Collision Course - Humans, Dinosaurs and Droids.

Earlier this year I worked on expanding the environments for early access indie game Collision Course.

Built in Cryengine the open world game takes place after you crash land on a prehistoric world. Currently the game features a large open world with unscripted AI encounters,crafting/survival and environmental events.

My work was on the project was focused on an undeveloped section of the map,adding grasslands and plains,rivers and additional cliff areas and integrating it with the existing map. The games latest patch added a new AI herding system as well as Parasaurolophus and the plains were the perfect spot for some dinosaur sight seeing.

It had been a while since I used Cryengine but as far dense exterior environments and exterior lighting go the engines capability's are still pretty additive,after working mostly with Unreal 4 it was an interesting to compare them both.Collision Course is attempting to make the most of the engine with day cycles, lava and flowing rivers and seeing dinosaurs roaming is sure to bring back those Jurassic Park vibes.

For more information about the game,it's progress and to see out the trailer check out the link to the Steam page below.

JP Aftermath - Photography Experiment 2#

Environment experiment

Quick experiment in Cryengine,was looking into environment animation and how I could to create larger scale elements (like having the trees pushed out of the way).Ended up using custom wind zones and animating a path through the jungle,the effect was interesting but not as precise as I'd hoped.

Aftermath- Now in .gif form

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JP Aftermath - Photography Experiment

A while back saw a image post that used Grand Theft Auto 5's photo mode to take some really nice snapshots from the game world. Decided to give it a try in my own Jurassic Park map making use of the binocular asset for depth of field an a quick bit of Photoshop filtering.

JP:Aftermath - Environments progress

Here's a bunch of progress/ general image shots covering recent work on the environments.The majority of the work was on adding the waterfall (still in the early stages),exploring particles and I also worked on adding the road and putting in a large tunnel.I expanded some of the surrounding area towards the main section of the park,began work on a small lake and I'm in early stages of adding the kitchen interior.

wip - since updated some of the rock textures

not exactly like the film but matching particle scales has been an issue

Tunnel entrance which runs through hillside,will be adding a lot to interior 

Tunnel exit,adding some vegetation variety into the map 

making this area a little less dense,the lake is just over the ridge.

very early stages of the kitchen,lots of props to add.

once everything's in place will add cube map reflections for the polished metals

JP:Aftermath - Christmas

I haven't had a lot of spare time to mess about in Cryengine recently but with Christmas coming up I spent an hour transforming my Jurassic Park map a bit for fun using some of Cryengine's winter assets.

Jurassic Park - Expansion

It's been a while since I've updated my blog on this but still working on learning Cryengine whenever I get any free time and build a Jurassic park based environment.
Recently I worked on expanding into a beach area and explored flowgrapths for elevators and timed events and also reworked the visitor center model a little and started adding the dining room..

improved rotunda,new lighting and shaders

cafe expansion work in progress

cafe exterior,patio needs added

hilltop bar / safari lodge beach

Jurassic park Aftermath - Raptor's

Update video showing raptor's in my map,I learning a little more about navigation areas for AI in cryengine and setting up how the AI can move interior-exterior as well as tweaking settings etc.Footage was recorded in editor,raptor and AI was provided by http://www.crynosaurs.com/

Jurassic Park Aftermath - Screenshots

Currently working on another AI video in my spare time showing the raptor a little but here's some screenshots from the map.The raptor was kindly provided to me the team behind Crynosaurs who took the time to re-create Jurassic park's raptor for Cryengine.

Jurassic Park: Aftermath - Mechanics

Over the last week I've been working on one of the parks bunkers.The power / maintenance shed holds the breaker which in the movie turned power to various areas of the park on and off.For my map I decided to script at least one of the breakers power functions via Cryengine 3 flowgrapth's. Below are some work in progress shots and a video of the breaker in action.

Jurassic Park Aftermath : A drive in the park

Jurassic Park: Aftermath update 3

Here's some in-game footage from my work on my Jurassic park Cryengine map,I re-worked the gates to be functional based on area triggers and have sound and also added two additional buildings. The landscaping is currently a work in progress.

Jurassic Park: Aftermath update 2

Some more new images from my work in Cryengine,I've been looking into viz areas / portals and how they can be used for interior environments as well as doing some modelling in Maya for a couple more key locations.The more time I spend in Cryengine I'm starting to recognise bugs as soon as they crop up but my advice for anyone playing around in the engine is backup your files..it's always just a matter of time before a map gets corrupted.You can also now follow the project on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/jurassicparkaftermath

Night in the park.In game shot.

Emergency bunker 1- work in progress

Raptor cage model added into game.

Maintenance shed work in progress.

Jurassic Park: Aftermath update

Over the last couple days I've got back into Cryengine 3 and my Jurassic park project has made some progress.There's been a lot of environment detail added as well as new models and smaller details like custom load screen and music/ sound fx. You can also now follow the project on Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/jurassicparkaftermath

The raptor pit,I worked on learning more about setting up time based weather fx.

Jungle road shot,connecting some of the areas I built previously with vegetation and tracks.

Raptor cage.Quick model just to add something smaller into the map.

Jurassic park-Cryengine 3

At the start of the year I played around a bit in Cryengine 3 building a Jurassic Park environment,I recently was looking into Cryengine's camera tools more in depth and spent some playing around and making a video with project.I experimented a little more with the and camera fx,animation and looked at how the engine's time of day lighting worked and could be customised.

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

Still shot using camera depth blur.

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...


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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...