Week #1

It’s been a week since the start of the “Production of 3D Videogames” course at BloomPix Studios and I must say I’m pretty impressed with what we’ve done so far. Here are some examples:

TABLE and SCREEN
 

By the end of the first day we were able to do a table (see above) with a basic layout of 4 cylinders (8 at the beginning – then we learned to use subdivisions) and a cube. I especially like it because it was my first project.

By the third day, we were able to make the screen shown above by subdividing, duplicating and extruding a single cube. It has only 96 triangles.

We seek perfection through simplicity. We need to create objects that will be part of a videogame, so we have to try to feed the videogame engine with the fewest objects, and the fewest possible polygons.

By the end of the first week we were given the opportunity to re-design (for educational purposes) a “Feisar” – one of the symbols (probably THE symbol) of WipeOut, the famous futuristic racing videogame developed by SCE Studios LiverPool (formerly Psygnosis).

WIPEOUT - FEISAR

It is made of 9 objects and it has 1,562 triangles and we used all the techniques we learnt during the first week (rotoscopes, select and transform polygons, edges and vertices, extrude, duplicate, merge and a-pretty-long-etc).

Since it was a re-design and the references about the first Feisar are limited I decided to give it a more compact and powerful look, but without losing the swiftness of the original design.

The main turbines are a little shorter than the original ones, and the propulsion system is bigger and more powerful; that, along with the new lower protection part (that also protects the main cannon), allows the chassis to support more impacts (mainly from attacks from behind and high altitude falls) and gives the craft a compact and finished look.

Another important feature are the Aerodynamics, there are no straight angles on most of the important pieces facing forward to avoid wind resistance.

I also added a built in cooling-system from an air collector on the front (as seen in latest designs of the Feisar) that goes through the whole chassis and cools the main canon and the turbines. The lower part is not mobile but it could be if we were to create a “cargo” type of ship based on this design.

The main layout hasn’t changed; it’s still a Feisar, still light but a bit more resistant, compact, and more… powerful. As I said, it is amazing that we were able to do something like that within a week…

In the next post (“Chasing Cars”) I will talk about our second week, which is also very interesting...