig off the top of my head to try "her" out. I made some alterations to the textures and made a few adjustments here and there in UU3D. Overall, I think "she" was worth the money. I may have to try out some more of their wares before the sale is over.



I only set up three of the animation's that come with "her", walk, run and idle. I did not bother with animation blending, or smoothing out the turning when moving from stationary/vanity cam mode, this was just a simple temporary rig. The "level" was just some assets quickly thrown together for effect.

You can find 3dFoin here:

http://3dfoin.com/

The other assets are from several sources that include:

Michael, over at Pure3D:

http://pure3d.de/en/index.php

Steve, at Arteria3D:

http://arteria3d.corecommerce.com/

and the boys over at Dexsoft:

http://www.dexsoft-games.com/

As soon as I locate the 3rd person rig I used here ....



I will test "her" out fully. But on the whole I am very pleased with the purchase and will be keeping an eye on their products in the future.

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