Lights and Buildings

Interesting week.  I feel I've done barely anything except watch tutorials trying to figure out this mess they call 3DS Max.

On the plus side, I've managed to create my first skyscraper for City of Rain:

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After taking this picture I soon removed all the window panels and will be replacing it with tinted glass that should reflect the environment in real time.

My other little project this week was educating myself on custom lights.  I searched around the forums and youtube's only to come up short.  No one was talking about how to make a custom light.  So I played around in the engine for a bit and stumbled on why....

Cause it's as easy as clicking a button to turn anything into a light....even text.

Once I found this out, my mind raced with idea's.  This is going to be awesome!

3DS Max

BEHOLD!

I made a fan. :-p

If you are wondering why it's so wonderfully crappy and multi-colored, it's because I have not added any textures of materials to the outside yet.  That is a project best left for tomorrow morning. I'll post a update for it when it is done tomorrow.

P.S., This took me about two hours (with tutorials) to complete.  *cough*

Day 1 and 2

Last night I started my long faze of video game development.  After a long debate with myself on what engine to use to best serve my needs, I ended up choosing CryEngine 3.  The outdoor graphics and ease of the editor were my tipping points.

So after three weeks of watching tutorials and waiting for my new macbook pro to be shipped to me, last night I finally got the chance to test out the waters by turning one of feature film scripts into a video game (City of Rain).

Here is a pic from the level dev I did last night:

Pretty basic and simple.  A mountainous valley.  Nothing special. Inside the valley there will be a thriving city called "RAIN" that is only open at night.  

I decided to start easy and work on trees, veg and grass first.  After a day of doing chores and playing around, this is the result I got:

Needless to say, I am pretty happy with the results.  I hope that by the end of the month I'll have my thriving city built, working and populated.  (If I don't get called on too many more film projects this month.)