News & updates

Well it's been a pretty interesting couple of days,my first Cryengine project was featured on several websites including Rock,Paper,Shotgun and IGN.com .My video received over 41,000 views (and counting) and several thousand blog views over the past few days!.Thanks to the sites that featured my project and for the e-mails and comments on the game project,I'm continuing work on it whenever I have free time and will be sure to post an update on the progress when I have more to show.

Jurassic park: Aftermath - Video

After 3 weeks I decided to put together a first look at the game so far,all footage is captured from the editor.Thanks to www.crynosaurs.com for the use of the AI raptors.
Plot : Several weeks after the incident at Jurassic park and while the Costa Rican government is arguing with park funders Ingen to firebomb the island.You are sent to recover valuable data but as you arrive rival company BioSyn has already made similar plans.Something has survived...

Welcome to Jurassic park...


.
I had a few comments from people unable to view the video because of the audio in Germany,you can see it here if that's an  issue - http://www.indiedb.com/games/jurassic-parkaftermath

Jurassic park:Aftermath - Cryengine 3

I started work in Cryengine 3 by creating my terrain using a heightmap I created in L3DT I worked out a basic landscape shape and the position of the main Jurassic park features.The first area to tackle was the visitor centre,the major issue was scale - how do I have a interior set that's bigger than the exterior (the Tardis effect!).After a bit of hunting I found the solution was to use layer switching in Cryengine.This required making a flowgraph with the exterior model on one layer and the interior on another,as you open and pass through the doors of the visitor centre the exterior deactivates and the interior appears seamlessly.

Landscaping the exterior and pond.

View from across the pond.

For both interior and exterior I looked at creating environment/cube maps,these are used to create accurate reflections for objects like the pond and the marble floors.At this point I started looking more in depth at material property's and lighting effects like global illumination for inside spaces.

Work in progress.Some work still needed on wall textures and 1st floor.

Playing with lighting setup,this shows the interior at 10am.

I started work on sculpting the terrain a little more as I added the Raptor pit,here I looked into using decals to break up some of the flatter textures.I later used decals to add detail to both interior and exteriors by adding cracks to walls and floors as well as dried blood in the visitor centre rotunda.

Work in progress,The digger was a low poly prop I built for my unity game version.

After getting the layouts done I started adding the roads and electronic car rails in which tour the island,with those in place I could get to work on painting in vegetation.

Using environment mapping shaders and checking out materials.

I started exploring  creating decals by creating a logo/load screen in photoshop.

After working on these main areas I started putting in the main fences and building up the vegetation around the central roads and paths.The Jurassic park gate and the beginning of the T-rex paddock were also placed in and experimenting with AI began...

You can also now follow this project on Facebook for updates - https://www.facebook.com/jurassicparkaftermath

Jurassic park : Aftermath - Modelling

So about a month ago I spent the afternoon playing about in Cryengine 3 and after building a quick environment I was hooked.I decided to bite the bullet and in my spare time over the last three weeks learn the program in more depth and rather than randomly doing tutorials jumped head first into a project.I had been playing with making a Jurassic park game in Unity engine off and on for close to a year so that was my starting point and rather than rebuilding what I had already worked on I returned to the environment of the first film.

I started modelling in Maya and up first was the visitor centre,the model was an interesting challenge as the interior and exterior are pretty unrelated and there's limited information in the film about layout.It's built fairly (but not exact) to the film with the scale differences being tackled later in Cryengine.

The exterior and interior wall/roof height is vastly different in the film.

Click images to enlarge

Next up was the interior,although in the film it appears pretty simple the set itself is pretty much filled with curves,everything from the walls to the bannisters flow and the aim was to keep it relatively low polygon and clean for the game engine.

My main focus was the ground floor and basic layout,you can see the 1st floor still requires extra work.

I added some basic debris but will fill in the missing props later.

The 3rd larger environment model was the raptor enclosure,fairly quick to model as it uses a lot of repeats and mirrors and is a solid blocky structure built to withstand the jungle.

The basic set,lights are to be added later to the side walls.

And finally the Jurassic park ford Explorer.In terms of reference it was the easiest to get images for and too iconic not to include,again I kept the model low poly and worked out the texturing in photoshop.

The base model,the doors at this point are separates so it can later be a usable in game.

Basic texturing,still need to add explorer logo / dirtmaps and interior.

There was lots of other modelling also to be done,electric fences and smaller props such as lights,roadtracks and the Jurassic park gates at this point I began importing into the engine and setting up the basics of the environment...

Animation Screening

Monday 4th of March is the premier of a project I worked on last year,Stoke your Fires film festival in Staffordshire will be the first to show 3D animated short "Goodluck Mr. Gorsky".I worked environment and character modelling on the film,will update with some more info soon...

Click to enlarge