Peter Harries

Last night Jase got in touch with me with some finished tree models, we decided to get the textures on and get them in engine. A maya shot, complete with texturing problem! No Alpha :( Alpha with dodgy edge :( wahd out textur and no lighting built :( Lighting built, almost there! And some grass! ------------------------------------------------------ and done :D Let us know what you think we love to get feedback! oh and we also have a website (although I've been told by my good friend Max Jensch that a single page with a couple of links on is not a website) sorry max! www.fatpancake.com

I've been busy doing lots of level design, kismet and documentation for this game I've suddenly found myself making. Then I got distracted by environment art which led me to making some snow. It's a particle affect in UDk set to spread quite a distance and I've doubled up a few of them. Hopefully it won't be too taxing on resources! I am pretty happy with it. Check out this video and have a look for yourself! There is a few of us making this game now and we decided we need some sort of name to go by, I've had the name "fat pancake" floating about in my head for a while and decided to go with that. Jase put together a logo and here we are! We even managed to get a website sorted, nothing much there yet but you can find it at www.fatpancake.com

Adding more assets and playing with colours. Spent most of today working on foliage! (and watching game of thrones!) I think I prefer the snowy version.

I'm quite tired so no big description. This is what I've been doing today! Early days yet. With  Ollie L  Making rocks.

So here's a video of what I've done so far on my little puzzle / adventure game. There's are a few game play bugs that need working out, especially the checkpoint system. I also need to get some characters in there but as I suck at character modelling. The environment needs fleshing out as well, more models, textures, better lighting, particle affects and interactive items. wow just realised that's a lot to do! Anyway aiming to get this section of the game playable so people can have a go at it and maybe even enjoy it! also start working on DoubleX again on Monday! wwooop!

First post in a while! Been crazy busy recently, but with loads of interesting stuff!! So on March 10th 2011 I got the opportunity to visit blitz games in Leamington spa!! I thought I would do a write up of what it was like to give anyone else thinking of applying an idea of what to expect. (If you're thinking of going already, do it! it's well worth it!) I arrived in Leamington spa on the 9th and stayed overnight in Buckland Lodge , the hotel it self was a bit dated but overall it was ok. Run by a guy called John who seemed nice and it was cheaper than the travel lodge! Also got breakfast in the morning, always good :) Next day I was up at 7:30 got breakfast had a bath (no shower in my room! gutted!) and got up to Blitz just before 9. At which point I waited for Rhys (One of the programmers we worked with in the 2nd year, also from Newport uni). But Rhys managed to get himself lost so I just went inside and I was cold. Once I was inside we got directed through to a ...

So I'm going to do it a bit different today and instead of making multiple posts just update this one with my texture progress! Here's the first shot, pine end of the house, Haven't done the stones at the bottom of the wall yet.   update #1: got bored made this out of parts of the main building!    Update #2: Just got a comment on Polycount about how the wall texture is grainy, I do agree so I may bump the texture up to 1024 for the bigger parts. Here's a texture shot of what it's like now. (actual size). update #3: Door done! update #4:WHat I've done today, may revisit the wall texture but I want to get it finished in the next few days so I'll use it for now and hopefully have time to go back to it later. The roof texture needs working on as well.

Yes this and my previous post are a reference to lil jon & the eastside boys musical masterpiece that is "get low". :D So I've unwrapped and done a first pass on the textures, so most of them are big ugly block colours. Still pretty happy with progress and confident I'll get it done in the time I've set myself. There are a few dodgy shadows, I'll try and figure out how their sneaking in soon. Could just be the Ambient Occulsion being weird. anyway here are some pictures of what I've been doing.

So texturing isn't my strongest point and I find it really tricky and difficult. Especially when working with anything under 512's. I'm quite happy with them but will probably re-visit them later. Having to do the artwork with a mouse at the moment because I don't have access to a tablet, so that's a bit of a pain. May go hunting for a cheap one tomorrow. Overall happy with progress, was hoping to get more items unwrapped today but don't know how many I'll get done. anyway here are some screenies. And a shot of the texture.

Broken the house down into seperate assets. Hopefully this will let me re-use them if i decide to create a full scene with this, will also let me tinker with the model as I go along. Edit: Here's the re-assembled version!

This morning I've been adding some details. Plan for the rest of the day is to finish that up, then start breaking it down into sections for unwrapping and texturing.

So I managed to do some work today, I'm happy with the outcome. First time I've done something like this. I say outcome even though it's miles from finished! As it stands the mesh is Bad... Very Bad. Loads of un-needed topology and lacking llooaaddsss of details that I want to add. I want to go for a pretty low poly style and hopefully hand paint the textures so the end result will be Warcraft/torchlight-ish. Today my plan was to nail a base concept and I feel I've got that. Next I'll be playing with details and seeing if i can make it more interesting. Then I'll figure out a colour pallet and start texture work. I've given myself until the 10th! wish me luck!!

First some assets! These are WIP's. The barrels need a lot of texture work including spec and possibly bump maps. The sign mesh needs tweaking as it's a bit tri heavy at the moment. Mite play with the textures some more as well. We've managed to get our forums up and running and have finally found a programmer! Recently we've just been meeting quite a bit and setting up online stuff. We also had to prepare for a presentation as well so I haven't really had a chance to post on here much! But I will update soon!!

This is my progress on the level so far. each building in white is a static mesh that has a Maya file and a .FBX file. The maya file can be edited so eventually these buildings will be detailed. I've started off by creating the smaller buildings as they will only have 1 maya file corresponding to them. However the taller buildings will be done modularly allowing me to use static meshes repeatedly. This will save me time and mean I can edit building size/height very quickly. This is already implemented on the two tallest towers. The very tallest you can even go inside and walk to the top. But this takes ages (lifts will be implemented! lol) to avoid the repetition being obvious I'm planning to use decals, props, texture variations and the occasional different modular mesh. For example a floor that has been damaged or has a different layout. Hopefully this will be enough to mask the obvious repetition. To get an idea of scale the red dot at the lower part of the city i...

Here I was trying to work out an architecture style for the buildings in the city. The environment is on the side of a mountain so space would obviously be limited, so buildings would be built upwards to get as much real-estate from the area as possible. I was also thinking the city would be heavily involved in the mining industry because of it's location, so this has also influenced my design. The City will have been abandoned when the player enters it so this should show through in the environment. There would still be power within the city so several lights would still be working. But the fact that the city is borderline derelict needs to show through. I'm really happy with this as my first piece of concept work in colour :)

Not so happy nwith this one, lot of problems with it. Trying to get a more of a street level view.

I did this for some friends studying film & video. Their sending the film hey recently finished off to a load of film festivals and needed some DVD artwork done. Here's what I came up with, they seemed to like it, so it's all good! Oh, and watch the film here! : http://vimeo.com/11686493 It's brilliant and definatley worth a watch!