Sunday Update

Good news, everyone! Through our power's combined, we have achieved a cel shader that is all kinds of awesome. Pictures of that will come later and you can probably catch them first in Matt's blog. 

More good news, everyone! I have begun importing models from Maya into the UDK and the scale of the buildings seems correct. The simple ramp shader I had tested also works fine on the models. However, some faces appear invisible in the UDK, so that still needs work. This probably means some remodeling needs to be done. Also, none, and I mean NONE of my Maya models have centered pivots nor are they at the origin point, so I have been correcting that. Pictures and images to come. 

Cel Shading

I have said that I want the final product to be done in cel shading. In Maya, this is a very easy thing to do, in Unreal, not so much. Matt and I looked at various tutorials on the internet and none proved to be very useful. The best one we got was on how to get the Team Fortress 2 shader. However, I was relentless and, in an incredible struck of luck, actually looked through a text book from one of my classes, Mastering the Unreal Engine vol 2. There is almost an entire chapter on how to make a toon shader in the UDK.

So never having done any materials in UDK before, here I post the results of my experiment.

Not too shabby, eh? Ok, now I must get to modeling. Check out Matt's blog to see his example trap here.


MATT'S BLOG

Forward

So if you haven't checked out Matt's blog already, you should. You can find a link to it at the bottom of all my posts from now on.

Moving along with the project at hand, here are some images from models I created for this project during the summer. Granted, the project was not this one exactly, but it served to establish the theme and context for it.  Concept art for my project was done by Wirt Salthouse.

All models were done in Maya 2010 with a Ramp Shader and Toon Line. Without the Toon Line the models get a painterly effect that I also like. We will try to incorporate a shader like this to our level in Unreal.


MATT'S BLOG

Dangerous Environments

I haven't pitched my ideas for projects to the class yet, but it has pretty much been decided that I will be working with a friend on a collaborative project. I will be in charge of most the artistic parts, mood and set dressing and the sort, while he takes care of the more technical aspects such as Unreal. This doesn't mean we will work exclusively in those areas, but that those will be our focus areas. You can follow him in mwilli28.blogspot.com. He has uploaded some images of work we did over the summer in preparation for this project.

Our plan is to make a small scale multiplayer map. Currently it is supposed to be a Capture the Flag style map. Some suggestions were made to lessen the use of weapons and make so that players have to use the environment to attack each other. I fully support this idea and after discussing it with Matt it appears that making destructible environments in Unreal is not that complicated. I would love to have a final level of which a high percentage is fully destructible.

And so it begins...

I firmly believe the Mexican Revolution could only be made cooler if it had run on Steampunk technology. I have been thinking this for a while but have been largely unable to do anything about it. Today, I have still not found a way to travel back in time, but I do have an alternative that will satisfy the need for the world to find out how a Mexican Steampunk town would have been.

I'm Andy and I am a World Designer. For those of you eluded by the obvious this means I design worlds. Not in real life, mind you, but for games. I have long opposed keeping a blog, but this one will serve to document the process of the project at hand. Ideally, the end result would be a playable level powered by the Unreal Engine (R), but we will see how this goes.