Posts by zaphod

the Uv's are one really long strip, so the only work you have to do is scale it vertically to change the tiling rate to whatever you want.

Quote from st0lve

You should do a deserted island, which sandy dunes\beach, jungle part and an underground gave with a skull carved into the mountain enterance. Lava inside the cave muhahaha

I was actually thinking about something like that a few weeks ago after I watched the goonies which has some stuff in it like that. I have a lot of cool ideas for tracks, I just wish I could work on them all day instead of in my spare time.

I am by no means an expert at making a track, this is only the 2nd and I am still learning the process. Some kind of time lapse video would be kind of neat though, I will try to remember to set something like that up from the start on the next track. I can at least describe the process I have been using so far.

1. decide theme

2. collect reference photos

3. create base textures

4. decide on a shape and what kind of features you want in the track

5. create the shape of the track in illustrator

6. using the illustrator image, trace the shape of the course in maya with the curve tool

7. push and pull the curve until happy with the heights and curves on the track

8. extrude a line along the curve to create the track shape

9. start pulling geometry off of the track piece to create the supporting landscape

10. I usually skip around to different pieces of the track and only start building it out if I can feel a glimpse of what it should look like in my head. I sometimes put large pieces of placeholder geometry to help arrange where I want large features.

11. Once the main landscape is done then I start creating and placing props, as well as tweak smoothing groups and uv maps.

12. After the final geometry is in place then it's on to lighting. I set up a rough lighting model in mental ray and tweak it until I am happy.

13. I bake the lighting into the vertexes of the level

14. I go through the level bit by bit, refining the lighting with the vertex paint tool, removing hard edges and adding in key lighting.

Thats the basic process, there are a couple of things I would like to do differently on the next track however. There are a lot of fun mario kart tracks that have almost no curving track geometry and are just made up up regular geometry or objects (bowsers castle, tick tock clock, etc.) I would like to do something like that where it's not a track shape from start to finish.

nothing too pretty this time, spent most of today blocking out a base for chill mountain after figuring out the layout I wanted.

[Blocked Image: http://aycu40.webshots.com/image/22999/2004671644998947034_fs.jpg]

something like that would probably be vertex lit I would imagine.

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/chillshot.jpg]

I like creating little dioramas with a starter set of textures and props before I go all out modeling the actual layout of the level. It helps me get a feel for the character of it before I commit too much, and it makes later construction more fun when you can texture and populate while you go. This course is going to be called "Chill Mountain" and a couple of the ideas I have for the course are:

river w/ stone bridge

cabins

wooden fences

road signs

trees, boulders

mountain tunnel

telephone poles

frozen lake

*edit* just noticed I forgot to scale the texture on the stone chimmney, don't mind that

delicious is a good adjective for what I am aiming for. I'm not using source, so far the stuff we have done has been in ogre3d. Next I think I'm going to to a snowy/winter level.

An item box. Click for animation

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/boxshot.png]

Right now it will only have a cubemapped environment map for sure, but I'm certain reflections would be a possibility for those with good computers.

I think that chest looks top notch! Good work!

The more post-apoc games the better! Can't wait to see more screens.

I rendered out a little animation of the kart and rider with some animations on them to try and get back in the swing of working on this thing. Click on the image to see it.

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/kart.jpg]

boy don't I know : /

I want to start another level soon, there just isn't enough time in the day . . . I might have to just quit my job and work on this full time!

1. Studio arranging it for you, unless they are a rinky-dink 5 man studio with no hr department.

2. This probably depends on the kind of studio, I have seen it done both ways.

3. No, this is a very reasonable thing to do if you are traveling a long distance, just explain your needs and try to work it out. Maybe just offer to pay for the trip yourself if you are worried about stepping on toes.

4. Spend some time wandering around the area where you might be moving if you have the chance. Also, ask questions about the area and lifestyle while you are interviewing.

The San Diego chapter of IGDA just put up an interview with me and my brother about Devbump: http://www.devbump.com/story.php?title= ... vbump_IGDA

Quote from Zacker

Last time I visited Devbump it seemed dead, which was rather sad.

There was a period of lowered activity but this relaunch is designed to get it back to full speed, which seems to be happening.

Remember that site called Devbump? My digg-like game development centric site is still alive and kicking. We have just launched a new version of the site. The number of users contributing content is starting to pick up speed, and I know there are people from this community that can contribute and get use out of this site as well.

Please: check it out if you haven't visited yet, or if you haven't for a long while. The more people using the site, the more interesting stuff starts popping up. So link Devbump your game developer buddies too!

ask and ye shall recieve.

digg story: http://digg.com/gaming_news/Digg_style_ ... relaunches

we just launched a fresh version of the site with updated features and looks, check it out: http://devbump.com

right now we are working with ogre for rendering and racknet for networking.