Progress Report 01 news - Proving Grounds Skirmish mod for Unreal Tournament 3

Concepts

We've now uploaded a good selection of our concept art which can be found in the image gallery. For our project we were each required to do several concepts and final artworks for different aspects of the warehouse and assets. This was a good exercise for us because we had relied more upon reference and real life imagery for our look and feel (especially given the realistic nature of our game style) and it allowed us to tie our ideas together. It also allows us some decent promotional art for our presentation at AVCon.

Assets

In our planning phase we divided our assets up into 2 section, the warehouse build, and population assets. Warehouse build assets are assets that contribute to the main warehouse structure and the major structures. This includes the pieces that make up the warehouse (doors, Windows, pillars etc), the scaffolding, and the suspension bridge. These assets are all designed to be modular and fit together perfectly using a grid system. The warehouse build is built primarily by our resident engineer Peter Utnicki and placed by our UDK expert Rhys brailsford. Population assets are simply the props that populate the level and make it look real (Bins, boxes, crates, tires etc). These assets have their own unique textures and are not modular in general. Most of the props are created by Rosie Coleman and Brad Collins.

The warehouse build

The warehouse structure has been completely finalized, all the major modular pieces have been created, finalized, placed to a unit and locked in. All that remains is to complete the tiling textures and use UDK's vertex blending system to grunge up the environment and make it look unique and real. In addition the final lighting needs to be placed and baked. Our texture artist Brad Collins and Peter will be working on these aspects in the near future so more updates to come!

Populating the warehouse

Throughout our timeline we have been steadily working on creating assets to populate the warehouse with, as such we now have a decent amount of props to use in the final environment. Our focus when creating assets was to make things that were both realistic and practical. We tried to choose things that would fit but were also repeatable. Things like tires, bins, palettes, sandbags etc worked well. We also wanted to be efficient and make things that took up space and created good atmosphere and cover. As we enter the final phase of the project more props will be made and placed, more updates to come!

Character implementation

The character has been completely modeled and has been baked down from high-poly to low-poly to produce its normal and AO maps. It has been weighted to the existing Human male rig from UDK and is in the process of being put in engine. The textures are due to be completed soon, with, of course, updates to come :)

Thanks for reading!