CAGD 470 - Video Game Production

 

Sprint 1

This sprint was really normal or slow for me. This is similar to my other experiences regarding the first kickoff, especially since it is the first week which is one of the shorter ones. After we decided the game and what assets we needed on. In this case, the ship that would represent the player would be a priority so I started with a few designs for it. The theme of the game is Greek in space, which would add Sci-Fi elements to old Greek mythology aspects. Because of the theme of the game and the type of aesthetic that we are going to include, this represented a little bit of a challenge for me. I had never done boats before (which is the main focus of the player), even less futuristic types of boats that could go out of space.

First Attempt

I started with concept art of how the boat would look. I looked for references of Greek boats and saw the common denominators between each other. At first I wasn’t sure exactly what a Greek boat from space would look like, but I ended up with a basic design and expanded with more ideas from there. For the Sci-Fi element on the boat, I based myself mostly on the movie “Treasure Planet.” This movie gave me ideas of having normal boats with motors and really cool looking sails on the sides and on top. At first it was more normal looking with some motors on the back. But after a few changes on the boat, and ideas to use mostly on texture, the final decision for the model ended up looking more futuristic and appropriate to the theme.

Final Attempt

I also started modeling the boat, which presented a challenge for me since I had never done boats before. Looking at other people's boats, as well as tutorials on the internet, I was able to arrive at a way of modeling this object without too many complications. This is also possible since the art style of the game would be a little more stylized than realistic, giving me more options to improvise. Although I was not able to finish the boat this sprint, I was able to come up with the basic shape, which is sometimes the most difficult part of modeling.

Boat in progress

But not everything has been smooth while working. The major problem that I came up with was with Maya. When I started to model the ship, Maya started to not accept my access key and was causing me troubles to export or import anything, as well as having low resolution while modeling. This problem came from some issues that Autodesk was having with my license, but in the end they were able to solve it. However, this took a lot of productivity on my side and didn’t allow me to work at a normal pace in this and many other classes.

For the next sprint, I’ll keep working on the and finish the main elements of it, as well as doing their respective UVs and textures. The mast of the boat would also be started to be modeled, since this is going to be a more complicated part. I am not completely happy with the amount of work I have done, but I feel happy to have a great development on something I had no experience with before, which is the boat. I want to see the end result and how it will come along. In the future, I hope I can have a better pace of workflow on my end, and try to make better models for the game, since a lot of them would be a challenge on my side for their aspect.