TOWER Aero Blasters ScottMichaelH
polycounter lvl 14
I'm excited to start my own tower thread based Aero Blasters! Also known as Air Buster, I have this one on the NEC Turbo-Grafx 16 (also known as the PC Engine) and still play it to this day. Fan art to me is a way of telling my story and this is one of my favorite shooters. :poly009:
A few things:
1) I'm not going to try to implement my usual Unreal 4 workflow here so I will make this "stylized" and not "dirty/realism". I'm not sure exactly yet but it will look brighter to preserve the sort of anime or classic game style look to a degree.
2) I will intentionally allow the scale to be what it will be and not worry about it. This way it will make it look sort of like a miniature scale model if you were to 3d print it.
3) I will likely place the orange power up thing (name?) outside the 14x14x6 area to activate the space.
4) The models themselves will be a little less detail than I would usually make them to keep this simple, stylized and fun. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I do want it to look as best as I can within the style I'm going for.
A few things:
1) I'm not going to try to implement my usual Unreal 4 workflow here so I will make this "stylized" and not "dirty/realism". I'm not sure exactly yet but it will look brighter to preserve the sort of anime or classic game style look to a degree.
2) I will intentionally allow the scale to be what it will be and not worry about it. This way it will make it look sort of like a miniature scale model if you were to 3d print it.
3) I will likely place the orange power up thing (name?) outside the 14x14x6 area to activate the space.
4) The models themselves will be a little less detail than I would usually make them to keep this simple, stylized and fun. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I do want it to look as best as I can within the style I'm going for.
Replies
More of a refined layout of the buildings. I messed around with the size and space contrast and decided not to place them all in a linear fashion but rather utilize the corners for a hopefully more dynamic layout.
More work done on the buildings.
Progress on the jet model. It's a matter of design decisions at this point. I don't want it to look unfinished or too finished. I'm going for a stylization.
I'm thinking it's not really necessary to make this a serious PBR work but rather something different for me with possibly no normal maps. However, that enemy ship is looking really blocky. If I've learned much at all from critiques then I know that no one will be impressed by this. They need to at least look like they physically work and not just have cylinders resting up against each other. Then again, thats all my reference has. I will need to find a simple but believable solution.
Here are the buildings all baked. The low poly and UVs were easy, but the bakes took me a lot longer than expected. There are 9 variations all on a single 2048 sheet.
looking forward for updates.
Here's the enemy ship model. I want to keep it simple since this is a remake of an old bit wars era 2d game and there isn't a lot of space to move around in the tower floor. It's a challenge for me to stylize and imply knowing that you won't be staring at all kinds of small details.
Making changes to the design and feeling much more comfortable at the moment than before.
Calling the high poly finished.
I really felt like my efficiency with retopology, Unwrapping and baking went up with this one. My first test bake was surprisingly good and was almost perfect. I mention it because normal baking used to be a thorn in my side. Once you have done it so many times, it becomes so much more natural to you and you are aware of so many little things that can lead to errors.
Here is the model WIP in Sketchfab! It feels good to see it in here finally.
All things considering it will be a stylized texturing process. It's not Unreal so I'm not thinking of doing a huge detailed environment. Thus, the ground and water are very simplistic. If I texture the ships too much, it will look odd and partially finished ... not to mention the posting could take a long time to load (I'm assuming that would be the case). I am thinking I will take the enemy ship and do a separate full portfolio piece on it after the tower floor is uploaded.
Thoughts are welcome
Here's the basic idea. The buildings aren't fully colored in yet. I will put some basic roughness in to some places.
Close to done. I admit I'm seriously out of my comfort zone here and very much unaware of how I feel about this. Since Sketchfab is the end result, I'm experimenting with the style and workflow as I go. Final thoughts?
While I struggled with design decisions, it was a learning experience and hope it was for you as well. Here are some screen grabs of the scene below: