As part of the project, everyone doing the media production course has had to produce an electronic press kit. EPK’s are produced in order to show investors how the project is going, to try and secure funding on a project or in order for news outlets to be provided with something that they can showcase when talking about the project. For mine, I created a title card with a description of the overall project, that being the game as well as a short video showing off my assets.
All posts by Matthew James Quon-Wing Chan
Set Piece 2: Flooded Ship
Following on from the substation, I wanted to create more set pieces. I liked the idea of a moored ship slowly being overcome by water so I begun with this as my final goal. In its construction, I realised that the pieces of the ship could be used for other landscapes and set pieces. I wanted the tone to really come across in this scene and so the low light and dark corridors really showed a sense of the closed environments this would create a sense of paranoia and claustrophobia at the thought of what might come next.
I started with the door as being my basis for the rest of the ship. I thought of showing a very industrial approach so I added the girders and lights next, some barrels, vents, light panels and access points finishing off with the walls. I wanted to keep it related to my previous assets and so put some branding on it relating to the axe I have previously created.
Putting this all together, I constructed a scene of a ship corridor. I also added lights to try realistically lighting the scene as though the ship was illuminated by the emergency lighting with red lights and dim white lights. To show the flood, I worked with the node editors to show a generated water scene that reflected the lights and showed distorted the floor below it.
My approach to the creation of these models was based more on the scene than it was the original assets and them coming together to create this. Because of this, I have the renders of the untextured version of the ship as seen below.
As with all of the props, I intend to take this into the Unreal engine and show it in a game engine. This should give me a chance to play with lighting and see how the assets look and interact with each other.
Water in Maya
For one of my final renders, I wanted to show the ship scene as I originally imagined it with it being flooded with a shallow layer of water. Because of this, I had to find a way to get a realistic looking water texture in Maya that wouldn’t be too time-consuming or complicated. I ended up finding this tutorial.
In the tutorial, Bomb Beard discusses the use of a plane with a type of image map being applied to it to replicate the appearance of a rough aquatic surface. I found this approach to the water visual interesting as it relies on nodes and editing them to get the finished result similar to how Blender works, something which I’ve had minor experience with in the past.
Overall, I’m fairly happy with the results as it fulfils the requirement I have of it. Hopefully, if this game was picked up fully, then a different bit of software would be used that could relinquish better results such as Houdini or if a game engine has liquid physics programmed to it.
Set Piece 1: Substation
Following on from the creation of the axe and hammer I thought I’d create more of a scenery piece and so I considered making a hybrid of a human and alien technology. I figured that a combination of the two technologies would allow for a display of the type of narrative I’m trying to get. It would show how the alien visit has enhanced human scientific capabilities and how the humans cooperated with the alien visitors.
I started with a basic idea which I constructed in Maya but ended thinking it looked too much like something out of a cartoon. Because of this, I scrapped the project and started again.
Link to the original model here!
I thought that I could show the alien technology in the form of batteries for the substation with the human technology surrounding it. As such, I put typical human technology conventions in the item such as vents and a control module, panels and power output ports. I also added disks to the top of the substation to provide a texture and interesting focus to the top of the device.
When modelled, I then took the model into substance painter and began working on how to convey this combination of the two technologies and thought that having the human technology react to the damp but the alien technology didn’t and so looks a lot more pristine. This is how I managed to construct this look. I also did a curvature map in substance painter to get the edgewear on the substation.
Weapon 2: The Re-Materialiser
For this prop, I wanted to show the alien and futuristic overtones to the prop. I also thought that a hand-held melee weapon would be another opportunity to showcase this without it being too over the top. Because of this, I thought about a hammer that could be enhanced with alien technology and customisation. I started with a regular steel mallet and then added the additional shock pads to the end. This then leads to me considering how to power these attachments, so I added two power packs to the side of the hammer and the wiring to the pads as well as to a button on the grip for the user to enable the shock pads.
From here, I generated some appropriate UV maps for the Hammer and took it into substance painter. I then began texturing the hammer as I would any other model with the materials and smart materials being used to my advantage. I also learnt about the edge-wear generator and baking curvature maps. This allowed me to add a realistic level of metal edge wear to the model. I also used one of the alphas in substance painter to show the electrified nature of the prop.
Following the export of the textures, I took these back into Maya for a full render with Arnold. Programming the textures to the model was interesting, a lot of learning from my mistakes and re-uploading it but I eventually arrived at something I am happy with.
