Thanks Roostermap! Ooh sorry for the delay in response guys, not getting any notifications since the polycount update it seems. Grooveholmes, I did initially just take shots hand held against the eye piece... surprisingly good results even from that, but now I have an adapter to attach my DSLR to the microscope instead.
I've been a bit unwell recently which has slowed down some of my work, however I've been sketching up some more enemy Hunter Gatherer machine designs....
Today I took a break from earthly based work to start a rough block out of one of the main characters ships, The Science Rig. A sensor laden vessel. The scale of the aliens (around 1mm tall, for the uninitiated) means that this ship is about the size of a car in human terms. This means that I have to design the ship differently from how a full sized human scale sci-fi vessel.
For instance, In order to communicate over long distances requires a decent sized antenna, I cannot just place a tiny antenna on the ship and expect that to have any range - so here a good portion of the ships shape contributes towards housing a huge Parabolic Antenna at a scale that is meaningful (if the ship was to be actually built in reality). This design will change a lot as I block out further and add all required systems.
I haven't decided on the power/propulsion systems yet but I'll likely keep them relatively grounded in reality and stay away from theoretical methods.
Wow... You've put such a crazy amount of hours on this work... This is mind blowing, and the idea behind it... Really astonishing !!! How many people are working on this actually ?
Executex and _Kratos_: I'm the only full timer working on this at the moment (well, I actually work during the day freelance and then moonlight on this project) in the evening generally. Aside from paying myself enough to pay the rent, all money I earn as a freelancer is saved up for the past couple of years. Now that I have some working capital I'm hiring contractors to help move things along faster but they tend to be hired for specific tasks as and when needed at the moment. For 2016 I want to really ramp up properly and bring on more consistant help to get the prototype in a playable state ASAP! From there I have a few different potential options for some proper funding but I've not entirely settled on the method yet.
Hi James. About the sounds that you used in the "Early POD locomotion concept animations" video. I love the ones from the enemy drone and shooting effects, are this sounds made by you ? If so, what sound editor do you use ? Do you know any websites where I can find this kind of cool robot sounds ? Thanks.
Yep, the enemy drone sounds are pretty much made by recording my voice and modifying / layering those recordings. For instance, the "scanning" voice was pretty simple, I just spoke like a dalek and added some pitch correction / filtering. The "hovering" sound of the drone travelling around was also made by recording weird sounds with my voice then layering them up and processing the sound to be less organic.
For the POD's shooting sound I pitched up a recording of a horse whinney and combined it with a synth bass tone + sped up firework explosion.
For audio editing there are a good many options out there, but for the POD videos I used both of these free wav editors + mixed it together to the footage in after effects: http://audacityteam.org https://www.goldwave.com
These days I use a combination of the above + Adobe Audition/AE. The main area lacking in the free software is the quality of it's reverb whereas Adobe Audition has some pretty decent convolution reverb.
If you don't have the inclination to record your own sounds, then there are some resources such: https://freesound.org Though of course, if you just use sounds from here or libraries straight out of the box then you lose the opportunity to create your own unique sound/style.
I had some time off this weekend and monday but today I got back onto the ship - further developed the centrifuge and parabolic antenna sections: And also added the ION engine, which is housed around the antenna's central feed.
Nothing too exciting tonight, redid the front area because I wasn't happy with the first iteration. Now moving onto the rear part of the ship. Hoping to tie up all the hipoly this weekend and move on.
That's awesome. I'd love to see a car in there for scale. Or the Hubble!
I think you mean a screw Im guessing this thing is about 10 cm long? Because most of the mechanical things that are on earth in this game are 2-3 cm tall?
Thanks! Heres a very rough approximate scale of the POD and ship: I ended up scaling the ship down a bit, particulary because there will be an even larger "mothership" that these vessels dock with (potentially approaching the size of a small airliner)...
I should also note that the science rig vessel is only suitable for space flight - it's structure would not survive atmospheric entries and it must remain in orbit during planetary encounters:
So the centrifuge module with the spikes or antennae coming out of it is a habitat module, yes? When considering that scale, the interior of that module alone would actually be quite large from the little aliens' perspective. Will we get to navigate the interior of the ship?
I'm really loving the art direction and designs of the alien technology. It's very realistic and functional despite the general whimsy of playing as tiny little space critters (moreso than most sci-fi technology in games, actually). From this I'm getting a feel for the tone in that things will be played quite straight, dealing with the conflict or general situations in the story with gravitas, while tempering that with the humor and irony of the fact that they're so small humans will likely hardly even realize that something far more advanced and important than us is occurring below our observational threshold (like I'm imagining the hypothetical concept of a grizzled warrior who's been through hundreds of violent battles that determined the fate of a galaxy and seen more of the universe than any human could possibly hope in their lifetimes... who is also smaller than an ant and people don't even notice when his ship lands on someone's lawn). Am I somewhere close with that feeling or am I way off the mark?
Very perceptive Yep, my current thinking is that the player gets to spend an introductory span of time up in space initially. You are pretty on the mark regarding the tone too - though humour won't be amiss, its not from a zany cartoon style or some such.
Stefano has almost completed the texturing of the Hunter Gather machine, so here is a shot in my latest environment scene: These Hunter Gatherer machines are formidable foes... I suspect much of the time players will choose to evade the units until they are prepared to take them on. Hasty attacks upon them will likely be unpleasant, so sneaking around the undergrowth and letting them pass by may be a wise choice in some cases!...
This is getting better and better every time I see a post by you. It's amazing how you are taking the time of making all of it productively perfect at some point. Really great work so far Cubits !! Keep it up, can't wait to see more
Nothing too exciting tonight, I made a planet material that uses vertex colours to blend different surface types. So for example, these planets below are all the same UE4 material, It's just different vertex colours settings (colour/brightness per type of terrain is also simple to change, via the instanced material)...
A few updates back you guys showed the early stages of modeling one of the characters. You were blocking it out using splines. Can anyone link me a video of someone modeling using this technique. I would love a demo to see if it would work for me.
Thanks Beastypet! The aliens skin colours will vary a lot, so there will definitely be some Yellow shaded ones.
Roostermap, I'll probably be splining up one of the latest HG unit sketches this weekend, so I'll see about capping that as I go - they don't take long.
This one is particularly loose and I didn't fuss over the details. Now I'd take the spline sketch and refine it a bit, make sure the proportions are good (the body is too small, for instance) add the turrets etc. Really how much detail you want to add is up to you. I like going loose because I can fill in the blanks in my head for the most part, yet the splines do help refine overall form / joint locations. You could also spend a little bit more time adding splines for more complex topology to help inform you too.
You could then convert the splines themselves as edges for bridging poly's but I don't tend to bother - I just block out with the splines there as a rough guide. I wouldn't bother doing spline sketches for a lot of models but for certain tasks, like these HG units, I do find it helpful initially.
Lack of updates due to being embroiled in the retopology, UV and baking of the ship but here is the near final hi-poly. In a sense this is actually more of a level, so I'm breaking it up into a lot of instanced/duplicate parts. The player will be able to explore the inside as well as walk around on the outside in a POD. It is at this introductionary part of the game where the player will learn some of the core gameplay mechanics - in relative safety, before plunging them into the wilds.
The aft section of the ship houses a telescope slung underneath the mount of a very long secondary antenna.
Saw this game on steam and instantly thought of your project. http://store.steampowered.com/app/438360/ I was disappointed to see that it wasn't the "infinitesimals" I was familiar with. hehe
Replies
How are you pulling the images off of the microscope? You aren't just holding your camera up to the eyepiece are you?
Grooveholmes, I did initially just take shots hand held against the eye piece... surprisingly good results even from that, but now I have an adapter to attach my DSLR to the microscope instead.
The scale of the aliens (around 1mm tall, for the uninitiated) means that this ship is about the size of a car in human terms. This means that I have to design the ship differently from how a full sized human scale sci-fi vessel.
For instance, In order to communicate over long distances requires a decent sized antenna, I cannot just place a tiny antenna on the ship and expect that to have any range - so here a good portion of the ships shape contributes towards housing a huge Parabolic Antenna at a scale that is meaningful (if the ship was to be actually built in reality). This design will change a lot as I block out further and add all required systems.
I haven't decided on the power/propulsion systems yet but I'll likely keep them relatively grounded in reality and stay away from theoretical methods.
How many people are working on this actually ?
Keep it up, top notch!
Executex and _Kratos_: I'm the only full timer working on this at the moment (well, I actually work during the day freelance and then moonlight on this project) in the evening generally. Aside from paying myself enough to pay the rent, all money I earn as a freelancer is saved up for the past couple of years. Now that I have some working capital I'm hiring contractors to help move things along faster but they tend to be hired for specific tasks as and when needed at the moment. For 2016 I want to really ramp up properly and bring on more consistant help to get the prototype in a playable state ASAP!
Yep, the enemy drone sounds are pretty much made by recording my voice and modifying / layering those recordings. For instance, the "scanning" voice was pretty simple, I just spoke like a dalek and added some pitch correction / filtering. The "hovering" sound of the drone travelling around was also made by recording weird sounds with my voice then layering them up and processing the sound to be less organic.
For the POD's shooting sound I pitched up a recording of a horse whinney and combined it with a synth bass tone + sped up firework explosion.
For audio editing there are a good many options out there, but for the POD videos I used both of these free wav editors + mixed it together to the footage in after effects:
http://audacityteam.org
https://www.goldwave.com
These days I use a combination of the above + Adobe Audition/AE. The main area lacking in the free software is the quality of it's reverb whereas Adobe Audition has some pretty decent convolution reverb.
If you don't have the inclination to record your own sounds, then there are some resources such: https://freesound.org
Though of course, if you just use sounds from here or libraries straight out of the box then you lose the opportunity to create your own unique sound/style.
James
I loved the 2D animations the most. Hopefully these will be well translated into 3D.
And also added the ION engine, which is housed around the antenna's central feed.
I think you mean a screw Im guessing this thing is about 10 cm long? Because most of the mechanical things that are on earth in this game are 2-3 cm tall?
Subbed to this one!
I'm really loving the art direction and designs of the alien technology. It's very realistic and functional despite the general whimsy of playing as tiny little space critters (moreso than most sci-fi technology in games, actually). From this I'm getting a feel for the tone in that things will be played quite straight, dealing with the conflict or general situations in the story with gravitas, while tempering that with the humor and irony of the fact that they're so small humans will likely hardly even realize that something far more advanced and important than us is occurring below our observational threshold (like I'm imagining the hypothetical concept of a grizzled warrior who's been through hundreds of violent battles that determined the fate of a galaxy and seen more of the universe than any human could possibly hope in their lifetimes... who is also smaller than an ant and people don't even notice when his ship lands on someone's lawn). Am I somewhere close with that feeling or am I way off the mark?
These Hunter Gatherer machines are formidable foes... I suspect much of the time players will choose to evade the units until they are prepared to take them on. Hasty attacks upon them will likely be unpleasant, so sneaking around the undergrowth and letting them pass by may be a wise choice in some cases!...
Really great work so far Cubits !! Keep it up, can't wait to see more
Can anyone link me a video of someone modeling using this technique. I would love a demo to see if it would work for me.
Roostermap, I'll probably be splining up one of the latest HG unit sketches this weekend, so I'll see about capping that as I go - they don't take long.
This one is particularly loose and I didn't fuss over the details. Now I'd take the spline sketch and refine it a bit, make sure the proportions are good (the body is too small, for instance) add the turrets etc. Really how much detail you want to add is up to you. I like going loose because I can fill in the blanks in my head for the most part, yet the splines do help refine overall form / joint locations. You could also spend a little bit more time adding splines for more complex topology to help inform you too.
You could then convert the splines themselves as edges for bridging poly's but I don't tend to bother - I just block out with the splines there as a rough guide. I wouldn't bother doing spline sketches for a lot of models but for certain tasks, like these HG units, I do find it helpful initially.
Lack of updates due to being embroiled in the retopology, UV and baking of the ship but here is the near final hi-poly. In a sense this is actually more of a level, so I'm breaking it up into a lot of instanced/duplicate parts. The player will be able to explore the inside as well as walk around on the outside in a POD. It is at this introductionary part of the game where the player will learn some of the core gameplay mechanics - in relative safety, before plunging them into the wilds.
The aft section of the ship houses a telescope slung underneath the mount of a very long secondary antenna.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/438360/
I was disappointed to see that it wasn't the "infinitesimals" I was familiar with. hehe