Games Ark Blog

On the 22nd of March as a class we went to The Manchester Museum to conduct some primary research by taking pictures of animals, weapons and textures. I used the trip yesterday to get a lot of sample textures of wolf fur to help with my project as there are werewolf’s in my project.  Also I took my time to sketch some of the wolf in person as it prove a lot more useful and a image off the internet.

In the slideshow below you will see a few images of the wolves and the textures I took from the museum, I took these specific images because of the angles that the wolves are positioned in and it will help me with my concept art and 3D models.

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A werewolf or lycanthrope is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shape shift into a wolf or a hybrid wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction. There are many variations of a werewolf for example there are many werewolves that can only turn during a full moon where as others can turn at their own will it is also said that werewolves or lycanthropes can only be killed with a silver bullet or sword which would prove difficult to kill.

Legends of vampires have existed for millennia cultures such as the Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demonic creatures and blood-drinking spirits which are considered modern vampires. Vampires are creatures with incredible power, speed, and intellect also with extended life they are basically immortal but folklore one can kill a vampire either with a wooden stake, sunlight.

Witches are often thought of as old women wearing a long dark robe or a witch flying on a broomstick however the origins of witches dates back to the Ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians they are believed to practice witchcraft which varies from Foresight or visions, shape shifting or brewing powerful and deadly potions but witches mainly use spells by casting them or using rituals runes or puppetry. however many society’s mainly from the 1600-1800’s saw witches as satanic creatures and killed them in many ways such as publicly burning the victim or hanging them.

 

 

I have conducted my research on Werewolves, also known as Lycanthropes, are legendary shape shifting humans. the shape these creatures take on is that of a wolf which not only increases their power and brute strength they gain incredible speed. The history of the werewolf dates back to ancient Greece and has sprung up independently or spread to virtually every area of the Earth. It is also one of the oldest legends of human monsters in recorded history along with vampires and witches which is also part of my research and each one of them has different assets that make them unique so I will study them carefully to help with my concept art and 3D models.

Links to all pages I visited :

http://www.trueghosttales.com/witches.php

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=vampire&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_jqLI6sjLAhUsEJoKHZ3wCbUQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=ancient+vampire&imgrc=_

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=vampire&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_jqLI6sjLAhUsEJoKHZ3wCbUQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=witches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire_folklore_by_region

http://theshadowlands.net/vamp2.html

During today’s lesson I have been discussing my final major project ideas with my peers however they gave me some good advice as for my project I am working in a team with Christian Rae, He will be developing the lore for our project however I have been advised to thoroughly read through his story and lore and make sure it fits with my concept art and 3D assets.

I will make sure to split the work evenly to prevent and delay of our work and it isn’t too stressful for me or Christian.

In this evaluation I will be talking about our project during unit 6-7 our project was using Pokemon’s characters and changing them from a RPG genre into a Fighter.

For my unit 6-7 project I was working as a team with Marmadou Thiam and Brodie Dasent. Our group project was turning Pokemon into an arcade fighter, for example we took eighteen characters from the Pokemon franchise and brought them into a  Mortal Kombat styled game, where the Pokemon would fight against each other like in the Mortal Kombat series which would include blood and gore during the start of our project we set our expectations a little too high as we thought we could actually get some animation and fight scenes in our project however that wasn’t the case we ended up with only the 3D models imported into Unreal.

When we all split off to develop our individual work I had a clear idea of what I wanted to make for the project I started with the Pokemon Arena which wasn’t too difficult but consumed a lot of my time as some parts of the 3D model was tricky to make however I managed to complete it. After I decided to make a Master Ball and one of the characters (Blastoise) from the Pokemon franchise making all the three, 3D assets was by far the most time consuming for example when I started making the Pokemon I was using some modifiers that I hadn’t used before so getting the main body for him was proving difficult the main techniques I used to make these assets were Extrude, Bevel, Bridge, Symmetry I would have to say the technique that helped the most would be symmetry because I only had to work on one side of the character and made it a lot easier and convenient.

The main problem I had with the project was I didn’t have enough time to create and complete my assets such as I only managed to texture one asset which was the Master Ball which did end up looking good but I wish I could of textured the character instead. However i’m really proud of my 3D character because it was very time consuming to make and I was using some some modifiers I wasn’t familiar with.

In the end I did complete all the assets I wanted but I didn’t reach the standard I set for myself at the start of the project which I am a little disappointing with but I think my work can if I lowered the expectations from the start or just focused a little more I would’ve got all my work finished.

After evaluating my work I have concluded that it does fit the brief as I needed to re-target the audience and I believe I have for example the Pokemon franchise is mainly seen as a young adults to children game however I have changed the visual style by making 3D Pokemon and making the visual style into a side scroller  and the interactions of the game to resemble a Mortal Kombat game, Pokemon is a 3+ rating game however by adding blood and gore and certain elements of fighting such as applying a x-ray vision attack which allows you to see bones breaking a cracking while fighting in the game. I have changed the game into a 18 rating game.

Today I continued working on 3D Max creating a couch but adding more textures and here’s how I did it.  I first made a couch like I did yesterday and after I made the couch I went into slate material editor to add the certain textures I wanted.

I then used the Multi Sub-object material and split the couch into two groups the main body being group one and only the couch legs being group two, In group one I added a standard texture (Black Leather) using a bitmap, after I added another standard texture the colour brown with wooden textures to the couch legs to give the couch a better look to it, I also had two cushions which I gave a standard texture yellow. 

 

Here is my screenshot of the texture I have applied to the couch I made in 3D Max It is a image of a hero from a game and below is how I did it I first used a standard material and applied a background colour  and used the bitmap to add the image. 

In today’s lesson we made a single seat couch starting off with the Box as usual we then connected certain lines to outline where the arm rests and the back rest will be, after we extruded all the outlines to a reasonable height and ended up with the basic design of the couch so far.

After making the basic couch we then made clones of the couch at least three clones the second couch was cloned for the detail for the back rest and arm rests, on the next clone we started to curve the couch and give it more of a realistic look to it by using many different techniques on 3D Max such as.

Techniques :

Connect, Extrude, Inset, Bevel, Rotate, Soft selection, Chamfer, M smooth

After the main look of the couch was done I started added a lot of detail on the third and fourth clone further improving its style and design.

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During this lesson we were asked to make a tap on 3D Max, to do so we must first make a pillar using the box tool, I then went on the slice the box in the appropriate places using slice plane. I also used many other tools such as extrude, inset to make it look more realistic after making the tap with little detail I went on and made 2 more copy’s of the tap to add two different versions of a smoothing tool such as M Smooth and Auto Smooth. too round up the rough corners and make the final 2 designs more realistic and more professional.

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The first image is my initial design only using the box tool and adding detail, then the second image has the first smooth tool auto smooth which make the corners and edges on the tap more rounded and have a smoother look. The last tap is the final design using the M smooth which adds a lot of polygons but has the smoothest effect.

Here is my Swot analysis giving a brief summary on my strengths, weaknesses, opportunity’s and threats.

Strengths : Team Work, Communication, Pixel Art

Weaknesses : 3D modelling, Photoshop, Drawing, Easily distracted, Self assessments

Opportunity’s :Tutorials, Work experience, Peer Support, Reviews and Video’s

Threats : Punctuality, Time management,  Deadlines

Today I collected many images for my representation of my city I ended up with a picture of a castle on a river bank  then I took a picture of a road on a desert and used Photoshop to blend the two images together using many different tools such as the magic wand  and the magnetic lasso to clean up the rough edges and make it look more realistic.

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In the slideshow above I have organised it from the original Photoshop design into the other four images which are made in 3D Max and taken at four different angles showing  the final product. The tools I used to make this were simply using the shapes provided and using inset, extrude, scale, paint deformation and soft selection, to add all the detail onto my castle and the rocky areas in front. The windows and doors were made by first insetting then extruding to make it look layered and more realistic.