A few new 3D models

We have gotten a few new 3D models up, but their just basic things, such as pipes and a power usage readers. Their not textured yet, but it's coming along well. The area that I am designing currently is were you start out in, and you wake up in a cryo-sleep chamber (which is a chamber were you can be put to sleep for hundreds or thousands of years), and you don't know were you are. But this building was also built in the 1950's, so it also has to look all worn down and, well, like it was from the 50's.

Blizzard is showing off new products at Blizcon, such as Heart of the Swarm, WoW games, and a few other things. It's amazing for how much work they can push out there in just 3 years or so. They also have a much much bigger pot of money to draw from (a few billion easy), so they have teams of thousands all over the world working on these games. If you look at it from a small game studio, like Mental Orange, point of view, there is a chance of getting a job, but it also can't be a small, fun, place to be. Sure, you can get more work done with money, but money isn't everything.

Well, enough of my ranting.

There may be pictures up next week of what we are working on, so stay tuned!

-Hamstamps

Texturing Fail and Darlek

As a side project, I will be making a full 3D model of a Darlek, and I plan to try to make a little animation out of it. This most likely won't be usable in a game, unless if we make a Doctor Who game. I am doing a high-res model, so if it gets done, and looks half-way decent, we will post a picture/video of it (Learning a product like 3ds Max is very difficult to learn all the little parts).

For the texturing fail, I had sent one of our texture artists, Yerks, a UV map (which is a 2D version of a 3D model) to texture so that I can apply to that 3D model in 3ds Max and UDK. So I went and plugged it into UDK, and it came out as a 2D picture, which I can see, so I made it into a material, and set that 3D model to use that material. Something went wrong, and it displayed multiple versions of the material on the model. I don't know what went wrong, but I'm going to do some research for it. It also did the same thing when I did it in 3ds Max, so I don't know. I wouldn't think it's Yerks...

-Hamstamps

Texturing

We have started to learn how to texture our 3D models, and to make them look all nice and cool for our current game. We are using Adobe's Photoshop CS5.1 currently, so learning a new product is fun for all of us, but it's also tricky to learn something advanced like this.

What we have to do is make the 3D model in 3ds Max 2012, then export the 3D model into Unreal Engine 3, and them in UE3, we have to attach collisons onto the model, so that the player/players can not run into it. This is fine for some things, such as little plants and stuff like that, but is not aceptable for big models that are made out of metal or any other hard subtance.

Next, we have to also export the 3D model into a 2D UV map so that it can be edited in any art program, which in this case, is Photoshop CS5.1. After we texture the UV map, we have to make the bump map, light map, and reflection versions of the file. Then we have to take the 2D UV maps and plug them into the 3D model in Unreal so that we get a textured static mesh in Unreal (or in some cases, a dynamic mesh).

If anyone who is currently reading the blog, if anyone has any ideas for different types of textures or models, or want pictures posted of what we have so far, leave a comment please.

A new gaming platform and a new iOS

Bigger news first:

Epic Games has just released at the Adobe conference that Unreal Engine 3 will be released for Adobe's Flash 11.0 and up! This means that here at Mental Orange, we could make little sub-games, or convert other games that we are/will be making over for Flash, and we'll be able to play them in-browser. Facebook, Google+ (maybe in the future), or just on the web. This would be a great way for us to demo our games or products before you download them.

Secondary news:

Apple Co. just also released that they are coming out with the new iPhone, the iPhone 4S. This will have the A5 CPU/GPU combo that the iPad 2 has. Since they are claiming that it will have up to 5 times faster CPU/GPU speeds, it will be able to game better. It will also use their new iOS5, which will hopefully be supported by UE3.

The one downside to this is that Apple charges $100 to register as a developer, and to put your app onto iTunes, and with how terrible iTunes is now these days, it's not worth the time and energy to mess with that. If they didn't charge for that, it may be worth it, but it may also be worth to pay the $100 if we wanted to try and sell a game.

That's all for now.

Imprisonment Screenshots

Here are the pictures of the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 mod called Imprisonment. Imprisonment is in post-production, so we are still finishing it up.