Space Flight Sim Dev Thread

[Count_de_Money]

Here's a wall plate I did, inspired by some of the Starcraft 2 artwork.

It took me quite awhile to get everything right, especially the low poly bake, but in the end I think it paid off. I learned many new things, how to do some things better, and how to become more efficient at hard surface modeling. Next up is to texture this thing (need to learn that from scratch too), and I've begun work on a second wall plate for variety.

[shot]http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/97/wallpiece.jpg[/shot]

[Hellclown]

I looks wonderful, but I don't see how this tiles vertically.

[Count_de_Money]

That's where second piece jumps up.

[danimal']

It tiles like this essentially (I was also working on a similar piece). The second piece he refers to is the middle piece.
[shot]http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/3826/captureuxd.png[/shot]

The idea is Count's been learning to do some hard surface work with some of my input on what I've learned. People really don't understand the process until they've had to work all the way through it, so I made him do the whole thing start to finish. Getting clean normal maps, a high poly, a low poly, UVs, working with smoothing groups... it's all a huge pain at first, but he's got the hang of it now and this is his first serious piece!

[danimal']

Count did a quick paint-over of his wall piece and ran it by me, since I try to enforce a "semi professional" pipeline (I make him plan, consult, share and iterate with me, it drives him nuts!) It's pure color, nothing else, but got the instant Dan nod of approval! As with my crate, adding color really makes it come alive. The cool thing is if you've done your modelling properly, you can do these paint-overs extremely fast and run color ideas past a teammate.

[shot]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/929/colorvl.jpg[/shot]

[Hellclown]

I like this more and more every time you guys post anything. Can't wait for the final product.

[Iron_Maniac]

Nice! I'm liking your flight system. Makes me think I should do something with mine.

[Hellclown]

What's happening with this? any new eye candy for us?

[danimal']

There won't be much from me for a bit. I just made the move from England to Cali in the past two weeks and it's been crazy. Currently on my plate is the first week on the new job, moving large pieces of furniture and I still have no internet until the end of this week. Once I get settled in I should finally get some time to keep working, but until then, nothing on my end. I know Count did a little work with his wall/hallway pieces, but no candy from Dan until mid month.

[Count_de_Money]

No candy from me either. However I have finally decided on the look and modeled a rough version of the inner ring layout. Next, before I start work on the next piece I need to calculate horizontal spacing of the tiling sections so that everything snaps correctly withing the ring. Not fun work, but required now so that later it wouldn't give me a headache to reshape every piece.

I also invested some time in understanding how lens flares in UDK work. Before it all seamed somehow complex, but now after some playing around it turned out that it's quite easy and fun to work with.
Artist really has incredible control over them, all you need is a good texture sample for the shape and idea how to organize it's components. They really give great amount of flexibility like color and alpha change over distance, etc. Really fun stuff to relax after work.

This is still a wip so i might do some changes, I'm still to decide on the look of top and bottom trims (top one is missing here).

[shot]http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/2989/wall2n.jpg[/shot]

[Hellclown]

I'm liking the hallway so far.

danimal' how are you posting without internet?

Keep up the good work, both of you.

[danimal']

danimal' how are you posting without internet?

At work I'm at a games company tho so it's not a huge deal, I still feel guilty until I see everyone around me playing games and looking at websites! It's a bit of a shift working at a games company from the life of a lawyer/business guy (tho I'm still here in a management/business capacity). Internet arrives on Thurs!

[Hellclown]

Sweet. Hope you're enjoying your new job and our country.

[MatiasCastro]

Need original music???

[Count_de_Money]

Lately I've been working on a large ring portion of the space station. Having a circular shape for the ring required some more time to make everything tile correctly, so here's a preview to give you the idea how it will look.

[shot]http://img805.imageshack.us/img805/1710/ring1q.jpg[/shot]

[shot]http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/3200/ring2vx.jpg[/shot]