I was put into a game design group in the art and animation section with my classmates. I was apart of Team I with 6 in the game design team and 6 in the animation and modelling team. The team came up with several ideas and themes for the game. When I heard of the ideas and game mechanics, I decided to doodle ideas for the aesthetics of the game in MS Paint. There was an idea for a jungle themed puzzle game and an idea for a snowboarding game where the snowboarder is being chased by a giant creatures while traversing various landscapes (1st area would be snow themed, the 2nd would be jungle themed, etc).
The concept we chose for the game is a cyberpunk themed game where you are constantly running to escape and dodge from enemies’ attacks such as turrets and drones. Before we had finalized what aesthetic we were going for the game, I did these concept drawings with a city level and a factory level. The team came up with a city and factory levels for the game and the animation team would do the animations and models.
Also small doodles for character designs. I originally imagined the main character’s design to have a more tactical suit design. Also an idea for turret enemy that chases the player character.
The main character was decided to be a cyborg in sports gear. This one was based off a design a team member did.
I suggested that I design enemies and posters for the environment of the levels. These are very rough concepts for enemies. Since the game was going to be a runner game, I imagined the enemies to be either chasing enemies like drones that chase the player and try to blast them with a machine gun or a stationary turret enemy that you had to run away from the fire. I still needed the group to figure what color scheme we were going for.
Instead of that, I was given a list of things to model:
- A door
- A menu for a restaurant
- Several neon signs
- Several wires
- A can
- A glass bottle and shards
They were modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter. The color scheme we handed on was blue, purple and red. There are some things I added later onto the models, such as lighting on the text on the billboards and text on the menu.
For the texturing I used Substance Painter. When texturing, the team had to put a rust overlay over the models to give the models texture instead of them looking flat. In Substance, I used a generator to generate a mask based on the topology of the mesh, so the texture of the overlay is the model. I could increase and decrease the extremity of the rust depending the model ( ie. to make something look beat up, I could increase the value of rust on it).
These were the first models that I textured, some doors. However they didn’t go well with the chosen aesthetic as they were too cartoon-y as well as not sci-fi enough. They came off as very unappealing as I put a bunch of colors together without taking account of how they would make sense in the level, so I took a more sensible approach to the coloring, with using darker tones of the same color for the texturing.
I also modelled bottles and cans to scatter around the environments. I also made a shattered version of the bottle. The can is a generic shape with a bright red solid packaging. Unfortunately, I didn’t design a logo for the can. The textured can was made to look like rubbish so I covered it in a heavy rust texture, especially on the silver parts, which . I created the shattered version of the bottle by resizing each of the the vertexes to make them look they had been broken.
This is a vent that I had designed. I heard that there was going to be a vent that the player would travel through, but I designed as a level prop. The box behind the opening would be enlarged depending on if they needed to.
This is a new model for the door. I designed them to be glass doors instead of the steel doors with a button pad I did for the first designs. There are elements I added to it’s design to make it standout as a way to proceed through the level, such as adding lights that would be green colored, as that is the color used as an indicator to the pathway of the level, as well as a transparent texture to the door as a way of creating a window effect, to see through to the next part you need to proceed through. I intended to put a green lighting effect on the door lights to make it more apparent.
This is a design I had for a menu. Since the game took place in the future, I gave them a sort smartphone look to them with a glassy texture and had them floating and held by a base. I intended to add text to it, but didn’t get around to it.
These were the billboards that I had designed. I was suggested by a team member to make it look like an AI designed them so I gave the borders weird shapes. The original billboards that I designed while following the color scheme, but didn’t really look appealing and the coloring was too vibrant.
Since the game was going for a Japanese cyberpunk style, I wrote the text in Japanese (using Google Translate) using the text function in Maya, turning the letters into models. I stylized and scaled them in a way to make them look visually interesting. I intended to have lights over the texture to make them stand out more. The first billboard had a checkered pattern for the face. I wrote out generic phrases for drink advertisements like “Very Refreshing”. I designed the billboards to have giant fake cans and bottles connected to them to make look specifically look like cola adverts.
These were some wires that I had designed. They were mostly just a number of cylinder shapes resized and reshaped to make them look like they’re bending. I also added a little plug at the end of each wire to make them look like they have been cut. I had a rust overlay on them, but made the rust texturing more subtle on the later version. I originally had them various different colors, but I decided to have them several shades of blue and purple to keep them more consistent. I intended to have a blue light over the part plugs to simulate electricity. I tried to make these bend more naturally by putting them in blender and moving the ends of the cylinder parts around, but when I did, it just shrunk them and detached them from the rest of the cylinder parts, despite combining all the parts in Maya.
These are all the models textured in Substance and then exported into Maya. They appeared in Maya without their texture maps and no transparency. There were some models that had their textures mess up when exporting, but their weren’t very necessary so it was fine.
When the team was getting together to meet in uni , I went in to try the game and see my assets that were already put into the game. The game was mechanically sound from what I had played. I saw some of the signs I designed and was told that the can, bottle and shattered pieces of the bottle I designed would be scattered around the level. Those were the only models used. I asked the game design team that if there was anything else I could design for the level, so I was suggested to design some building equipment, with a log cutting stand. There was this empty area in the level on top of one of the buildings that needed some dressing. I designed a chainsaw and some logs to go with the stand in Maya.
Here is the creation of the chainsaw. It was mostly made mostly with cube models that I had extracted and combined together to make the various parts for the base. The blade was half a sphere I extracted the lines of to make it stretch out and I added little thin pyramid shapes on to them to create the teeth. The top handle was originally rounded with a donut shaped polygon, but I decided to go for a more square shaped handle.
The logs were just cylinders that I modified to have each end a slightly different shape. I kept the side of the one logs the same as another so that the 2 logs could fit together and turn into one. I was able to texture them before my Substance ran out with a simple wood texture.
Lastly, I designed the stand. I intended to have the logs put through and in between the parts with the chains
I was going texture them myself, but the license on my Substance Painter had ran out (I textured the logs before that happened) and I was unable to sign up or re-new without going into uni, so I sent them to another from the animation team to texture them and to import them into the game. Unfortunately, no one else in the game design team had Substance, so they couldn’t be textured, so they had to be scrapped.
Looking back at what I had created, I felt there was a lot more that I could do with my models. The first thing is that when I started doing the models, I had a list that I had of what I should make, but other members of my team had already set to model them. A door for example, I had designed several doors to be put into the game, but none of my designs for the door had made it into the game. I was told to design doors and I was told about how to improve it, but they were never used. I was told there was going to be a restaurant part in the level, so I created a menu, but there wasn’t one in the level. My models were too simple compared to others’ work in the group so I was disappointed with how mine came out when seeing their work. Lastly were the models that I had done last, the chainsaw, logs and the log stand. The substance running out had rendered the creation of these models worthless. That’s how I felt about most of my models that I designed for the game, as I could only find the billboards.
I felt the biggest problem I had was lack of communication on my part as I should’ve had talked more with my team members to get exactly what I needed to do, instead of wasting work on models that weren’t going to be used anyway.
I feel like my modelling had improved over the creation of the game. This was my first time creating more grounded items in a project for the environment of the level (excluding the sci-fi influenced models like the menu I designed). My work worked stylistically with the rest of the game, as when I played the game and saw my models, it fit in with the art style of the others’ models.
My favorite models are definitely the neon signs, as I felt they were something that helped with the aesthetic of the game, yet different from what everyone else in the animation team was doing. One idea that would do if I knew to would be to have the giant props connected to the billboards spin. I wouldn’t really know how that would work with putting animations into the game engine, as I was on the animation team with no knowledge of game design.