Natural Selection II Alien Structures
polycounter lvl 14
Hey, guys! Just wanted to pimp a little work I've done for Natural Selection II from Unknown Worlds.
My work was to refine the lowpoly, unwrap, bake and texture.
It was a fun and unusual task to convey different kinds of organic surfaces.
To get the base texture for this fella I actually had to scan a piece of ham out of my refrigerator. Times like that I love my job even more=)
That's Whip and he is an alien turret. Here's the description from the development blog.
And this thing is an incubator for alien structures, where they "grow".
This organic, wet, semi-transparent stuff is interesting to do, because its believability totally depends on use of all the different textures that make a material. Here are Whips' textures as an example:
I actually did one more alien structure that I am not allowed to show yet, so I'll post it sometime later I hope.
Anyway, thanks for watching guys, hope you like it. And yeah special thanks to Den Fox and Unknown Worlds for the opportunity.
Cheers!
My work was to refine the lowpoly, unwrap, bake and texture.
It was a fun and unusual task to convey different kinds of organic surfaces.
To get the base texture for this fella I actually had to scan a piece of ham out of my refrigerator. Times like that I love my job even more=)
That's Whip and he is an alien turret. Here's the description from the development blog.
And this thing is an incubator for alien structures, where they "grow".
This organic, wet, semi-transparent stuff is interesting to do, because its believability totally depends on use of all the different textures that make a material. Here are Whips' textures as an example:
I actually did one more alien structure that I am not allowed to show yet, so I'll post it sometime later I hope.
Anyway, thanks for watching guys, hope you like it. And yeah special thanks to Den Fox and Unknown Worlds for the opportunity.
Cheers!
Replies
Is that rainbow color in the spec how you got the textures to look iridescent?
Gotta say the way the whip has a slightly thinner connection to its base has always bothered me, but that's a design decision I guess.
as a fan I am really interested in what the first and last... things... are. :P
And yep the colored spec pretty much gets the job done. You put a little color into the diffuse, make sure there's enough variation and then you really crank it up in the specular. You could also place some very subtle different colored blobs into the illumination map to add another "layer" of color variety.
crazyfingers, thanks, I'm really glad you love it!
Huge thanks,fearian.
The top part of the Whip is supposed to rotate around the bottom, so maybe thinner "neck" makes more sense that way.
Well, I hope I don't get my balls busted for this, But I'm pretty sure I saw those things in the alpha.
As far as I get it the first one is supposed to be an alien spawn point. Aliens hatch from it
The last one is a similar egg, only for alien structures.
Its a shame the Alpha is in a bit of a state right now, I've put off playing it until its running smoother :P
And nevertheless I think the guys are doing a great job, with their very open development strategy. Gives a whole new value to pre-ordering.=)
Are you going to apply some distortion to the outer shells of your mesh? As it is now, those alien-things inside look a bit too clear for my taste.
Thank you,vofff! Thas was a really amazing thing to hear. I worked hard!
Thanks,teaandcigarettes. I'm glad you dig.
I'm not really sure If I got your question right.) Do you mean the the mesh should be distorted a bit? Or the there should an actual distortion map like in UDK that "twists" the pixels seen through a transparent object? Or do you just think the whole thing was too transparent?)
But whatever the question is, the answer would still be "no".=) because the client has required his textures exactly the way they are and if it's going to be changed it's doesn't depend on me anymore.
It might be a little unexpected, but those are rendered with default scanline renderer=)
Firstly because the games' Normal Map tangent base is the same as scanlines'. And secondly the engine is still in the works and I haven't seen transparency support in it just yet.