Feed me back please :D

si-man

Hi all, in this thread I will be posting work from my final year project ( Im nearly done studying games art at teesside university). This project aims to create an environment inspired by the art style of the WipEput franchise, whilst maintaining its own unique identity. I would really appreciate any feedback since I want the best possible end result!

si-man

]So, like I said, WipEout is the main inspiration here, but I want to give it my own twist. With this in mind I started concepting and developing some pre-vis material to get started. I decided upon a futuristic ship construction factory (like those car production lines we have today) with lots of mechanical arms and heavy industrial stuff to fly through.

si-man

Once I had an initial idea of where I was going I started to think about how I was gonna lay this environment out and break it down. I knew I wanted to create a world of contrasts, light and dark, open and confined spaces, clean and dirty. With this in mind I came up with some track layouts, taking inspiration from wipeout, of course, but also looking at motorcross and F1 tracks as well. By understanding their limitations, I had a better idea of how I could break them with bottlenecks, big sweeping corners, and corkscrews.



http://simonwentfyp.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-28-07-34.jpg?w=1000&h=

IchII3D

I'm confused, have you just started your final year project with only weeks to go or is this going to be a blog you slowly add to as you collate all your material?

In terms of the work so far its has some interesting inspiration, not to sure about the whole F1 tracks inspiration. Sounds like just some random gibberish to talk about in your dissertation. I would have recommended white boxing up a corridor flow, would have probably been quicker and more productive than doing it on paper.

EDIT: *facepalm* didn't see you mention it was a racing concept. All the concepts pointed towards corridors. I thought you was doing a walk through dynamically changing areas.

si-man

Now, with an initial layout and a plan forming, I started construction. I decided to build the the world around the track, and so it was important to nail the track first. I ended up using a combination of lofted track sections and modular environment assets so that the track felt more integrated into its environment. I had a model ship I built last summer which kick started this whole project off, and so I chucked it into UDK and set it up (with some help from a friend, it was harder than I expected getting a custom vehicle going in there!)so I could fly around the track and get a feel for the scale of things and making compositional thumbs of the environment:


http://simonwentfyp.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/racer1_1.jpg?w=2000&h=

si-man

Ok, so with stuff gettin thrown into UDK it was time to start takin a closer look at how I was gonna break this environment down into modular assets. I know that modularity is powerful, and what with this bein a futuristic industrial world, it should be a straightforward environment to break down. I started off by looking at interesting shapes that would complement the feeling of speed as the viewer moves through them. I jottted down some of the best repetitive shapes I came up with and started thinking about how I could best present them in game. Being futuritic, I knew that hard surface modelling was gonna be a strong tool in my kit, and so decided to focus getting the most from this process as possible. I love sculpting, but in terms of speeed and practicality, I didnt think it would the best way to go here.

si-man

At this stage I was keeping things pretty loose in terms of the overall shape and design of the environment. I was concentrating more on producing 'chunks' and shapes that gave the suggestion of of larger structures and could be reused and combined in as many ways as possible rather than focusing on making one specific structure. This gave me alot more wiggle room when It came to putting the whole thing together in udk, it was a bit like making my own lego!

si-man

once I had a decent collection of modular pieces I could start arranging them into larger structure in udk, creating prefabs out of the combinations that worked best or playing around with unique combinations to create indiviual structures:

si-man

with the environment coming along nicely I decided I need a couple of other things to help set the scene off nicely. Firstly I needed some robotic arms and and a couple of ships to bring the place to life a bit more:

Makkon

Subscribed. Whoa.

si-man

So, this is about where Im at at the moment, just made my own skydome, had fun messing around with the r,g,b channels to get the stars twinkling and experimented with lofting strips of polys just under the sky dome and making a moving space traffic texture with larger fast moving ships on the red channel and smaller slower moving ships on the green, giving the impression of depth, and intermittent flashing emmisive lights using sine nodes to bring it to life a bit more




You can see more of my work at my portfolio here: http://simonwentbananas.wix.com/portfolio# and my FYP blog here: http://simonwentfyp.wordpress.com/
I will be trying to update regularly on here, as well as my blog and portfolio, any crits or ideas would be very weclome, cheers

si-man

Oh, right, yeah, got a few videos on you tube as well, matinee and video editing are two things ive only just started to pick up though, so apologies for any bits that look a bit , the video is still a work in progress, im only posting it for feedback! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBVIJMZGgg4

si-man

hey Ichll3d, thanks for replying! Yeah, I may not have been totally clear eplaining my project, it is near completeion but in my dissitation I need to include a critical report on what could have been done better, including critical feedback from peers and forums like this!
The initial concepts did represent very linear spaces, like corridors rather than obvious track sections, but I was trying to establish an overall aesthetic for the environment. This might be a good opportunity to assess whether or not my initial concepts and designs clearly communicated the ideas I was try put forward! If anyone's got any tips on concepting race tracks that would be nice!
I'll also take a closer look at whiteboxing as well!!

Anyways, thanks for your input man, really appreciated

minorthreat

wow, looks incredible so far! Sorry I don't really have any crits, but this stuff is really cool.

si-man

Thanks minorthreat! its been a lot of hard work, but its finally handed in! Not as finished as I would have liked, but Im gonna try and polish it a bit more over the summer, things to adress are indications of scale, more detail in some of the areas,more variation in the billboards, and some better edited videos! here are some of the latest updates on the project, last minute touches included refinement of the animated signs, scaffolding to help tie the scene together and create some cool shadow effects, and a more refined track texture for the forcefield sections that included chevrons, as per the wipeout aesthetic:

cupsster

Hmm for wipeout aesthetics is little dark and too massive I think.

barnesy

That is a crazy amount of work to have done for a FYP so congrats!.....All I made was a character and I am now ashamed of myself.

urgaffel

si-man wrote: »

Those are my favourite shots. The first one beacuse I like the lighting and the detailing, the second one because it's the closest to the Wipeout look (in my opinion). Impressive amount of work but the lighting needs a bit of work since it's very dark in places and quite hard to tell where the track is going. And as Cupsster said, it's not quite Wipeout. But it's one hell of an achievement, very impressive.