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3DThe ships of Darkdawn: Encounters
LeoCeballos0
Posts: 0Member
Hello everyone,
Its been a looooong time since I visited this forum. Heck its been long enough I couldn't even recover my old account. Its been just as long since I've really worked on any high-poly scifi stuff.
About three years ago I quit my job in 3D archviz to go back to school and get a graduate degree in interactive design/game development. Having finished school, as a personal project I've been fleshing out one of my game experiments, a 3d capital ship combat game for mobile, into a full-fledged app-store ready game. I'm happy to say I'm now literally days away from launching an "early access" version on Google Play.
However, all this interactive mobile stuff has meant that I've spent the last couple of years obsessing about polycount for real-time rendering on a(n older) smartphone. My limit for player ships was something like 3K tris; its an interesting and fun way to work, but I'll be damned if I don't miss obsessing about every last detail and slowly building up a ship over weeks/months. So I gave it some thought and decided, heck, why not? I can convert one or more of the ships to high-detail versions and use them for promotional art, and to scratch the itch!
So here we go. I've started working on the Othirion-class cruiser, a mid-size cruiser and the second of three playable ships.
Attachment not found.
This is the low poly, in-game version. As you can see, it relies pretty heavily on texturing for its details, and is pretty flat. In-game (and on the ship viewers linked below), I break up the surface a bit with a bump map, ut the idea is to add actual 3D detailing to the ship.
Attachment not found.
I've started on the front and plan to work my way back. For now I'm sticking pretty close to my texture work, tough with more time and no poly limit, I may eventually start adding/changing things... but not so much so that it looks like a different ship, since I intend to use it in promoting the game.
Attachment not found.
And here is the underside. The cool thing is that since the proportions and overall look are done, and i'm reasonably happy with them, I can really relax and just let myself enjoy the process.
If anyone is interested, I have a little promo app for the game up on Google Play right now, with an AR mode, so you can have little ships floating on your desktop: Darkdawn Ship Viewer on Google Play.
No Android? Here's the web version (no AR though). Warning: you'll have to install the Unity web player: http://darkdawn.co/shipviewer.html
Its been a looooong time since I visited this forum. Heck its been long enough I couldn't even recover my old account. Its been just as long since I've really worked on any high-poly scifi stuff.
About three years ago I quit my job in 3D archviz to go back to school and get a graduate degree in interactive design/game development. Having finished school, as a personal project I've been fleshing out one of my game experiments, a 3d capital ship combat game for mobile, into a full-fledged app-store ready game. I'm happy to say I'm now literally days away from launching an "early access" version on Google Play.
However, all this interactive mobile stuff has meant that I've spent the last couple of years obsessing about polycount for real-time rendering on a(n older) smartphone. My limit for player ships was something like 3K tris; its an interesting and fun way to work, but I'll be damned if I don't miss obsessing about every last detail and slowly building up a ship over weeks/months. So I gave it some thought and decided, heck, why not? I can convert one or more of the ships to high-detail versions and use them for promotional art, and to scratch the itch!
So here we go. I've started working on the Othirion-class cruiser, a mid-size cruiser and the second of three playable ships.
Attachment not found.
This is the low poly, in-game version. As you can see, it relies pretty heavily on texturing for its details, and is pretty flat. In-game (and on the ship viewers linked below), I break up the surface a bit with a bump map, ut the idea is to add actual 3D detailing to the ship.
Attachment not found.
I've started on the front and plan to work my way back. For now I'm sticking pretty close to my texture work, tough with more time and no poly limit, I may eventually start adding/changing things... but not so much so that it looks like a different ship, since I intend to use it in promoting the game.
Attachment not found.
And here is the underside. The cool thing is that since the proportions and overall look are done, and i'm reasonably happy with them, I can really relax and just let myself enjoy the process.
If anyone is interested, I have a little promo app for the game up on Google Play right now, with an AR mode, so you can have little ships floating on your desktop: Darkdawn Ship Viewer on Google Play.
No Android? Here's the web version (no AR though). Warning: you'll have to install the Unity web player: http://darkdawn.co/shipviewer.html
Post edited by LeoCeballos on
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I just realized I forgot to post a bit of gameplay. Here is the (low poly) Othirion flying into combat:
[video=youtube_share;Nu9kz1AbERs]
Definitely interested in seeing what some of those ships look like in high res.
Hey colbmista, like the title says, the game is "Darkdawn: Encounters", and its not released yet. I'll be putting up an "early access" edition on the Google Play store in a few days, though. I'd say if its a (relatively) quiet weekend, I should be able to finish it right then.
See, that's why I'll always be a designer/artist first and a coder second. I can code pretty well when I'm focused, whereas doing art (particularly modelling) *makes* me calm and focused.
Yep, its a smartphone/tablet game. I'd say best played on a 7/8 inch tablet, but works alright both smaller and larger than that. Last I checked, it'll chug but still be playable even on my 3 year old HGT Evo 4G. It *should* run on iPhones as old as the 3GS, and i've done a bit of testing on a Lumia 820 so I'm also targeting Windows Phone 8.
The trick really is, well, space. Even Chris Roberts brought this up talking about Star Citizen. The advantage of space is that you're not rendering trees, hallways, rough terrain, etc. And you not only accept, but *expect* few but powerful/distant lightsources. So I can dump all my polygons and shaders into a handful of ships and a few other floating bodies, and not worry so much about the "environment", other than of course to paint a nice skybox, and light it well.
Hmmm. Might be time to upgrade. And then buy my game
So small update today; I'm super close to releasing the early access version of the game so most of my time is being spent tweaking code and bug-fixing at this point. But I did start working on the joint between the forward section and the main body of the ship, and the long "spine" that runs across the top of the hull. Also, I set up Modo's daylight render simulation to get some nicer shading for the shots I upload.
render1.JPG
More soon; hopefully lots more over the weekend.
Anyway, I did do a bit more paneling, and combined the ship with the low-poly model. I think this project will go through two "phases" or passes. For this first pass, I'm replicating the details as they appear on the texture maps as accurately as possible, with an eye towards improving certain transitions to break up the obvious "polygonality" of the original. The second pass will be to add a whole new layer of detailing to really bring up the model to a "cinematic" level of quality. Well, thats the plan, anyway.
render4.JPG
Darkdawn: Encounters Early Access
The high resolution version of the ship is looking great so far. :thumb:
Ugh I'm dying to spend some time with this but this week is going to be rough. Livin' for the weekend...
wip3.jpg
Glad you like, Death.
Here's a bit of a quick update; the mirrored engine/shield towers at the back are now done, so I'm starting to add plating on the center section again.
render6.jpg
render7.jpg
render9.jpg
render10.JPG
render11.jpg
render12.jpg
render13.jpg
render14.jpg
render15.jpg
render16.jpg
raider.jpg
And here is the beginning of the high poly model for the engines.
raider_wip1.jpg