Rossco

Not being funny mate but how on earth can you get from 0.77 to 1.01 in one night if your second prestige. That would assume you already have thousands of kills so the amount of kills you need to get to change the balance that much seems ridiculous?

Yes! The ping. Thats why I use HBS. Stick my headphones on when playing anything with Hardcore and using the HBS is awesome. Normally with speakers the ping isn't always that loud and is drowned out by gunfire so headphones make all the difference somehow.

One thing I would like from the next Zelda is for them to go wild with the controls. Have everything using Motion Plus and Balance Board but I don't expect them to, probably just stick in some Motion Plus controls as an afterthought for anyone who has the controller. I haven't really played all the early Zelda games so wouldn't want them to change the format of the game too drastically as I still enjoy it.

Cheers. Well that's quite a varied degree you ended up doing! I think I know that name Daniel Livingstone too but can't picture who it is.

4th year is just killing me anyway, so stressful as you say.

Yup that's him! That project sounds a bit odd. What degree were you doing?

Cheers mate, hope everyone else does too, really looking to get a first class honours.

Although the rest of my work is really stressing me out now. So much written work to do I'm finding it hard to focus on the 3D aspect!

Ladies and Genetlemen, I give you... Tears of War. A story of violence between two of this generations most popular video games characters, Master Chief and Marcus Fenix.

This is for a Character Animation module in my 4th year of Computer Animation degree. The models obviously are not mine, they are ripped from the games. Everything else has been done by myself. The facial animation and lip syncing are not my strong points, I have a lot to learn in that department but to be honest I don't plan on ever doing any character animation again so no big deal right now. The voices were recorded by two of my fellow students at uni and incase you're wondering, I use Newtek Lightwave for my character rigging and animation.

Any comments are welcome.

I'll try get some render's of the stuff I'm doing for uni.

Currently making an Unreal Map + Characters for use in a game using UDK.

I'm modelling a football stadium based on the Riverside Stadium in Middlesbrough - so I'll throw some renders up on here, near or around christmas.

Rossco - how many tri's is that currently? How many can you use? Do you have a limit?

Sorry I didn't reply before, been a bit busy working on other projects! Haven't touched this one for weeks. At the moment I think it's about 80,000 tris. Trying to keep it low as possible but really haven't set a strict limit as I'm not really sure what a good limit would have been. It was going to be animated but have since changed my mind and only going to use some high res renders so will let the polygon count go a bit higher now.

I'm currently working on a character animation using Master Chief and Marcus Fenix models. Should be finished in a week or two so will post it when I'm done. Not really my strong point and haven't spent a lot of time on it but it's reasonably good so far. It's the lip sync and facial animation I'm finding the hardest.

Hello guys, not much done the last few weeks. Only started making a bit more progress in the last few days. Added some new buildings along with setting up all the hilly terrain, big watertower, street lights, etc. Then the last few days have been spent learning how to do the trees and the alpha mapped fencing, both of which I'm quite happy with. Used a plugin for the leaves on the trees called FiberFX which is just fantastic. It's Lightwave I use, but I believe it's available on a few other formats. Also very impressive for grass, hair etc so I shall be using that for the grassy hills later on.

Had almost hit a brick wall with some of the modelling so thought I'd start getting some texturing done to keep the project moving, hate that feeling when you're just plodding along not making much progress!

Anyone else got some work on the go?

Yeh I always work in quads where possible now. Didn't used to bother as it was never really enforced by our lecturers strangely enough but I'm on board now!

And yeh, I almost forgot about poly counts as tris and not quads. Must remember that for portfolio time at the end of uni when I start looking for jobs.

So here's an updated render. I've reduced the wires from 8 to 3 sided cylinders. Previously they had 15 sections I believe and now they have 8 sections. So I've pretty much reduced the count on them by about a fifth. You can see the difference here but it's not too bad. Also brought down all the poles from 12 sides to 8 sides which you can't tell the difference with.

As you can see in the background, I've started work on modelling various buildings around the outside of the prison now. Seeing as the prison is the main show, I think I should do everything else first so that when I do the prison, I've got a wee bit more skill and confidence than before and will hopefully be better because of it.

Haha very good point! Although Im targeting a job in the games industry eventually, I still feel I should put as much detail as possible in since I'm still being graded for my degree on this. But then I also think on the other hand, I can use this to my advantage, by using all my documentation to explain that I'm on a limited poly count and have to find certain ways to overcome problems. Our reports are worth about 30% of our degrees so it needs to be good and I think making it a suitable a video game environment is a good angle to come from.

I'll try the 3 sided poly method you suggested anyway and see how I get on. The wires are certainly taking up way too many polys as it is right now that's for sure!

Hehe sorry, should have said I was only doing that test to make sure I could do it easily enough as I had never used the technique before. I'll go back and do it properly at the texturing phase, I like to fully model everything first!

I'm not too sure how to go about it for the telephone wires though. At the moment it's a series of discs put together and obviously bent to show the wire bending which clearly takes up alot of polys. The only other option I can think of is to use flat polys followings the curve instead of disc shapes which will obviously reduce the poly count drastically but when textured would only really look good from certain angles would it not? Like when looking straight onto it. When looking at an angle it might not look so good?

The poles are 12 polys around, would you say that is generally too much? Bring it down to 8 maybe?

utero, the ground is going to have some variance in height, for instance I plan to make the road leading up to it have shallow ditches down the side. It was something I thought early on to make sure the ground had a good bit of variety in it, I think it can be overlooked quite easily and then the flatness can take away a great amount of realism.

Thanks again by the way guys, all the help is greatly appreciated!!

May as well post some updates while I'm here too. Changed the guard tower to something much nicer, added tall spotlights and electricity poles/cables.

The lighthouse isn't going there, just chucked it into the render for good measure!

Thanks again FozZ.

Awesome cheers mate, I didn't know it was so easy! Just done the quickest test ever there and it's worked a treat, never even used an alpha map before so quite happy I pulled that off too!

Every day's a school day.

That's certainly gonna help the poly count anyway which was like 3,000 for the wire alone!

Yeh the lighthouse I modelled it on is exactly like that unfortunately but seeing as that's not part of my brief to keep it an exact replica I should just change it ! Never really caught my attention that it was very plain at the bottom but makes sense now. Although it's not going to be a playable level, it still makes sense to start modelling this way so thanks for that.

The razor wire is all polys, I'm still not sure how I should be doing it. Should it just be a flat two sided poly with a texture and alpha map on it put into the shape I want?

And I'm still working on the external area utero, nowhere near finished that yet, so don't worry there's plenty of detail to come there!

Looks interesting Capone, keep us updated with, er... updates!

Here's the latest from me. Pretty much finished the lighthouse, will tinker about more with the top section where the light will go later on.

And started the basic modelling of all the external areas of the prison.

Can't decide whether I like the razor wire or not. I spent ages making it like that but it's not as I imagined. Quite tricky to do I feel while not letting the poly count go through the roof!

Also, the scale of some sections are a bit off and will require some jigging about. But all in all, happy with my progress so far.

Open to constructive criticism as usual.

Well this is along with another crappy character animation module and two more modules from January to May also. And it's not just making the prison, etc. There is alot of documentation you have to hand in, critical analysis of you work after it's finished, keeping logs of what you done and when, and you have to show all your planning, ideas, sketches, concept images, etc. Which is a pain in the arse! I just wanna model/texture!

That Unearthly 2009 challenge looks quite good, lots of interesting entries so far. Post the link to your thread in it so we can see your updates.

I'm sure I commented on that door when you posted it originally Capone!

Anyway, back at uni now for my fourth and final year of Computer Animation. Lecturers are already putting the pressure on me based on last years work and I'm feeling confident.

Two main projects on the go at the moment so far, one is a deserted prison environment at night and the other is an Italian style piazza/square with a Ferrari F40 sitting in it. The latter isn't due until May so I am focussing on the prison environment first which is due in January.

Spent a bit of time planning it all out and finding some referance material so eventually started a wee bit of the modelling tonight. And it feels good to be back!

It's a lighthouse that will sit at the edge of the prison with the light still on flashing round which I think should make a nice feature. It's based on the lighthouse at Alcatraz prison, which I am using quite heavily for reference in general.

I'll keep putting regular updates here which will hopefully entice others to do the same as it's very quiet around here recently and it's good to help and discuss each others work.

Still using Lightwave, planned to learn Max or Maya over the summer but it never happened. I'm very comfortable with Lightwave anyway so it'll do for now. Upgraded to 9.6 which is so much faster for renders and possibly a bit more stable! Also using FPrime now which is a fantastic wee tool for rendering.

Capone, did you retract that last post or something? I seen the pictures you uploaded, looks fantastic texture work, really impressive. Have you used any actual photographs for it or do you produce them completely from scratch?

I eventually finished the modelling yesterday, started it again as I was doing it all wrong with lots of polys having more than 4 sides, all sorted now though and I managed it in about 2 hours an have space for about 2000 more tris.

Will start texturing now though I think this is where I will struggle. Don't have alot of proper texturing experience or teaching especially for something stylised like this. But I shall try!!

Haha I do enjoy it so I will try this plus I really want a job when I finish uni so need to have good work to show!

You are right though, mapping can be very tricky, I think capones work on this particular piece is spot on, very professional looking.

Hmmm I agree with 28, not many places will look upon that as alot of work. I'm not putting you down by the way Number 28, as your model looks far better than mine so far! Just agreeing with you, would need to be fully textured impressively in my opinion to be worthy enough.

Yeah it's good for a change I suppose as I spent my whole third year project trying to be realistic as possible so bringing a bit of colour and style to the mix will be interesting. I have been extruding inwards for the windows but I feel it's tricky getting all the polygons partitioned off to be extruded and I'm rubbish and getting good 3 and 4 sided polygons, everything looks a mess on my wireframes I feel. And I often end up with a big poly that had countless sides that seems to take forever to fix.

Must be fantastic working on Crackdown 2 though, so jealous! I really need to put all my spare time and effort into this now as I don't want to lose the opportunity to work in the games industry and setlle for something less.

Oh yeh I remember you saying that now, what a shame.

This Ruffian test is taking AGES to model. I know for sure I'm doing it the long winded way and there must be a quicker way of modelling the windows but I'll manage for now until I work out a faster way.

Yeh Dundee is looking good place to be right now.

I didn't know you worked for Ruffian, is this a new job you just started? What's your exact position there mate? Are you working on CD2 then?

I've never really went for a stylised texture style before but I am going to give it a shot, started the modelling last night so a wee bit to go yet before the texture stage.

Hey Asura, is that for Bizarre Creations? Was looking at them yesterday, gonna give it a shot too!

What ever happened to your Gears of War style project? Was really interested in that too.