DreambackVr - Indie horror

Another project I've been working on this year is an upcoming VR / Unreal 4 indie game called 'DreambackVR'. The horror game is set in sprawling mansion as you explore the haunted halls,solve puzzles and unlock hidden secrets.



I was responsible for building the the initial phase of environments,taking pre-existing assets and making a cohesive mansion,initial lighting set up,modelling and modifying props and materials. The mansion was built around a central courtyard with multiple levels and vantage points which meant adapting the modular parts to fit and re-texturing in Substance Painter.

Early version with some test lighting.

Corridor lighting test.

The house appears in two time periods during game play along with the exterior of the house and surrounding forest area. One of the central characters in the game is a doctor so I looked at references for old medical operating theatre's as well as influences of mystical / occult items relevant to the time period. The levels of the house also have servant quarters, storage and formal areas similar to what would appear in large mansion during the period.

One of the guest bedrooms.

 The game is currently still in development with plans to release with full VR support via Steam sometime in 2019, more about the project can be found at http://comeovergaming.com/video-games/dreambackvr

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 - 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.

Unity 3D: Trespasser environment flythrough

A while back I started a fun little project in my spare time recreating the environment from the game Jurassic park Trespasser,this is a work in progress flythrough of the game map so far.The video is a little long as there was tons to cover,it was created in Maya and Unity3D.
The frame rate is a little jumpy due to compression but check it out in full HD if you can..

Jurassic Park:Game remake preview

Working on getting a flythrough of the entire level done at the moment but decided to make a short preview style trailer.Modelling was done in Maya and the game is built in UnityPro.For progress shots click on the "Jurassic park" tags below.

Unity fantasy world update

Finally found some time to update this project,originally this environment was built fairly quickly using Maya and Unity 3D but my old laptop didn't run it very smoothly.I got a new rendering rig from pc specialist last month and made some changes and updated the map.You can still see in the later sections where the environment isn't finished and its missing a lot of bump maps but this was one of my first Unity environments I built just for fun and a challenge.
Check it out in HD if you can...

Exploring Cryengine...

Found some spare time to play about in Cryengine 3,was having some trouble getting the layer textures working but turned out to a minor glitch with the version I had downloaded.Decided to import model from Jurassic park game project I was making for Unity and test out some the lighting and tools,still just learning the basics and discovering the menus. Wouldn't say the layout of Cryengine is the most intuitive to learn and it seems to crash far to often.

Click to enlarge images

Bamboo hotel,built for Unity engine originally / missing bump and spec maps.

Environment work

A couple of months ago I done some work on a game project,these are some rough versions of a dock environment built for Unity engine.The models are work in progress base versions to be polished as the map comes together,built in Maya.

Work in progress on layout of the map.Screenshot's from in editor.

Above screenshot showing the shipping yard layout.

Low-poly concepts/props

Images from a game I worked on last year,these are various simple sci-fi gun turrets add-ons for ships and space stations,the concepts were kept low poly for use in Heroengine.

Game project: Day 2

Working on a range of low poly assets and sculpting the terrain for my fantasy world in the Unity game engine.Added some bridges and sculpted out the area a lot more,in the distance there's a place marker for a lighthouse which I hope to build tomorrow if I have time.

Also added some rocks modelled in Maya for the canyon.

Unity game project : Day 1

Today I start a new mini project... that's epic of course. I'm building a low poly but large scale open world environment in Maya and Unity engine, I've gone for a fairly traditional fantasy style (so far) in this scene partly because its not a style I would usually go for and for the starting area of this map it works.Lot of modelling,textures and detail to add,first shots show the basic landscaping and today's props.

Entrance to the first village,everything built by me
except the trees.Lots of vegetation to add.

The mountains are roughed out and will develop as I go,
these shots are from in the program (not final in game).

Unity 3 lighting tests

Spent a hour or two playing around in Unity 3 engine,previously I found the final rendered game graphics to be a bit disappointing so I thought I would experiment with lighting options and see what I could come up with.I imported a couple of my Maya models into the engine to test indoor lighting and anti-aliasing effects.

Some realtime shadows,image effects applied to camera to soften jaggy edges

Forward lighting with some point lights to fake ambience

Hero Engine testing

Another quick test I put together using HeroEngine Game development kit,the online engine enables collaborative world building for MMO games.I brought in an old factory model I built to see how many polygons the engine could handle importing from Maya.

Amnesia: Making of the Game

Amnesia: the dark descent is best known for it YouTube reaction videos of players letting out yelps and screams while playing the game, its pretty good at mixing point and click,survival horror and physics to create something original.After finishing the game I noticed that among the install files was one called "super secret Rar ",so I went straight to google.It turns out the multiple endings of the game give sections of a password that opens the file and inside there's a fairly expansive making of,over 200mb worth of videos,images and production booklets.

Behind the scene images show Maya modelling for game details.

PDF,PowerPoint's and word files breakdown  production,
selling points and pitch the story's unique elements

The majority of making of books tend to gloss over a lot but here you get to see development of the game engine itself and a host of pdf and even PowerPoint pitching the game (presumably to investors) and its features,they show initial ideas and breakdowns of story and basically try to sell the game at its earliest stage.It's an interesting look into behind the scenes of a game and worth checking out even if you aren't a gamer.

Review: Lumion Realtime Rendering

Real time rendering programs..they have a habit of hiding a button called play,record or movie that's actual purpose is...to render.Lumion is no different but the program itself manages to get away with it because for the most part it does produce some really good real time images.The first thing that hits you opening the program is the design,Lumion looks like the 'sims',everything is ultra easy to navigate and you can explore the entire program in about 5mins.The program itself has a ton of props,materials,animated characters as well as terrain and water.It all has the bright and cheery Sims look.

A Pre-set examples scenes in realtime,the quality settings
are graded by 1-4 stars with this being the highest.

A quick .obj import of my model in realtime the weather
can be instantly updated with lightbeams and fog.

The main purpose of the program seems to be architectural rendering,fly-throughs of streets and concepts which it does do well.On my laptop the program ran with some drop in frame rates and other issues but on a good system I'm sure it wouldn't be much of an issue.Its a good program but limited,the renders have a definite "look" that feels game-ish and it feels more like a fun program than a professional one.When i do upgrade my computer I will probably come back to Lumion and see how far it can be pushed,its definitely one of the best I've tried so far. http://lumion3d.com/
For review's of more realtime render software click program or review tags below.

Review: ShiVa Game Editor

Today I tried out Stonetrip's ShiVa editor,a game building engine and authoring tool similar to Unity.Opening up the program the first thing that hit me was the layout which seems to waste as much space as possible,putting all the major an important tools in a panel half way down the screen rather than up top.Once I got past that all the usual features are there (creating lights and shapes etc).Whenever you create object they are added to a library where they can be dragged and dropped into scene,seems pretty simple but with all the menus condensed into one area it quickly gets complicated.

ShiVa 3D Available as a free PLE edition

The demo levels show off some nice lighting and soft shadows and there's a library of free materials and objects to play around with,Maya importing is also fairly simple though the polygon limit seems low.In the short amount of time I played with shiVa I got the feeling Unity's probably got the upper hand with interface and community forums.