Set Dressing and Lighting the level! (1st pass shots)

Egyptian Temple (piece)

and this is my final prop before starting to set-dress. The top of the temple can be used as a stand-alone for other things. Was based on the temple of Edfu.

Sphynx, Statue, Concept Art...

Getting way faster at sculpting, the Sphynx took me pretty much one week from scratch to hi-res to rendered out with materials in UDK (although I did re-use my statue's head model). Also added some parameters in the material to the statue so that anyone set dressing can customize it.

And some card illustrations for my game mod:





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What I have so far for my card illustrations. These are technically speed paintings that are receiving second passes of polish since I have to do so many of these in such a short amount of time. These are going to be 2.5" x 3.5" so i don't have to worry too much about the little details unlike in my bigger paintings. More to come.

Sphynx [WIP]

Here is the work in progress Sphynx for our level. Texture i am still working on so here is a screenshot test in UDK.

Concept art and Egypt update

A little slow on updating my school blog so here is some progress:

Concept Art and Futuristic Pyramid [WIP]

Pyramid is for level design, second one is for level design in futuristic egypt

Rock Painting Tutorial

I found this fairly simple rock tutorial that I took a little further in order to create a full on rock scene. It's amazing how a couple of simple tips can improve your digital painting. Of course I also, incorporated some of my own knowledge. I started this piece following the tutorial (different reference image) and to the end I painted underneath the overlayed image. Then I flattened the image and went over it in one layer. Finally, I timed myself to 30 minutes.

and here is the tutorial I used:
Link

Egyptian Statue Progress [WIP] pt.3

Another day on my final stages of the statue. Seems like an endless wave of things that I want to fix, like the left arm's bicept right now, seems kind of big. Today I combined some objects to occupy the same UV space/ optimized UV space. Fixed the normal map and gave it some more detail. Also, gave the mantle the same texture as the skirt. Got the eyes glowing a bit and went in and finalized the sculpt texture and gave the statue some occlusion mapping.

Work has now begun on the pyramid (concepting for now)

Egyptian Statue Progress [WIP] pt.2

I finally had time to pick this baby back up to finish up after putting this to the side to work on my modular kit. Here's some progress on it. Fixed some more proportion issues, including the big right arm and leg length and lowered his "skirt" a bit.
When importing the statue to UDK I played around with the material editor and found that I also liked a tan version of my statue, so there's a possibility i might make multiple versions of this according to my team.
So far I have to model this, a pyramid, and a futuristic Egyptian vehicle, which should be interesting.

Space Egypt- Modular Kit

My modular kit for our space Egypt level. Pretty much 99% done with a few adjustments needed to be made.

Testing Uno Game Mod

Wednesday- I went to game design club to test out my game mod.

I first played my game un-moded, and as usual the game started out very boring, at least to me because I find Uno to be a very boring and simple game. So then I brought in the mods!

First up I brought in my off-the-wall mods to immediately spice things up. I implemented one of my color mechanics, yellow first. So at first it proved to be very successful, because it got people to yell, have fun, and argue about who said the keyword first, which was my original intention. Something I didn’t think about however is that in Uno, the color stay the same for a while and I didn’t set a limit on how many times the mechanic worked, so after a while the mechanic started to get tiring, and everyone stopped participating. As soon as I found out about this, on the fly I changed it so that the mechanic is limited to only valid when the first set of yellow cards is played after a color change.

            I then implemented another color mechanic on top of my other color mechanic, because in my original thinking, my idea was to have a keyword mechanic for each color. This worked fine for a couple of rounds, better yet, people were anxious to see a yellow on yellow or a red on red. These mechanics I found suffer from being fun at first to getting trying at the end.

            In retrospect I should have set a limit on the color mechanics somewhere in the middle because I went from having it work every time there is a same color on same color card, to only the first time the color is changed. This changed the occurance rate of the mechanic from 60% to almost 30%. I should have tried to get a 45% occurance rate by setting the limit in the middle to get it to balance out and see if the mechanic stays fun longer.

            Finally, I brought in my counter mechanic, which was the only “card” mechanic I managed to implement in the game due to time. Countering, I found, proved to be very successful almost always. It seemed to be very balanced right off the bat. You can counter any card at any moment and have the opponent put it right back to their hand. This prevented people form winning the game or setting down a powerful draw 4 wild card. However, since it brings the card back to their hand, it only delays the play (in most cases anyways).

            My end goal was to have everyone laugh, have fun, argue, dispute, and make enemies and friends. I believe I succeeded in this at least. I am in the right path. My next step is to balance these mechanics alone. After their balanced, I think it’d be in my best interest to simplify some of the core mechanics further, in order to implement the following more complex mechanics into the game.

Game Design - Uno modification brainstorm

Thoughts about my game

-       What is successful about it? – How simple it is to get into the game, because it has no learning curve. The game can be explained in a very short time.

-       What would I like to keep? – I’d like to keep the main goal easy to understand.

-       What would I like to change? – I’d like to change the game’s learning curve. The game is already incredibly easy to learn so making the learning curve higher (making the game more complex) shouldn’t be too much a problem for my game. I’d also like to add dice, color and effect mechanics (effects written in cards). More detailed changes on the modify section.

-       What could be better about your game? – More in-depth game-play, less linear. More complex mechanics. Diverging paths to victory but with the same end goal (the way you win the game is still the game, but maybe there might be ways to get there faster or through another method).

-       Art on the cards

-       What crazy, outrageous, thing would you like to try? Implement a board along with the cards. I feel like I probably am not going to try this because I want to focus just on the cards and make that solid, but it’d definitely like to see what comes out of it.

Modify-

1.     Reverse: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. At the beginning of your turn you may replace a card in your hand with any card in the draw pile instead of drawing. The deck is then shuffled. This ability may only be used three times (use counters).

Thoughts: gives a person more chance to match cards using another mechanic (an interesting one).

2.    Raise number of starting cards to 14.

Thoughts: gives the game chances for more card combinations and variety of play.

3.     You may play up to two cards of the same number at the same time

Thoughts: combo mechanic, just sounds like it’d make the game much more fun.

4.     Wild card: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. At the begging of your turn before you draw, you may have one player draw one card. This ability may only be used three times (use counters).

Thoughts: A cool mechanic for more virety.

5.     Cancel: Play this card when an opponent is playing a card. That player puts that card back into his hand and skips his turn.

Thoughts: chance to interact with other player actions during their turn.

6.     Wild draw 4: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. You may play cards on top of this card instead of the discard pile during your turn. If you have a straight series (1,2,3…) of 7 cards, you win the game.

Thoughts: A different (special!) path to victory.

7.     One: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. Raise or remove the number of counters on that card by one.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects.

8.     Two: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. Raise or remove the number of counters on that card by two.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects.

9.     Three: This card acts as a regular card. As the card is being played you may choose one card with counters. You may use that card’s effect again as this card is being played.

Thoughts: Still retains the same mechanics as a regular uno card but with added effects, more powerful than the last.

10. Draw two: Place this card on your own separate place. This card is a permanent. You may counter any card being played at any moment anywhere as long as this card has one counter or more. If you do, draw a card. This ability may only be used two times (use counters).

Thoughts: Again, gives a player chance to interact with enemies during their turn.

11. Dice: each player rolls a 9-sided dice at the begging of their turn after drawing a card.  If a card in your hand matches the dice roll, then you may play that card in addition to your regular discard.

Thoughts: Dice mechanics should spice the game up

12. Dice: if you roll a 1, draw a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of being penalized (luck)

13. Dice: if you roll a 9, discard a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of being rewarded (luck)

14. Dice: if you roll a 6, target player draws a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different of penalizing another player (luck)

15. Dice: if you roll a 3, roll again, if roll another 3, target player draws three cards.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different of penalizing another player, harder chance to get. (luck)

16. Dice: if you roll a 8, discard a card then draw a card.

Thoughts: smaller part of a larger dice mechanic. A different way of changing up the cards in your hand for better chance at matching.

17. Dice: if your roll rolls off the table, draw two cards.

Thoughts: keeping players on their feet about rolling right!

18. SAY UNO WHEN YOU HAVE ONE CARD. Penalty is draw 7!!!

Thoughts: Harsher punishment for not saying “Uno” so that players will say more often and louder?

19.  Nine: Destroy a permanent. Draw two cards. A wild draw 4 card may NOT be destroyed this way, but cards making up the series may.

Thoughts: A way to deal with permanents at the cost of drawing two cards for balance.

20.  Blue>Red: When a blue card is placed on top of a red card in the discard pile then the player who played that last red card draws a card

Thoughts: color mechanics sounded fun

21. Red>Green: When a red card is placed on top of a green card in the discard pile then the player who played that last green card draws a card

Thoughts: provides some more complex mechanics

22. Green>Blue: When a green card is placed on top of a green card in the discard pile then the player who played that last blue card draws a card.

Thoughts: provides more complex mechanics. Color mechanics are fun.

23. Yellow>All: When a yellow card is placed on top of any other color card in the discard pile then the player who played that [any color card] card draws a card.

Thoughts: I wanted a dominating color, so people are like “aww yeah, I have a bunch of yellow cards!! Hahaha!”

24. Blue=Blue: When a blue card is placed on top of another blue card, first person (other than the person playing the card) to say “wawa” may abolish a card (abolish= place a card from their hand, out of play). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: Trying to make the game more fun. Also applying the “human judge” way of soccer, where there are disputes over who really said it first and such

25. Red=Red: When a red card is placed on top of another red card, first person to say “bull” (other than the person playing the card) may have another person draw a card. ). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

26. Green=Green: When a green card is placed on top of another green card, first person to say “haha” (other than the person playing the card) may recycle a card from the discard pile and place it at the top of the discard pile. ). If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

27. Yellow=Yellow: : When a yellow card is placed on top of another yellow card, first person to say “aw yeah!” (other than the person playing the card) may steal a card (without looking) from anyone’s hand and place it on someone else’s hand. If not clear by everyone else, the person playing the card is the judge on who said it first.

Thoughts: same as last. Providing different things to say so it’s harder to remember which on is which.

28. Special on special (wild card, draw two, wild draw 4, cancel etc): When a special card is placed on top of another special card, first person to say “delicious!” may take a card from their hand and throw it at their opponent.

Thoughts: Taking it even further and going as far as saying “throw” at their opponent. I want to cause fun chaos in the room.

Which of these ideas hold the most promise?

I think the saying out loud mechanics (color mechanic) sound like they could make my game really fun as a group, which is how uno is played a lot of the time.

The first mechanic I’d want to try to implement is raising the number of cards to 14 in order to accommodate so much additional drawing and discarding mechanics.

Then I’d like to go right in and add the color mechanics to (I think) make the game really really fun right off the bat.

Once the game is established as being really fun, I’d like to go in and add more complex mechanics, such as the dice mechanics or the effect mechanics.

My primary goal is make this game REALLY fun. (with color mechanics) My secondary goal is to make this game more complex with card effects and dice mechanics.

Egyptian Statue Progress

This is all WIP of course. I am done UV'ing the statue and I am now on the texturing stage of this project.

Once I was happy with my body sculpt I went ahead and did some concept art on how i should proceed, which helped a lot... having concept art for your piece speeds up your work tenfold. The statue on the right is a concept paint-over of the high-res sculpt. The statue on the left is how it's looking so far in zbrush.

Lots of work to juggle right now so i am having less and less time to spend on this.

Ryan Woodward - Sketch demo at the beach

Ryan Woodward came to give a life drawing demo today at the beach. Very interesting demo. Concentrated on generalzing the figure down to one shape to start off and then throw down some big lines that shows the figure's movement. He further expanded it into incorporating cartoon elements into life drawing and exaggerating. So here's some photography and sketches from today:

That last one is from a few days ago at figure class, just found interesting to post.

DPSC- 1 Hour Speed Paint

Zbrush Statue Sculpt - WIP

This is my work in progress sculpt of the statue for our level. High-res sculpt almost done but still needs quite a few adjustments and I still need to work the hands and tone down the ribs haha.

UDK level - BSP map

The first stage of my map - getting it blocked out in BSP brushes in UDK to be later replaced by static meshes. Video further down.

Real World Mod - Proposal

REAL WORLD MOD

Our real world mod is about changing the flow of traffic in the common's (cafeteria) entry door.

Through observation, Tim, Josh and I noticed how everyone in the common room went through the left door almost 90% of the time, unless the left door was already in use. So we came up with the idea of changing the flow of traffic through appearance and feel of the doors. The left door is going to be the "bad door" and the right door is going to be the "good door". We intend to make people use the right door instead of the left door (when looking at them from the inside).

On a smaller scale, we are also going to alter how (and if) people place their hands on the push plate handle. One plate is going to be smooth and one is going to be dirty. The germphobes will probably feel inclined to place their hands on the smooth, non dirty door plate instead of the dirty one.

I was responsible for execution on the illustrator document for the presentation. We all had input on design ideas and information on the document. I tried to keep the document as clean and simple as possible in order to provide all the necessary information as efficiently as possible.

Red Sky Sundown

Uno Deconstruction

I. Goal of the Game:

The goal of the game is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. 

II. Core Mechanic: 

Set-up: Each player is dealt 7 cards. The rest of the cards are placed in the center of the playing field as a draw pile. Out of the draw pile, one card is taken from the top of the draw pile and flip up on the table to begin a discard pile.
Game Play: Players take turns in a clockwise fashion. Each player during their turn must match the card in the discard pile with either the same color or the same number. If the player is unable to make a match, then he must draw a card from the draw pile. If the player is still unable make a match, the players then passes his turn to the next player. Once a player is down to one card, that player must yell "Uno" that turn. If a player fails to do so, he/she must draw two cards. The game is won by the player who discards their entire hand first.

III. Space of the Game:

The game of Uno is a discrete two-dimensional game. There are two cells connected two each other, the draw pile and the discard pile cells. This is because at the begging of the game a card is fliped up and placed as the discard pile on the table. Next, players connected to the discard pile cell as well as the draw pile cell. Each player is also each considered a cell (another zero-dimensional space withing the two dimensional space linked). Each player cell is connected the player cell next to it, to the left and right. Each player space is also a nested space because each player has a cards in their hand, and each is also considered a cell.
This is better illustrated in my example below:

  
IV. Objects, Attributes, and States.

Each card in the game is an object. So there is a total of 108 objects. All cards have the following attributes: wild card, color, and number. Out of these attributes we have states for each depending on the card. The basic attributes and states are depicted on my table below:

Special cases: If the card isn't a wild card, then its "wild card" attribute is "no". In some cases, if the card is a wild card, then it may be multi-colored. In the case of a card that has the state and attribute of "wild card" or the "wild card" attribute of "draw four" then it will automatically have the state of "red, yellow, green, and blue" as well as "0" through "9".


All cards in the game also have the "match?" attribute. A card will gain the "mach successful" state only if a card being placed on the discard pile has the same color or number as the top-most card of the discard pile.

Two other objects in the game are the discard pile and the draw pile. The draw pile has the attribute of "availability" which asks: is the draw pile available for a player to draw from? The draw pile object will gain the state of "available" if it's a players turn and that player hasn't drawn yet this turn or placed a card on the discard pile first. The draw pile will gain the state of "unavailable if neither of those conditions are met. The discard pile also has the state of "available", with states being "available" and "unavailable". The discard pile gains the "available" state (which means the pile is available for a player to place a card on top of) only if it's the player's turn and a that player hasn't discarded a card already. Certain cards, such as the skip card, disable players from drawing or discarding a card.

V. Actions

Operative actions:
- Match a card in your hand with a card on top of the discard pile through color or number.
- Draw a card from the draw pile if you have no playable cards (or if you choose not to play a playable card).
- If you did not get a playable card from drawing in step two, then you must keep drawing until you you get a playable card and play it.
- Pass your turn to the next player in the rotation. You may only do this if you've played a card.
- Draw cards due to a card effect.
- Yell "Uno" as soon as you have one card in your hand.
- Pass your turn due to a card effect.

Resultant Actions:
- Play a card to switch the rotation of turns so that a player who has a low number of cards doesn't get a chance to win the game yet.
- Change the color of the top card in the draw pile so that you can play other cards in your hand of that same color
- Change the color of the top card in the draw pile in the assumption that you can force your opponent to draw a card because he doesn't have that color
- Play your skip card so that the next player in the rotation doesn't get to play his winning card.
- and more...

VI. Rules

- First player to discard their hand wins
- You must draw a card from the draw pile if you have no playable cards (or if you choose not to play a playable card.
- You must keep drawing a card from the draw pile until you get a playable card and play it.
- If you do not yell "Uno" you must draw two cards.
- You may NOT pass your turn.

- No peaking at other player's cards
- No revealing your cards to other players
- No marking of cards for identification purposes
- No physically harming other players
- No threatening or bribing other players for in-game benefits (or for any other reasons)

VII. Skills Players Learn

 In Uno, players learn some basic mental skills. These skills include things such as matching a card by color or by number. Players also learn to predict what an opponent may have in their hand (what color card) in order to play the right card and make them draw a card. Some social skills are also involved, where players may read a player's face to see if they look like they have this game in their hands or not. Overall a very basic game that won't really work your brain too much.

UDK Simple Map Test

Week 3 at Ringling. About a week and a half of intense UDK learning and this is what I came up with for my simple map assignment:

 

Built using UDK.
All assets property of Epic Games.
All Music and sound effects property of Epic Games.
Built for educational purposes only.

A one man project. Responsible for set dressing, lighting, kismet scripting, matinee animation, and camera animation.

Textures!

For more check out my photo blog!

Alleway Concept - Architecture and Modular Building sketches