Hello everyone, I'm [TWDEV]_Franky_ and I'm a Modeller and Texture Artist on the Traction Wars team. Today, I would like to present you with a bit of an unusual dev blog entry, namely, a dead cow. At first, I was quite surprised when I was approached with the idea of creating this asset because I have worked on organic modelling in the past, but not under the circumstances of our current project.
Since I enjoy a challenge I did not shy away from this curious assignment. So to start off, I needed good reference material. I needed to go beyond just finding high resolution imagery of various cows and start digging deeper. So I proceeded with gathering many different references, including some authentic World War II photography from the German Bundesarchiv as well as some anatomical diagrams of a cow's skeletal structure and its musculature.
"bordering on the ridiculous"
Once we settled on the pose of the model, I proceeded with creating a high poly version of the cow for the purpose of creating a normal map. This was an opportunity for me to improve my sculpting skills in 3D and also showcasing attention to detail with a mix of clearly defined muscles, bones and fat tissue. This not only required a sense of anatomy and observation skill, but also the intelligent use of various software packages working in concert to create a normal map that reflects the level of detail of a high resolution model consisting of over 1,2 million polygons.
Painting
Next up was the creation of the diffuse map, not as small a feat as it may seem at first glance. I decided to go with hand-painting it entirely with my pen tablet. I wagered that the additional amount of work would be worth the investment if the outcome was of arguably high quality. Usually, I would create textures with a blend of photographic and hand-painted elements. For this specific project, I went and created the fur one strand of hair at a time, basically consisting of hundreds, if not thousands of individual brush strokes. All the while I was fully aware that 99% of all players would run by this cow many times without even really looking at it, so I did not want to spend too much time by getting lost in details.
In the end it was worth the effort but I still have some refinements that I want to make.
I hope you enjoyed this entry of our dev blog and I look forward to sharing more of my work with our team and the audience/players.
We are still looking for talented individuals to join us on the team, so if you think you might have what it takes or if you are just curious then you can check out our recruitment page for full details.
Keep up the good work guys.
Yep, that cow is dead...
[citation needed]
This is great, good to show that you are paying attention to the smaller details.
All it needs now to complete it is a toungue hanging out :)
R.I.P. Daisy :(
I'm thinking her udders should be more grey. It's a corpse after all.
make it bloody too. Cant wait to T-bag the mess out of that cow in game.
You sir, have some weird fetishes lol
i had no idea a dead cow needs so much work
no cows were harmed in the making of this game (cod/cod2 lol)
Its udderly amazing how much work you are putting into this.
Will we perhaps see any that is mooving around still alive?
Excellent idea, Arieas!
Maniche
mooving... i see what you did there :p
looks really great, a higher resolution texture would be better if possible
better yet you should make them small time npc like the crabs n chickens on crysis wars maps. talk about atmosphere n enviroment lol
The legs standing up are due to the cow swelling as it decays. It would look like you have it there at first, but then it would blow up like a balloon. Thats how you get those legs sticking straight out.