XCOM Speed Models for Concept

Essynim

Back in the day, we did some concept work for what would later become XCOM The Bureau. These were a series of models that I made to pass over to the concept team. 2K sent over the original concepts for these guys and we were to create upgrades and add-ons. To make things easier, I did a quick model of the concepts so the 2d guys could keyshot and paint over them from different angles, sped up the production a crazy amount. Each one of these took only bout an hour or two, was able to pump them out to the team super fast since I didn't have to deal with unwrapping or textures at all. In the end the concepts came out pretty well and iteration wasn't an issue.

danjohncox

These are great! What software did you use to render these? And how did this work in the pipeline? were you just designing these off the cuff as you modelled? Or did you get early sketches from concept and create these for the concept guys so they could concept out surfaces? This seems like MORE work than normal, but I think I'm just misunderstanding the setup.

Regardless, these are awesome!

Essynim

it would start with original concepts from the main team. I was working at another studio (Massive Black) at the time and they contracted us to do additional concept work for them. Some of the items they had already modeled and some hadn't yet been created. So they sent us the original concept art and asked for upgrade concepts and addons to the exisitng assets, and they wanted multiple angles, more than what the original concept art had so it wasn't just gonna be a paintover job. So to make things faster they had me do a quick mockup in 3d, then they could go in and render out a bunch of angles from KeyShot and paintover those. This sped things up a lot since each asset was only about an hour or 2 to bust out, and by the time the concept team was scheduled to start working on this project, they already had a library of 3d assets to use so they didn't have to worry bout any blockin or perspective stage, just simple material swipe and render from KeyShot and straight on into paintover concepts.

These were rendered using Modo.