Volcano Race will track the development of Jess Vine's 2nd yr CG university project. All stages of production will be noted and the main programmes used will be Maya, Zbrush and Photoshop. It will include design, modelling, particle effects, texturing, lighting and rendering.
I have started to create a building with its window blowing out from an explosion.
So far I have the explosion, and I've used a shatter effect on a polygonal object to get 30 window pieces.
I have then seperately animated each of the pieces.
Here are some stills from the work on this element so far through development.
I've made another dead tree but added more detail to it. It has been modelled in Maya, textured in Zbrush, I will continue to texture this once I can see contrast levels between the landscape and the object at a stage a little later.
After sketching some shape ideas for the track I decided to mock one up and see how the corners might be handled. The sketch has conour direction to help me think about the Volcano shape and this will be the next step, the basic volcano shape; then I can see how the track and volcano can be put together.
I've added a page to look at the car I will be tring to model. I'm also going to add some links, not only making it a useful resources page for me, but somewhere to find some cool stuff out about this awesome car.
As I'm looking at Zbrush from the very basics I've spent some time modelling a simple tree in Maya and exported it to Zbrush for texturing. By doing this I have learnt how to prepare a model for export and work between the two programs for both the model and it's very important division levels, and the painted texture in Zbrush into a UV texture in Maya.
This has been a very helpful excercise, making me ready and prepared to begin constructing and editing more important models.
From experimenting like this I am also seeing how building and developing each model seperately may be an advantage for my own development. This means that I must soon create an edited production schedule, or at least outline main models and plans for their construction.
Here I've composed an image in Photoshop to possibly place in forums to try and get people interested in my ongoing project. The image will need to be updated and developed before used for this.
To make and create the mountain I used Zbrush and started to learn and use the colour tools to easily switch between modelling and shading. I am starting to see the advantages of making a larger poly volcano with the racetrack in Maya, and then export to Zbrush for details and colours.
The brief and schedule I have produced origingally here will need to be adapted for the project.
The difference in envioronments that I like the idea of may work well, and a proposed idea from another was that the burnt dead environment that I suggested could be everywhere to begin with, and as the project develops other envioronments can be built into the track. I think this may work better but pre-production and production will both be a lot more intwined.
My main influences and reference imagery for the track come from four main videogames. I have been looking at the props around the track, the textures used for the props and track and will further research the techniques used to texture the models. I am also considering the techniques used to cut down render times.
GranTurismo 5
In this particluar example I have also been looking at the smoke effects created from the car.
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
Motorstorm's tracks are created on the terrain. There is also possible interaction with the props next to the track. The textures on quite a few of the motorstorm tracks will be studied more in depth as there are lots of dry areas as well as jungle areas within the game.
Blur
Blur uses more vibrant colours around it's track and I like the integration of this. I also feel that Blur has got a lot of depth to it's tracks from the use of tall buildings and flowing power lines. Although these props aren't what I intend to put into my own design I would like to bring depth to the track in places.
Need For Speed
Need for Speed has a more natural use of brighter colours which I like.
I finished this rocket a couple of weeks ago through training with a tutorial. I have concentrated on the particle effects for this excercise but wish I had taken 15 minutes to apply more sophisticated textures before fully rendering the effect. The techniques I learnt about particle effects and shader nodes will all be applicable to smoke / fire effects when I create them for my own use in Volcano Race.
This forest's manmade magic is quite exciting. I like the want to keep as much of the
scene natural as possible. The colour spectrums through the leaves can be very
interesting.
This artistic and colourful forest is quite inspiring. As I would like to have some balance between naturalistic and fantasy this has got lots of interesting features, especially in the plants, to give me some ideas.
Motorstorm: Pacific Rift has quite a few tracks which I can study to look at textures for most of the things I will need to create. Bearing this in mind I will try not to simply recreate what I may find.
Using references and inspiration such as these videos I will continue to build up a collection for all elements of the project.
