Star Wars Republic Commando Intro Remake

Sigmatron

Hi fellow polycounters. Another year, another ambitious personal project. This time I am really set to do a remake of an old game. And here I will post some updates and stuff. Consider it as a blog.

So, for the whole project I will use UE5 and some help from my friends. Not so long ago, I finished let's call it quality reference for the project. So, the bar is set and what's left is a lot of work.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/QnO4RB

https://youtu.be/B_ygOUxVGb8?list=LL%EF%BB%BF

Sigmatron

To keep things updated, and the thread afloat, I will do more posts with pretty early WIP's.

At the first stage of the project, I did some planning. Played the game for like 4th time and deconstructed scenes on the Miro board, to keep the assets list in sight. Tried to use Trello/Jira for this project like I do at work, but really after all I understood there are is no need for such a style of work organization. While some numbers of assets are to be created, after all I will work on the 95% of them(I plan to ask friends to help me with a few). Same idea with source control.

You can check it out here https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lbqowpo=/?share_link_id=590564398038

Last weekend I managed to get some rest and work on the project. I focused on the 1st scene blockout. One of my favorite stages of the work, when you already have an idea of haw it will look at the end. From this point, you just push it a step further with every iteration.

I am not certain how I will light the scene, but we will see, will do my best,

Thoughts/Feedback are highly appriceated!

Sigmatron

Oh my, today is May the 4th, so it would be logically to write an update. Almost 2 moths passed since the last one. I got pretty busy with my day job, pretty exiting stuff over there, but takes a lot of energy. Anyway, I'm constantly trying to find an hour or so per day to work on this.
For the last month, I redid the lightning setup of the scene.  Man, the UE5 is a pretty nuanced thing, and let's say all the ray tracing stuff, especially shadows and translucency, clunky as hell. Can't imagine that Lumen is production ready. So If you are interested to read about my struggle with it, please let me know.

Coming from character/props art, environment, this is a different beast. Thank god, I need to consider pretty strict camera locations and frame, so I don't need to tile everything perfectly.

Another thing is project folder organization. It is great to do some planning ahead with blueprints and stuff, so in the end, everything is much more flexible. After all creating something requires iteration and polishing, and if it organized properly the life became much easier.

Cheers, as always, feedback is highly appreciated!

blockout of the seccond scene

Sigmatron

Bumping the thread with Kaminoan KE-8 Enforcer high poly model, the project is coming together so more stuff soon in this thread

Sigmatron

Textured version:

Sigmatron

Let's continue friends

Today I want to share a character for the project, Kaminoan male(tall boi), which was made in a collaboration with the incredibly talented Oksana Cherry. I worked on the outfit modeling and retopo of the whole character, also rig and animation. This character was made as a favor, so I took all non-artistic manual labor. A female character is on the way, meanwhile I'm working on a lighting setup. Cheers!

Don't forget to subscribe for more

Sigmatron

Found some time to work on my Star Wars project, made this ship. It is a background asset, nothing fancy, but anyway decided to render it, cuz it is better to keep posting stuff

Sigmatron

Hey guys and gals, I'm still here and still working on the project. For the last 3 months I did a lot of content for it and started to work on my instagram account, trying to get some attention to the project and make some buzz around it

Check it out!

https://www.instagram.com/labskamino/

I am not sure in what format to post here tbh, some detailed blogging with deep thoughts and problems solving in UE5(or I can make big video post-mortem of the prject) or maybe short messages like that and images/gifs stream? Overall, I am quite curious in what state our industry now and where to show stuff to people, cuz arstation currently looks pretty dire, and this project is not like 'artstation portfolio content' Also posting GIF's gives me 2000's vibe here hehe.

For example, here is the latest addition to the project: Advanced Dwarf Spider Droid. Made from original concept from the game. Cheers!

Alex_J

super cool project, looking great.

personally I like to read about process people went through, problems they faced, etc. But I think majority of people just want to see the finished art. But you can post whatever you like.

You probably wont get much engagement until the entire thing is finished. There was a guy who posted a little about his game here some years ago and after seven years he finished it and it ended up doing very well. He made a post-mortem of sorts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhVNu54_T8s

But one recurring theme he brings up is that few people engaged up until the very end. I suppose there is just a ton of stuff out there and nobody can be bothered to engage with something unless it is finished and personally speaks to them. But even if people aren't responding that doesn't mean they are not checking in with some interest from time to time. And if you don't keep posting you'll fall off radar entirely.

Anyway, I've enjoyed your progress so far.

ps - also if you are trying to get some more attention look at reddit and imgur. at least for me, views there is usually like 10 - 100x more than anywhere else. The time of day and time of week you post can make a huge difference too. polycount is most valuable for getting occassional feedback and tips from other artist but not necessarily the right place if you are trying to build up fans.

Sigmatron

Alex_J said:

super cool project, looking great.

personally I like to read about process people went through, problems they faced, etc. But I think majority of people just want to see the finished art. But you can post whatever you like.

You probably wont get much engagement until the entire thing is finished. There was a guy who posted a little about his game here some years ago and after seven years he finished it and it ended up doing very well. He made a post-mortem of sorts here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhVNu54_T8s

But one recurring theme he brings up is that few people engaged up until the very end. I suppose there is just a ton of stuff out there and nobody can be bothered to engage with something unless it is finished and personally speaks to them. But even if people aren't responding that doesn't mean they are not checking in with some interest from time to time. And if you don't keep posting you'll fall off radar entirely.

Anyway, I've enjoyed your progress so far.

ps - also if you are trying to get some more attention look at reddit and imgur. at least for me, views there is usually like 10 - 100x more than anywhere else. The time of day and time of week you post can make a huge difference too. polycount is most valuable for getting occassional feedback and tips from other artist but not necessarily the right place if you are trying to build up fans.

Glad you like it, and thank you for sharing your thoughts. I think you are right, most of the people just have no time to look and be engaged with pretty early WIP's. Especially artists, the vast majority coming to post their work and not keeping an eye on others.

 Currently, I am trying to post on the Instagram and /r/StarWars once a week or so, sometimes It is successful, sometimes not so. It looks like Instagram works best for me for now. Going to try Imgur, thank you! One of the reasons I chose this project was an understandable fan base, so I have a pretty good idea who might be interested in it and how to build an audience. 

Also, thanks for the video because after this thing I am planning to make a vertical slice of a game (not Star Wars) and it is quite inspiring to see a guy succeed.

Sigmatron

Cooking here some stuff for ya'll

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAOfEIma2NM