Task 1 – 1850s – 1970s

Games in my opinion were all the way back to stone ages when you think of a way you can entertain or have fun with yourself or another person. But in terms of video came the base started from the early CRT (Cathode Ray Tube), based on the US missile defence systems developed in the late 1940’s and in 10 years more games were developed by defence contractors, increasing its complexity and mechanics.

Moving to 1950, Charly Adama created the ‘bouncing ball’ video game for MIT’s new whirlwind computer. It was the first computer to display real time video imagery and used core memory; showed publically in April 1951. This is when real time visual elements were shown through an oscilloscope screen, this game was not interactive but was the precursor to the future upcoming games.

1952 the ‘OXO’ was developed also known as Tic, Tac, Toe and noughts and crosses. Created by Alexander S. Douglas. It was the first simulation game and ran on a EDSAC computer which used the same technology developed in the 1940 (cathode ray tube) as a visual display. It was essentially the first computer game which was the player vs the computer but was not allowed in the outer public because the computer was only made for and in university of Cambridge.

Going do 1961, the first influential computer game, ‘Space War developed allowing two players against each other capable of firing missiles, also having an environmental star which the players had to avoid. This was made on the DEC PDP -1 and the game was also given with the new DEC computers at that time.

Ralph Bear and Bill Harrison creators of the, ‘The chase Game’ and ‘Magnavox Odyssey’ , starting at 1967 developed the light gun and other video games which was works for on the TV set. The game, ‘The Chase Game’, consisted of two squares that chased each other. In 1968 the very first video game console was developed which was able to run table tennis and target shooting on its own hardware. Then at the late 1972 the game console and the peripheral known as the light gun was mass produced and sold.

Moving to 1971 where gaming actually became very popular and one of the most iconic games were developed at that, such as the galaxy game and one of the most popular pong.  The galaxy game which was also the first coin operated game only in standard university made by Bill Pitts and Hugh Tuck, it was an improved version of the Space war game; costing at nearly $20k using the DEC PDP-11 computer with a vector display. There was only one than a lot of them produced in 2972 allowing ‘multiplayer’. 

Then later in 1972 Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dubney created the game called PONG, which was an idea from ping pong at the early times in 1967 which was on Magnavox Odyssey. Atari inc was developed in the same year in June. In September 1967 they installed it at a local northern California and where it became a huge hit and within a year they sold more than 35,000 machines. It became the most historical idol game which is remembered to date.

Reference: http://www.bmigaming.com/videogamehistory.htm

Gladiator!!!

Very anticipated project where i get to make a whole character, very excited and i think i did a great jon at it. I used a different method to achieve my result, I used the new industry way to accomplish my gladiator; zbrush high poly to low poly model and i think i did it really well, the bake came out perfectly. Also i made two specular maps, I gave it all i got for this project and i learnt a great deal from it. Using my past experience and learning new things as i do trial and error process.

The Transit Van

A project which i was really waiting for, making a vehicle, in games this is very popular and i wanted to learn the process and the idea behind it. We had a lot of time to do it and i think i did great taking loads of reference photos and made a proportionally correct Transit medium van. Staying under budget however i did make some mistakes on the front topology and forgot to add two other seats which was very stupid however i did come up with a final result.

yeh, the specular map was a little odd.

Tree Project

For the foliage project i choose a simple tree which was just down the road from my class. It was sort of unique as it had orange leaves and had a spring feel to it, we were targeted to do 2 so i took that one and a total opposite which was just branches. I think i achieved it very well and stayed under budget on both textures and tri count.

I even imported in UDK and made a little forest. Very proud to accomplish this.

Architecture project

For my architecture project i made a old banks pub which was i go past everyday on my way home and thought of doing it as a project, it was very exciting making a building which i never did before; i also followed the brief as it said it has to be old and interesting. Which it definitely was and i was very happy for that. Moving on from it was my first time making tillable textures and after many attempts on trying to make it flawlessly tillable i actually did; it obviously had errors there and there however i did my best to get it just right and represent the exact building in real life.

following all the necessary precautions such as the tri count and the texture limit i think i did a good job and it looked very alike the actual building; im very proud of the my project, learning lots new and great techniques.

Van

 To start, this project was very interesting as in actually get to make a vehicle for a game. Having played several racing games I wanted to see the work put to making virtual cars. The brief indicated to get individual reference for a ford transit, being a very dull car to model I was still very thrilled. The reference is mainly used for the textures because the vehicle has specified dimension that you can’t model from pictures because of perspective and distortion. We were allowed to get the dimensions / orthographic from the internet.

However I encountered issues as all the images I got couldn't line up for the vehicle I was doing, I didn't want to change it because I had a lot of photos taken of the specific van I wanted to model which was the ford transit short wheel base 2012.

(The reference image)

Despite it looking perfect, I tried all I can to make it line up so I can model it easily however it was not possible due the guy that actually made it resized different proportions from the front.

However the pictures for textures I got was pleasing and indeed very helpful – (found in the reference images folder). Looking at them you can see that the majority of the photos are not the vehicle I’m doing however in terms of texture and parts its identical to the vehicle I want to do. So the compromise is ok.

Moving on to the first stages of modelling the reference image did line up; barely but it did. I assured myself and continued to model. Getting the box model done and blocking the main shape and not focusing on the detail was my main priority because detail can be added later by either adding more polygons or through normal maps. However I choose to do it through geometry which was a big mistake.

Doing that my typology got ruined however as there was other projects that needed to be done time drew nearer and I keep forgetting where the problem was and continued to model. Finishing the modelling stage the UV’s told me where all the problems were, so in my opinion I was fixing more than actually progressing my work. Eventually I finished it but still had a few problems with it that didn't fix.

Some triangles and some other parts that couldn't be linked because Max didn't want to. Another way I checked for mesh errors is using mud box, it tells me what errors there are and where they are on my model. Very convenient for last point check-up’s.

I use mud box when I finish modelling and go into UV’s because then I have a chance for making my UV phase fast and easier without worrying about typology, if I use mud box after UV-ing I have to recreate the UV for part of the mesh which was incorrect. A very bad approach.

This is telling me what the problem is with a description; for a newbie like me this is very knowledgeable information. If my mesh is 100% correct which 90% chance of it not being. It will go straight through without error messages.

The red dots indicate where the errors are, so I can look and go back and check them. I use this technique in my workflow every time.

UV’s being done I go into texturing which is I believe harder than modelling because achieving realism is hard without proper textures, my pictures for textures had a lot of lighting problems and as for being a vehicle it was obvious. I wanted to at least get the base texture of the van right. After many tries fiddling with colors around pure white I choose a white bluish tone for my base color because I think it matched it perfectly.

After that the texturing was fairly straight forward and I was able to do them without any pressure using marmoset tool bag as a live renderer as it updates every time I re-save over my old texture I can visually see what I’m doing right and what needs to be done. Again very useful tool.

Overall I think I didn't get time for this project because of the two week projects I had between them plus other projects from visual design, time keeping in nearly impossible due to the amount of work from different areas. However I will try to do my best and give as much time as I can to the next 3D project. Focusing on mainly time keeping.

My UDK game :)

just in case anyone didn't see it. I'm proud of it.