Bane Truck Project - Update 6 [CG]

So it's been quite a while since I've posted about this project. Progress has been happening slowly, and I've finally got the low poly done and baked the normal maps. I've done two passes at optimizing the low poly, but left in some geometry for the normal map bake which can now come out and hopefully get the poly count down to about 18k.

Underwater Station Update 2 [CG/Game Dev]

Another progress update. I have started textures for the corridor area, and so far have completed diffuse and normal (via high poly models) maps for the main parts of the corridor. I will next crate spec maps and finish up the doors at the end of the corridors. Hopefully the influences from the new AD are starting to come through.

Underwater Station Update 1 [CG/Game Dev]

Just a quick update now that I have now completed block out for all objects in the level.

A quick word on art direction for the level too. After chatting with my tutor I have decided that textures for the environment will look different to the concept as the concepts have a very generic Sci-Fi feel and this style is very common. To make the final piece hopefully stand out we thought that a much cleaner style would work well. Some inspiration for the look and feel is coming from games like Mass Effect and Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the film Oblivion.

Here is a small sample of some new references that I have collected. This style is much cleaner which lots of use of white and grey with an accent colour to highlight areas.

Underwater Station CryENGINE 3 Project Kickoff [CG/Game Dev]

Welcome to my latest project (along side the Bane Truck)! I am currently working on modeling, texturing and all that on my first full environment, doing so with CryENGINE 3. The environment will be built with a modular system and I am basing it on three pieces of concept by Jenny Rathbone (http://jennyrathboneconceptart.wordpress.com/)

I have been working on this project for about 2 weeks now, and is also a part of learning the engine for a competition I am entering with some of the guys that are on my uni course. (That competition is Off The Map for anybody interested, and there's a link to the project page here.)

So far with the Underwater Station, I have taken the concept art and broken it down into a list of required assets, and completed block out on most of these assets. A breakdown of the assets listed here.

Here are a few screens of how the environment is currently looking

Creating automatic doors (using custom geometry) in CryEngine 3 [Game Dev]

This is something that I have been working on for a project and couldn't find very much documentation on, and even though it is quite an easy thing to do, I had some problems doing.

First thing to mention is that I wanted to use my own models for the door. The basic set up that I have is a door at the end of a corridor. The door is made up of three parts. Firstly, the door frame and surrounding wall, which connects to the rest of the corridor, and 2 doors (left and right) which have slightly different geometry. The frame and wall geometry is in the level as a brush and the doors as door entities (door entities are found in the Rollup Bar under the entities menu

I have placed two of these (one for each door) and change a few of the properties of the entities. First if you are using custom geometry, or just want to use something other than the default mesh, the model can be changed in the entity properties. As I want the doors to slide open I have zeroed out the rotation values and set the range of the slide to 1.5 and -1.5 to make the doors slide in opposite directions. The axis may also need to be set if the model is not already in the correct axis. The other important thing to mention is to set the UseDistance to 0 so that you do not get the Open Door prompt on screen when you approach the doors.

To make the doors open automatically they need to be connected to a trigger. I have placed a proximity trigger (found in the Rollup Bar under Entities > Triggers) in the middle of the two doors and set the DimY value to 8. This works with the default acceleration of the door entities if you sprint to the door, but these may need to be changed depending on the feel desired.

The last thing to do is to set up the functionality in the flow graph to connect the trigger to the door entities. With the trigger selected, at the bottom of the Rollup Bar, click Create under the Flow Graph heading. Click New and type and name for the action. Something meaningful like opendoors.

With the flow graph open and the trigger sleceted, right click in the center of the main work area and chose Add Selected Entitiy. Do the same for the door(s). Now to actually connect the nodes drag from Enter on the trigger node to Open on the door nodes and from Leave on the trigger to Close on the door nodes.

Now jump in the level and when you get with in 4 meters of the doors (half of the Dim Y value as that this a radius from the center of the node) they will open.

Bane Truck Project - Update 5 [CG]

High poly finished, but some small details in the mid section still need to be done (pipes etc)



A few renders of detailed areas

Bane Truck Project - Update 4 [CG]

All of the top for what I am calling the front part of the truck now done. Need to revisit the bottom to do suspension etc. for the rest of the wheels.