Michael -Friday 13th February

"Captains Log 13/2/09"

This week I finally got to use Maya for the first time in a while. This week was all about creating placeholders. In order to get placeholders out fast I had intended to create REALLY simple placeholders like spheres with some cubes sticking out of them and then just shoving in more geometry to get up to the polygon limit. After a while however I found myself actually making rough models of the enemies. By doing this it will allow me to reuse parts of the characters later on in a kit-bashing process which was a process used by the artists for the Gears of War games. I also created placeholders for a few weapons for both the first person and third person views.

So enough talk, time for the pictures of the work done over the last few days. And for your viewing pleasure...all the enemies have been textured in bright pink with a little baked ambient occlusion in there as well.

To start things off, here is the placeholder for the Exploder enemy as well as the ortho drawings I drew up for them.

Next up is the Mother. This design is destined to change into an even more disfigured abomination which should be a very entertaining design challenge. Im thinking some really gorey stuff which I havent really done for a while.

The Reaper here has also been used in the kit-bashing process for its First Pass model. The newer model (Which is still a work in process in Zbrush) stays pretty similar to its initial design as it didnt require any modifications.

The last three screenshots here are the placeholders for the Mine Layer, Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle. Again I got a little carried away with the detail but the way I see it, If I can model them fast why not make them look a little good. The reference images for the weapons can be found in my previous post from the 9th of Feb.

So thats the work for this week. To see some of these placeholders in action check out Tames recent post. Im sure hes given life to these aliens. Next week you can expect to see some Zbrush sculpts, some textures and maybe some new concept art work for the new and improved Mother.

-Michael