We didn’t post a Friday update last week, but I thought I would pop in and let you know what we’ve been up to.
A lot of game development is tedious and unexciting. We are doing a lot of clean up. I cleaned up project directories and Unreal builds. Alejandro has been cleaning up and prepping the human models. Joe and Tommaso and I have been working on a plan to get the new Omniframe efficiently. More specifically:
1) Human models are 160,000 polygons. We are building them this way for future cut-scene use. But we decided to also prep a lower polygon 30,000 or so, for ease of animation. You see it’s very slow to animate a 160k poly figure, so we needed a lower poly one to animate. We are also going to use the 30k version for our in-game highest LOD model, and let software called Simplygone to auto generated the rest of the LODS. The humans also needed to be stripped of their temp hair, and lower poly teeth created, as well as tongues. Status: DONE. We have the high poly and low poly masters ready, albeit untextured and without hair, but good for animation.
2) We went back and forth between a custom Maya rig and blend using a popular human rigging system called HumanIK. In the end we used a HumanIK system and added custom controls for our facial experessions. Now that the human models are prepped with low poly versions, these will finish rigging and be ready shortly. We do plan to have some out of Omniframe animations, like when your suit is destroyed or you leave the suit to enter a building or new suit.
3) Omniframe cleanup. Starting from Tommaso’s great high Rez model, we have to now prepare new low-poly meshes from this and clean up the high-poly to make it optimal to bake normal maps. Normal maps are what trick the eye into seeing more detail and curves than is actually there in the high poly. Normal maps make a low poly model look like a high poly. This is not an easy process. Joe first started by creating a colored guide that showed which pieces need the most rework or new work done. I’m currently working on a collar plate to see how long it takes to create a low poly and unwrap it for baking UVs. Our intention is to divide up the work to make it go faster.
4) I’m interviewing a modeler for a more low-poly and texturing work. Looking for people with prior game industry experience that can hit the ground running. If you know someone who has done game ready models for shipping games before, let me know. We need the extra help in texturing too. So looking for those who can texture characters or hard surface in Substance Painter.
5) Jetpacks. I’ve started fooling around with the Unreal base project, to add some jet packing models. Going to do this while we wait for art to complete. I will hook up a variety of ways to do jetpacks and see which method I like the best. Then I plan to get Justin’s help (the original designer of the beta jetpack) to test the feel and give me his opinions.
6) Music. Bross has started in on the music for Em-8ER’s thumper encounter. Nothing to hear just yet as he is recording and sourcing instruments first to explore a feel for the music.
That’s our update for now. I’ll keep you posted. Reworking the Omniframe is most critical path for us right now.
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