Sketchbook: Zerreth

Zerreth

Hi guys!

As I'm nearing the end of my courses @ Digital Arts & Entertainment, I'm building up my portfolio site in preparation for an internship next year.

Everything I've made in the past 2-3 years is getting an extra polish treatment and while I'm doing that I've also decided to create a large portfolio piece.

I've been mostly passive on Polycount, since this huge community harbors a ton of very talented people and I didn't feel like my stuff could ever live up to some of the things that get posted here.

Over the next year or so I'll be dumping a lot off stuff from various projects. Feel free to bash it into the ground since I want to have a top notch portfolio when I'll start looking for an internship.

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Ok, so first up what I'm going to be focusing on in the next few months is that big portfolio piece I was talking about. The general idea is to create a 1 minute long cutscene in UDK. I was feeling nostalgic about a little game called "Freelancer" the other day and I really wanted to create something with a lot of technical detail.

The scene would involve a large open station hangar with a Star Fighter and maybe a few characters. The station itself would be similar to Cloud City and would be visible as the star fighters are giving you an airshow before flying off to space.

Currently I'm in the low poly design stage of the craft, and I need some C&C on the design so far. The ship itself would be modular, similar to EVE Online. So you would be able to swap out the afterburner, body, guns, shields, engines, etc...



I do have to admit that the landing system was a bit of an afterthought, and is still very WIP as the front set of wheels are still missing. Any suggestions & ideas for the landing system would be a big help.

Phew! That was a lot of text

Xoliul

Hi man, thought I'd comment.

Zerreth wrote: »

Everything I've made in the past 2-3 years is getting an extra polish treatment and while I'm doing that I've also decided to create a large portfolio piece.

I wouldn't put too much effort in that polishing old stuff. Rather than polishing 2-3 old pieces you're better off creating one really good new piece. remember, you're only as good as your worst work.

Some crits on your fighter:

-I can't read scale very well. Might be due to the Wip nature of big shapes + small greeble, but the only thing giving me a hint is the door on the sides and the wheels.
-You're going too fast with details for this stage of design. Your balance between big - medium -small shapes is already off: the big shapes could do with some more tweaking to get the best silhouette, and you've pretty much skipped medium shapes to go for small ones straight away. Small details don't really belong in this design phase anyway.
-Design wise it feels a bit cobbled together, even if you're going for that. Main body shapes and the wing/gun pods are cool, but the bulgy pod underneath doesn't really work that well for me. The rounded "TIE" like wings could work, but they're connected so flimsy, looks like they'd break if they had to carry the weight. Especially if they're gonna carry all those boosters/engine... I'd consider rethinking that part a bit. Put the engines on the main body, rethink the connection, tweak the big shape of that part (ugliest, blockiest area, very stark contrast with the more polished other areas).
Also, you mention Freelancer, their designs were never that crazy (and by today's standards, not that good either), they tended to stay more conservative. You seem to be getting some EVE influences here (not bad), but many of their crazy big shapes only really work for very large ships. Fighters I'd always consider more compact, streamlined, with not so much crazy extensions. Just because they have to pull extreme manouvers and take a few hits while doing it.
Also, consider movement of parts when designing! It can make things a lot more interesting!


I'll try to upload a presentation on spaceship design I did at the beginning of this year. I even recorded it, but don't think I still have that recording.

Zerreth

Thanks Xoliul. Yeah the font of the afterburner "pod" was a dead end for me in terms of design. So I ended up just capping it with some sort of shape and just leaving it like that so I could maybe put a tractor beam module on there or something. But you're right, it ended up biting me in the ass The TIE side engines are oversized and are indeed too heavy for the connections with the body. They also seem dominate and make the afterburner look like just another engine. Any suggestions for the landing system ?

Zerreth

I did some quick edits, moved the afterburner/engine from below to the back and worked it in the rear. Much better and more logical, I only need to tweak some of the proportions now since the ship is now way longer. By moving the engine/afterburner I can now make a decent landing system that doesn't look like crap. I also reinforced the connection with the TIE-like wings.

Xoliul

Here's the presentation, I think you saw it before, but you never know: http://www.scribd.com/doc/69482451/GZ81-Naganata

It's getting better, but the whole attachment for the TIE wings still feels tacked on and seems very lowtech (square steel girders..). Why not try and remove them completely and try a few different wing blockouts there? Don't go into too much detail, just really lowpoly and see what shape works.

Zerreth

This one seems to work for me. The VTOL like engines also give me more room to play with motion.

altasa

nice ship
I think it will look very well when finished

Zerreth

I've also been working on some strategy game units

leslievdb

cool units !

only advice would be to add some colored parts or stripes on some places to improve readability at smaller scales (or maybe you already wanted to do that to assign colors to teams?)

anyway nice work, keep it up

altasa

very cool units

Zerreth

Thx guys, @Raven: They're gonna get the color treatment when I've got the full lineup. I'll probably do some shader magic in UDK using a seperate set of UV's.

Some updates on the space fighter, I've started some of the detailing work, while also doing some rigging and animation on some of the small parts:

Zerreth

Version currently on the portfolio:


Finished the Holographic sight & added a silencer & laser


Also working on a grenade launcher attachment...

Zerreth

And this one is done Over the next few days I'm going to work on some handpainted low poly stuff. The spacefighter is alive and kicking in UDK with some test animations, but that one will have to wait for now...



/edit: fixed url

Zerreth

Apparently I forgot to post the last space fighter update, now a few weeks old:


The handpainted very low poly stuff is done, but I'dd rather show it off in an Unreal Scene. And over the next 2 weeks I'm forced to do some heavy duty HLSL & DirectX work.Suffice to say I'm going into lockdown, so the next update will have to wait till after that.

altasa

wow, very cool these gun and ship models
really nice job you have done here