Shop til you drop!

So today my goal was to create a rough draft version of a store for my video game (along with my ongoing mission of completing my collision proxies for my buildings.)

So without further ado, I present to you:

The Garden of Weeden.  Haha!!!

Just wanted to play around more with the lighting and see how it all looked together.  Obviously the store still looks a bit empty so I'll have to keep playing around with it, but you get the general idea.

Well, until next time!

-Will
www.skyridestudios.com

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.

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. 

Buildings 3-5

Here are the models for buildings 3-5. 

They aren't all suppose to be super fancy.  Some of them will just be far in the background and needed for more ambience than anything.

I know it's hard to tell what they will turn out to look like in the end, but try to imagine something along the lines of this:

At least....that's the goal.  Very much still in the beginning stages but once the buildings are in, textured and a lot of the props are applied, this city is gonna start looking good.

Buildings 2-3

I've added models of two new buildings to my level:

I havent textured them yet.  I think I am going to wait until I have all the building models in the game engine first and then will go one by one and texture them.  I also almost finished a third building, but it isn't quite ready to bring into the game yet, so you'll have to wait for the next post.

I've also realized that my roads are too wide, so once I get the buildings in the level (which should be done by the end of November) then ill show a screen shot from a bird-eye-view and let you see everything in action.

Victory!

I am excited to announce I have successfully modeled, textured and implemented my very first object in my very first game.

Here are the results:


BEFORE:

















AFTER:

As you can see, the building and textures in the before pic are the same are the same as the after, but this after version has color correction added to each texture to help make it look more pleasing and blend.

I don't think it turned out half bad.  I have a little more work left to do on it.  Need to add more details into the textures and also do more with the lighting later on, but other than that, I think it looks pretty cool.  Can't wait to add more buildings and start populating this place.

...you know what I mean...