The Balmora Reborn Project (Artists needed)

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

Oh hai Polycount! $:\$
I now feel confident enough to really start up this project.

Nothing is set in stone at the moment and we'll probably need more people once the project has taken off but at the moment we're looking for three skilled artists with a good grasp of aesthetics and quality.

You can either reach me via pm or add me on skype (kalle.wrangback)
Positions available:

Texture/material Artist - Submit earlier work.
Concept Artist - Submit earlier work.

Filled positions:

Environment & Prop Artist
Level & Environment Artist

The plan is to have it so that every member of the team is able to contribute to the project in a unique way and thus being an essential element.

The whole idea of the project is to evolve as artists and also pull out some awesome game art to sprinkle on our portfolios/demo reels.

I am currently working on some random foliage for the project:

And some other stuff I've been doing(some old and some new):

Also some title thingy I did yesterday:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15123461/Balmora_Reborn/Snippet_Hard_COMPRESSED01.avi

We have lots of fun ahead! :thumbup:
Don't be afraid to contact me about anything regarding the project:)

acarr · Feb 2011

Check your links.

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

acarr wrote: »

Check your links.

Man, links are hard

Fixed now, good call!

One person might be interested in the level artist position.
I will post on other forums as well. The more applying the merrier $:\$
I've also started rigging a cage fight for people applying :thumbup:

Nah, seriously the whole aim with the project is to give us people who want to make it in to the gaming industry a chance...

That doesn't however mean that I exclude people who already work within the industry. Everyone can apply and I hope we'll have a blast pushing the boundaries of awesome :poly142:

Sebeuroc · Feb 2011

Ah, yes, I saw your older post with this stuff. I'm a huge fan of Morrowind, and it is really exciting to see Balmora re-envisioned! I wish you luck!

DDuckworth · Feb 2011

I'm with Sebeuroc, I LOVEEEEE morrowind, top 5 games, probably my number 1, I don't usually use any mods though. The Fighters guild and Mages Guild signs are looking pretty good overall! So you're just remaking the town of Balmora? It's my favorite town

Shiniku · Feb 2011

I'd love to participate, Morrowind is my favorite game by a million miles. But environment art isn't my strength. I'll be watching how this turns out anyway.

oobersli · Feb 2011

good luck. doing a few props here and there is easy, but like 80% of teams trying to do stuff like this fall apart due to communication and organization. Keep it small and set yourself series of short goals.

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

oobersli wrote: »

good luck. doing a few props here and there is easy, but like 80% of teams trying to do stuff like this fall apart due to communication and organization. Keep it small and set yourself series of short goals.

Goal 1: Start
Goal 2: Add the last details...:\

The reason to why I aimed for a small team was more or less because I wanted to restrict it. We do aim to do a remake of the exteriors of Balmora, but we have some short term goals to reach before we might even show stuff to the public.

I'm happy for all of the good lucks but I rather see someone fill the Texture/material Artist position

Joopson · Feb 2011

One thing to keep in mind is that, now-a-days, companies are less likely to have a "texture artist" as a separate entity. Generally, the prop-artists would texture their own props, et cetera. So, perhaps, for the sake of artistic evolution, you should make that just a material artist, and have the environment artist textured the environment, and the prop artist texturing the props. Just an idea, but of course, it's up to you.
I'm really looking forward to this, and I wish I could help! Too bad now of these positions fit my skillset. Oh well, haha.

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

Joopson wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind is that, now-a-days, companies are less likely to have a "texture artist" as a separate entity. Generally, the prop-artists would texture their own props, et cetera.

Yeah, the thing is that since this is such a large project it felt like the best decision to have one person in control and supervising all the textures and making sure that the quality is coherent, making tweaks that will gain the overall environment, adding details the environment artists hasn't thought about or had the time to implement. Detail normal maps, and a lot of other tweaks that will help the visuals of the project. We could just call him Material Artist but since he must have a firm grasp of texturing and creating it felt goofy to leave that out

He will of course not make all the textures for the environment, but he will supervise the production of all of them and also in the end be responsible for the consistency and that all materials fit nicely in the environment.

But we'll have to see how everything works out now in the beginning and if things doesn't work we'll probably be able to locate the source of the problem quite early one. We aim for a strong core where everyone has a specific part in the making of the project.

And there is certainly people who's main objective is to create textures and materials in the industry. Even if there title isn't there is certainly people who have been allocated to only do textures or materials. I could name a couple of people who does it for a job.

Kind of a long post with no pictures but since I've already chosen this path I might as well just keep on going. The Level Artist position has been filled, he's extremely talented and I'm eager to start working with him.

We still need to fill the other positions and if you're interested don't have any hesitations to contact me :thumbup:.

I'm still working on foliage at the moment. And there's a lot of it that needs to be done.. :poly136: We as a team will start looking at the landscape and since I already have a somewhat accurate height map I think we'll be able to concentrate on tweaking and thinking about some things to incorporate into the design and shi.

ceebee · Feb 2011

Joopson wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind is that, now-a-days, companies are less likely to have a "texture artist" as a separate entity. Generally, the prop-artists would texture their own props, et cetera. So, perhaps, for the sake of artistic evolution, you should make that just a material artist, and have the environment artist textured the environment, and the prop artist texturing the props. Just an idea, but of course, it's up to you.
I'm really looking forward to this, and I wish I could help! Too bad now of these positions fit my skillset. Oh well, haha.

The hell are you talking about? There are tons of studios that have people dedicated to textures/shaders.

Joopson · Feb 2011

companies are less likely to have a "texture artist" as a separate entity

My point was that maybe there are some companies, now, with texture artists, but as zbrush's texture tools get even better, and as companies have economic troubles, those will eventually mostly disappear. That was my point. And as it stands, a lot of companies are this way already, so...Yes.

Also, Nocty, I totally understand. Just wanted to make sure it was thought-out. And it was, very. So, carry on, I can't wait to see some more work!

aajohnny · Feb 2011

Joopson wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind is that, now-a-days, companies are less likely to have a "texture artist" as a separate entity. Generally, the prop-artists would texture their own props, et cetera. So, perhaps, for the sake of artistic evolution, you should make that just a material artist, and have the environment artist textured the environment, and the prop artist texturing the props. Just an idea, but of course, it's up to you.
I'm really looking forward to this, and I wish I could help! Too bad now of these positions fit my skillset. Oh well, haha.

Thats not necessarily true. Larger studios like Bioware have texture artists, and other artists. It really depends on the studios size. If its for a small studio then yes you have to be jack of all trades.

planaria · Feb 2011

switch unofficial polycount project to this

DDuckworth · Feb 2011

planaria wrote: »

switch unofficial polycount project to this

2nded!

chrisradsby · Feb 2011

How many are you so far?

Moar updates xD

OriginLinear · Feb 2011

I might be interested in doing textures. I have some questions though.

What is the deal with the oil rig and the rifle?

More importantly, what is the purpose of the project? How will this project be put to use? Or will it be used simply for pretty pictures?

PS: I fucking love Morrowind! Modding Morrowind is responsible for getting me interested in game art.

greevar · Feb 2011

OriginLinear wrote: »

PS: I fucking love Morrowind! Modding Morrowind is responsible for getting me interested in game art.

Same here! Remember the Tomb of St. Nerevar? I made that for the armor resource. It was my first popular mod.

duxun · Feb 2011

i am in and i hope to work with ya guys on this i love morrowind !!!!

samples of my work www.samuel-gonzalez.com and http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80002

Cheers...

Visceral · Feb 2011

Is this all you got or are you just showing of some props? Beacuse what i feel when im in mods and indie projects is that people tend to begin in the wrong end. They start by showing off some impressive assets and then forget with the whole picture.

Would be moore intresting to see entire enviorments than just some of the details. Just sayin

NAIMA · Feb 2011

Hahah I love morrowind , what you think of my old Morrowind time project Narsis city in Hlaalu style?

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4384/narsis974.jpg

I was thinking to get it back in New Skyrim Creation Engine ...

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

Visceral wrote: »

Is this all you got or are you just showing of some props? Beacuse what i feel when im in mods and indie projects is that people tend to begin in the wrong end. They start by showing off some impressive assets and then forget with the whole picture.

Would be moore intresting to see entire enviorments than just some of the details. Just sayin

We have more in terms of blockout and landscape, but the projects aim is to create the environment. I should probably have mentioned that this is a entirely new started project. It's in the making. We are looking for a strong core for the development. I am also aware of that showing the entire environment would have been in beneficial, but not at this hour. The assets I showed are more or less just to show my capacity as an artist. Would have felt like blasphemy asking for earlier work while sitting on my throne like a fatcat.

But we do have some blockouts, mainly rough proportions and nothing that we feel the need to show. Making environments from the ground takes time and requires a team, at least if you aim for quality.

OriginLinear wrote: »

I might be interested in doing textures. I have some questions though.

More importantly, what is the purpose of the project? How will this project be put to use? Or will it be used simply for pretty pictures?

I should probably have stated that pictures above mostly were to show of the direction and quality of the project and me as an artist. I don't want to make people expect to join a AAA game or have any other high expectations of the project. We are simply two humble and open minded guys that love to make art.

We are certainly not stating that we are the game artists equivalence of an corvette, even though we probably have the potential and certainly ambition of becoming.

The aim of the project is mostly just creating great game art atm. But the more people that hear of it the better. We would love to take a shot converting it for the creation engine once it's out. But time will tell. We don't want to say to much since the main priority is to create great art, not split an atom $:\$
We foremost want to get a greater body of work before we can start discuss stuff of that nature.

I know that this is kind of a leap of faith for many people since this is so new and in many ways this definitely is a leap of faith. I wish I could write more but we are busy having a discussion on skype, and sharing ref in our dropbox folder.
We have high hope and I expect to do some awesome updates very soon.

But we still do need a texture artist! We want to be able to somewhat concentrate on doing the landscape atm and the sooner we can get a better picture of the feel and the environment as a whole, the better.

We will also need concept artist(s)... Spread it around.. $:\$

planaria · Feb 2011

i really hope for this project, and i would almost be willing to put time into it but right now it still needs slightly more, and honestly it needs to be from YOU.

the only way indie projects like this will last is with a strong *and* productive leader.

there are plenty of artists on this board who could fill any position you need but im betting most dont step up due the trepedation of the foundation that they see. namely they just need to see more. if i were you i would spam even blockouts, and also atleast start on new assets and spam those in this thread right now. that way this thread will atleast stay alive long enough for you to hopefully get exactly the help you want.

good luck though, projects like this are always harder then you think!

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

I've been having some health issues for the last two days..

But I'm all better now!

I will get back to people that's been applying.

We have a steady progression on the project! Most recently we've taken care of some scaling issues. Besides that we've mostly started adding some vital geometry. The layout is 100% done and everything that we model should now fit right into place

This might not seem that big but it's definitely a extremely important part that will eliminate allot of problems later down the road. I've started adding some geometry that is easy to instance(bridges and stairs) while Samuel has done some modular house parts.

Next off now is probably for me to start tweaking the landmass a bit more intensively, also getting the walls on each side into udk, so we can get a bit better perspective and locate scaling problems from ref better. Some wip rocks and what not.

The house & bridges should be corresponding to the landmass in terms of scale on the x&y however we are still working on the height. This works for now though. We will probably scale the landmass a bit once we get a better picture of it all. I think the walls will add a lot of perspective.

The communication is going awesomely within the project and I think that we've really nailed down a good system for it, and even though were just two people atm it feels like it wont be that much of a problem to scale up the team. We will however be a bit careful since we don't want it to get out of hand.

EDIT: Everything that you see is wip. But we would still like all crit we can get.

Habboi · Feb 2011

I'm just curious but how are you sharing the level? Are you the master who takes all the content and puts it together or is the level constantly updated to some sort of server.

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

Habboi wrote: »

I'm just curious but how are you sharing the level? Are you the master who takes all the content and puts it together or is the level constantly updated to some sort of server.

Server! :thumbup: We have a shared dropbox folder that we constantly update. We will use a lot of packages while developing so we don't end up with one package at 1gb needing to be synced every time someone does something in udk. It works very well for now. We're both pretty versatile so when one is doing updates in udk the other might fix stuff in their 3d software/textures/whatever.

We did try floppy disks and then use my cat as a courier but that didn't work out that good... $:\$

duxun · Feb 2011

we are using dropbox to upload the level/updates in a folder and from there we share what we are working on.

planaria · Feb 2011

nice update !

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

"Just opened up the udk and wow we are progressing" Yes yes! :poly142:

From the project log:
2/18 2011
- Tweaked the landmass
- landmass no more dynamic shadows while developing
- Doing the walls
- Added support edge for the river
- Added southern lower wall
- Added new double sided support column(support_column01)

I will start fixing some environment props like stones and maybe trees. Just something to instance around. Will probably fix the other pieces of walls first.
Since no one has stepped up to the plate for material artist I'll might have to do the landmass mats and start paint that on... Need to tweak the landmass flow some more but think it'll be easier doing that later.

Give us all that hard crit that you usually do.. We still need every listed position. Really need a good concept artist atm. We have some alterations that we want to make to the original environment.

NoctyQ · Feb 2011

Tested out some new techniques. Tried to broaden my spectrum. Took a lot more time than I'd plan but next try will go a lot faster since I won't fall in all those traps. We have texture week. Don't really feel like writting something long.

Still looking for Texture/Material artist but I guess we can survive. We have a lot of work on our four foots. I've done some concepting and I guess it's passable.
Samuel is currently working really hard for GDC and I'm working on portfolio/Demo Reel. I also have this nagging lod and fbx problem on my hand..

The Balmora Reborn Project (Artists needed)

Replies