Monday, November 28, 2011

Ship Design for "Sector Lords"

As a large part of my work for Ascent Games, I've designed concepts for several classes of ships including cruiser, heavy strike craft (bomber), battleship, colony ship, and even the largest ship in the game: the behemoth class. This usually involves a lot of preliminary sketch ideas!




From the sketches, a suitable design was chosen by the art director and from that I made more finished renders with orthographic information for the 3D modelers to create in-game assets.



Saturday, November 12, 2011

C't Magazine for Computer Technology

Our game, "Vestige" has been featured in the German C't magazine along with other neat independent game developer's works. A CD with a downloadable version of the all games, including ours, came with it. This is great, we are published!


Here's a cropping of the article in it's fullness (it spanned a few pages).



Yes, it's in German! I haven't gone through and translated it but I know what our description in English was, so it is a bit easier to understand knowing that. Also, the picture basically states (and this is just me trying to read German): "In Vestige, the heroine has to shut down energy blockades and other traps by sending holographic images of herself to fool them."

Thank you very much, C't Magazine!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Triton's Edge Concept

This is a concept painting I did for a friend's 3D project.

"Set in an off-world and recently abandoned water treatment facility: the "Triton Edge Complex" had once supplied desert fuel-mining colonies with absolutely necessary water from deep mining wells. In such an environment where the key to these colonies' survival was so obviously water, it only made sense that this facility would be the first target of an opposing power's greedy eye. It now stands as a monument to the importance of colony defense."

This first step was my initial quick pencil and basic color concept to decide what sort of viewpoint, blending interior and exterior spaces, we were trying to achieve.


From here, my friend John created this simple geometry (below) in Maya and sent me many angles to decide upon, from which I agreed to paint over this one:


First, I began by blocking in general light sources and suggestions of where the most detail would be.


And soon after, using the perspective already apparent in the 3D geometry, begin to add in objects, color, and more detail. After this point, pictured below, everything has already been set up and it is just a matter of time and effort put into detailing. We also wanted to maintain a rusty feel, hence the predominant rust color and rough textures.



Finally, after approximately two hours total, the piece is ready to be used as a reference to be modeled and textured!

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Vestige Paintover II

Another paint-over I did for our game project "Vestige."
www.vestigethegame.com

Starting from step one, you see the basic screenshot taken by the modelers in order that I can, through the paint-over, give them a sense of a possible lighting scheme and detail enhancements without loosing the overall feel of the already established room. From with what I develop and the team agrees upon, the lighters will begin their work lighting up this 3D space in the game engine.


In the above screenshot, we can judge the space appropriately and see where the light sources should be by seeing where the light-fixture models are and already being able to see stand-in light sources to support them. A natural light source, the vertical pipe opening that is causing that vapor to light up and cast light on the ground, is also present but in need of refinement.

Now, what I do next to this image is add in more direct lighting and also suggestions of items to fill this otherwise scarce area. The purpose of paint-overs is also to shape the space and add believability to it. It should be obvious that this is an area constructed for a specific purpose. In this case, a maintenance access hallway. So things that should be present are pipes, access hatches, machinery, etc. This stuff is present but needs to be enhanced in a way that it all doesn't just look slapped together but planned and complex.


Here we can see the lights begin to have a volumetric quality, meaning the light they emit is almost tangible because of the atmosphere the steam-powered equipment is filling the room with. Also, detail like the more crude texture on the stonework, graffiti, extra/uneven piping, and wires hanging from the ceiling give it the desired "operational but abandoned" feel we were going for. The image at this stage is still rather desaturated and it isn't immediately apparent that there are both natural and florescent lighting schemes at play.


In the final image, more contrast and warm natural/yellow lighting brings the near areas forward in space and the florescent and colder visuals recede.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Vestige Paintovers

Hello! Herb here.
Just getting into the blog scene!

Here I'll share with you all how I created Visual Targets to assist environment artists on our team. These are images taken from our game, "Vestige," a first-person story-driven puzzle game set in a neo-Roman society.

Step one of the paintover process is to take the base screen shot of what the current level looked like (this was taken during the alpha version earlier this year).


 Step two, I adjusted the tone and color of the level to bring out some difference in space and to emphasize the areas that are important to the player. Here you can still see some areas of the level have not yet been addressed; this step is dealing with lighting and overall areas that need to be blocked out.


Step three, I refine finer details. Things like the completely darkened out ceiling "crushers" (these were black because of some lighting complication the team was dealing with in UDK). I also addressed the room to the right, which needed to be toned down and needed to also be emitting light into the station. Small details, like the gate in the distance and some refined wall texturing in the arch and the subway walls, are added here. As it is now, it is still not done. The lighting seems a little off, I heard this referred to once as "Skittle Lighting," where it seems like you just picked cool colors but they are conflicting.


In this next step, I observe the picture as a whole, in black and white, to make sure the values are working overall. This step is repeated many times during the paintover process.


At this point, the values work. The colors still need to be reckoned with, however, and this was achieved by lowering the saturation and adjusting the color of the yellow lights to make them less contrasting the the rest of the lighting scheme.

Using this image, the team was able to change the look of the level in this area and similar areas to assist the way the player navigates the map. It also makes environments a lot prettier. Here is the station, now re-lit and textured for the final game:



Thanks for checking this out!