Graduated and back in the fray

Finally I've graduated, just waiting for that final approval from school and they'll send me my degree!

It's such a relief too, I was hoping I could juggle portfolio work along with the thesis writing, but life tends to give you other plans. But now it's done, and with that I've been working to get back in the art groove and job searching. As for game art I've now begun to work on environment art aimed at RTS games, so huts away!

First I began with the concepting of course, as in the spirit of the ANNO games, which I love, I thought the design should revolve around the plot in stages. Think a building which goes through stages from mud pile, camp, hut and so forth until it's a proper mansion in itself.

I also did some low poly blocking beforehand to explore a few options of buildings to make, I will probably do more if I decide to do more buildings, but for now I settled on the hut. 

Now this hut I've taken the farthest, it consists of 3 components with its own texture space. The building, the ground "anchor", and the doodahs (which means props I guess, seen it a lot in old game editors). The ide of splitting it up like that was to enable the doodahs to be reused in other building slots as well as giving the option of reposing the plot to give an alternate version of it. Stylewise I'm going for a handpainted style, the hut currently takes 400 tris, the ground 40 and the doodahs 415 triangles.

Going to continue working on it tomorrow, curious how big a village I could end up making :D

Oh, and if you're one of the 1-2 people coming by, do comment! Or critique! I appreciate both equally.

Medieval construction

Medieval architecture is kinda fun, these buildings were built to be sturdy even with the materials that were('nt) available. But they have that fun idea of settling, that is, they reshape themselves over time depending on their structural integrity and the ground it stands on.

No wonder they medieval cities were so tight, the buildings sure needed their neighbors to hold themselves standing! No but on a serious note though, its quite an important thing to consider, since a medieval building with all straight angles could seem a bit off, unless it just got built. But that's sorta what I've been working a bit with today, building modular pieces for buildings to use in UDK. Also for this I made a new wood texture, yesterday's one didn't quite fit the bill since it looked a bit too worn (that would probably work better as a scaffold piece).

I'm still debating how large modular pieces I should do, 256^2 ones or entire floor sections in varying sizes. Also I'll have to experiment in how to get the settling effect with modular pieces, but settling is easier within the wood bars at least. That's was all I got for today, tomorrow I'll see if I can tackle the roofing.

Back to the battlements

Yay, finally the theoretic part of my thesis is done. But now I finally can do what I've been longing for, the actual art. Now this project I'm starting work on will be a quasi-medieval/fantasy village or outpost. It's both for the continuation of my thesis work, and will be a nice addittion to my portfolio as assets gets finished.

(As for what this wall-resting construction could be, I guess a merchant stand or maybe some sort of stable.)

Now here we have todays work, at first it started with a sculpt and texturing of a wooden bar, it then evolved into some modular practice. The construction is made from the single model texture and with all the bits and pieces its at about 900 tris, something I think I'll be able to cut down quite a bit if I give it another round of optimizing. But todays biggest timesink I guess was figuring out UDK lightmaps, something I'll have to rework in that model since it could only apply a very basic variant of it.

Qin Shi Huang Soldier

Yesterday I finally finished up the work sample I was working on, It was quite a fun project to work on and as always a nice learning experience as well. I'm glad it also helped me get better at updating this blog a bit more regularly. Now though I'm back to my thesis writing and hopefully some time can be spent on my entry for the game artisan competition.

Lynx Viking + I got a combo going

Feels good to actually have been able to make something each day to put up on the blog. Think I'm going to keep it going, no reason to stop the combo! Nowadays I'm mainly busy with two things, my dissertation/thesis and jobs searching/work sampling. But feeling an upwards swing I think I'm actually going to take some more work on, feels good having stuff to do. So I saw that Game Artisans were holding a new competition, the last one was one of the first I managed to participate in and also complete, so now I'm thinking of joining the new one. Yesterday I sat up late and worked on this concept of a Lynx viking, will be interesting!

Tech Reaper

Did some late night doodling.

Chinese warrior - p2

Continuing from the concept I posted last time, I've now gone ahead on the modeling part. Still lots of optimizing to do, but these are the parts that will be included. I got some triangles to spare, but I hope after the optimization that I'll be able to put in some extra things.

Chinese warrior

A work sample I'm currently working on, concept stage done, now to get some modeling done.

Updates

Still quite busy with my final thesis/dissertation work, but as I mentioned at an earlier time I signed up for 3D motive and yesterday was mostly spent learning all about UDK transition materials. Now I know a hell of a lot more about the programs node network.

Also, Leeeeeeeeeeerp (UDK users will get this one)

What's happening this spring

This spring I'm back to my studies at Skövde Högskola, this time I'll get that degree. The big advantage from last year is that both my arms are intact at least!

Also, I forgot to mention this in the last blogpost, but as you might have seen if you've kept track of my website is that I participated in a mini challange over at Gameartisans.org a while ago.

I'm back, I'm back, with foliage!

Okay, made a short try with Tumblr, didnt work out well, so now I'm back to this blog!

Now I wish a lot had happened during the last year, but its been pretty standstill in many areas, just to give some closure from last year I did finish that tank.

But now I'm back and going to get things rolling again. Yesterday I subscribed to 3D motive to get access to their tutorials and I'm quite glad I did. I've only plowed through the UDK foliage course so far but I've learned quite a lot about it. Now this was me foliage skills yesterday

And this is where I am now.

Time for more shading tutorials tomorrows :P