This Starfish Needs Another Name Besides 'Sammy'

You may recognize this little guy from a few weeks ago. We were all given a base model of Sammy Starfish (not the one I made) to play around with in z brush. 

The more I use the program, the more I find myself loving it. You can accomplish a whole lot in zbrush and it's pretty fun pushing and pulling the mesh to make shapes that'd be a nightmare in maya. 

Cathedral of the Damned

Or so I dubbed it after my initial concept idea of a cathedral with a cemetery became a volcanic hellfire.

This was my first attempt at making an environment in the Unreal game engine using assets bought by the school along with a few free ones. It's far from perfect and there are a lot of things I'd like to go back and fix, but it was super fun to build and I really want to keep playing with it.

The only requirement was to make 4 rooms or areas, but I wasn't entirely sure what qualified as a room or area so I focused on making it as fun to explore as possible with various points of interest, game rewards, and so forth.

Here is where our adventure begins, out in front of a rather aged building.

A statue is in the center whom I viewed as a pagan goddess of war. She was destroyed in the aftermath of whatever happened at the site to make it empty.

Taking a selfie with the beheaded Goddess Statue no big deal.

Oh.

Here's where I tried to add a story element. Also a potential free weapon if it was an rpg kind of game I guess. 

"Pull the weapon from the skeleton?"

Treasures to reward anyone who does go to the second floor.

I broke a wall in the Cathedral. There's actually two entrances to the back graveyard area, but I figured that having one within the Cathedral itself was easier for the player to advance and made more sense.

The graveyard area isn't as 'fun' as the Cathedral interior. This place is in need of the most polish as it really isn't too visually appealing besides the minor building with a sarcophagus and treasure.

Now for places we missed

Both sides of the Cathedral are framed with that fire...pit thing. And have a gate. The one gate has been destroyed by a falling boulder, thus you can jump through to the graveyard. But it's not as fun nor does the player gravitate that way. Which is good!

That's the map from above. 

Besides obviously meeting the requirement, I wanted to attempt weaving a small bit of story into this visually after listening to a guest speaker that worked for Bethesda. This ended up being the driving force behind a lot of my choices like the machinery, skeletons, chains etc. While a demonic looking ruin of a Cathedral wasn't my intent, it sure made for a more interesting story for the player to navigate. 

Kaboom

I think this marks the end of our long journey with the maya cannon. This week was pretty light on the tutorials, but I went back and redid the entire thing with the Zbrush model for a better end result.

Here we have our ever fascinating hypershade editor complete with material attributes.

Our lovely model rendered out in grayscale with wire frame and then in color both with and without wireframe.

And here it is within the Unreal Engine environment. It's rather funny to have them next to the model since the cannon is meant for a smaller character. It's also very fun to stand on top of them.

A Journey in Basics

First off, hello to my mom who is now watching and said my writing style amused her.

Next, here's a few ball bounces from the past two weeks. The first one is pretty rusty and unrealistic. I didn't allot myself enough time to iron out issues with it. My second one still has flaws, but it's definitely a stronger piece. Plus it earned a giggle in class so I consider that a success in itself.

Who Lives in a Pineapple Under the Sea

Clearly not this guy

There is a model A and B because the concepts varied in how low the body went. Personally I like A better with the lower lying tummy. I think that nails the look better.