For this blog post I will be starting with the anchors. Overall some anchors are still the same as before with a few exceptions. The general anchors would still be our overall motivation lacking due to complete lack of interested in the genre of the game and overall theme as well as multiple absences we experienced
Some of the other major anchors would be me spending too much time on an asset we did not urgently need, this asset being a car which was going to be none interact-able and a prop to just make things look less empty outside.
Another major anchor would be the rig for the first person character not binding properly setting my work/production back by a substantial amount of time. There were also other technical errors that set us back such as maya not working properly and crashing, UVs corrupting after saving, etc.
I have started by creating a concept for one of the NPCs in the game. I have done this on paper as I am not a concept artist nor am I used to digital sketches. I had previously done a sketch for the protagonist concept before we had decided to go with a first person game.
Side view
T-posed Concept for one of the NPCs
The images above are for one of the NPCs we are going to be using in the game project and that I have started modelling, one of many to come. We are going for a cartoon art style with more exaggerated reactions and animations.
The Game’s Protagonist concept.
Progress as of 10/01/2020.
Here I had started modelling the base low poly mesh for the NPC character or one of the NPC characters we would be in our game. This particular character would be one of the many old men which would be found in the houses, on the street our game is set in.
Start of npc model
I started with modelling the low poly that I would be baking the sculpted high poly mesh onto. I am going to import the finished mesh into zbrush to sculpt it . After sculping in Zbrush Iwould then texture the model in 3dcoat.
further progress on npc model.
I started the model with a cube primitive and using subdivision modelling I altered the shape of the cube which would serve as the body of the character to match the shape of reference image I drew for the character.
After the body was at the shape I wanted I selected and deleted faces and circularizing and extruded to create the arms,legs and neck.
Progress as of 17/01/2020.
Progress as of 21/01/2020.
Today in the scrum meeting it was decided that i would be making the tiles for the houses in the game after completing the character and arm modelling.
in the image below i have made a few set assets for the houses using plains.
I have made pieces of the house separately, such as, the walls, roof, windows, doorways, etc. this is to make it easier and more efficient than creating a house in one piece and exporting it.
Progress as of 28/01/2020
Today as our team leader and scrum master was absent, we had a quick meeting deciding what was left undone and decided who would do what. I continued to work on character related models such as the hands for the first person character which needed unwrapping which i did while waiting for Matt who was in-charge of rigging to be ready to rig the arms.
Retrospective. 5th of February 2020
As a group we decided on our 3 Anchors and Engines. The engines we have decided are good communication skills, with this we were able to talk to each other properly without issues and tell each other whenever something was finished, being worked on or just started working on. To exploit this we will keep using good communication skills to tell each other when something is finished. The next engine we have all decided on is good work flow, with this we were able to get work pumped out quite quickly/at a reasonable amount of time, making the first sprint have a lot of assets and also making it so the coding was done at a reasonable pace for what there was as well. The next and final engine we have decided on is the good planning we had before we started, getting what is needed to be done at the correct time, to exploit this we will make sure to keep up this work flow.
Next we will be talking about the anchors we had. Starting with the first…Attendance which we will overcome by having better time management outside of college instead of just within college. The next anchor we have all agreed on as well is exporting files from Maya to import files into Unreal Engine, to fix this we will have to export the files as a FBX file and make sure the point is set as Y. The next and final anchor that we have to overcome is Unreal. Unreal at its latest version has most the plug-ins we want but won’t work due to it not supporting the up to date version. The way we can go around this is finding a new way to get these plug-ins to work.
Progress as of 14/02/2020
Progress as of 28/02/2020
This week i made a practice model of a car prop as i had never made something as technical as a car before. My original choices as to what kind of car to was either a pickup truck or the Oldsmobile 1976 or maybe even a hatchback.
Progress as of 04/03/2020
Progress as of 05/03/2020
Progress as of 06/03/2020
Progress as of 12/03/2020
Today I had to complete my car model. I had to retopologize my car as it had a lot of polys, making it more difficult to UV unwrap which in turn makes it more difficult to texture the car.
Today’s Plan 12/03/2020
I’m going to finish the re-topology of the car, unwrap it then send it for texturing. After that i will also make the tree house which will be used in the game as a starting point for the character.
At the start of the session I attempted to mirror over the first half of faces i had made for the re-topology of the car by duplicating and the flipping the faces over. I did this, because, I thought that I would be able to merge it with the quad draw tool as I was doing before with the faces, but it didn’t work.
01/04/2020
I realized that i had not unwrapped the character model for NPC yet so I focused on UV unwrapping
Today’s Plan 01/05/2020.
Today’s plan is to finish the tree house/base for the protagonist/player.
Richard Lowton's Synoptic Project 