Blog for Ori Cohen at GarageGames.com

RTS Creature Pack and GAMECONTEPTPACKS.COM site redesign

Ori Cohen — 2008-07-21T04:09:24+00:00

A while ago I reached out to GG and asked them if they were interested in my RTS Creature Pack, I was very happy to hear that they were.

Getting a pack ready is quite a challenge; I would even dare say that the pack itself was the easy part. Getting all the marketing materials and contract details was a little bit more time than I anticipated.

I started with TGE 5 years ago, as a programmer I can honestly say that I had a steep learning curve going from programming to doing art. Ever since the beginning I have always wanted to have a Content pack released by Garage Games. I really hoped it would be a lot sooner, if someone is interested in starting I would strongly recommend going to CG school and leave the self teaching until he has enough knowledge in his arsenal. It's been a long journey and I can't even tell you how happy I am to be published by GG.
i would also like to thank eric elwell for doing the textures in this pack, thanks eric :)

In short, if you want to get the RTS Creature Pack just hop to www.garagegames.com/products/295/ its only 20$ :) .

The content pack itself was designed to aid RTS game developers to achieve quick prototyping in minimal time and help you to easily create RTS Games. Provide modular and customizable solution for Team Mode RTS games. The Two characters that can be used in an RTS environment and to have them in multiple teams. Each character texture has 3 variations, so this means that you can mix and match your teams, either have a color or a character type based team.

RTS Creature Pack is the first pack of a series, and will be followed by several other RTS compatible packs using the same standards.

The RTS Creature Pack contains 3D objects ready to be used in the Torque Game Engine. All 3D mesh source files are included to allow artists to modify any element.

The main characters are animated using Biped Bones, and it comes with 9 New Animations Compatible with animations that come with TGE, including any animations that use 3ds maxs Biped Rig.

The pack contains precompiled files for 3D objects and animations, and in addition, all source files are ready to export for TGE, including LOD (Level of details) and mount points.

This Pack Comes with Multiple sizes of Texture Maps and Normal Maps (64x64,128x128,256x256,512x512).
This pack can be used on Torque Game Engine, Torque Game Engine Advanced, Torque X and TGB. Specifically any Torque engine that is using a dts/dsq system.

The pack includes "exported" and "ready to use" files for the TGE and the RTSStarterKit.

What's in the RTS Creature Pack?

* 1 goblin 3DS Max9 file
* 1 stone man 3DS Max9 file
* 3 full quality jpg goblin textures (psd) with
* 3 full quality jpg stone man textures (psd)
* Full range of texture sizes (64,128,256,512 WxH)
* Normal Maps
* 9 NEW attack and defend animations 3DS Max7 files
* One weapon for each character

RTS Creature Pack New Biped Animations:
Root, Attack, Double weapon chop, Weapon cross swing, Full body spin, Jump, Shield_block, Staff_block,Take damage

* The RTS Characters are rigged using 3DS Maxs Biped; this means that you can use any animation that comes with the torque game engine. For example the normal walk, run, death animations.

www.gamecontentpacks.com

a few months back i reduced both orc and weapon pack prices they are much more affordable now. one orc and lots of weapons for $50. separately the orc is 35 and the weapons are only 20$.
in addition to all of that i had to redesign the site and make it more user friendly. i think i redesigned that site 5 or 6 times, i even added separate galleries to each of the pack, ORC Warrior Pack, Weapon Pack and the RTS Creature Pack. i hope i finally nailed it. here are some website pics

main page:

rts pack gallery:

weapon pack gallery:

orc pack gallery

Pack Updates www.gamecontentpacks.com

Ori Cohen — 2008-02-26T10:23:19+00:00

Hey folks,

after putting the RTS Creatures pack on my site www.gamecontentpacks.com
and changing the pack prices:

RTS Creatures : $20
ORC + Weapons Packs : $45
ORC : $35
Weapons : $17

limited time offer for previous owners of any pack - RTS Creatures : $15

i added NORMAL maps to my packs. so now the Warrior Orc, Weapons Mega Pack & RTS Creatures Pack have Normal Maps.
i decided to use Ryan's CrazyBump 8.6beta. its a realy good solution, it can load your PSD files directly, in a few clicks it will show you the normal map on your character and then you just save it. its a realy quick process.

keep in mind that these characters were not done in an app like zbrush, so the normal map is generated from the texture itself. for the most part this works realy good, especially for objects. the only problem i encountered was with the characters, if you realy mirror your character properly (half a face, half a body etc..) or if you use your full mesh on the uv space, you wont have any real problems.

there are some parts like when you decide to uv skin a head, that will show a seam in the normal map.
removing shape recognition in CB and playing with the sliders will make it almost disappear, you can probably bleed the texture over the seams and then paint over the normal map in photoshop and get that seam to disappear. but there is still a real issue with texture to normal map workflow.

after researching other sites i decided to see if there is a way to change the paypal buttons to plimus, the change will be there soon, plimus is a bit harder to setup than a paypal button. but i hope the change will get more people into the store, i know some people dont realy like paypal or dont have a paypal account. so this will definitely be helpfull, i just hate the fact that plimus takes 10% and paypal takes only 5% from each sale.

plimus also have an affiliate program, so that would mean people from other stores can sell my pack and i can sell other packs on my store. on that note i did get an affiliate request but it was from a fishy site that let people download photoshop and games, a mix i dont realy understand plus it seemed to be a pirate store.

Before:

After tweaks and changes:

Cheers

new RTS Creature Pack !!

Ori Cohen — 2008-02-22T13:29:28+00:00

Hey folks,

I am about to release my new "RTS Creature Pack", it contains 2 characters (goblin, stoneman) each one of them has a weapon, 3 texture variations, LODS and a set of 9 new attack and defend animations.

Each character is about 600 polygons with its weapon, i tried to design a character that would go well with fantasy RTS games and still can be used with fps or games that the character is farther from the camera.

I am going to price it at $20 and it will be on my site www.gamecontentpacks.com as soon as i can.
if you are in a rush you could pre-order it from me before i update the site.

In addition i changed the pricing on both of my previous packs, the ORC Warrior Pack is now $35,
the Weapons Mega Pack is now $17. which makes them a 30% off the previous price.

The Weapons were designed to work with the ORC pack, there were a lot of people who wanted to buy both packs so i decided to bundle them together and offer them for $45. that is 40% off the previous priced and $7 dollar less then buying them apart.

i am also offering the RTS Creature Pack for $15 to anyone who bought one of my packs in the past.

if you guys have any comments, crits, price opinions etc.. i would love to hear it.

okay enough talk, here are some pics:

Cheers, Ori / www.gamecontentpacks.com

Camp Pack is coming to www.GameContentPacks.com

Ori Cohen — 2007-08-25T11:25:28+00:00

hey guys,

after releasing my ORC Warrior Pack, i have been working on a camp pack,
i have done a couple of tents so far, i am going to add a few more tents and camp things, your thoughts ?

aaaaaaaaand Dont forget to check out my new orc pack at www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1508, www.gamecontentpacks.com or my previous ORC Plan

cheers :)

Ori / www.gamecontentpacks.com

ORC Warrior Pack available at www.GameContentPacks.com!!

Ori Cohen — 2007-08-22T19:06:14+00:00

hey guys,

so i have finally finished my orc pack, and its being advertised on the image of the day page.
www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=1508

The ORC Warrior Pack includes a fully-functional player character that's ready to go into your Torque-powered game.
Based on the stock torque animations, the ORC will work with all the previous animations that you got with the torque engine!!

So what do we have in this pack?
* One ORC model with green and brown skin variations with optional blood textures.
* 15 NEW biped compatible animations.
* 9 NEW items with LODs (accessories, axe, sword, spear of death, shield, helmet).

You can purchase the ORC Warrior pack in my shiny new Store at www.GameContentPacks.com

Please check out the two demo videos!

Torque in Game video
Animations video in TST pro

it was a lot of fun making it, hopefully it will be a success :)

- Ori / www.GameContentPacks.com

Character Evolution #4

Ori Cohen — 2007-05-30T07:38:31+00:00

hey folks, in the last week i was working hard, trying to finish the orc pack i mentioned in my last blog post, i have added all the needed mount points, multires, animations.

i am glad to finally be at the stage where all i need is to tweak things around to make it smooth.
there is also a little movie on you tube and a couple of screen shots for those who dont want to click that link :)

until next time, hopefully this pack will be finished :)

Orc Character Evolution #3

Ori Cohen — 2007-02-08T12:42:07+00:00

hi again, continuing my previous character evolution plan here i want to show you what happened to the orc from the previous plans, i gave him a different weapon, redid the texture on the face, legs, hands, pants. the face has changed to a more anatomicaly correct orcish face with a nose ring.
i had put most of the blood on a different layer in the photoshop file, you can see some of it in the renderings.

one of my favorites is the spear, i had replaced the flag i had earlier with a death spear covered with 3 orcish skulls :).

i hope to finish this orc character pack soon enough :)

* the renders are pg-13, with lots of gore :P

edit: blood stuff

cheers.

Character Evolution #2

Ori Cohen — 2006-12-02T15:22:07+00:00

Heads, i have started doing heads in zbrush, to understand the head anatomy and to create different heads as possible, i let myself work maximum of 30 minutes, most of them were actually done around 15 minutes, with the miracle of digital sculpting its possible, three cheers for zbrush :)

Btw all those heads share the exact same base model :)

if any of you have zbrush here is a quick Tutorial on heads

Character Evolution

Ori Cohen — 2006-11-22T08:06:52+00:00

Hey folks, i started this character a while ago and up until now it has gone through a bunch of changes, it started from a low poly model and right now i am reworking it as a higher rez one. in the traditional "less words more pics" blog report style :p

Okay so this is the final render with texture maps for this model, i was happy with it, but not too happy, so i am reworking the design/maps/model from the basic mesh. In due time i'll have a better model running inside torque. for those who can tell, those textures are actually textured mapped.

Inspiration from a well known concept:

From here on there are a bunch of screen shots and wireframes, its pretty easy to tell how things
progressed:

For some reason everytime you start doing a uvmap, you get faster and better from your last time,
at this point i'd like to say, for all of you artist there, please do yourself a favor and get unfold3d

Tried to make some dynamic poses, the best thing is to open some comic book and look at those characters, there is no need to invent the wheel:

Some more texture work progress:

Rigged and working with the stock orc animations, how cool is that :P

From this stage on i have taken this model after some much needed tweaking into zbrush,
added a few muscles, i cant stress how it is important to know your anatomy or things will look
like poop.

These days i am working on the pants, i'll make sure the uv is better, make a new texture, rig it again and put him into torque. stay tuned..