Mayday mayday...

Am doing my crashed spitfire at the moment, here's some wips

Making Fires

So Another quicks paintover of a damaged variant. This one's full on crashed and in several different peices. Have been researching crashed spitfires and there aren't many spectacular pictures about. Most of them seem to be in one peice, which I guess says a lot about the plane and their pilots!

Spitfire

Paint over for the sort of thing I want my destroyed version of it to look like.

Going for a hard landing where not much damage is incurred.

May look at beaking one of the wings off.

Taking fire...

Finished my damaged textures now. This plane's taken a fair amount of flak fire aswell as some high calible rounds :p Wanted to do a version thats damaged but not destroyed first before I move onto the destroyed one. For that I'm thinking of having it plowed into the ground after loosing a wing! More to come soon...

Like spitting fire...

So a quick update here, textures for my spitfire are pretty much finished, still a couple of small details to add in. Have got a variety of camo variations, I think this blue marine one is my favourite, also have desert camo and the standard green. Decided to name it Tommys' Talos, as Talos, In mythology, was a giant bronze man with wings who flew round the coasts of Ancient Greece and protected it from invaders, thought it was quite fitting. Now to start on my damaged textures...

Spitfiring...

So here's a few more WiP shot of my Spitfire. I'm onto texturing it now and I'm quite pleased with how it's going. Working with the diffuse, specular and normal maps in unison really makes texture creation easier and more flexable, allowing you to really decide how you want to get the details across. This is rendered in realtime using xoliulshader, and the maps at the moment are 2048s (always best to work bigger and then scale it down when you're done I find). There's still a lot more to do, I havent gone into dirtying it up yet and have only just started painting the scratches. More to come very soon.

Spitfire update...

So here's some work in progress shots of my spitfire, still got a bit of modelling left to do on it, but it's coming along. Got a low poly interior in there at the moment but will add more polys to it if I've got some spare.

At the moment it's about 3,500 so I've got plenty spare.

Up, up and away...

So my rooftop's coming along. It's in UDK now and the past week or so I've been dressing the scene. I might make it a bit more busier with assets, but I don't want to over crowd it or I might start to see too much repetition. So far I've tried to keep it as varied as possible scattering things about and having different groups of assets. Crits always welcome :D

If I was in world war two they'd call me spitfire...

So my trip to Duxford on the weekend to get reference photos was met with great success :D I managed to get a load of good reference for Spitfires, and one of the mechanics even let me step over the velvet rope so I could take some detailed pictures of the flap mechanisms on the wings. As far as textures go, I'm going to be hand painting this plane probably with texture overlays. The idea of simply slapping photos onto it just doesn't seem right anymore, even though I'm quite happy with my texturing skills, they can always be improved.

The photos will provide me with information about surface details that I will need to include, and I will take full advantage of the Normal and specular maps on offer.



The past few days have been spent modeling it, and so far I'm pleased with how its going. One thing I might need to sort out is the amount of flow lines going towards the tail at the bottom, it's looking a bit crowded down there.


I'm also making an Airfix version of the Spitfire to help me, and I can't stress how much it helps. For anyone doing a vehicle, get yourself an Airfix version, you won't regret it!

From now on I'm going to divide my time between my Vehicle and Environment. It allows me to switch what I'm doing if my attention starts to wander...

Speed-a-roo

Time's-a-cracking on....

So time's getting on and it's nearly time to start my vehicle project, but more on that later.

In the past weeks I've been cracking on with my rooftop project, and overall, I'm please with how it's coming along. I'm a bit behind the schedule of finishing this week, but it doesn't worry me too much. I'm not going to rush it and do a bodge job, I really want to get it down, and make a good portfolio piece with it, because at the end of it, I need stuff that I'm proud to present to people.

I did spent a fair amount of time concepting and coming up with ideas, but when I look back it has only made my project stronger. I went through and blocked out my ideas to get a good idea of what they would look like, and from this it helped me pick the most interesting idea.

I would really encourage people to do this. If you've got a few ideas, block them out it max first. Having an idea in your head is always going to look amazing! mostly thanks to the capabilities of the human brain, but when you start to get it down on paper (or 3d), things will change. Limitations come in, and things will not look the same as they do in your head. This process will only take a few days and will help you massively with decision making and your perspective on things.


Anyways back to my project. I have most of my assets textured now, and my next big task is importing them into unreal and building the scene. A lot of my items will be duped a lot, due to the nature of scaffolding and bricks, but this allows me to save on texture and tri budget. I have posted some screens of the layout I'm going for as I just realised there are no finished mock up screens here, apart from the paint overs.


I'm off to duxford tomorrow to get some awesome reference for the legendary Supermarine Spitfire, which will serve as my model for my vehicle project.

quick painty...

Doodle me this...

I'm back! With some random doodles...

Hot down, summer in the city...

Quick messy paint here, used advice about more solid brushes, kinda cool. I like the feel of a hot, dry New York city summer...

Good end to an evening...

Well today's been a bit of a write off since I got my new iphone, but all is not lost.


A quick paintover, sunset palette here, nice colours but probably won't be suitable for an actual level.

Spent about an hour and a half on it.

Paint over...

A paintover done for my rooftop. Spent about an hour and a half on it. Not overly pleased :/ will be doing some more over the coming week, hopefully to more sucess...

Hands 'n' Feet...

Here's a few sketches I've done in my spare time (from life).

Bulding my Ideas

Here we go then, my last idea, the modern day construction site. I was going to do the whitehouse roof as my forth, but to be honest I don't think I would have run with that one, and it doesn't give me much room for creativity. So I've decided to do the modern day construction site instead.

This sketch is basically another highrise building only under construction. I've filled out the scene briefly to get a rough idea of things. Scaffolding has a big presence in this scene, I like scaffolding because there is no set shape to it and it can be mess and un-organised, and often is.


One that I havent added here is tarpauline. This would add more walls to the level and make it more confined as you walk around. The animation posibilities of it would really bring the scene to life aswell.


So my sketches are now done and my initial ideas are roughed out to a standard that im pleased with.

Now I've got to choose one...

The Empire builds back!

Drum roll for idea number 3...

Construction Site

This one really interests me because building sites are always cluttered and look busy, they also have a lot of movement present in them. So my original Idea was to do a modern day construction site, but I came up with a spark this morning and thought I'd combine it with one of my previous ideas.

The Empire State Building. I've always seen pictures and old rough footage of it being made and the perils those construction workers went though on a daily basis, and it facinates me. You see them walking along creaky wooden planks and shimmying along girder, with no reaction to them being hundreds of metres high and one wrong step away from being nothing more than a mess on a New York side walk. When see the pictures there's always so much going on, it didnt have the orderlyness and health and saftey these days.

So I've made a quick mockup of a corner of the Empire State just to get and idea of what I could achieve.