Droid planet

[YouGroove]

I start a new LE3 project for this year, we'll see where it goes ?

 

 

Your ship is damaged by a sudden asteroid tempest, you have no choice and you must land on the nearest planet , a not so friendly old human planet devasted by war against a cybernetic race. The land is mostly abandonned and habited by robots amry , your goal is to stay alive and find a way to get back to your home planet.

You'll encounter some fearless people during your adventure that are seeking valuable ressources or treasures on that dangerous planet.

 

It's a TPS action/Infiltration game with Metroidvania levels with specific gameplay :

- respawn point when you die like Borderlands

- Xp system : If you a are killed Xp points remains in that place, you must go back where you were killed to retrieve Xp points

- hard core difficulty

 

The minimal goals for this year :

- TPS gunfight with cover system

- some 3 different ennemies to fight (or more?)

- turrets , indestructible specific robots

- Save points and travel teleporters

- Flying Drone for satellite view of the zone for the player

- Simple dialogs text

- Simplified 3D map metroid like

- Power up : Shield barrier , Decoy ,Frezzing Emp blast , Invisible

- Stylized graphics different from realistic standard style ??

 

Optionnal :

- Additionnal power ups unlocked throught story : Time slower, Reverse IA

- Dangerous environments : radioactive zones, traps

- Character and weapon upgrades spread among levels

- secondary characters with that will help the story to advance, also with secondary quests and unique rewards

- Unlock new tools throught story beating bosses : grapplin, wings, ..

- Climbing ledge system

- Different possible gameplay on open level : drive a buggy with weapons, a tank ?, perhaps ride a cyber dog ?

- Sub levels mini games : racing car game, arena gunfight combats

- Puzzles and physic puzzles

- Additionnal TPS moves

- real time cinematic scenes

 

Early wip player.

[nick.ace]

Did you model that character yourself? The topology and normal mapping looks great! I'm very interesting in seeing where this game goes!

[YouGroove]

Yes, i used MakeHuman to quickly have a base character, imported in Zbrush, than i modified it's shape. After that i created all clothes and boots in Zbrush using tools mainly like : extract, move, inflat, slice with delete hidden geo, pinch, flatten.

 

For retopology i decimate in Zbrush the model to 50% or more depending on density and i export it as Obj before importing it in 3D Coat and doing the retopo with tools like like lines, and quads (2 clicks, paralelloid).

Once it's done i export the low poly retopo as Obj and finally i import in Xnormal tool the original high poly with a low decimation like 30% this time and the low poly retopo; finally you just have to press the bake button.

 

To make it easy in retopo i had worked with two different models , that i combined in Blender for the final model, each part using a material with 2048*2048 textures.

 

Beware on the decimation, as decimating too much the high poly for baking you will loose many details some time, for example the character looks more detailled in Zbrush

 

But tou can bring back details by simply paiting on the normal map on the final low poly model.

 

 

The wip model in 3D coat with PRB (the eyes and the hair will be another object and material)

 

This will be a TPS so this will be the main view of the character.

[YouGroove]

Blender is really powerfull and fast , for rigging you have two usefull things :

- Mirror : SHIFT+E = Extrude a new bone mirrored, so any modification you make on one will be made on the mirrored in edit mode, i got armature complete in some 30 mins because i just worked on one half side only.

- Automatic Weights: When you apply armature on the character weights can be placed by Blender automatically, if you have placed the bones carefully, you don't even need to correct the weights of bones.

This is why creating armature is something to do carefully and not rush it up.

 

 

 

I made some belt and added bones for animating it, the solution is using IK or it would take ages to tweak each bone indiviually.

So you just move the last bone of the chain and the belt deforms smoothly.

 

 

I just wish LE3 to support cloth system some day , so animations would look lot more natural and would follow real time physics.

 

And the character with full clothes bones and IK

[YouGroove]

Lessons of the day if you plan to animate clothes :

- keep clothes model separate from character for rigging

- don't use thin clothes with volume otherwise you'll have many problems animating with vertex going throught planes , just use one side planes for clothes with double side rendering (if you need a visible thin border , just extrude the bottom lower ring faces)

- use IK for all chain of bones used on clothes , so animating will be ver easy and fast

 

 

If someone would integrate Physix or Bullet clothes in LE3 in some future i would be happy to be the first tester

[Guppy]

For your own sanity you may wish to redo the leg / foot rig to something a little more animation friendly;

 

here is a easy to follow tutorial;

[YouGroove]

I didn't target realistic but minimal animation :

 

But it's very interesting, and i'll try it as it can save lot of time when animating.

Thanks.

 

There is another very good and complete rigging tutorial for Blender new comers :

[AggrorJorn]

That is very nice topology. It looks very clean.

 

Also: I hate to be a grammar nazi, but is the title intended like that? Because it is either "I've (I have) seen aliens" or "I saw aliens".

[YouGroove]

Thanks Aggror.

My topology is in fact very simple and classic , you just follow curves.

Also: I hate to be a grammar nazi, but is the title intended like that? Because it is either "I've (I have) seen aliens" or "I saw aliens".

It's wip title.

[Josh]

Or you could be following the cue of Sixth Sense and say "I See Aliens".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsNjQhyvRnU

[YouGroove]

Or you could be following the cue of Sixth Sense and say "I See Aliens".

This could work as title game, but it's really a wip title i picked up, if the game progresses far enoutgh it will change with other ideas i have.

[YouGroove]

Some star wars inspired mob made in Silo 2.

[nick.ace]

Very nice! You may want to change your title though. Droid is a registered trademark.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(robot)

[YouGroove]

Thanks for the hint, anyway title is still a wip.

Perhaps DroidLand name should be ok as one word

 

Model desassembly on Blender and fast UV Unwrapping, still there is optimizations to do gain space.

[YouGroove]

Main colors are blocked, next is refining and adding details

[gamecreator]

Looking nice!

[YouGroove]

A bottleneck for graphcis as universe is robots : make working the metal shader effect in LE3 with textures from 3D coat or Substance

 

With some work perhaps.

[YouGroove]

Assembly of the mesh before painting AO, dirt, scratches

Big error also, i baked and worked with 1024*1024 texture,so painting details won't go very far

 

Red color will change perhaps because it looks a little Pokemon

[YouGroove]

Sketching some droid

[YouGroove]

Some army color themes

 

 

[codeape]

You are starting to get good at this YouGroove!

[YouGroove]

Thanks codeape.

 

sketching ideas

[YouGroove]

Faster sketching with 3D coat

[YouGroove]

sketch again

[YouGroove]

It's like development blog , the thread will have tips and discussions. mainly for people that like the 3D artist side.

 

----------------------------

 

This is a solo project, not team project , so i keep some following rules to be able to achieve things the more quickly possible :

 

1) Gather pictures and Sketch ideas

- Gather picture over internet , take the ones having good ideas or style or concepts from 2D artist.

- Skecth quickly in some 10 minutes (2D or 3D software)

You can skecth characters but outdoors also, like sculpting a thin box to make terrain than adding boxes representing houses , or big shapes to represent important things. I prefer that over 2D drawinfg as you have immediate 3D space view.

 

2 ) Detailling level and game visual style

Before starting a project, a good thing is to choose a level of detail, like making very detailled textures and models with extra polygon details or keeping simple shapes and simple textures. The more detailled , the more time it will take to advance the project.

Also the visual style you go for can make things easy and make you work faster with splendid result ( games like Journey, Rime etc ...)

 

3) Re use as much as possible

Buildings :

Make a library of basic pieces : Walls, corners, Tile floor , decoration assets, assemble them to make rooms variations ,assemble rooms to make complete buidings.

When the building is just decorative , i make modular floors each with some variations geometry and texture variations; then i assemble the final model in Blender or in the 3D engine (but this makes more objects for a building so more draw calls).

Machinery, robots :

Same as above : Decompose the model in elementary pieces, than UV and texture. Duplicating bolts , cooler, or any pieces to quickly detail your model without making extra effort. Keep unique pieces as low as possible.

Humanoids , monsters :

Re use your base characters library , you go faster modifying or scultping an existing one than starting from scratch.

 

4 ) Good tools :

Find the best tools you have fun to work instead and make you gain time instead of beeing frustrated because of some tool.

- Silo 2 :

That is lightweight and very fast , fun to use, i use it for 3D assets mainly, or low poly game 3D work.UV and Paint in 3D coat.

- Blender :

No so good interface, less friendly, but i use it for : advanced modeling tools like cables, racing track , arrays objects ,3D Tiles work with snapping , rigging, animation.

Many things to gain lot of time like IK, auto Rigging , duplicating animation keys and axis mirroring it.

- 3D coat :

This is not a fast software , because voxel is very demanding in highter res but it allows to make precise hard surface models easy.The best for retopology and painting for my use.

- Zbrush :

The fastests for high res sculpting. For hard surface, it is longer to make things and it can make artifacts, and 3D coat is best for that.

- Sculptris :

The most fun, small but awesome , with auto resolution sculpting, good to make some characters or monsters or a base that you can detail in Zbrush or 3D coat.

- MakeHuman :

Free and ready to make base characters to sculpt

- Gimp2, Krita :

Great open source painting programs, i use them for skecthing ideas or making GUI images.

 

5) Start small

The best advice i read on various forums.

Start always small instead of wanting to make too much models , too much gameplay or too much visual quality.

Your game will grow slowly but surely, and many things can be improved and added later.