DM-Crater wip 3

Hey guys,

Quick update on the progress I've made during the week on my handpainted/sculpted deathmatch map for Unreal Tournament 2004.

I'm currently sculpting the bark texture at the moment, I'm quite happy with how the maps turned out so far, I've just started working on the skybox and looking at reference for ideas as to what i can add to it. So I've been looking at clouds, planets and starts etc.

Thank you for your time,

Andy

DM-Crater Wip2

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on the DM-Crater map from my previous post

The trees and some of the foliage are finally in awaiting textures and I've added some nice orange glowing bases for all the weapon spawns.

I'm currently sculpting some rune stones to add outside near the cave entrance and in the caves interior by the bio-rifle.

Thanks for reading,

-Andy

DM-Crater

Hey guys,

I've started working on a new Unreal Tournament 2004 map on Friday. Its a small 2-8 player deathmatch map, I've been keeping this one pretty small so I can really polish the visual for my level design portfolio. I've been looking at some of my old concept art and some of the new World of Warcraft art for inspiration.

Some of the references I've been looking at for ideas are:

This piece of environment concept art I made couple of years ago

These screenshots from the new World of Warcraft content

As well as mostly spiritual inspiration from the mood of the level The Truth and Reconciliation from the original Halo game.

I'm currently designing some foliage for the map and looking at different types of props i could use to improve the visuals. I'm considering making blue glowing rune stones for decorating the cave and orange ones as a base for all the weapon spawns.

The map is will also have a lot  more cover when I add the 7-8 trees in engine based on my original layout design.

Thanks for reading,

-Andy

DM-Crushbone - Cliff walls

After chatting with my brother about the map I gathered some reference for cliff walls then sculpted and modelled a cliff mesh to use for the map.

The sculpted texture was base on vertical layered rocks found in places such as the grand canyon or in cliff forest areas where the softer rocked had more easily eroded leaving sharp inclines of this type of layer rock exposed as a surface.

I'm currently decorating the level with the cliff mesh shown above.

Thanks for reading,

-Andy

Everquest UT2004 maps - more textures and UV fixes

I've created some more textures using 3D and 3D sculpting for the Rock, Marble rock and grass in the scene. I then i had to spend a significant amount of time fixing and creating all the unwraps as all the texture warp on the ground/walls was incredibly noticeable with decent 512 and 1024 resolution textures.

Heres a screenshot with the original 64x64 Everquest textures

 and here is a screenshot with my 512 grass and 1024 rock texture.

It's been quite fun trying to retrofit this old scene but there's only so much I can do before it starts to loose its appearance, I'm going to finish up with the wood textures and move on from the map soon.

I've started creating a new map inspired by the Legend of Zelda: Windwaker using some simple hand-painted textures painted directly in Photoshop not using any sculpting at all. Below is an unlit screenshot of the scene in 3dsmax.

Thanks for reading,

-Andy

Everquest UT2004 maps - continued

I've finished fitting out the level and testing it with bot pathing and pickups, and I've moved on to cleaning up/reworking the geometry and textures. I'm taking a lot of care not to take aware from the classic old feeling area but there are things that just plain ugly, and the UV unwrapping and texture resolutions of the originals are beyond hideous.

I've spent some time chamfering corners and unwrapping the level as well as adding some more geometry to make the castle feel more like a castle.

Before:

After:

As you can see there's some extra trims and castle details, which are still quite blocky and keep with the old school geometry of the castle but add a lot to the aesthetics of it. I then decided to move on to recreating my first texture.

I modelled the bricks in 3ds max and imported them into mudbox to sculpt. Using screenfiltering to extract the base texture and normals (not that UE2 uses them xD) I also extracted some cavity maps and other masks to help my in photoshop while painting. I put a lot of time and care into making sure i matched the colours shape and values of the original texture to keep it as authentic as possible.

                                                                    Original texture:  

New texture:

I took a lot of inspiration from modern sculpt to handpainted styles as they make as much as of the diffuse channel as possible, the only channel ut2004 and everquest uses for textures as it's all vertex lit.

Here's the new texture in game

It made me realise I have a lot more UV's to sort out xD especially on the inside of the castle but it's a lot more pleasant too look at already. I also made a quick spec and took a render in marmoset showing the tiling texture with full diffuse specular and normals for future use on my portfolio website.

That's all so far this evening, I'm going to sculpt plank textures from the bridges and wooden flooring soon and perhaps make a mesh and sculpt the cobblestone wall just outside the castle. Thanks for reading

-Andy

Everquest UT2004 maps

So I've started this year playing and looking back on good old classic fast paced shooters. Mostly playing UT2004 and also deciding to play some classic Everquest Project 1999 and I thought it would be a bit of fun to take the dungeons from Everquest and make them play or work as a classic arena shooter map.

So I've started with the dungeon known as Crushbone, which is one of the most famous newbie dungeons from the game.

I've kept a lot of the classic old school modelling in tact and fleshed out the rocks and wall areas with some ut2004 cliff meshes.

Thanks for reading
-Andy