But out of the ashes we are going to work on the game in part time basis, as all the members of the team are really into and believe that  it will make a cracking game once we prove ourselves!

Initially the game was going to be created on iOS devices, but due to Sony’s apparent advancement in helping indie studios to start up producing games we have decided we are going to move it onto PlayStation Mobile , more specifically for the PlayStation Vita.

We believe that it’s touch controls,thumbsticks and backface touchpad , could really help push our game and add to the interactivity and immerse the player in our environments.

We’ve made the jump because of two awesome things Sony have done,

1) The fee to become a publisher has been waived, it’s now free to submit applications to Sony for mobile.

2) Unity 3D teaming up with Sony to produce an 1-click deployment type add-on to Unity, making developing for PlayStation Mobile easier.

3) I can use my Vita as a dev kit for testing without needing another other bits of hardware etc! Win!

This will be an exciting prospect!!

The first thing I did was to look around at other artists websites to get an idea of which work well and display work really nicely, I came across a few that really showed up!

http://polygoo.com

http://www.simonfuchs.net/folio/

http://www.mayvin.be/index.php - One of my favourites!

http://www.alecmoody.com

What strikes me the most about these sites are they all have 3 key items.

Large, clear, well presented images of portfolio pieces.

Minimal  text, but clear and easy to read.

A uniform layout that reads well.

I really liked these and will apply these elements to my portfolio.

I also took my website off the free wordpress hosting. michaelelphickart.wordpress.com is too long and annoys me.

So after many many hours of researching on how to actually host a proper website with a proper domain such as www.michaelelphickart.com , I changed my hosting over and everything to do with my website is placed upon a GoDaddy host.

I then installed WordPress onto the hosting. That was a big gulp! Luckily it worked and enabled me to copy my entire website from the free to the hosting area. I also installed several plugins such as Akismet (a spam blocker , a must!), SlimStat, Social Media Widgets etc.

I also purchased a theme from http://www.towfiqi.com/zenon-pro-wordpress-theme.html , this theme was perfect for me as I really wanted to have a moving slider type device which can show lots of assets in quick succession and also provide links to the relevant pages.

This guy had incredible support and would recommend his themes to anyone! I discussed with him how I wanted my website and he went through telling me all the different codes and html editing that I would need to achieve the look I wanted, which is brilliant! I also added a few social buttons on the bottom of my pages to link to other places such as Polycount.

The theme is also very mobile friendly, so enables me to reach all devices and browsers (theres a slight bug with aligning in IE, but is very minimal)

I also added large images on the homepage that link to the relevant pages, I also added a bold title with my name and profession, which is matching with my showreel to create a unifying colour scheme and style.

I have five main menu’s on the homepage.

About – A brief description of my skills, experience and education followed by a photo and a nice art image.

Professional Work – Ive added for which when Killzone Mercenary launches i’ll play through and take screenshots of what I had a hand in creating, perhaps even contact Sony to see if I can have some renders for it.

Personal Work – Uni projects and also odd bits and pieces I do in my spare time.

Showreel – A direct embed link to my showreel.

Blog – This blog! Bits and pieces such as tutorials, progression and my thoughts and ideas would go here.

I’m really liking this style to my portfolio and is definitively a keeper!

For creating my showreel I really want it to have asset breakdowns as this really shows what your objects are like and your skills. An ideal program for this is the Marmoset Toolbag A fantastic tool for presenting models and easily creating render passes for compositing.

Fantastic little program. Really quick to set up and creates fantastic results it can be pushed really far such as..

Which is phenomenal work! Its also shows off the DirectX11 features such as tessellation which makes it even ideal for displaying characters as tessellation will soon be used in nearly every game on the current and next gen systems!

I loaded up several of my meshes, starting with my conveyor console and created a little lighting setup similar to a 3 point setup but included the IBL (Image Based Lighting) to really make the reflections look real. It really helped push the realism of the object and made the metals really look like metal.

I used this on several of my assets and rendered out image sequences which would then be placed into After Effects to put it all together. I did a couple of passes one beauty pass and one wireframe pass to really show off the model.

I also included a cut down version of my environment fly through to show off my environment design skill. I also created a nice little name splash for the intro and end splash.

It shows a sample of what the viewer is going to see and also contains all the relevant contact information before they view it. For the music in this section I chose a really harsh type industrial track (Steel Rods by Kevin McLeod, royalty free), which really gives it a huge in your face, grab your attention which is very vital for an showreel. I also duplicated it at the end to grab the viewers attention again before it ends. In a way it also re-informs all the contact information again and also the music credits. I would have loved to create the music myself as I did with my last showreel, but due to time restraints I had to crawl through the internet trying to find an ideal piece of music, I did a little bit of editing within the software Audacity to trim parts and blend the tracks together. Several sound effects were slightly overlaid to add interest while the level flies are playing.

After comiling it all together and then having a few issues with bitrates and encoding I managed to get a proper version up onto Vimeo and YouTube!

So here it is my, Showreel of 2013!

We met the whole team and had a good chat through the presentation, what we are going to address who says what and also the possible Q&A’s that may come our way, we were up editing the video till 1am in the morning and then even adding in parts and making it sharper and consise even up to the last minute before we walked through the door. They seemed to really like it at least they took a great deal of interest in it but also had some concerns that we would not be able to pull it off. We had an concise answer for everything and were really pushing to prove that we can indeed make the game and make it really successful!

We weren’t given a date when we would hear back which was a shame so hopefully it’s not too long. We also had a look around the Abertay building and it sure looks sweet ! Hopefully be able to look around it more soon!

Also while traveling around I came across this..

I’m not exactly sure what constitutes  a ‘Champion Cat Show’ but I sure wish I could have stayed till Saturday to find out!

CryEngines camera tools are much easier to use than UDK’s so enabled me to create precise shots that I needed.

So here it is!

Let me know what you think in the comments!

I think the environment is now pretty much finished I also added a little water area to try out the water volume tools and also to add to the story, in the middle of the forest the campers must have gotten water from somewhere it also allowed me to go into more detail with placing foliage, such as the aqua plants and the lilly pads for that little extra detail, the water itself was easy to get together and tinkering with the water volume shaders to try and get a pond like quality to it was a great deal of trial and error, I spent about 2 hours trying to get the water just right for what the look that I was going for. I feel that adding in a small little bit of water also added to the nature of the environment by having faint ripples of the surface from the wind vector in the environment. I also added a frogs boid to give the area some fresh life.

I used decals to really break up the repeating objects, it was also helpful to use these as the moss  on top the rubble piles, I tried to use these as effective as possible to reduce the stretching across certain angles, but some of it is unadovible, although decals can be placed upon one another and are set in a layer system which tells the tenderer which order to render them. Decals were also used on the trees to stop the repetitiveness of the textures and add some uniqueness to them, this worked very well and enabled me to only make one tree with a mirrored version and then decals to break them up. Fantastic!

To bring even more realism to the camp area, I used the rope tool in the engine to draw out the guide ropes on the tents.These can also be shot or ran through which makes them snap which is pretty funky for when someone is running around the environment and can snap them. I also placed a few tuffs of grass here and there to give the impression that the camp has been sat dormant for some time.

 For the broken corner area I tried to give them impression that the structure carried on around the corner and had become destroyed and eventually eroded down  to a few blocks on the floor with smashed pillar across where it had eventually given in and crashed down.The Banyan tree in forces this point as it chokes one of the last huge blocks of the structure. I also added a smaller fog volume as a lighting hint that there is nothing that way so the player should turn around.I also added a further few tuffs of grass going back into the fog to show that this is an actual environment and not like a stage dressing.

A further screenshot showing the decal use and also the heavily mossy banyan tree that is attached to the structures roof.

Another screenshot showing how the SSAO and fog really helps to bring the various parts of the environment together.

Screenshot showing the pond area with the blend into the terrain an also the little AI frogs just chilling in the middle, adds a nice little bit of flavour to the environment. I also added some AI pigeons to the sky to add extra realism and some interest to the sky.

With that all done I’m now going to use the trackview editor (creates animation cameras) so I can render out some fly throughs  to create an video and also add some sounds to the environment to really bring it to life!

]]> http://michaelelphickart.com/finishing-up-the-environment/feed/ 0 http://michaelelphickart.com/my-new-and-improved-workflow/ http://michaelelphickart.com/my-new-and-improved-workflow/#comments Sun, 05 May 2013 16:15:17 +0000 michaelelphick http://michaelelphickart.com/?p=1268 After some time something just clicked in my head while I was creating the low poly meshes. Why not start in Maya first with a semi properly modeled model and then Zbrush sculpt to my delight. So I went and remade a few of the key ‘hero’ pieces in my environment to this new way.

Basically I would create a simple squared out block mesh and then cut into the geometry into the rough shape of my pillar. Then once that was done, I created edge loops to square of sections etc and add support loops around areas. I then would smooth the mesh in Maya and then see if this subdivision would then hold its shape, if it does then fantastic, if not I would go back in and edit it more, This solution creates a nice base to sculpt off as long as the polygons are roughly the same squared shape all over. If they are not , so areas would have a different subdivision area that would show as higher detail in others and lower in other areas which isn’t good!

I would then duplicate the Zbrush ready model, and remove edge loops, merge vertices together to then create the low. The sculpted Zbrush mesh would then be decimated in Zbrush and then brought into Maya to set up the cage for the baking process. This could either be done in Maya or XNormal, but am favoring Maya’s bake tools for now.

Here’s an image of the low on the left, and the high resolution on the right. After baking and some Nd02 magic , here’s the finished prop. I also applied this technique to several other props in the environment which makes my workflow pretty sweet! Also if I take a huge chunk off the prop away while sculpting I can then cut in more faces into my low and create the topology around that or for a more precise way I could load up Topogun and just re-topologize the areas that are heavily damaged and then merge that with the low with Maya. I think this was the last step to creating really good assets. I’m hoping I’ll have some time soon to work on a mini diorama displaying the techniques I’ve learnt!

All the major parts are in the environment now so have begun to dress it up and start wrapping it up, more grass has been added with a size variation to really make it more realist as not all grass is the same size! I also tweaked with the level fog to pull that back as i fear that it was to much and created quite a distraction.

I also completely retextured the stone on the archway as the ones before were far too noisey and looked nothing like they were meant to !It also draws a link to the stone around it rather than standing out and not being the same as the rest of the structure! Wheres the logic in that?? I also remade the doorway models as I had a sudden epiphany when it comes to low-high baking!

It’s all Go at the moment !!!!!

Got the main ‘semi ruined’ structures in and the ground elements, I also started more work on the ‘story’ of the environment. I created a little rough walkway using the ‘Road’ tool to give the impression of footsteps from the forest to the camp and to the temples structure. This will also serve as the spawn point when people play the level.The ‘exit’ area has a few rubble pieces placed around from where the large banyan trees have forcibly torn down parts of the buildings. This will recieve more brushes etc to fill the gap in a clever way and not look ‘shut off’ and obviously looks like a cornered off area of the environment. I also added some small trees to further create a blur between playable and non-playable areas. Having them there also adds to the story in which nature is slowly crawling back into the temple.

Alternative View of the Pathway, on the left you can also see I’ve started placing some deferred decals to blend the terrain and brushes together and create interest on duplicate brushes. I also enabled POM (Parallax Occlusion Mapping) on the terrain to give it a huge boost in looks and realism.

I turned mine slightly down, as the self showing from the displacement can add to much and kill the look, I’ve got mine to set to about half and works pretty well for it.

Camp now has the crates, fire and other pieces to make it tell a story, they came across the ruins of this temple and then set up camp to explore, then mysteriously everything  got left and no longer any signs of them…..

]]> http://michaelelphickart.com/a-little-more-progress/feed/ 0 http://michaelelphickart.com/inspired-by-tomb-raider-2013/ http://michaelelphickart.com/inspired-by-tomb-raider-2013/#comments Wed, 17 Apr 2013 14:27:52 +0000 michaelelphick http://michaelelphickart.com/?p=1245 I was really sure on how to create my campfire for the game. So looked to sources within games, and thought the campfire that was created for Tomb Raider would suffice! it also gives me a little down time to play a bit of PS3!!

I also wanted to merge it with the story that they had been cooking the night before and left it burnt out with an empty pot, so looked at different idea’s for how to have the pot hanging there. But settled on the image below mixed with the Tomb Raider reference.

So for this prop I planned that I would use four wood log,  one smaller kindling pieces, the base, and also the string/wire to hang the pot up. I wanted to reuse parts as much as possible so made them very modular, in which they can be used in many ways, rotated/scaled etc. The wire/string, would also be made using a zbrush high model, but then be baked down to planes, to create the game mesh. Otherwise the wire would be far to high poly and would just look wrong. It also allows me to experience how CryEngine handles alpha maps and also , I can use multi-materials on this object and give each material its own specular interest, especially the pot that will have a slight sheen to it.

Pretty pleased with how the asset turned out, it also taught me a lot more about high to low baking, this mesh is far more optimized than the others currently in my scene, so am going to go back and reduced the polycount of a few assets.

Here’s the high poly in Zbrush, the wood was sculpted by following along to 3D motives ‘Creating and Texturing a Fantasy Shield with dDo’ in which multiple layers of small strokes of clay tubes then etched in detail with the ‘Dam Standard’ brush. I ultimately decided against using the pot that I sculpted in Zbrush and made a hard surface model in Maya then messed it up in Zbrush a little. For the Low poly, I actually went into Maya and built the low poly shell around the highs which created a far cleaner topology and edge flow. It also made UV mapping a breeze!

Ive made some headway into the environment and made most of the props and now have textures! I’m going to go back and redo the textures on the top of the archway as they don’t really fit and are far to noisey for what they are meant to be! I also created a few little rocks piles to further blend between the terrain and the brushes which realy help to tell the story that these rocks have started to break down and chip from erosion and are sprinkled across the flooring. I also have created my tiling rock mesh for the back wall, by following this tutorial which I found through links on the Polycount Forum. (Polycount)

I also completely remade the stone lab textures as they were ugly as hell and their material definition was terrible, so now they appear more stone like with a slight sheen from the sunlight and also the erosion effects.

Heres the tutorial link (http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html) this tutorial is fantastically written and I got an amazing result. The best bit was really getting into Zbrush and sculpting lots of different stone slabs and placing them together to create the final wall.

High Resolution Zbrush Model

Low Poly ‘Game’ Model

Another technique that I learnt to create pretty good decimated meshes for the game models, is to take the high resolution model and hit the ‘ReMesh All’ button with a high resolution and X turned off and polygroups turned off. This then creates a new subtool of all the other subtools somewhat ‘Blended’ together. I then use ‘Project All’ to project the high details onto the subtool low. This starts of pretty crappy. But subdivide the subtool low then half the amount of the project all ‘Dist’ this allows more detail to get projected down. do this a few more times until it is how the old high mesh was.

This new tool can then be used to create the High and the decimated Low for use in XNormal and in-game. The decimated low can then be cleaned up in Maya to take out unnecessary polygons and cleanup the edge flow.