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Topic: A peek at creating a scene

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All Forums : [THE GAMING PLAZA] : Game Development, Research & Modding > A peek at creating a scene

#1 20 DEC 2010 at 7:11pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6951 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	[image]http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6416/image4ut.jpg[/image] Here's a peek at what I've been doing lately, aside from building a website. Here I'm trying for a scene using our evil character. She was developed some time back as a faction we are using. Now that her look and art direction are done she's an asset for more work- be it a cut scene, a diplomatic screen scene or whatnot. Developing a full library of different scenes for the building of Emperor's Bane:The Gambit. Here you can see a shot of the many polygons she's made up of. Some 70 thousand plus- which in a game engine would be too high- but for cut scenes or prerendered scenes that can used within the game engine they'll play just fine. For actual use in game her poly count will have to be reduced to about 10k or so. [image]http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4862/image6sc.jpg[/image] yet untextured. [image]http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3513/image8pr.jpg[/image] MAT applied [image]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/3532/image10ii.jpg[/image] She looks cool so lets put her in a 3d scene already finished earlier [image]http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/9701/image12sw.jpg[/image] The grid is turned on for a visual cue to help get her placement to the floor correct. [image]http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/2461/image14xy.jpg[/image] I decided to stick a little sci-fi in as we are shooting for a medevil/sci-fi direction. This plateform- or thron perhaps will do nicely. Whatever library of assets we have can be added. This is slowly growing as time goes on and I keep busy at it. Got to stop playing games so much to get it where it needs to be [image]http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/7192/image17y.jpg[/image] These columes make a nice touch as well. However she's pretty lifeless. Next step is animation. [image]http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/6743/image19vh.jpg[/image] I "Pose" her for the first frame- in a planned 300 frame scene. If you look closely you can see I have her hand selected (the white box). Above on the left is a bunch of circle lines that let me move her bones for animation. each circle line does something different- be it 'bend' or 'move up and down', 'twist' and so on. Every section of the model can be selected and moved- or morphed. Morphing is good for developing another character using the same model (biped). This saves money of course but it also just makes things easy as base animations like walk, run and so on can be used for different characters-saving a lot of time. [image]http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/1893/image21mz.jpg[/image] her expression was rather 'duh' as well- so again I selected her different facual parts. . Since she's evil I went for that 'bitch' look. [image]http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/640/tempscene0071.jpg[/image] before mapping the 300 frame scene with animation and camera positions I render a single frame to take a peek at how it'll look. I'm looking to make sure ambient lighting, shadows and so on are working - sometimes you can forget after several hours in a work session. [image]http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4059/image23v.jpg[/image] Rendering away. not much to do until that's done- which can be several hours or even days depending on the length - in this case I'll just go to bed- it'll be done by morning. Here's our finished scene. It's a prelim- one of many. It either fits or not. We use probably 1 in 15 in the end. Yeah we're picky- but as in most movies a lot of stuff ends up on the editing floor. If we do use it it'll have a couple of other angle shots, panaramic or zoomed out- which I'll render in the future and see how it all fits together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j426AwVWZ8&fmt=22 This is a lot easier than it appears - anyone can do this stuff with a little practice, time and desire.
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#2 20 DEC 2010 at 7:18pm
Azzurri Banned for 15367 days Posts : 9755 Joined: 24 NOV 2009 Location: 0, Kentucky Status : Offline	Looks great Ghost!!!!!!!!! It is better to die by a swords quick thrust than to be impaled for a lifetime upon the sharp tongue of a woman.-Grimjack
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#3 20 DEC 2010 at 7:31pm
critter Commander Posts : 1170 Joined: 7 APR 2004 Location: US Status : Offline	Great shot. Can't wait guys. You know what's sad? My first thought was, "Gah! She overcooked the bacon!" - Martok
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#4 20 DEC 2010 at 7:42pm
Owen Wills Centurion Posts : 7 Joined: 7 SEP 2003 Location: US Status : Offline	I have to say that is pretty slick. I'll have to keep an eye out for any other posts you have like this. Good work and have fun doing it. I especially like what you did on the backside of your avatar the buns busting out of the g-string look so real. Merry Christmas and Safe New Year, safe but Fun
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#5 20 DEC 2010 at 7:57pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6951 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	Thanks. i had to add music to our babe to get the 'feel' right. Plus i just tinker a lot She's certainly one of our best characters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTzmAzkWZcE&fmt=22
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#6 20 DEC 2010 at 8:58pm
stophro Commander Posts : 2171 Joined: 3 MAY 2007 Status : Offline	The vid looks great GR! And Schlomo wouldn't give a rat's ass about whether it was platemail or email.-LB about Gus
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#7 21 DEC 2010 at 5:07am
yoshino Centurion Posts : 110 Joined: 22 APR 2008 Status : Online	GR,what program did you use for modeling, rigging and animation? Right now,I'm learning those with 3dsMax(and difficult to grasp) for game characters. So I'm interested to using program.
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#8 21 DEC 2010 at 10:36pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6951 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	I use a lot of different programs - 3dsMax-but an older version (7)- who can afford 5k upgrades? If you can learn to rig a model you can use true bones for animation- I'm not using that here but is a package i recommend- it'll work with a lot of different modeling software- but on the cheap though the tutorials are sparse one of easiest to use is Fragmotion- which works with truebones and is only $50. It doesn't do high res models in the 70k range (I believe 14k is the limit) otherwise I'd be using it here. For the game trailer I'm using Poser 8 pro and Daz 3d studio professional- however daz 3d is a free download and is pretty good - the pro version can be had for less $300- wait for a sale. These programs are pretty easy to learn compared to stuff like 3d studio Max- though what you can do is somewhat limited of course- for world creations, as well as assets a partner modeling and level program is Carrara 8- levels, scenes or models can be created here and then exported for use in Daz and Poser. http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/carrara8?_m=d Also daz does have an asset store and you can buy and use direct from there. There is a number of 3rd party plug-ins I'm using- for shaders, clouds, lights, animation and so on- some of those is animate (pro version $200), Poser format exporter for Daz (free), Particle FX for Daz (19.95), Dynamic clothing control for Daz (49.95), Ubersoft lighting kit (19.95), Shader shop ($199), and faceshop. The two models come with Daz, Victoria 4 (I upgraded her to pro) and Micheal 4 (also upgraded)-- you can't tell as I morphed and retextured- but these are the only 2 humanoid models used in the trailer- representing all our factions. There is a plug-in that will reduce the poly count for use in the game engine (Unity 3 Pro -$1500) - which is included in the SDK for $199. Most in game models however will be made in Max- as these renders are mostly going to be used for cutscenes or diplomatic scenes (think civ5 for example) - but certain models that appear in game cutscenes like a certain horse may be reduced and used so they match up- but I'd say 99 percent of game levels and models will be built in 3d studio Max and imported in the engine- with only faction/house leaders being used from Daz/Poser - which do not appear on the actual game map (again think civ5) Generally I render in Daz as poser is somewhat unstable and slow in rendering- though scene setup- especially character setup and morphing is much easier in poser- feature wise it's superior to daz- then I exoprt the scene or character to Daz for final rendering. However Daz usually also crashes in rendering an movie file- so I have to instead have daz save each frame as an image- and I then use a program called VideoMach to turn these into clips. For sound I'm using Audiocity (free). I then edit and build the hd movie in Pinnacle 14 ultimate (this is also somewhat prone to crashes). I first tried Vegas Pro as most reviews named that one best- but feature wise it lacked a lot of what we needed. It's also pretty hard to use- an obtuse interface to say the least. The bulk of our game design happens on paper- I'm using Pose/Daz mainly for expirementing on art direction and faction characters- once our world is done there the bulk will happen in Unity- which can use 3d max models, levels directly.. We are however boardgaming this out old style on a table--- there the actual rules,play etc are refined. If it works there, and is fun- then that will be our framework for a computer port- as we also may do a boardgame if our universe is successful on the PC- including other formats like Xbox360 and PS3- as this is easily done in Unity using mono --- though I doubt we'll go for web play, iphone or droid versions- which we could using Unity if we wanted as well, but this is a somewhat small scale project compared to what is my true aim- which is basically have a release in a relative short time (like 2 years) that can earn money so I can go full time on a bigger grand strategy game- using this universe that is pretty much in line with a follow up of Emperor of the Fading Suns (minus the licience name) - which would absolutely need full time devotion and a good budget- Or in short- quite my frickin day job and do what I really want to do.
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#9 22 DEC 2010 at 6:28am
yoshino Centurion Posts : 110 Joined: 22 APR 2008 Status : Online	Thanks GR! very informative.I've learned from your comment a lot. I tried Poser/Daz a few months ago.Those applications easily make and animate a character. I didn't know a plug-in that convert from high-poly to low-poly. Usually I use these characters to 3D game engine(unity3D[ ]),so I would require this plug-in if I use these softwares. Right now I want to learn making 3D characters from scratch,so I'll still use my 3dsMax for learning purpose. Again thank you.
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#10 22 DEC 2010 at 5:27pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6951 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	That's a good plan as Poser/Daz really aren't anything like 3dMax- and in the overall picture that's the one to really learn- these other programs have certain benefits- mainly they don't take years to learn- I too have played around with Daz/Poser for a long time but never really did anything until now. Again mainly because things are just faster when your working on an art direction- but the programs will nickle and dime you to death. Free sounds good but then you want a shader- money, then an effect- money, then some smoke- money- not to mention doing effects is redicously tedious and time consuming compared to doing them inside a game engine. i can apply a shader in 3 minutes, or do a cutscene in an hour- with Daz/Poser it may take a week- and not look good- as both are buggy. a frame will drop putting a jerk in a 500 frame scene that then has you dumping it- losing all that time- I'll be much more happy when I jump to 3dmax and the game engine- but coming up with stuff out of thin air HAS to be done- and this is the fastest way - but you get what you pay for- a $200 program just isn't never going to be 3d studio Max- but I wish they'd fix some of these critical bugs.
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#11 22 DEC 2010 at 10:45pm
Sigma One General Posts : 10480 Joined: 13 NOV 2010 Location: US Status : Offline	Holy Moley thats impressive. I'm always in awe for modellers and animators mainly because I have NO CLUE how to begin to even do that. It'd probably take me all day to make a stickman walk! That aside, that stuff looks AWESOME GR.
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#12 23 DEC 2010 at 4:05am
SiTheSly Centurion Posts : 194 Joined: 9 JUL 2007 Location: UK, London Status : Offline	Very impressive, looks like an awful lot of work. Good luck and I really hope it all comes together sweet for you.
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#13 2 FEB 2011 at 11:25pm
ghostryder Colonel Posts : 6951 Joined: 4 MAY 2004 Location: US, Texas Status : Offline	Took a while but finally came up with another house/faction. I'd been going around in nowhere circles on this one for weeks- [link=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0JVr7kFCLk&fmt=22]http://www.youtube.com/...v=m0JVr7kFCLk&fmt=22[/link]
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#14 22 FEB 2011 at 10:48pm
Steelgrave Colonel Posts : 3322 Joined: 1 DEC 2006 Location: US Status : Offline	Wow! Impressive stuff, Ghostie. "When in danger, or in doubt.....run in circles, scream and shout!!!", author Herman Wouk.
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Topic: A peek at creating a scene

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