3D Models
Technical Summary:
To finish the other crafting items, I finally created a model designed to be scrap metal that the player can find to craft iron gears. I spent a long time unsure of how I wanted to make the model look. I ultimately based it on scrap sheets of metal and several bolts to act as other miscellaneous scrap. The hardest part of this model was creating the holes created inside the sheets of metal. To do this, I used the Boolean modifier to accomplish this. The Boolean modifier has its benefits, but did mean I had to do some heavy re-topology.
The creation of the Metal gauntlet was one of the simplest of tasks to do, essentially being a cylinder with a whole through it. However, noticeably from the 3D view, the gauntlet isn't a perfectly symmetrical shape. This was due to the fact that when creating this model, I extruded edges over each other which caused me to create the strange shape.
For the screen, I wanted to create a typical curved Sci-Fi screen. I used several bevels to create the curved edges and made sure to have them connect with the inset for the actual screen. The elements that really makes the screen look how it should is through the texture given to the face. This uses the smart material I created for the hologram trees, but to differentiate this from the usual look of the holograms, I made it green like a radar, fitting well with the Scanning Devices purpose.
The Scanning Device was probably one of the easier models to create since it used the Metal Gauntlet and the Screen which I simply attached to each other. This saved a great deal of time, making it unnecessary to have to model and unwrap something new. Since the models held the same UVs as the originals, all I needed to do was assign the materials to each part, also saving time on having to retexture a model and keep it consistent with the other pieces.
The metal keys I created to finish the final section of the inventory UI. Originally, the model was just going to be used for the Mars Monkey method, but we adapted it to work for the player and allow them to exit the house. The key would also be reused for the Bribery Method since the original silver metal design never actually made an appearance.
Reflection:
These models work really well with the other Crafting and Key items that I made, the main goal of these models was to tick off the renders for the UI (Market, Crafting, and Inventory). I think these models fit with the rest of the game and the overall art style we had been developing. I think these models being so small showed me some of the errors that can easily be made when creating them, especially with extruding edges twice without realising. I also think it helped expose me to the benefits and drawbacks of using the Boolean modifier.
Market
Technical Summary:
As production continued into Beta, we began focusing on areas that hadn't been significantly developed through Alpha, firstly focusing on the Market Area. We spent some time as a group coming up with ideas and fun references to make into market stalls.
The first market stall I created was based around one of the models created by the first years we collaborated with. The inspiration behind this design was the crashed spaceship you can see inside Mos Eisley, Tatooine. This model I made as one whole model before using the separate by selection feature to remove the front part and move to create the idea, it had been broken apart. I also added a sheltered tent area as a way to fit with the traditional tent design of markets. The tent itself was created with a subdivided plane that I moved the vertices around to give the effect of hanging material.
Alongside this model, I created the Hammer and Spanner models to act as props for the stall. They are very low-poly models intended to be seen in the environment rather than be a significant part of the overall game. Similarly to other smaller assets, I kept in mind the resolution of the textures, keeping them at 256 * 256 since they are very small and easy to miss assets. These acted as a way for me to enhance the immersion of the level further by having the mechanic use the tools to strip his crashed ship of parts to survive.
I next created the Mars 'R' Us and Ozone shops using the same model. These were very simple designs, but drew a bigger inspiration from traditional market stalls, but still having the Sci-Fi aspect of hovering off the ground. For the actual logos of the Market, I designed them inside of Photoshop, recreating the Toys 'R' Us logo in the similar colours and text style, before importing the transparent PNG before adding them as a base colour layer in the models textures, I also added some height to them to make the logo stand out more than being flat. The Ozone Logo was an entirely unique design, using two of my personal favourite colours, but also an attempt at capturing the style of an old high-street technology shop to really stand out from the other logos. With these stalls using the same model, it was easy to just replace the logo and use the same material for the two of them.
Another unique stall was the Star-Bucks Stall, a clear Parody of Starbucks. For the model, I used a pre-existing drawing of the Martian face, and traced the pre-existing lines to a thicker design, and filled it in with a white layer underneath the lines to look similar to the recognisable Starbucks logo. When looking into Starbucks cafés, I saw a trend of having this bumpy design along the back wall, which I attempted to mimic using a black and white stripe map, and giving it height. Because of the inclusion of the logo, the textures of this model are slightly higher to keep the logo at a better quality.
Alongside the Ozone Shop, I created a fridge asset for the Martian owner to sell, drawing inspiration from a traditional fridge design. I first focused on getting the shape correct having the curved top edges before adding several insets to give the illusion that the fridge did have doors you could open. With the fridge textures, I kept the emissive texture to be white, this allowed me to use the material shader to modify the emissive colour several times without having to have several different textures for different colours.
Reflection:
I think these models really help to enhance the Market Place Location as well as continue to uphold the fun we've had through the project. I think we approached the enhancement of this scene well, developing ideas we wanted to include to help build on the empty space. However, as much as I like what we have created for this location, I do wish that we did have more, it definitely has some charm to it, but I think we could really add more, such as a lightsaber stall, a food store, and more. With these models, I took a great deal of care to make sure that I didn't cause any overlapping extrusions. A couple of these models were quite a challenge to unwrap, but I am confident that they are of good quality and help me to improve further.
Cantina
Technical Summary:
Similarly to the Market, the Cantina was one of the last areas that needed developing. Throughout the project, we had put off developing the Night Map due to how similar the map is, before we'd populate with Redcoats and the respective models, so with the Cantina the now main focus, we were well on the way to accomplish this. We already had the interior mechanics of the Cantina developed, it was just a matter of creating a building and interior elements to really populate the scene. I created the Cantina as a unique shape to stand out from the typical house, but also have the similar dome top. A lot of the inspiration for this building was the Mos Eisley cantina, which I looked into the interior and exterior to help with the development of this location.
To create the shape of the Cantina, I first started by scaling a cube to a larger size, to be the base of the model. I added a second cube into the viewport and subdivided it once to make it into a sphere, and cut the mesh in half, which would act as the dome on top of the building. With the base cube, I added several loops around the mesh and pulled out edges to create the curved pillars to the outside, which helped to attach the dome to the top of the building a lot easier. I started by removing the main cubes top faces and joined the dome and cube together, which allowed me to select both their edges and fill to create one large N-Gon around the joined object. I made sure that the new connected roof was divided into quads to help with my topology skills and to not cause any texture issues when creating them. The only other change that I made to this model was separating the floor to its own piece so that I could add some thickness to it and prevent the floor from clipping with the ground material.
The Cantina Bar is based around the one seen in Mos Eisley, and was quite simple to create because I was using some reference material to create it. I first created the front curved piece, by using a cylinder, insetting the top faces, and cutting the cylinder in half to leave us with an open curve. I extruded the top part of the model to create an overhang, and extruded where the cylinder ended to create some long ends for bar patrons to stand at. To create the inside table, I took the outside bar, scaled it down and mirrored it, leaving us with an opening on the top and bottom, which I filled and then turned into quads so we didn't get any shading issues with our textures. I also created a logo for this, tracing over the rendered image of the consumable bottle and added the text "Drinks Sold Here" to prompt the player into interacting with the Barman and purchasing the drink boosts.
Finally, I created the Booth model to be the seating arrangements for the cantina patrons to be seated at. I started with a very simple cube and added a loop cut to create the back piece of the chairs, before bevelling several of the edges to give it a smoothed pillow look, and since I had only created one, I could export this out to allow for me to create custom seating arrangements, but also making a double length variant using the mirror modifier. Alongside the chairs, I also created a very simple table, created through a cylinder that I extruded and inset to create a design similar to the reference images I used. Finally, to create some regular large seating areas, I used the double chairs and mirrored them again to add seats to both sides of the table. With all of these variants using the same models and UVs, I could very easily texture the single chair and the table and assign them to the other models to get the same results.
Reflection:
I think these really build on the Cantina Location a great deal, but I do find the building to be really lacking in comparison to the other models. The model should have been an asset pack that I could build which would avoid the issues with the walls being flat planes. This could also allow for us to create a whole level dedicated to the interior rather than fitting it all inside one building. As an asset pack this also would have allowed for us to really add to the building with separate floors and rooms rather than a big open empty room. With the Cantina Bar, I should have brought a Martian into Blender to help gauge a scale as to how big I really need the bar since I was trying to add the sign to it and having issues with scaling it properly so that it kept some of the quality.
All 3D Models
This is a collection of all models I developed and created for this project.