idea generation tool: silhouettes

Meanwhile, somewhere in the outskirts of San Francisco...

I need practice so practice I shall. Just a quick speed paint of a scene from my last trip to visit my sister in good old san fran...I think it captures the mood of that trip pretty well. I want to do more of these, I've never been good at painting environments, it's something I definitely want to work on. Also trying to experiment a bit more to get away from my always soft air bushed style and use more texture.

edit:

With everyone talking about Bioshock Infinite today it got me wondering: Which is the scarier prospect...drowning under the sea or falling from the sky? Either way I like the use of uncomfortable and strange terrain (or lack thereof) in the bioshock series, that in itself is kind of a thrill.

Illusions

Just like everyone else in the world, I too was inspired after seeing Inception. The idea of creating impossible architecture is what really got me excited, which isn't surprising because I've always loved optical illusions and the art of Escher. Thinking of a game world as a dream world more so than trying to create the real world opens up a lot of doors to things I didnt think I could do before.

So heres my first shot at it, the ascending and descending staircase. (sorry my blog layout doesn't allow for the full size video)


Here's a link too (this is actually a different version from what I thought was a better angle): 2010-08-02_2215

This is far from perfect, basically its a prototype. I added one bot in there to demonstrate how it works. I originally wanted to use a crowd, and while it did work to a point it was very messy and as we all know, the crowd is stupid and does not like to stay on its path, also that problem of using triggers arose again and I couldn't recall if we ever solved that and if we did I don't remember how. The lone soldier does his job. Poor little guy is trapped forever in an endless loop. It would be a lot more believable too, if I could figure out how to get rid of the teleport effect...the goal is to make that transition seemless. (If anyone knows how to do that please let me know.)

The hardest part was figuring out how the stairs actually work in 3d space. I went through a lot of math to figure out that there really isn't that much math involved. The stairs spiral up and in and the numbers of the stairs go 9, 12, 6, 3. After that it sort of just comes together. The angle isn't perfect but I blame that on UDK's camera.

If nothing else this served as a fun project that helped me brush up on any UDK skills I may have lost over the past couple of months and I learned a bit about the updates to the July beta which is the version I was using. Btw, you now need a GameCrowd_ListofAgents archetype (which is hidden in the actor classes tab with the other classes that need the two boxes at top unchecked) as well as an UTGameCrowdAgent archetype to get crowds to work, if anyone went into their old files and was wondering where everyone went.

I can't wait to get back to Ringling ^_^ its coming up so soon!