Week 5 & 6 - The Spaceship and Test Animations

Modelling the Spaceship


During the process of Team Project 2, it was advised by our 3D Lecturer J.J. Quinlan to make a distinguishable environmental feature to tie in with the narrative. He gave us examples such as an Aztec building or a statue. The feature we have decided to create is a Spaceship. The Spaceship fits in with the narrative as how the player came to the island. The spaceship was made to act as a central hub to the player too, a type of home-base. This would mark the start of the game and the end. It also acts as a good focal point. If a player gets lost, they can use that as a marker to return to familiar ground.

Ship Design

As we chose a ship as our distinguishable environmental feature, Nicola designed a template design so that Conor could use when modelling the ship.

Below is the design we used:

Creating the spaceship - V1

Upon creating the spaceship for Haven, the spaceship was designed in Photoshop.  Using this design the spaceship was created using a box object in 3dsMax and was edited in the Editable Poly modifier to get the desired shape of the design.  Thrusters where then added by using the extrude modifier and they where then beveled to get a vent like appearance.  The door was then detached from the rest of the ship by selecting Polygons where the door should be and then in Editable Poly with polygons selected, clicking detach and naming it as a separate object.

Problems: 

There were various problems with this approach, one being the normals inside the ship where not present.  This would mean we would not be able to see the inside of the ship.  Originally we were going to do this, but later on decided on having an interior.  The options where to use the Shell Modifier to add a layer to the inside, but this raised the poly count and created a weird lighting deformation in Unity.  The other option was to model the inside by hand, but this raised the poly count significantly even without the interior objects.

Creating the spaceship - V2

There was no choice it had to be created again.  Using the same technique as the last time, a created a box object in 3dsMax and was edited in the Editable Poly modifier to get the desired shape of the design.  To make the Thrusters, they were modeled separately as the bevel in the last version didn't look very neat on the inside.  Pro Boolean was then used to create a doorway.  Pro Boolean subtracts an object from a selected object and leaves the shape of the picked object in the selected one. The door was then modeled separately and a walkway was placed.


Final Renders of the Spaceship Model:

Spaceship Render - Side View

  

Spaceship Render - Three Quarter View

Testing the Creature Rig

Another task that was completed this week was some animation testing. We wanted to make sure that the models were ready and suitable for animating. This was not to be our final animation, it was simply a test of the rig and skinning.

To achieve this Gavin created an animation sheet in the aim to get a correct animal walk.

Below is Gavin's Animation Sheet:

UI Design Continued

This week, Garreth continued to work on some UI Designs for by adding in prompts for Spawning Fruit and Petting the creature.  The aim of the prompts is to alert the player when they come in contact with an object.  A Ray Cast is used to determine the distance between the players look vector and the object.

Below are the latest UI elements: