Abandoned Park

Gutentag, Skyride Studios has been super busy as of late and we couldn't be happier.  Here's a few things to catch you up on our development process:

Last week we worked on the beginning of a park you will explore in the middle of the game.  This park is hidden and surrounded by buildings.  The only way to get in, is to go through a old abandoned building.  Here's a few screen caps of the park so far:

Since this park will be visited at night time, we've added a bunch of christmas lights through the walkway to guide you along your way.  There's even a old rusted playground to go play on.....IF YOU DARE.  MUHAHAHHAHAHAHAH *cough cough*


We've also added a video up on the youtube's so you can check out some of the beginning gameplay of the game.  Everything is still a work in progress and rest assured that the final version will be much more pretty.  This was a test to basically figure out some coding on daylight changing/ text helpers and checkpoints.  Check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO0rgFkWCbk

Other than that, Skyride has also been working on a super secret project that we aren't allowed to announce yet, but once we are, we will be glad to share it with all of you.

Have a great night and I'll chat with you later, Screen Slavers.

Mansion

What's that you ask?  Where I have I been for almost a month?  Only modeling this crazy mansion.  This will be the mansion where the owner of the city lives.  Just a little shack.  Allow me to walk you through.

Here's the front of the mansion (see that tiny doorway in the front, that's about the size your character will be):

Once you walk in, you get this view (interior isn't complete):

From upstairs it looks like this:

In the middle of the building is a outside courtyard (this is looking down from the roof:

And finally in the back of the mansion where there will be a lush garden:

So as you can tell, I've spent a fair amount of time on the details, adapting about 12-15 pictures of actual mansions with features I liked.  The inside shouldn't take me too much longer, and then I will add chandeliers, huge fireplaces, etc.  Really "Citizen Kane" the hell out of the building.  

If you don't know what Citizen Kane is, it's a movie.  Go watch it.

City of Lights

Here are a few images from the status of the project.  I have probably about 4 more buildings to create before I can start getting into the design of the city and also work on the textures of the buildings.   Enjoy.

Dark city alleyway

So I've been playing around with some props lately, trying to put detail into the city and get it ready for characters.  The first area I decided to play around with was one of the alleyways between two buildings.  After some fun production design and lighting, here's a first pass on what it looks like:

Obviously there is still a lot of work to do but I am pretty happy with the result.  Next I will decorate a shop in one of the buildings and see how that turns out.

Later crazies.

Lost a day...kinda

So today my goal was to learn how to make all my props and custom buildings physical.

Not like that you pervs.....

Basically put, all my buildings at the moment are like ghosts.  You can walk right through them without a problem.  You can even shoot a missile at them and watch as it blows up the hill behind them.  (Ignore the creepily professional floating house in the background)

Soooo I watched a tutorial on how to make it so that they are solid objects that you can collide into and shoot at.  After watching the video I said "Simple."  I should've known better.

Here is a link in case you want to try it out:   https://vimeo.com/35828945

Just kidding.  Here's the real link:  http://eat3d.com/free/cryengine_3dsmax

For some reason, now matter what I did, I couldn't get the Proxies (which make the building solid) working on my level.  Even after all the steps I took and followed to the note, my buildings still remained walk-through-able.

When I went into the test level (the level that comes with the game engine) and put my buildings in there, they worked just as they were suppose to.  I thought for sure I had accidently clicked or didn't click the wrong/right setting but after hours of looking around I couldn't find much.  I thought "Well, maybe it's a bug on my level.  I guess I'll just have to make a new one."  But even when I had started to make my new City of Rain level I quickly tested the building again and it worked.  I said "F&%^ THIS!" and went back into my old level.  I remembered reading something about how the tree's in the level were messing up another guys proxies so I deleted all the tree's and guess what....now the buildings work and take damage:

I'm just glad I didn't have to start all over on another level because if I added back those tree's without knowing they were the cause of the problem, I'd probably run outside and punch a midget.

So all in all I lost a day to this little project.  The of many I assume.....

City Complete

So yesterday I just finished texturing my last building for the main road.  Here are pics of the 13 remaining buildings:

I can't begin to describe how awesome it is to have my default character run around town.  All the small squares in the front of the buildings will be shops along with street vendors, shoppers, gangs, strip clubs, casinos, etc.

My next step is to start adding props and people into the city, so first I will start laying down roads, trees, streetlights, vendor carts, etc.  Then after that, I'll take a small break to learn Autodesk Mudbox so I can start creating my own people to inhabit into the city.

In total there are 25 buildings that I made from scratch and textured.  I total, from learning the programs til now, this has taken me ~3 months to achieve.  (5 if you include the time I had to take off to pay the bills)

I'm expecting characters to take me another 2-3 to complete with props taking about 1-2 months in addition.

That leaves me with 4 months to complete animation and recording of the video for release in November to be pitched at the American Film Market.

So far I'm on track as long as my day job doesn't eat up too much free time this year.

4 down. 13 to go.

Hey.  So I've been slaving away working on these buildings still.  I found a new better way to texture them using UVW Unwrap which allows me to put the textures into photoshop and add multiple ones over others to help blend them better instead of just looking like a repeating pattern.  Downside is, it takes a lot longer to do so my process hasn't sped up like I'd hoped.  As a treat, here are the new 4 buildings I've done:

I'm still gonna try to finish them all by then end of the month, but I might be a week off because of work.  Still going strong though and can't wait to be done with these and onto bigger and better learning experiences.

My novel got published!

Hey everyone, my novel, "Oblivion Girl" got published as a eBook.  If you have a ipad, kindle, nook, sony reader or even just a computer, you can download it and take a read!  Coming soon it will be available also at the Apple bookstore, Amazon store and more!  Visit here to download now:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/275799

Building Buildings

Hello again.  I thought I'd take a small break and show some pictures of the buildings I've done so far along with close up shots of the detains that I've been putting into them.  I found with all the detail I am trying to add, each building takes a day to texture.  Also I've been slacking a little on the texturing because in a few days, I'm going to be publishing a book I wrote and had to go back through it again to make sure it's all ready to go.  Once it's online, I'll make a post about it here, even though it's not game related.  It will be published for Apple ipads and iphones, Amazon Kindles and PDF form for computers.

But enough about that for right now, on to the good stuff.  Here is wide shot of each building with a close up shot of the texturing it below:

So, there you have it, the first 7 buildings.

Keep an eye out for my book post coming soon!

Buildings Are Boring

I've been working my butt off trying to finish these buildings, however my progress is going at snails pace even though I've been putting a lot of long days into the process.  Here is a sneak peek:

I have 6 buildings finished and 19 more to go.  The one above took me all day to texture.  It only has roughly 23 different textures on the single building but the process is grueling.


1.  I search for a texture I like either in my texture library or online.
2.  I then bring it into photoshop and resize it, color correct it and if need be blend the edges and save it.
3.  I then have to re-tweak the image for again for highlights and save that as a separate file.
4.  Then I apply it in 3DS Max and work on the way it fits onto the building by pushing and pulling it around, (Giggity)
5.  And then I repeat that over and over 23 times and then I have one building done...........this is going to take me longer than I expected.  I'm exhausted after just explaining it.

I'm gonna go take a break.  Later crazies.

I'm bbbaaaacccckkkkkk

Hello all. Hope your holiday season was as relaxing as mine.  Ok, enough small talk.  Here's what's up:

This week I'm going to be working on texturing all the buildings I've made in the past two months.  The picture above is a small example of one I did today.  I'm hoping that the process gets more streamlined the more hours I work on it and that I get 5-8 buildings done a day towards the end of this coming week.  

Once that's all said and done, I'm going to start working on characters and motion capture (aka "mocap") while trying to implement lighting/prop/signs into the street. (that should only take a few months).  

After that it's on to animation, recording, editing and then posting the final product video.  

Sure, it doesn't sound like too much, but I'm expecting to hit my deadline of june/july.  I can't wait to show you all the finished product I have in my head that is slowly coming together.  

Well, just wanted to give you all a little late holiday present.  Until next time!

Buildings are done!

Well, done being modeled that is.  Here is a early x-mas present for all you naughty boys and girls:

(Sorry about the shaky video....it's not my fault...but it is....)

So now that all 25 of those hand crafted beauties are made the next step is to add textures to them such as brick, stone, wood, etc to make them not look like clay anymore.

I'm going to be out of commission for a bit cause of my day job, but I'm hoping to have these all textured by the end of Dec.  I'll try to give another update in a few weeks.

P.S.  To all my foreign viewers (people outside the USA), thanks for keeping up on the blog. I hope you've been enjoying it.  Feel free to contact me through email with questions/concerns or just to chat at:  will@skyridestudios.com

100% sure I've completed 50%

What's that?  I haven't posted for 2 weeks and you miss me.  Don't worry loyal minions, I haven't strangled myself quite yet.

In the past two weeks I've been getting calls for my day job while also modeling buildings.  Here's what I got so far:

A good start to a awesome city.  Here's some more to wet your whistle:

I even took some night time shots with temporary lights.  Don't say I never gave you nothin':

Even though these buildings are in the level now, all of them still need to be textured and tweaked to look juuuuussssstttt right.  I should be done with modeling these by the end of the month.  By the first of the year they all should be textured with signs (hopefully) and a lot of the assets starting to be placed around.

So was it worth the wait? Yeah, I know it was.  You're welcome.