Moments of Consequence Update

Just a quick update :)

The team is working together great and we now have a new recruit:

Jacqueline Blundell our Production Designer who has put together a couple of pretty cool room designs for the final environment.  

The design has changed quite a bit from the initial paranormal activity pitch.  We have axed the static camera system in favour of spending more time on the dramatic last scene where Cass tries to convince her Mother about the strange stuff happening in the house.  I would still like to implement the static cameras and the recording gameplay but maybe at another date.

So the script is shaping up well, I have finished all 3 characters and Jacqueline has completed all the drawings for the environment.  Next stage is to build the environment in Max which is quite a big task since I want to make all the drawers, aga, windows, doors etc to work like real world objects.  e.g the windows have to be able to blast open and the door has to be able to come off its hinges.. This has actually been much more fun than I thought, its a bit more work than my usual level design but when you start to play around with moving doors and sliding curtains it starts to feel really real. Can't wait to have it textured and lit!!

Here are the completed characters

Moments of Consequence Update

Ok so tomorrow is the first group presentation for the Moments of Consequence project.  My team is totally on board with the idea of doing a Paranormal Activity style twist to the game so I guess I can unveil the bare bones of the story :)
Above is Cass fully rigged, Skinned and with a bunch of phonemes and emotions that all seem to be working great!
I currently have a team of 4, including myself.  We have Jon Harbottle working as writer and Sam Bank and Helene Sifre as Producers.  Sam is also going to do some of the music too which is a key part of establishing the theme.  I am also hoping to recruit a production designer to consult with for the level design and set dressing which I hope to hear about soon.
So far the story beats involve an initial set up explaining our main characters back story and current motivations then diving straight into the paranormal!! The second act will be filled with gameplay in which the player has to switch between static cameras set up around the house and use their limited recording ability to try and catch evidence to prove to the parents that they have to leave the house, culminating in a few alternate endings depending on the players choices!
So 4 weeks of production till the deadline and i'm hoping to get 2 more characters, an environment and the gameplay sorted.. no problem :)

Moments of Consequence Update

Just a quick update for the Moments of Consequence project, I have been working on Cass for a few days.  I completely redid the face since it looked way too old, this did mean deviating from the concept art a bit having tried lots of shapes out in Zbrush that didn't look good in 3D.  The new Cass has been, re-topologised,  colored, normal mapped and is now gonna be rigged yay! I guess ill be able to see how well my topology worked soon, I do expect it to need tweaking but I hope not too much... famous last words :p

I really like character modeling! but there is still so much more I want to learn with Zbrush I feel like I could do so much better if I were to complete a few Digital Tutors tutorials or maybe a more official short course in character modeling... just wish I had the time! this Moments of Consequence project is gonna be hard to complete in the time frame anyway... guess that makes it exactly the same as every other project I have worked on at the NFTS though :p.

Synthespians Final

So the Synthespians project is officially over and i'm now working on the early stages of Moments of Consequence (the last project for the first year!)
This was a pretty tough project to get done in the short time frame especially since I wanted to do a bespoke environment to test how much I had learnt in the last few months.  I am pretty happy with the final product, not so great on the gameplay front but I have learnt a lot in terms of environment building and texturing for a low poly stylised World of Warcraft style environment! I think I will do more of this kinda stuff in the future since it was so fun :)
I managed to finish off a stone tile, stone wall, wood, metal and cloth painted texture for this environment but I was sticking quite close to  my reference photos so when I have more time I would like to also try and build some custom textures from actual photos instead :) anyway here are some of the screen grabs
     (you will have to forgive the rather dull lighting since my Unity [not unity pro] cant do deferred lighting).  The video however was made from my school computer and has the actual lighting I wanted for the final product.  I will have to look into this cos Unity standard's lighting does not look good, (well at least I cant make it look good) So I guess that is a good enough excuse to move on and to try UDK or Cryengine instead, we will see, I think i'm stuck for Moments of Consequence for now though.

Intro splashscreen

Really liked how the large teeth turned out for the main stage!

The Thriller Jacket was really fun to make in Iclone! quite challenging since most of it was made with an original image with a lot of warping and painting in PS.

A look at the gameplay, you (representing the crowd) choose whether Zombie Jeff is doing a good job or not, leading to different animations and endings based on the crowds reactions.

Thank you Mixamo! for the actual Thriller dance animation! really helped! though combining Mixamo with Iclone animations was not easy ;p I wrote out the workflow on an a4 page and it took something like 10 steps from Iclone out to max then Mixamo, 3Dexchange and back etc!

A look at the zombie crowd, I didn't model these guys they were free but I did have to re-rig and animate them since the fbx had been rigged with a different modifier rather than skin which unfortunately doesn't export to Unity.  The crowd have a rather simple AI they will either Idle, raise a glass, boo or sleep depending on the players perceived performance.  When the whole audience is asleep the player has lost!

Yay for barrels! a shout out to Ben Cowell-Thomas our 3D guru who taught me how to properly build my first barrel back in January.

The sad ending where upon realizing he has sent the whole audience to sleep out protagonist trudges off stage.

My ever so slightly complex animator allowing for Zombie Jeff to progress through each verse but also switch out to play a nervous hand through hair animation if he is doing particularly badly.  This probably wont mean much to anyone who hasn't worked with Unity but it took a long time to get right.  

One big take away from this project, for me, was to stay as far away from Iclone as possible!.  It is a great piece of software for pre-vis but if you'r using Unity I personally think that's where it should stop!  I ran into so many issues trying to get Jeff into Unity and animate correctly that I knew I could fix if I had made the animations bespoke in Max or Maya.  I was freaking out a little bit when we only had a few hours till presentation and he wouldn't stay on his mark!  I guess the bottom line is that without Iclone there is no way I could have pulled off this project at all in the time frame but if I was going to show this off properly as a finished piece it would mean building a new character in Max and Zbrush and rigging and animating him from scratch! Maybe that's me being picky but there are just too many issues that apparently dont have any fixes and it just put me off Iclone as a tool for anything beyond pre-vis..