Fantastic 3D Caves In Only 10 Minutes!

I made a test piece of track to see if I could get the process down for making good looking caves. It was way easier than I thought and produced fantastic results. And the best part is I did it with no textures at all!

A simple and easy to make cave.

It was easy to make and the process is simple. I took a cylinder and cut off most of the bottom half of it. Then extruded it several times and angled the joints correctly. Then I smoothed it once, and hollowed out the center with a simple command in Wings 3D. I hid all the parts I didn't want to work with and selected all of the horizontal lines of the inside of the cave, then cut them all into 4 parts and connected all the dots. This makes pretty much all of the polygons more or less square instead of really long rectangles. I then hid the floor since I wanted it to turn out more smooth than the walls. I then use a command to select 20% of the edges of the cave walls and moved them all a little bit to make the cave look more rough. I then smoothed the cave walls again. After that all I had to do was unhide the floor and select 20% of the vertices and move them a little bit. This made the floor look a little more natural. It looks pretty great and the polygon count isn't as high as I thought it would need to be. With todays average hardware a computer can be expected to display at least half of a million polygons at once. There is even a scene in Oblivion that shows nearly two million, and my computer never even skips. The simple piece I made is larger than the player will usually see at once and is only about twenty thousand polygons. Of course I'm not going to make anything like this in an outside setting, but for a tight corridor this really works well.

A second look

Completed Racer

I finally decided to work on my game again. Here is a picture of a completed racing vehicle. I decided to use only material colors on it so the player can customize the colors very easily. There are four customizable colors on this racer. The two primary colors of the racer, a single color for the cockpit, and a metalic color for the details. It kinda looks like a mouse head if you look at it the right way. I'll call that an unintentional cute side effect. Some of the racer designs will look like animals intentionally, like the sea turtle racer I designed a few months ago.

A fancy new racing vehicle!

One thing I really enjoy is when a game can pull off a good atmosphere. I strongly believe the best way to do that is with good lighting. In this case I plan on having a lot of dark places in tracks where you would depend on your own headlights. But also a great feature would be to have tail lights too! Of course the most important lighting will be proper lighting of the levels.

This racer even has headlights and tail lights!

Unfortunately because of time constraints and lack of intense will power I will probably be relying intensely on material colors for most assets and use very few textures. But this makes good lighting much more important. If its done right I can still make the game look fantastic with very few textures. I will likely have to use a lot of textures on the race courses though.

The design for the Sea Turtle Racer I mentioned earlier.

I may need to redesign this Sea Turtle Racer a bit though. I think its arms turned out way too large and its midsection way too skinny. But its a neat first draft and something fun to think about.

Finished Models for Earth and Mars!

I've got more buildings done! I tend to pull my inspiration from anywhere I can find any. For instance the large twisted building is based off of a building in Sim City 2000 Gold edition, only available in a futuristic texture pack.

Finished models for Earth

The Large Twisted Apartment Complex was made with 19 pieces. I started by modeling the first floor and then I textured it. Afterwards I copied it 14 times and shrunk each floor a little more than the previous floor. Then I rotated the floors to give it a twisted look. I also experimented with UV mapping tecniques with the dome which allowed me to make a dome shaped house you can see on the bottom right.

I have also finished a couple models I plan to use on Mars!

Finished models for Mars!

The larger building is the corporate headquarters of Mars Manufacturing, the biggest company on Mars and one of the manufacturers of the parts and upgrades the player will be buying or winning throughout the game. The player will also be able to win them as a sponsor to recieve bigger rewards from winning a race and possably a discount on their parts. The building is kind of crown shaped and is larger at the top than at the bottom which will make it look like it is towering over you and is an impressive sight to see. I may change the name of the company to something more edgy later and give it a marketing campaign so players may see their advertisements in the game on bilboards or on jumbo TV's.

Mars Manufacturing, Solar System Heavy Weight

Its looking quite fantastic! I would have to say the art style is about solidified. It takes about 8 hours to make a building from start to finish because I make the texture by hand in a pixel art style. Here is the texture for Mars Manufacturing. I used some tricks to make the curvy parts straight on the UV map. I also make all the faces that are the same shape use the same part of the texture.

Mars Manufacturing Texture

Textures!

I took some time today to UV map and texture a building. Afterwards I transformed it into a couple other buildings so I could reuse the texture. Honestly I am quite impressed with how it came out. I really didn't think it would come out so well half way in. The texture is very simple and resembles line art or pixel art. Putting in small highlights in the right areas really made it all come togeather.

Kerkythea rendering of 3 futuristic apartment complexes

Building Assets

Many futuristic buildings were modeled by RemixedCat and I today. We went wild just playing around with neat building shapes and kicked ideas around all day. I would have to say it was all quite fruitful! We came up with a pretty good style and the buildings we modeled look great! Usually what we do is model most of the assets and come back and texture the ones we decide to use. So I will show some textured buildings later when we hit that step.

Lets begin again!

Its been a long long time since my last post. I also haven't worked on my last project any since October. I bought a house in November and I have finally settled in. So lets get things going again!

My project "Lost Kingdoms" has pretty well stalled and for now I would consider it too ambitious so I'm going to put it on the back burner for now and after I complete a smaller more fun project I may either come back to it or cannibalize it for a better thought out project.

So what will I do instead? Glad you asked! I'm going to jump into a niche market and make a racing game! No not one of the thousands of NASCAR games or even anything with wheels. This racing game is going to be set a few hundred years in the future with hovering cars and races all over the solar system!

In my opinion there are a few good elements that make a good racing game. First obviously is the feel of the racer, it has to be responsive and fast! The second element I like is being able to buy upgrades, it makes wining more important because your after the prize money. Third is the game's graphical style, I'll have to whip out some fun and funky graphical elements and make sure I throw some awesome on it! Mmm yum, its awesome, and tasty!

Generally I am drawing some of my inspiration from what I would consider the best racing game ever made, "Star Wars Episode One Pod Racer" for the Nintendo 64. Sure there may be a couple newer games that are similar and passably better but I haven't played them myself. But some of the feel of a super fast race and the general idea that you can upgrade your racer are all I'm borrowing from it. And honestly I plan to expand upon the customization greatly.

The player will be starting out with a junky or old car and they will start their racing career in an amateur circuit. The player will have to race a bunch of races and a small tournament in order to progress to better races, possibly with better paying sponsors and more fame and riches. And they would have to upgrade their racers and buy better hovering cars in order to compete. That part is all pretty standard in a good racing game but there could be a lot more. Such as running around great cities finding black market dealers to buy more unique parts, or occasionally running a crazy delivery mission through the Volcanic regions of Io, one of Jupiter's moons. So I plan to make a few unique twists on an already interesting game idea.

 

Since the first phase of planning is done, I have actually been able to get some work done on real assets! Here are the pics for one of the racers. I still have yet to texture it however, but you can see what I started with and how it ended up.

 

 

Quick sketch of a Racing Ship

I started with a quick basic sketch just to get the general shape on paper. I made a bunch of these and only pick the ones I like to continue working on. I do all my drawing with a graphics tablet in "Easy Paint Tool SAI".

Refined drawing of a Racing Ship

After I pick a good sketch to work with I blow up the sketch and on a new layer I draw over it, refine the shape and edges, then add detail. Some of the ideas and detials I rethink by the time I make the model however.

Finished 3D model ready for texturing, or a paintjob.

And here is the finished model that just needs some paint slapped on it. This particular ship took about 12 hours to model, mostly because I had recently learned some new things about 3D modeling and I took the time to play around with my new knoweldge. Otherwise all the complicated shapes of the wings and fins took a lot of trial and error before I got them how I wanted them. This model was a lot of fun to make and I learned a lot from it. And best of all, the model is unsmoothed, I did it all by hand and didn't rely on subdivision to hide any blemeshes. After triangulation the model weighs in at approximately 5300 polygons. I even made all the movable parts like the rudders, landing gear hatches, and cockpit hatch fit into or on the model seamlessly. I plan to have all of those parts animated in the game, and also a lower poly character in the cockpit too. I will likely make several models before I decide how I want these painted though. I would like to offer the player some options such as color selction so I may make a few neat textures that only rely on 3 or 4 colors and alow the player to change the colors. So besides just a plain ship, the player could throw on a flame themed texture set on the ship, and change its color scheme too.

Creating Internal Environments: Part 2 Catacombs

Detailed Catacombs

In "Creating Internal Environments: Part 1" I discussed how I developed all of the parts to make my Catacombs for my game "Lost Kingdom". Now its time to put everything together! First I had to make sure all of my parts fit together seamlessly and looked good. Fortunately all it took was five walls and one pillar repeated over and over.

Catacomb Wall Pieces

I also had to make a bunch of caskets to fit in the walls and to scatter around. The idea is that a necromancer took over the city's catacombs and made a big mess wile creating a legion of undead. So some of the caskets are broken or opened.

Big Mess of Caskets

With all of the pieces and major decor finished, I had to make the level out of all of it. First I put all of the walls up where I wanted them and then put the floor in. The floor is just a block underneath each room. It took a long time to find a good texture to put on the floor. Nothing seemed to go with the walls and decor, so I severely modified a decorative floor I had hiding away in my texture collection. Gimp did wonders with it and with color correction and contrast enhancement I had the floor that I wanted.

Catacomb Walls and Floor

With the level layout done, I had to put in more detail like all of the caskets that need to go into a crypt. I have more stuff to put in such as lights, candles, and dead bodies. But those are not done yet and the bodies may not be put into the level until I am ready to put in the monsters.

Catacomb with Caskets

Filling the level with caskets took about five hours. Some are pulled out of the walls and some are broken all over the floor. Im quite happy with their arrangement, some of the rooms are such a mess that a player would walk in and go "OMGWTF happened here? And where are all of the bodies!?!" And then run around the next corner and get swarmed with zombies and skeletons.

A Big Mess of coffins!

It looks like something out of a Silent Hill game. Extremely creepy and satisfyingly dark natured. What will really set it off is proper lighting and some good creepy sounds and music! Another thing I will likely look into is making some blood to splatter on the floors and walls. I also need to place the light fixtures and candles around the level, but I will do that in IRREdit.

Wings3D is spitting and sputtering trying to cope with the size and complexity of this level. It has 211,888 polygons when it is triangulated and this is only two thirds of the level. You won't have to worry about that being high in the game though, IRRLICHT can handle that like its nothing. The last third of the level I will have to make in its own load cell, fortunately this layout makes it easy for me to do that. Once you have completed the first part of the level and have found the key, just find the right door and enter the second part of the level.

This is the first time I have made an internal environment and there are a few things to remember when making one. Scope is important. I would love to make a HUGE level completely full of details, however I don't want to spend a month on one area. When I do make a gigantic level I will use simpler pieces where I don't have to go back and put caskets in every wall recess. The more you componentize things, the quicker and easier the level will be to make. If you have an entire room completely predone it is easy to copy it and paste it somewhere else, then mess around with the decor or replace one wall to make it look different. And lastly keeping the polygon count of all of your objects low allows the level to load quicker and your 3D Editor will have less of a problem handling all of the geometry.

Growing Skills: 3D Modeling

Have you ever sat down with a bucket full of legos and made a small town or tower? Its a lot of fun! I spent a whole summer just building things out of legos with my friends. We made a bunch of boats, buildings, robots, and airplanes and played around with them for hours! Its really not too much different from making 3D models. The biggest differences are that you can't run out of pieces and you decide how all of the pieces are shaped. Oh and your fiendish friends won't recycle them for parts when your not around.

My first experience with 3D modeling was actually in a game called Blockland. Its a game where you and a bunch of people online can create a game room and build anything you want in it with a bunch of lego like blocks. After you make a scene you all can go to war in it too if you want. Blow up everything and everyone with missile launchers and watch the blocks fly! Honestly this game has seriously improved since I played it. It now has physics plus more weapons, bricks, and options for game play. I played it when it was still in a free beta stage, but now you can play the demo or buy a key for $20.

Totally Awesome Blockland Gameplay Video

Some time after playing Blockland I wondered into someones project for improving upon some old 2D game called Crossfire. The new and improved version was called Deliantra and it was fairly fun and interesting. I never played for too long but it did have some unique gameplay mechanics for an older game being remade and revamped with better 2D graphics. I talked a wile with Deliantra's creator Schmorp, after a wile he described how they were improving the graphics. What they were doing was creating 3D models of all of the items and buildings, taking a picture of them from the correct angle, and replacing the old sprites with higher resolution images. I thought it was a neat idea so I whipped out Blender and made a building, then it crashed and burned my house down. After a little research I found K3D and remade my building, and it turned out great! I exported it in the right format and emailed it to Schmorp. A few days later my building was in the game! You can see it in the picture below, it is yellow with a white roof and shows up twice in the left hand side.

Deliantra

Generally this inspired me to set out on a journey to get some more experience in 3D modeling. I was inspired to make something more and improve my skills. The next game I got into was Sauerbraten, the sequel to Cube. In Sauerbraten several people could get together on a map and have a fragfest, otherwise known as a death match. Or everyone could collaborate on making a new map togeather. Every map in Sauerbraten was made completely within the game with its own editing tools. It was usually done by pulling new geometry out of existing geometry and then moving the faces of it around to get the shape you want. Its kind of like how Wings3D works, except Wings3D isn't as restrictive. After spending a couple weeks on maps with a bunch of noobs building random stuff, I learned enough to make my own map from scratch. RemixedCat and I spent a week working on our own map called Joro's Retreat. Co-operative editing really made it easier to make the map, but my biggest complaint at the time was there was no way to copy my geometry and paste it somewhere else. I think that was fixed since I played though. Anyway I submitted Joro's Retreat to Quadropolis, Sauerbraten's 3rd party map site. To my suprise it hit #1 of their top 10 list and stayed there for several months! The map still works with the latest version of Sauerbraten, but there are a couple textures missing out of the library because the bookcase texture and a rug texture was later removed from Sauerbraten.

A Great Map, Completely Full of Details

I spent most of the next year deciding what to do with myself and I didn't do too much 3D Modeling. I did occasionally look into different game engines and 3D software looking for a good process to make a game with. I eventually decided to make a game after I found all of the tools I needed. Look at my first post "Making a Game: Tools of the Trade" to see what software I decided apon. And after about 3 months of making a few models a week, my modeling and my project is coming right along!

Really the best way to learn how to make 3D models is sit down and start making a bunch of stuff. Expect everything you make for the first week to be junk, or if it does turn out good, it will probably have too many polygons to use in a game. That awesome looking reptilian head in my first post was one of my first models. It looks great but I used the smooth tool on it a couple times to make it look good. Now when I make things in 3D I try to make it without using the smooth tool at all. The reason? Because the smooth tool just about doubles the number of polygons in your model every time you use it.

After playing around in my preferred 3D modeler for a month or two I knew what just about all of the tools were used for. Plus in Wings3D they add new stuff to it a lot. In the experimental version they have a new tool called Ambient Occlusion. Its their version of a technique often used in games these days. It darkens wherever there is an area on your model that is always going to be in shadow. It makes the lighting look more realistic and it does a pretty good job. I used it on the Georgian Townhouse in my earlier post, and on the pillar in my last post. Oh speaking of my last post, here is a picture of my current progress.

Catacombs, still missing a floor...

I have about half of the level done. Fortunately my idea of modeling several walls and putting those together like this works quite well! I still have to put floors in yet but I'll do that after I get all the walls up. Also the black parts of the walls are supposed to be black. The background is going to be black and I will have large black blocks put up between the walls so the player can't see further than the room they are in. It should create a good view for the player when I'm done.

Creating Internal Environments: Part 1

Its getting closer to that time of year again! One of my favorites! HALLOWEEN!! So to keep with the holiday spirit I thought I would make a Catacombs for all kinds of undead to hobble around in. I'll be documenting my process to reveal it to you as your trick or treat candy! Enjoy!

First I started with an idea and a simple story for it. The idea is a Catacombs behind the Church in my first city I'm making. The story for it is a Necromancer broke in and started making undead from all of the corpses laying around inside. Your job? You guessed it! Go slaughter some zombies and skeletons, and kick out that Necromancer! So before the player gets to bash in their great great grandparents' skulls, I have to make the level.

First I sketched out an idea for a layout. Because its easier for me to model in standard sizes and re-use parts, I thought it would be best if I made the level out of several of the same size parts. I color coded which rooms are the same size and labeled a few things.

Catacombs Layout Sketch

After the sketch is done I decided I should refine the idea and make it with squares of equal size. So in Wings 3d I made a 32x32 grid and colored where I wanted the floors. I then refined the layout and added some elements to enhance flow. Things like locked doors and closed gates are different colors and labeled in their material names. I then extruded all of the walls to make it look 3D.

Catacomb Layout in Wings3D

At this point I have a layout and an Idea but I needed to refine the idea and decide what style I wanted to make the catacombs in. I spent some time looking at pictures of real catacombs to get some ideas. I decided apon the look of all of my pieces such as columns and recesses based off of those pictures. To make sure I kept true to those selected elements and to make sure they looked alright together, I drew a quick sketch of all of the parts I wanted in it. I did this for each different wall. This is the wall with three casket recesses in it.

Extremely poor sketch of a wall full of caskets, scary!

Armed with a sketch of all of the elements I needed to render, I am now ready to battle my way into Wings3D! I will be putting the dungeon together in pieces, so to make things easier I proceeded to make a plain empty square wall to make all of the various walls and doorways from. This way, once I have modeled and textured all of the different walls and doorways, I can say a room is three walls by three walls wide and everything will fit together.

Untextured Model of a Catacombs Wall

Staying true to the elements I drew out, I easily completed a few walls and doorways. I had also drew out some of the things you would find within the catacombs like coffins and light fixtures. I modeled these as well and made several variations such as broken coffins or coffins with their lids off. With that done I had to go on to the hardest part of making my catacombs, texturing! Usually when you see a picture of a catacombs, the walls and decor is worn off and the place is falling apart. Thats usually because its several hundred years old. But this catacombs is a bit newer because the game is supposed to take place in a past setting, those several hundred years haven't happened yet.

Textured Model of a Catacombs Wall

At this point I'm pretty well tired out for the day. I modeled five different walls, an arched doorway, a gate, several caskets, and some light fixtures. I still need to texture most of the items but at least I textured all of the walls. It took me at least two hours to decide what textures to use on them and I had to make a couple new ones too. Fortunately since the game has more of an overhead view I do not need to make any ceilings.

I will show you the rest of the process in Part 2 once I have gotten that far. Mostly it will be about putting all of the pieces together and adding in more fine detail. Part 3 will be about importing the scene into IRREdit and adding proper lighting and lightmaps!

Early in game editor screenshots!

This in an early screenshot in IRREdit. I took this wile I was trying to figure out what kind of terrain I wanted and if I wanted the town to be placed right on it or within its own area. The terrain was made within an terrain editor called Terragen and modified by hand from within it. The textures were made within a program called T2 which is apparently a dead project. It can't make the terrain as good looking as I want it so I will have to apply textures to the terrain from within the Irrlicht engine. Fortunately the code for that has already been written, and the quality will be much better.

IRREdit early screenshot

As for the town, I decided to make it within its own area. There are three good reasons for this however. I can more easily create the town terrain from within wings3D than making a hightmap for it. I don't have the control I want of the terrain from within Terragen, and I have a specific layout in mind. And I will not have to worry so much about showing too many polygons and bogging down the players system from seeing the town too much from the distance.

So here is a screenshot of what I have done so far of the main town. The terrain is mostly untextured as of yet, and I do not have all of the buildings done yet. However I was able to obtain a very unique terrain and city layout by modeling it within wings3D rather than using a greyscale image hightmap.

IRREdit early town screenshot

I used a neat trick to help me out with placing the buildings. I took a screenshot of the terrain from above and edited it from within SAI, my drawing pad program. I then drew where I wanted the buildings and roads and labeled what each of the buildings were. I then reapplied that screenshot to the terrain. This allows me to see where I want the buildings exactly, rather then guessing where I want them.

I have a lot more buildings left to make and texture, however this allows me to see what I need more easily. After I finish with all of the buildings I will model the streets and then put in details like trees, bushes, and street lights. One neat trick is the windmills already turn!