Adventures in cross-training, the sequel

This is a follow up to my previous blog. For background, check it out.

I haven't had all that much time to work on this this week, but I promised a progress update, so here it is.

I added a few doors, and part of the back room area. I also added some shootable boxes, a few bad phones that will definitely be replaced, a little shelf and a notepad and pen in the office. Also a very rough draft of a delivery truck with some boxes in it. In the back room I added a little fenced area with some equipment, plus a bunch of stacked palettes.

I should point out that I did not model the gun here, I'm not quite that good yet :p Though I did model the shells that are being ejected from the wrong place!

I also fixed the materials so that they work right with the lighting system (i.e. specular highlights from all 4 office lights on the floor and desk, etc).


This is sort of a buildup from a sandbox and I'm gradually adding some features from the main core as I go along. So by the time I finish modeling this mission area, I'll have most of the gameplay features merged in, and you'll be able to get a good idea of what the game is all about. Then we'll finally start showing off some of the other stuff that the real artists are working on.






Also I started learning how to do some character modeling this week. I managed to model a naked woman with a lumpy butt and no head, that otherwise looked pretty okay, with about 1500 polys. I'm not going to bother posting up lumpy butt's portfolio, but maybe by the time of my next blog I'll actually have a character to laugh at.


I figured I'll start throwing out some tips that I've encountered during my learning endeavors in these blogs. I am mainly using 3D Studio Max 2009 and Photoshop CS3, so most of my tips will probably be specific to these tools, but some will be general purpose tips. I'll try to post 5 tips in each blog.

Tip #1: Need reference material for something you want to model? Sites like Flickr, Photobucket, etc are great for that. You can find professional quality photos from various angles of just about anything you could ever want (if it exists in the real world). They can also be used to make some nice textures, but just make sure you check your licensing, and get permission from the owners where necessary. I've found that the few that I've asked have been more than happy to oblige.

Tip #2: Speaking of textures, www.cgtextures.com is a *great* place to grab some great free textures. Mostly they're photographic textures, and aren't seamless, but they can be great starting points. You can fiddle with them in Photoshop to make them seamless if you want, or many of them are useful for discrete objects that don't need tiled textures, just like they are.

Tip #3: If you use Photoshop, learn to use the Healing Tool, the Patch Tool, the Color Replacement brush, and the various "adjustment layers". These are great for taking rough photograph textures that are almost right, and turning them into exactly what you want for game friendly goodness.

Tip #4: If you use Max, and want to cut something in half, or into multiple parts, such as for destructible objects, or pieces that fit together like a puzzle for whatever reason, then check out the ProCutter tool under Compound Objects. Very useful.

Tip #5: This is also Max related, but not directly related to modeling. I've had some questions about this asked a few times, and I've seen many posts about it on various Max forums with no resolution given, so I'll throw it out there.

If you use Mental Ray with Global Illumination in Max (and I presume in Maya too, though I haven't messed with that yet), to bake textures for ambient occlusion maps, light maps, whatever, and you're having trouble getting the same output baked as what you see in your scene render, you'll want to turn off all exposure controls for your scene and setup your lighting so that it looks good without them. It takes a bit more work to get the lighting right, but you'll know what you'll be getting from your baked textures will be exactly the same as what you see in your normal renders, so it will save you time in the long run. The exposure controls are all viewport dependent so they don't work right when baking, and everything will seem overexposed or splotchy in your baked renderings if you setup your lighting using them.


More next week.

Cheers.