Rossco

On the subject of UVs, I use Lightwave and I don't know of anything decent for UV mapping with it. It's all done manually and I would say it's the one thing I would like to improve on a bit more.

Here are some shots of my project I've been working on. I think it's coming along quite well to be honest. There are 12 buildings to be done and I've done 7 of them now. Everything is being UV mapped as I go too so when I get to texturing I should be able to just jump straight in. Once I finish the last building I will go back over them adding another pass of detail such as pipes, cables, lights attached to the walls, chimneys, aerials and the various plants/flowers hanging from many of the windows and balconies. Then a fountain for the centre will be done last along with various tables/chairs etc if the time is available.

Awesome news on the job! Well done. Met with another team for Dare today and I like their ideas much better so gonna join up with them, just looking for one more artist now and we're ready to rock. Hopefully the final person is also from our uni as theres never been a full team to represent us there before which would be nice to do.

Yeh I've got my heart set on the games industry but realise I won't just walk out of uni into my dream job so we'll see how it goes. I agree with everything you say there, it makes perfect sense. But I still want to get my first class honours, even if just for me, just to say I did it. So I am still sticking to the brief for my project but just twisting it as much as I can to be mainly an environment showreel. I will focus the vast majority of my time on setting it up for just stills shots though, as you say it's not worth it making it a full animated scene. The camera work will be stuck in randomly without much thought and just done for the project and that's it.

I've got my layout all set up for the now square shaped piazza while I think will be much easier to model and texture now. Halfed the amount of buildings too so can spend more time on really ramping up the detail levels.

Along with this project, I have a special effects one which I'll be using After Effects for, probably going to do the old classic lightsaber battle. Done a million times but still looks good. Throw in some rain effects which I've already been tinkering with and some kind of fire/smoke/explosions to top it off.

And the last module is to produce a 20 second advert for a compact digital camera in a team of 6 people. Going to be quite difficult as 6 people is alot for such a small project so spreading the work around equally and agreeing on ideas 100% is going to be the hard bit.

On another note,I met with a team last night for the Dare To Be Digital competition that utero mentioned earlier. We had a presentation about it a few months back and I really wanted in. Luckily I found a group from my uni looking for an artist. Meeting one more group in a few days too to see what they have on offer then I'll have to decide which one to go with. Such a great opportunity so I really want to get in to it.

How did the Frontier interview go Capwn?

smithstock, I previously done the same method for texturing a road with painted lines. As you said, if you didn't do it this way, you'd have to create a huge texture which can just be fiddly to get everything spot on.

I didn't realise this was coming out!

I'm fucking getting it!

That might make sense actually to scale it down a bit. Yeh it's oval shape as you can see in the attached image from Google map. That was one thing that I wasn't too fond of so I may scale it down and make it square shaped. I think having 4 obvious corners would just make it look better. I can't explain why I think that but in my head it just feels like it would look a better piece.

Well seeing as my course isn't aimed towards video games in particular, they don't give any bugdets for textures, polygon count etc. I'm not sure if I should set one myself or just go wild? The deadline is the first week in May, and it must be made into a two minute showreel at PAL standard. I wish I didn't have to make a two minute video out of it as I don't imagine that would make much difference for a portfolio piece. Game devs would rather see some good high resolution stills of your work wouldn't they? So that loses me some time on modelling/texturing/lighting to set up the video and render it.

I've already been researching hundreds of photographs and I've decided to pretty much copy a specific piazza building for building. I will add some things in though and change it about to suit what I want. I have a 360 degree view photograph of the area to use for reference.

Link to image - it's 8MB

What's your opinion on it? I realise it's still quite large but I'll only be modelling one side of the building really to be viewed from inside the piazza so the workload is reduced greatly. I originally wanted to do more of a street scene rather than a totally enclosed area like this but I think it's quite different and original.

Time to start blocking out the area then. I guess that makes sense too as it allows you to make sure the whole scene works at a glance before wasting time doing the high detail pass and realising it doesn't all fit together as expected.

Thanks for taking the time to help, really appreciate all the comments in this thread.

Hows the hearse coming along by the way?

Care Package glitches were out in squads today. Every game was just ruined by them. Why is this patch taking so long?

Holy moly, how do you get times like that!!!? 7 barrel rolls, I think I done 1 the whole lap!

Cool I didn't know that, quite useful! No more times then guys? When does this week end?

Yeh it's reeeeally dark for me too! Looking good though.

Now that I'm back at uni this week for semester 2, I'm back into full swing design stage for my next project. I had planned previously to do an Italian style piazza with a Ferrari F40 in the middle. I'm now ditching the car as it will be too much work and I've never modelled a car before and I wanna do environments when I leave uni so may as well work on that.

But I'm looking for some general advice on planning out such projects. I always seem to stray from my original plans and make the project bigger than intended, therefore it ends up not looking as good as it could have as I waste so much time changing things and just generally biting off more than I can chew. If anyone has tackled some decent sized environments before and has some good advice I would really appreciate it as this is my last chance to create something like this before I graduate and I want it to be of the best quality possible to hopefully help my job hunt.

I guess my main focus anyway is to keep it quite a small enclosed area compared to my last project. Plan it fully and stick to it. Would most people model everything then texture or model a building, texture it, and move onto the next one? Is it personal preference really or is there a proper workflow that usually works best?

I'm probably rambling a bit but I really want to make sure I get this right.

Come one people get some times posted. When I seen this I was hoping for loads of people taking part as it's always good fun. The PGR4 challenges had good numbers although I didn't do many of them to be honest so was hoping for similar amounts of people here.

Why don't you like Sebenco? It's such a challenging circuit, I love it. So many blind turns that you really have to memorise exactly when, where and how much to turn.

Another 29 laps produced this:

Rossco - RosscoMac - Assegai - Sebenco Climb - Venom - 32.75

Missed 1 speed pad at the 3rd corner I think too. So it's still beatable. Anyone else posting times?

Its looking great. I've never used ZBrush before, is that all normal mapped detail you've added? Love it!

You could try adding some gold trim or something all around it to give it a subtle bit of colour along with the black.

I've actually stopped using red dot and holos on all guns now. Find it so much better being able to use another attachment instead. You get used to using just iron sights in now time.

I love the SCAR too. Have recently switched to the ACR to level it up but can't wait to get back to using the SCAR.

It seems like ages ago I was running about with UMP45 Marathon Lightweight etc. Tried it earlier today and just failed miserabley! Some things just take time to get into again.

It's my pleasure!

I'll add you lot when I next log on so we can compare scores as we race!

Hi guys, think I'll join in with this. Just put this on today for first time in over a year. What a game!

Rossco - RosscoMac - Assegai - Sebenco Climb - Venom - 33.44

Think I missed a speed pad with that one too and obviously first day back so should be able to knock a good bit off that.

It says that's 255th in the world, I remember when this came out and I played it constantly I did have a few number one spots for speed laps on career I think.

Right, I was looking again at that Ruffian test the other day and realised one major issue I have with texturing. I have no idea how to go about setting up one 1024x1024 texture map for that building. I know how to UV map etc but it's never been taught very much in uni so my knowledge is just basic and I really don't know how to UV map properly for games.

I know for games you have to set up maps as 512, 1024, 2048 etc resolution and I try to stick to that when I'm texturing myself but to do that one building as one texture like that obviously UVs are going to have to overlap etc and I don't know how to go about it. Can anyone help or link me to some good tutorials or books they know of that teach good principals of texturing for games.

Thanks again for the comments guys, always appreciate it.

Unfortunately it had to be an outside and inside environment so I will obviously get a better mark for the interior. It has been handed in now so no changes can be made but I really like the idea of making it foggy instead. I had played about with that a bit last year so I might even rework some of it just for my portfolio to show the exterior area off better.

So eventually got my prison environment finished. I keep changing my mind on how happy I am with the results. I do feel I've let myself down a bit. The interior is quite nice and looks the way I wanted but the outside area just isn't up to stratch. Some of the buildings are nice but the environment as a whole with the terrain, sky etc just doesn't work for me. Should still be an A so I imagine I'm still well on track for my first class honours but the project just isn't as good as I had wished. Alot of time was wasted and I did not plan it correctly. But that means alot has been learned and I shall produce better next time. Everything is a learning process!

Anyway, here are the results. It originally was going to be a prison only, then I decided to flesh it out to the area around. The prison is loosely based on Alcatraz, the same goes for the various buildings in the surrounding area too. Mainly on the modelling though, the textures I just made up to look the way I wanted, obviously going for a grungey look. As usual, everything is done in Lightwave v9.6.

Youtube links below:

Click on all below thumbnails to see high res versions:

dare to be digital 2010

got a few guys who got some awards at our place now, worth looking at if your a student

Had a wee presentation about this in uni. Would love to do it but really don't see myself having the time to get an idea together before the end of the year. It's a bit silly to expect people to complete an hours year at uni as they prepare for this.

Anaardvark, I really didn't get on well with character modelling either. Didn't have the patience or interest in trying it for longer. Glad I stuck with environmental to be honest though.

Whats everyones thought on the best package to know for working in the industry then? I was swaying towards learning Maya after uni is finished as it seemed that's the most widely used?

I had assumed the project was a task to tackle a social issue through the medium of animation.

No chance, my uni aren't as imaginative as that with their projects. Maybe it was a bit silly to put it in but it's too late now. Time will tell if it backfires.

Really like the style of that Capwn! Is this done using Maya?

AWESOME!!

Thanks for saying, appreciate the honesty as I've asked loads of people about it and no-one has thought twice about keeping it in. It's not due until Friday so I might omit it before I hand it in but I don't imagine I will. I know it's a bit risky but what the hell, you only live once!