Quick Zbrush Update:

About half-way through the first zbrush pass. Still have to work out a few logistics. . .

Onwards to Science!

Well, I'll probably end up doing some more concepts for the environment, but for the time-being, I have some time to work on the Scientist character. He's a sort of quirky mix of Doc Brown and Einstein with a little Kramer in there as well. Here are a few concepts as well as a quick Zbrush rough for proportions / anatomy:

First concept:

An ortho-sketch:

Rough in 3DSMax:

Rough after some Zbrushing:

Environment Concepts:

Well, through some strange series of events, I wound up being the primary environment concept artist for the project during pre-production. I don't consider this to be my strong suite, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway, here is a sort of 'rough' outline of what the game environments will look like, starting from the boy's house and leading into the rift-wild:

Right outside the boy's bedroom the house begins to fall apart:


Finding it quite impossible to get out of the house the conventional way, our hero finds himself in this strange cave/house hybred after going through a coat closet:


At the end of the cave stands the unlikely front door to the boy's house. There is no reason why it should be where it is, it just is. Out beyond is the great unknown rift-wild:


Outside for the first time, the boy's sidewalk is rapidly falling away and the environment is replaced by strange floating islands. To the boy's left is a strange glowing device that is almost in reach:


After falling through the Aether (the energy dimension) our hero finds himself on an island full of strange and wonderful sights:

Rift Has Begun:

Well, after about two weeks of pre-production on two different projects, the vote finally came around last Tuesday. The class democratically decided to work on a project called Rift. Rift is a sort of surreal / fantasy / sci-fi platform /adventure game that follows a young boy through some rather strange events. Long story short, scientists from another dimension have discovered another dimension full of pure energy and created a device to harvest that energy. Unfortunately, somewhere during the initial testing of the harvester, the membrains of the dimensions became unstable and eventually shattered, creating a multi-demensional rift. It just so happens that this Rift opens right outside the house of our protagonist (the young boy). The Rift-wild is a surreal, strange mish-mash of our reality and the other dimension's reality.

For the scope of the team project, we hope to finish the first chapter in the story, which would involve the young boy finding one of the surviving scientists who worked on the device and getting back to the device. At this point, the device would suck both the scientist and the young boy into god only knows where, ending our project with a cliffhanger of sorts.

If we were somehow able to make the whole game, it would involve the boy trying to help the scientist repair the device and restore the dimensions. Throughout the game, more dimensions would get sucked into the Rift and new dangerous dimensions would threaten the future of the entire universe.

Since I have been studying mostly character design in my time at SCAD, I will be working mostly on characters. However, in our team is the very talented Leng who is also a character designer. As we only have two major characters for the scope of this project, I will stick to the scientist character and Leng will work on the main boy character.

If all goes according to plan, Leng and I should be done with our characters around week 7 and be able to help the other teammates with any left over asset modeling and texturing.

Stay tuned for art updates and the like!

B.S

3D Roughs

Well, I think I'm pretty much done with the concept art, so I decided to dive into 3D just to get something going. For this iteration of the process, I'm just working with a very basic box model with terrible topology for the simple purpose of defining the overall proportions of the model. As a result, none of this model will actually be present in the final version as it only serves as a guide in which to overlay the other assets and subtools.

relatively done:


pre-Zbrush:


post-Zbrush:

Time to pick up the pieces

Well, I can't say I've been goofing off, but I can't say I've been very productive either. Anyway, this here is seeking to remedy that little detail before the break is over. I'm hoping to at least get the model done before the madness of school takes over again. This here is a revised sorceress / mage concept that I decided to make because my other concept was feeling a bit generic. As a result, I decided to try to shoot for something a little more eastern and avoid the classic fantasy style if I could help it. Anyway, it's not done yet, but this is what I came up with. compare with the first concept...


new concept

old concept

Renders with Stand:

This is a little late, but I thought I'd throw them up anyway. I haven't gotten around to making a fancy stand, but I found the renders improved drastically by having just something for the Lich to stand on. With that in mind, here are the renders with the stand included (and the concept art):

Final Final:

Well, this is it. I made some tweaks based on the feedback I got from my presentation. This is the 'presentable' poster format of the Lich:



Not to be forgotten, the turntable movie: Lich King

This is The End:

Final countdown folks. DVD, powerpoint, renders. Good luck to you all!

Final Renders?

Alrighty, I've spent most of the weekend rendering and tweaking, waiting, rendering, tweaking, repeat. I'm not sure if it's just the 5:30 am talking here, but I'm feeling just about done with the whole thing. Here are some pictures to consider:

Pose with textures:

Alright, here's a few render tests with some photoshop bloom effects tacked on. I'll probably be messing around with the lighting for the next day or two, trying to get everything working the way it should. As far as the pose, I'm not 100% on a few things - mostly just how the hands are positioned. That's enough for tonight though, I feel the bed calling to me with it's sweet siren song...

Dear God Why, Or Rigging WIP?

Gotta love rigging. And man, what the hell was I thinking with all the little dangly bits on this guy?? Thank the gods that I don't have to rig this thing for actual production use because I think I would kill myself. In as much, I'm just getting as much as I need to concoct a decent pose out of this guy. Some early render tests to come soon:

So Close and Yet So Far:

Almost done with texturing for the main lich, but I still have to do the staff and Dagger. Hopefully those won't take nearly as long as the lich did (quite honestly, I can't afford them to). There are definitely some things I could probably do to make this texture pass a bit better, but I'm starting to really feel the time-crunch here. I'm going to move on to the accessories and rigging the lich. If I have time, I'll go back and touch up some of the textures a bit more.

The Texture Saga Continues:

It's been slow-going on the texture process, but hopefully I should be able to finish it up by the end of this weekend. That may require an all-nighter or two, but better now then later. I've been looking to unify the color scheme a bit more in this pass so I added some color to overlay the entire texture. I'd say I'm about half-way done right about now, more to come tomorrow.

Textures Begin!

Well, it's been a little while since I posted on the blog, but it's usually because I'm working until about 4 am and I'm too damn tired to post when I'm done. That being said, I whipped my ass and decided to go ahead and post some progress. Not a whole lot here, but hopefully enough to keep me from being screwed in the finals rush. On a side note, I have no idea why his head dress is purple behind his head but I'm too tired to fix it tonight so enjoy the little accent. In other news, I'm probably going to modify the fabric texture on the head dress as well. After looking at some real-life fabric, I realized threads really aren't that course. Oh well, everyone's gotta learn sometime...

Second Bake pass:

Well, I don't have a lot to say at this point, just trying to get to bed before 4 AM. I think I'm going to manage, provided that I don't end up talking too much in this post. In addition to finishing up the baking, I've also been optimizing the poly count considerably since my last attempt. Currently, I'm sitting comfortably under my 15,000 limit with the lich at ~12,000, the staff, scabbard and dagger at 2,536 with a total of 14,529 triangles. I also threw in a couple of renders of the textures:

Baking Party!

Bring your high and low res meshes to the oven, we're having a baking party over here! It's really a shame that you can't eat normal maps because they actually take longer to cook than cookies. It's probably for the best though because all that tangent bluish-purple doesn't really look that appetizing. Anyway, enough C list comedy for one night, it's time for bed. I still didn't even manage to finish the bakes, but I think I have a rhythm going now. One more session should be all it takes to propel me to victory. Farewell and goodnight, all my beloved, non-existent readers!

UV Fest:

Well, I really don't want to talk about it. UV's, I think that says enough. At least the worst is over, hopefully.

Holy SH1T it Didn't Explode!

Alright, I'm about 67.26% done unwrapping so I thought I'd do a quick bake test to make sure all my work wasn't for naught. Thank the gods, it actually worked. Here is a snapshot of the ~10,000 triangle low-res cage with the high-res details baked on in the form of a normal map. I was nervous it wasn't going to work because I had a few scares before with xNormal not working even though the models were in the same 3d space. Fortunately, I was not plagued by these problems for this occurrence. Looks like relatively smooth sailing from here out (aside from all the work that still needs to be done). Anyway, time for bed...

Low-res in the works:

Well, nothing ground-breaking here, just a little update to show what I've been up to lately. Basically, I've been trying to cram the lich into a 10,000 triangle budget and it's been a pain to say the least. Currently, I'm sitting around 10,600 tris, but I'm thinking I'll be able to trim a good thousand off once I get the baking finished. In other words, I'm forced to preserve some extra detail to make sure the xNormal bake doesn't freak out. I've managed to get most of the retopologizing done, so I've been working on getting the UV's done. Next update will some fantastic UV shots. Oh yeah.