Tuesday, December 11, 2012

waiting room in UDK

Finally got pieces in the waiting room. Still need to make an unholy amount of decals (graffiti and such) for the walls and floors, as well as debris chunks here and there. Here's what I have:


Monday, December 3, 2012

progress (mental ray)

Even though it's completely useless for my overall project, I continue to attempt mental ray renders. I spent a while getting the lights and shadows to work the right way, and added a normal map here and there. Texturing continues!


And a shot of the same room from the game engine (a few missing textures):


Monday, November 19, 2012

waiting room update

The lighting is just simple enough to get a render, so the focus here is the little bit of texture work I've done on the walls and ceiling. Much more to do:


Monday, November 12, 2012

November 10th

EDIT: ceiling wasn't nearly arced enough. It still isn't in this shot, but, like I said, work in progress:



I've been doing work, I swear. I've just been really bad about posting it. Before I started working on the interior, I spent some time placing assets in UDK. I have a good portion of the terrain mapped out, and the exterior is on its way to being done. Here's what I've been working on for a few days...the first glimpse of the waiting room:


Monday, October 29, 2012

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Updates Oct 24

I would really like to have the immediate perimeter completely finished by the end of this week so I can move on to modeling the interior. I finally got the broken window frames in all the windows to make it look that much more convincing.

I still have minor things to fix all over the map, but most of these problems arise due to my lack of experience within the Unreal Development Kit. With enough tutorials, hopefully I can fix my problems. Here's what I have in the engine so far. The light source is placed as though it were about 9 in the morning:


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

middle of the mid-term week

Here I am, middle of October. Still many things to do on the outside (let's not even talk about the interior) but I'm making progress. Just a little info on today's screen cap: since this is inside the game engine, not all of the materials I use on these objects are double sided, which is why you can see straight through to the horizon on some parts of the building. Fear not; all of the transparency issues will be resolved when the interior is built. Here's the shot:



just for fun, a shot from the inside. textures are unfinished, obviously.






Tuesday, October 16, 2012

October sixteenth and seventeenth

It's the middle of October, so according to the schedule that I made in September, I should be working on the interior right now. I'm slightly behind, so that isn't the case. However, I'm pleased with the progress being made on the outside, so I think it's worth the extra time. 

I decided to revamp the sidewalk chunks, using my own unique textures taken with my phone's camera. Here are the chunks that I can scale and rotate to make the player believe they are in a seamless environment:



I finally have the building itself textured, (with a few normal maps that need to be generated here and there). Here are a couple shots of the building with mental ray (soon I'll post renders from the game engine, which should look way better):





Thursday, October 11, 2012

october the eleventh and twelfth

Texturing is still in process, and there are a bunch of miscellaneous items I still need to model and texture for the exterior. Here's this:


And this:


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

a litta bitta game engine progress

I have much to do, but texturing is coming along well. Tedious and focus-intensive, but well. Here are a couple screenshots of what I have in the engine thus far:



Saturday, October 6, 2012

more gargoyle nonsense

Here's a fun little depth of field thing. I also finished sculpting / baking maps for the relief sculpture on either side of the gargoyle. Check it.


Gargoyle sculpt completed!

Finished the gargoyle sculpt and baked a normal map for my low poly object. See them side by side:


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

UDK proof of concept

Here's my proof of concept. This is within the Unreal Development Kit, so this is actually an environment that's playable. This will eventually be the east / northeast corner of the building; it houses the women's room on the eastern end of the main waiting room.
screenshot from UDK

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Sidewalk in mentalray

I'll be posting more shots from the game engine that all of these assets will be going into, which is the Unreal Development Kit. For now, this is a mentalray render of a few modular sidewalk pieces.


Monday, October 1, 2012

Just some normal normals.

I'm really excited about this! I didn't expect these walls to turn out like this at all, but it's definitely a great thing. The first picture is just the plain geometry with flat textures, no normals. The second one is with the normal maps applied (but they're not quite finished yet).



October the First


I have officially begun the texturing process. According to my pre-planned schedule, I'm slightly behind where I'd like to be, but I made the schedule to be just on the brink of impossibility; that way I can stay on top of things, procrastinate as I may. October is a big month for this project. By the end of this month I should have the exterior of the building and its immediate perimeter textured, then I'll start moving on to what the player will see on the horizon in early November. Keep checking back; more updates to come!

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Sep 30th progress

As far as the exterior of the building itself goes, I think I'm all done modeling the pieces. Now it's just a matter of putting them all together. The rest of the environment, on the other hand...not quite finished with that. But I plan to be before the new week starts.


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

September 26th

Making progress on the perimeter. I'm looking forward to blocking the player off from exploring too much of the outside >:]

I'm getting there with the exterior modeling (the immediate perimeter, anyway; beyond the fence is going to take a little more time). I need to start UVing all these assets fairly soon, or forever burn in the ashes of my unfinished work.


Wednesday, September 19, 2012

More.

I thought this deserved its own post. I need to model the remaining 3 floors at the top, as well as the carriage entrance on the north side (not visible from this angle). That'll be it for the building, then I'll move onto the surrounding environment!


Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A little bit of modeling progress.

Still a skeleton, but I'm making progress on the exterior. Should be done with the exterior of the building and the outside perimeter in 2 - 3 weeks. Texturing all these modular assets is going to be absolute hell.




Sunday, September 16, 2012

Left to do of the modeling:

Right side and immediate perimeter. Also, the THIRD THROUGH FOURTEENTH FLOORS. No big. (There are a bunch of missing geometry pieces here. Don't worry, I made some mistakes in the workflow of my modeling, and this is the direct result. I'm wiser now.)


image based lighting

Thursday, September 13, 2012

This is me, updating my blog.

I'm finally on top of things. I just needed the first week and a half or so of school to get ahead of my other classes so I can be proactive with this project. I've got a rough schedule planned out, and according to that schedule, I should be completely done modeling the exterior by the end of next next week. Yes, two weeks from the end of this week. Here's a test render, piecing together my modular assets in Maya.


Tuesday, September 11, 2012

A few asset updates...

For workflow's sake, I've decided to hold off on sculpting until I've finished doing all the low poly models. I'll go back and do that stuff when I know for a fact I'm going to finish the modeling.


the gargoyle that inhabits each peak

scale reference. this is looking up at the peak from eye level.

Updating...

I'm sacrificing food and sleep to finish the work I have for all the classes that don't concern this project in order to be able to work on this more. I have many, many more assets to model, but I've updated the game proposal that I posted earlier this month. AT&T is a terrible waste of space and employment, and has failed to deliver its promised product to my apartment for weeks now, so I have to come to school when I want to research or use the Internet, which is, of course, infuriating.

I'll be updating with some screenshots soon of my work thus far.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

pillar progress

I'm abandoning this and moving on to other assets for now. The left side is looking on at the top, the right side is looking up from eye-level.


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

research and such things of the like

A few days ago, I went out into the world to gather research from places other than Google Images. My first stop was the Detroit Historical Museum, which is closed until November 23rd. However, my next stop was the Detroit Public Library, which had all the photo reference I needed and more, down in the Burton Historical Collection. I was lucky enough, on this day, to get free xeroxes as well, which was definitely the highlight of the experience. Unfortunately, since these interior and exterior images of Michigan Central Station belong to a historical collection, posting digital copies on the Internet seems, on some level, immoral if not illegal.

modeling progress update.

Peaks and pillar caps. All low poly base meshes (except the Z Brush sculpt) rendered using mental ray.



High poly sculpt of the preceding base mesh.
Low poly with normals baked in.
Main peak base mesh


Poster & Game Proposal














some preliminary sketches...

Some preliminary sketches before I start modeling (there will be many, many more of these). Some interior drawings and some of the exterior sculpture in the front of the building.

It has begun!

Here it is. It's my last year at the College for Creative Studies (unless I make a series of grave, irreversible decisions, of course) and I couldn't be more excited to begin my senior project. I already know, right off the bat, I've taken a very serious work load onto my shoulders for these next two semesters. That said, I look forward to evolving as an artist, both digitally and traditionally.

I'll try my best to be a little more consistent with my posts this year. Last year I was anything but consistent. Since I have so much work to do for this particular project, I'll probably be posting things constantly, as much of my work is no doubt going to go through various stages of completion. Ready for action. Let's do this.