Dino RIG and animations!

Today I’ve been working on textures as well as finally rigging and animating the dinosaur that I’ve created a while ago. I’m not a good animator, so I didn’t expected the best results, but what I’ve managed is well enough for the environment artist work.

The Low Poly Dino with a bone structire inside 3DS Max

I’ve been working on the bake for some time, but I couldn’t get it right, so I had to create my textures in more old-fashion way – painting it in Photoshop and using it as a base for the normal maps. I’ll also be adding a tillable reptile scales normal map to get the random look of some scales and the missing details to my dinosaur. I am not sure how well would that work at the end, but I’ve created the textures so far that I’m happy with.

Tall Palm Trees

Today I’ve worked on the rest of the trees that I’m planning to include in my level. As the dinosaur original habitat had many tall tress (so the huge dinos could feed from them) and bushes, I’ve decided to create some way taller tress. I’m also aiming to create an environment with multiple layers of foliage, which I believe will add to the realism of the jungle.

Those tall trees will be using the same texture that I’ve created before. The only difference is in the amount of alpha planes on all of those trees. I’ve decided to copy them to create slightly more dense look.

I’ve also decided to produce 4 slightly different trees to minimalise the respectability of the assets. It should looks better in the final result. However all of those trees are so tall, that I’m worried that the differences may not be visible as much as I would like them to be. I’m still happy with those trees in general.

DINO!

I’ve decided that at this moment I really need to have a dinosaur in my level. I’ve been using ZBrush before, but this time I’ve decided to create a base for the design inside the 3DS Max and then move into adding more details in this software. I find this way easier and quicker to get to the final wanted shape.

I was working on it for two days and finally finished it with the details that I think will looks great in the final scene. The dinosaur would be huge, so the details of the head won’t be as visible to the player, but I’ve decided that I still want to work on it a little bit.

Finished Dinosaur in ZBrush
Dinosaur Head

I am really happy with the result, as I haven’t work on creature design for a long time. This is a satisfactory result as for someone who had to remind myself of how to use this software. The next step will be to retopology this mesh using a ZBrush tool, bake it down with Substance Painter and rig and animate it at the end. I hope that the other parts of it will go as smooth as this one.

Old fashion Palm Trees

After considering the SpeedTree as a main software to create my foliage, I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’ve eventually decided to make my trees an old fashion way – model them from a scratch. I don’t have enough time to learn a new software and experiment with it with unknown results. I’ve been working on my smaller trees just for two days, so I don’t think I could get this result with the software in such a short time. However, the small tress are not all the plants that I want to create for this project, so I’ll have to make more another time. So far this is looking good as it is.

I know that I should probably baking the second tree down to the low polygon shapes, but I’ve done some quick research to find out that the current tree limits are way above mine, so I’ll be fine.

I’ve also already started working on the textures for the leaves. I’m using alpha channels to be able to get the final shape.

I’ve also made a normal map out of this texture, to get some more details onto the final leaves in UE.

Textures

For the last few days I’ve been working on textures for some of my models. I wont’ be showing all of them here, as many of them have just simple tillable texture applied to them, but I will show those that I’ve spend some more time on it.

Bulb Box Texture
Mug Texture
Nails Box Texture
Paint Can Texture
Soil Textures

All of those textures are not as complicated as it seams, and had a clear UV layouts. Most of them were assets created for the shed, so not much work done for the lab interior this time.

Conference Room

Today I was working on another room, which is conference room. I’ve decided to place it right on the side of the main hall, so the ceiling triangles will be the windows for the actual room. It was very tricky to get the right shapes that will allow me to have doors on them (the faces of triangles weren’t straight, so I had to edit them). It’s also hard to block this type of room on the interior view. The windows were definitely one of the hardest things to make so far for the building creation of my lab.

Conference Room (Tris: 521)

Form this perspective the room looks like two tents, but it works pretty well with the ceiling and the entire idea of having a side by side rooms.

I’ve also already created some assets to fill the room with:

Conference Table (Tris: 92) with chairs (Tris: 114)

The idea came from the actual ceiling that I’ve already made, so to keep the general shape of the triangles, I’ve decided to work on that and add it to my interior assets as well. It may not be visible at first glance, but those furniture fits the interior perfectly.

Tablet (Tris: 382)

I’ve decided that one of the rooms will be nice and clear, but the other one will have some blood and minor destroyed parts. Because of that I’ve made several version of destroyed objects.

The mug (Tris: 728) and the broken iterations
Broken Table (Tris: 204)
Broken Chair (Tris: 192)

Serverrr Room

I’ve decided that I don’t want to go for a really low poly models of a server room, so I’ve went for the modular design instead. To be able to customise every single server part, I’ve done several different parts that will go inside the ‘box’ of the server rooms cabinets.

I’ve ended up with 5 different parts and I believe this should be enough to break the repetitiveness and add a variety to the same type of the assets.

Server Room Parts and modular design

Most of the parts will have a flashing lights material applied, to suggest that they are an connected and working electronic devices. This should also add some small movement to the static environment.

Building the… buildings?

For the last two days I’ve been working on creating the base building parts for my lab. It resulted in having several different assets that will be placed in the level at the end.

The ceiling of the main hall (Tris: 3445)
Top Level Floor (Tris: 2848)
Bottom Level Floor with working stations (Tris: 1416)
Server Room (Tris: 358)
Server Room Floor with stairs (Tris: 1478)

All of these assets were constantly placed inside the UE to see how the scale and how it all work together and going back to the 3Ds Max to make any changes.

I have also created some assets that may not necessarily end up in a level. I’m still not sure do I like the result or not, so I will rethink the use of them in the near future.

Main Pillar with stand (Tris: 540, 7830)

Big Plans!

Today I’ve draw a quick top view of a laboratory that I want to have in my level. Some of the areas won’t be as detailed as others and will be only visible from the distance on through the windows, so there won’t be as much work to be done to those places. I’ve sketched a huge interior with two main levels. This may be hard to achieve in the time left for this project, but I’ve several interesting ideas for the interior design already.

I know that this image isn’t the best quality, but it’s quite clearly visible what I want to implement into my lab. It’s a huge living space, with many different type of rooms created for the employees to work and relax after the working hours. I’ve also designed a front look to know what to expect from my own design to looks like while player will approach it at the main gate.

At this time I also know that I probably won’t be able to recreate the entire plan, but I’ll try to do my best in the time left for the project. I will start with several rooms first and then populate them with assets with textures untill I’ll move to the next room. This way I should be able to finish as much as I can without being left with nice parts that doesn’t fit anywhere in the level.