I’m probably my own worst critic. At least I know that I’m not suffering from any illusions of grandeur. After taking a good hard look at the cars made by Johnny and Jon, and then perusing a few forums, and eventually ending up at looking at a vehicle wireframe on Tyler Wanlass’s website, I realized that I was working much too low poly. I was going to end up with a PS2 model that no amount of normal mapping could fix.
Rather than slice up the boxy model and pull a ton of verts, I made a clean start. I’m a lot happier with the way the base mesh is coming out this time around. The car has more structure to it, which is going to make extracting sections of the body to create armor plates much easier. Also, there is a lot more resolution to work with in the mesh , so creating damage states later is going to turn out better.
Following Johnny’s lead, last Saturday I started on the car that I’m modeling for this project, known as Frankenstein’s Monster. A Fifth-generation Ford Mustang armed with 2 M134′s, smokescreen, napalm and oil slick for defense, as well as a 6-inch thick steel plate on the rear bumper called “The Tombstone.”
After quickly finding front and side line drawings of the Mustang, I started the process using a technique that I’ve learned relatively recently which involves using splines to create a cage of the model.
From there, using a surface modifier and converting it to polygons, I ended up with some pretty rough geometry, but it was a start.
More time working on it (and temporarily borrowing wheels from my Ducati Motorcycle model)
Having the general shape of a 2005 Mustang, I load up my movie reference and realize my front end needed tweaking.
She’s far from finished, but I’ve got her rolling.
Since my last post I’ve been working on a number of different parts on the project. One of which is getting the track blocked out in UDK. We’re using Unreal’s fairly robust terrain editor to make up the track it self. The brownish/orange and grey checker is a blend of two materials that are going to make up dirt and asphalt. It’s all roughed-in but it’s a great start and we’re all excited to see this project taking shape.
This is the general shape of the track the Death Race will take place on. We cut it’s length down by a third from the movie because of time constraints, however it is setup that if time does permit we can add in the missing bottom loop. Outlined in red is the path taken (counter clockwise).
Outlined in green are possible short cuts that will be available if certain conditions are met (speed to hit a ramp, destroying enough debris, knowledge of its existence, etc..)
After reading Bradd’s latest update I feel like I should put something up here also. It seems like just last week I was the only one with any car related posts… and now BAM Bradd’s got his truck started and I’ve seen the mustang Jon is building, which I hear through the grapevine will be unveiled here shortly.
As for me, I have finished the modeling stage of the car and I am now knee deep in Mudbox and photoshop. I will be posting my progress sometime before next Monday.
I swear. There’s other people working on some great stuff. And if you’re lucky, someday they’ll share it with you. I hear Johnny’s car has turned awesome since the last time I saw it.
I just started blocking out the base mesh for Machine Gun Joe’s Truck. Since every square inch of the truck is covered with armor, I was only worried about getting the basic proportions and silhouette correct. 
I’m not going to brag or anything but we’re basically kicking ass at this point. It took some colossal effort over the last few months to get this ball rolling, but now we’re well under way. Jon is getting tons of requests to put together a video tutorial on how we got our car working, and it looks like he’s gonna bust that out when he rigs up Johnny’s car.
On the topic of Johnny’s car, how great is that coming out? I was worried at first when he chose to make that as his first truly next-gen asset. I mean, I wussed out an made a broken piece of concrete… He’s stepped up and proved that he’s got what it takes to be a game artist in today’s crazy-fast-paced industry.
Anyways, enough gloating about my friends… After work today I sat down to crank out some textures for major track assets… I feel like I’m starting to really understand the power of the UDK material editor.
Throwing some assets into a scene...
I’ve spent a fair bit of time over the past week or so brushing up my UDK skills. I’ve scoured the internet for answers to all sorts of problems. If anyone out there is looking for a good introduction to Unreal, and its capabilities I can’t recommend the videos from Eat3d.com enough. They are heavily production focused, teaching you good habits and workflow along with the regular instruction.
While building some materials for our game, I came across a problem that took me hours to find a solution for- The material blendmode BLEND_Modulate is not supported in the new versions of UDK for lit materials. Long story short, the answer it to use an unlit material. Here’s an example of this in action:
The walls and floor are just the same tiled metal texture. The grime on the walls is a 2-triangle plane with the above material on it sitting just on top of the walls. The mess on the floor is another material set up the same way using a different texture. It’s cool to note that this setup will accept global illumination and shadows properly.
Moving on, I’ve been scratching my head figuring out the best way to build a large warehouse for this level. And I mean Large. It takes up nearly a third of the racetrack. If the movie is to be believed, there’s something like three miles of track winding around inside it.
Originally, I’d blocked the main parts of the warehouse out in max, and was detailing high poly versions of the pieces to use like lego’s and build everything. Since the player is never really going to be looking at the building, and rather just racing around and through it, the High poly baked to Low poly approach was taking way too much time, and still resulting in a ton of assets. Instead, I’ve gone ahead and blocked out the building using BSP’s. Using some tricks I picked up studying materials and shaders all weekend, I know that I can make it look as good, if not better, with this approach.
Haven’t posted in a few days so I figured it’s time I post a progress render for the Riviera.
Click the image for full size.
I’m pretty much 100% done with the model, I have a few poly’s to tweak that you can’t on the bottom, and then it’s off to mudbox for some sculpting. After that I’ll be working out the final details in Photoshop. Can’t wait to finish and drive it around in Unreal!
I’ve been working on a concrete barrier that will be used in various parts of the race track. It’s a simple prop that needed to be generic enough that it could be tiled without being noticed. We’ll be adding a grim/dirt layer to the barriers using the world offset method Bradd had worked out in his Material Test.
Here are in-engine shots of an undamaged barrier.
We needed to be able to use these barriers to direct the player around the track. Using the red and green channels of a mask, we’re able to flip flop the direction of the arrows. You’ll also notice the large yellowish color parameter that can be changed on the fly, which in turn will change the color of the masked arrows. We plan to use this type of technique to color coordinate sections of the track.
After finishing up the undamaged version of the barrier, I imported it into Mudbox to add a little bit of damage to give us another version of it that we can use in parts of the track where the player might slam into the barriers more often.
…Modeling. The way I know that I love the career I’ve committed myself to, is that I’m fine blowing off a date to practice and improve my skills. Seriously. Plus, when you get right down to it, GDC is right around the corner. The only way were going to scale this mountain to completion is by sacrificing wants in favor of needs. I can’t wait till it’s done though. Rolling into GDC, or Beer Wednesday, or any industry related event and being able to hand out a completed produce is really is the next level in my mind.
I worked on the Trellis stands that line the track tonight. The sheer scale and height of the object make working on it a bit awkward. I experimented with the sub-object orbit mode to streamline the process.
Here’s a few progress shots. (The trellis Frame is untextured. You’re just looking at the Normal Map and AO.)
Trellis Frame
Detail Shot of Base
Reference Image
