WarrenM-Halloween

[WarrenM]

Not sure what I'm going to do yet but I wanted to get my hat in the ring. I've been itching to try and get better at a number of things and this challenge seems like the perfect opportunity.

My house will be pretty stylized, perhaps even cartoon-ish, with lots of motion in the environment. My goal here is to improve my proficiency with 3DS Max and vertex shaders in the Unreal Engine.

I'll be using UDK.

Looking forward to hacking on this!

[WarrenM]

I've decided to get really rowdy this month. I bought a 3DS Max tutorial series and I'm going to work my way through that, THEN start banging out custom meshes for my scene, and THEN get to putting it together in UDK.

It's going to be a busy month but I should end up with a lot more know-how stuffed inside my skull.

I expect to be done with the tutorial series by the end of this weekend so I should be on to content creation soon. Screen shots will begin as I start making stuff happen...

[NightClucker]

I can't wait to see what come up with WarrenM! :-)

I'm thinking about doing this challenge as well but I am not sure if I have the time...

[AlexG]

I'm looking forward to seeing your wip Warren.

[WarrenM]

Sort of still feeling my way around Max and how to get things built properly. Some of the meshes I've been hacking on:



So, you can see that I'm trying to stick to more or less what I do at my day job - component pieces that can be stuck together to create larger scenes. I'm trying to force myself into doing very blocky pieces to just get the feel of the scene done first before worrying about detail. This is my fatal flaw when trying to create meshes - I try to add too much detail up front and get bogged down.

So, yeah, trying to improve on that this month as well. Here's my composite level which is just being used to stick pieces together and see how they feel:

[keithgarry]

Looking good so far. How's 3dsMax treating you? I gave it a shot a while back but couldn't get into it.

[WarrenM]

Looking good so far. How's 3dsMax treating you? I gave it a shot a while back but couldn't get into it.

Not bad. I'm taking it slow and it's going pretty well. I'm finding that leaving my preconceived notions of how I THINK or WANT it to work at the door and just going with how it actually DOES work is making the process less painful. My habits can be stubborn sometimes.

[keithgarry]

I'm finding that leaving my preconceived notions of how I THINK or WANT it to work at the door and just going with how it actually DOES work is making the process less painful. My habits can be stubborn sometimes.

lol quoted for truth.

[WarrenM]

So, making more progress. I'm getting my mesh set more fleshed out and adding pieces as I see a need for them. I need to start texturing some of this stuff soon so i can get a better feel for the assets.



My test level is looking very Main Street, USA -- hopefully some mesh moving and texturing will alleviate that.

[George]

They look awesome till now. I like those windows.

[WarrenM]

It's amazing what a little texturing and lighting will do! Starting to look spookier now. Still playing with the building layout and trying to decide on extra stuff to place around the house. Lots of work left to do. Probably going to start working on the hilltop and rocks and things like that next...

[Deltathunder]

lol yea textures and lighting can make a huge diff too your assets.
Looking good Warren.
Looking forward too seeing this completed.

[WarrenM]

Made a lot of progress over the last week and I think I'm about out of time for this. I'll probably spend some time tweaking it until the deadline but time is definitely getting tight.

I think, in retrospect, I didn't follow the exact spirit of the challenge since the level is in no way playable. It doesn't even have collision. It's really a scene built to match the theme but it's not a "level" in the classic sense.

At any rate, I'm really happy with what happened over the last few weeks. My confidence with 3D Studio Max and Photoshop is WAY up from where it was. I created every mesh and made every texture in that scene (aside from the logo, of course).

At any rate, this is where I currently stand (click for larger version):



This challenge ROCKS, by the way! Perfect theme choice IMO.

For those who like to see behind the curtain...

[Deltathunder]

Warren,Extremely impressive..What a Huge progession you have made in your workflow and new abilites..
Congrats too you matey..
Looks fantastic.
Looking forward too seeing ya final 3 images of your Scene.
Well done Warren.10 from me .

[Nexusdog]

I can't even think what to say, too many adjective crashing around and trying to get out at once.

Beautiful scene, just perfect, really. Hits every button.

Wow.