Author: 15560856

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First look at Blender

I’ve only ever touched on blender once before and never really looked back on it again.

I’ve decided to get into 3D modelling for the game so wanted to get to grips with the free software Blender.

I watched a series of different tutorials tips, and tricks to learn the basic keys and functions.

My first attempt of making a cup:

It needed a little more rendering but other than the completely out of proportioned and poorly shaped handle, I thought it wasn’t too bad. I learnt all the basics of how to modify a shape and merge shapes together as well as adding shiny materials and emission.

I thought I could go back to it and just fix the handle, I also wanted to change the colour to make it sit nicely with the blue before.

I’m going to start with the brightside… On the brightside, the handle looks a lot better! I’ve gotten used to the pen tool and how to connect the handle to the cup.

However, just changing the material colour to pink has for some reason made it into a glass cup. (However, we can just pretend that, that was intentional).

 

Overall, a cup has no use in ‘Take Two’ but has taught me all the basics I needed in Blender. From here i’m going to try experiment more with modifying shapes before I start playing with textures.

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First Attempt in Character design.

Before I started on working on 3D models I thought I should practice creating what the characters may look like.

This is my first attempt in designing what the main character that you can name and modify would look like.

I chose these colours to try and suit the cartoony flat sort of style I’m trying to go for.

I’m still not 100% happy with it but I want to see if it’ll work out when I make a digital 3D model of it. (I still think it looks cute though). It’s just going to be hard for me to draw it facing straight ahead, backwards, and from the side so I can model from it on Blender so I might simplify it a little bit.

I designed this on my iPad on Adobe illustrator (for iPad), and Adobe Sketch.
I found different illustrations from Pinterest, and Creative commons, to then trace over different parts of them to appropriate them. (Since I can’t draw at all).

This is an idea of the secondary character that can be used to pick resources and develop electricity for the new planet. The same model could be used for robots that develop water, and earth.

I feel as though this rough idea will be challenging for me to create 3D because of the shape of the body and arms.

However, i’d be happy to make a simpler version to begin with to develop my skills to then in the future create the model to this design.

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Similar games research

Birthdays the Beginning (2017): A garden game in which players create cube-shaped worlds that give rise to diverse and unique lifeforms.  This game has a completely different style to what i’m going for however, it’s the same idea of playing god and completely building your own designs.

Spore (2008): You start as a cell and evolve into different stages, Spore has five evolutionary stages: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space. Each stage has its own unique style, challenges, and goals. Spore is similar as in my idea you get to also completely customise the characters.

City Skyline (2015): The main idea is creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. It’s similar to my idea as is designing you own place in the game and making it run well enough for people to live on it.

Oxygen Not Included (2017): The player gets to try creating and maintaining a real city whilst expanding on some well-established tropes of the city building experience. It has a lovely style and I want to take on the same genre and survival mechanic.

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Plan of Action

Main focus points:

Creating design sheets.
2 or 3 3D models in blender and substance painter.
Intro video to game.
An Art Station page.

Things to research and find inspirations:
– Sketchfab
– Similar games

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Game Design Inspirations

My idea for the game design is to use 2D/3D art developed on Blender. I’m planning on using the colours similar to the images in a cartoony style.

I would like to explore different materials on blender and possibly substance painter. I’m hoping to keep the style basic with limited shading and with a contrast on bright colours on dark.

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Story, plot, and concept

My idea is a game that is set in the far future; where the earth has become too over populated due to super humanism. This lead humans to create an ai to create new planets for humans to move to.

The idea of it is to basically design the whole outcome of the game. You can design the Ai character, tools and environment/landscape. It’s also to make it liveable for humans and other life forms.

I’ve read into a few articles such as this one: How to Write a Good Video Game Story

This made me think more into my main characters narrative more than the humans. It would be good if the players could like the main character.

I’ve also looked into books such as  The Indie Game Developer Handbook (2015), this has really useful information such such as the different game engines that are best for independent game development and a lot of information on game art and design which is my current focus.  

There’s also more books on the designing side of games such as Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design (2014) by Scott Rogers and The Art of Game Design (2014) by Jesse  Schell.  I’ve read some chapters on it trying to look for tips on how I can make my designs affective but most of the information I found is on things i’m taught in the workshop or information I will need later on in the parts of gaming development rather than 3D modelling and design. 

Lastly, the library is filled with books on how to work with gaming development and softwares such as unity, how to make models work in them and be affective, however i’m saving that side of research and those books for second semester.

There is a lot more to the story of this game but I just want to get a lot of the visuals out about it first to see how I could make this possible and work some of the ideas around it.