Smoke

First pass smoke WIP

My New Animation Blog

So I Figured it would be easier and far less confusing to just have two blogs one for my animation work and one for my level design work.

I moved over my current animation posts to this blog here
http://brendonvince.blogspot.com/

Trying something new(Old)

So I've been a bit down,unmotivated and undecided on what I want to pursue this year.

As a result I haven't really done a lot Level design work or anything.

However this week after reading a few inspiring articles I'm starting to get motivated again. I'm thinking of trying my hand at getting into a lot more 3d modelling stuff and animation.
Seeing as I do have a Games animation degree its a bit of a shame to not be using any of the skills I have learnt. So my current plan is to get back into 3d and animation. I'm guessing I'm going to be really rusty seeing as I havent done any proper animating bar a few props here and there in the last 5 years.

Also the new version of 3d studio max does scare me a bit :P. But I'm sure i'll get my head around it .
I'm going to start with brushing up on basic animation principles and might even participate in the 11 second club animation for may :).
http://www.11secondclub.com

Think the key is really keeping myself active and getting involved in a few communities. from what i've seen the 11 second club community is very good and maybe might even try to be more active on cgtalk.

Here's a bit of a blast from the past my character for my short film at uni in 2005, where has the time gone

Elevator Evacuation Update

Figured I would give everyone an update on how my Elevator Evacuation gears of war level is coming along.

Most of work on this level latelly has involved fixing up bsp brushes to ensure that everything is properly alligned to grid and that no brushes are overlapping.

I have also been adding more detail to graybox and added a lot more buildings that are outside of the playable area.

Gameplay wise I have cut out the stop the elevator makes on its way to the top floor as it felt a bit random and confused the player.

I'm also in process of making the basement encounter more exciting and adding some more build up on the top floor leading up to the bezerker. Hopefully another 10 hours and the graybox should be final and ready for me to move on to the fun stuff of placing meshes and lighting :)

Will all come down to how much trouble this last bit of unreal scripting it going to cause me

Eascaping the creative black hole that is World Of Warcraft.

Howdy Everyone,

Its been a long time I know,

with starting a new job and the release of Cataclysm havent had a lot of spare time to do a lot of level design stuff. I've been slowly tinkering away at my gears of war level.

Either way I am feeling refreshed after taking a break and ready to accomplish a lot this year.
My main goals are to get my modeling up to scratch, learn some scripting and improve on my level design skills overall :).

An Update

Hey everyone,

havent made a post in a while.

I been really busy the last couple of weeks working on some job applications and tests.
However it's all paid off as I'm starting a new job this week for a game company. It's only doing QA work but its a step in the right direction. Plus its for a company doing game's i'm really passionate about so it should be a lot of fun.

I'm still working on my gears of war level and after some feedback from a level designer friend i've been making some modifications for the better.
Hopefully i'll get the grey box finished soon. I've been taking things a bit slower with this level latelly as after 6 months of constant portfolio work I've enjoyed having a week of relaxing and getting back into games again.

Been really enjoying Nba Jam on xbox 360 and the new cataclysm changed in world of warcraft look amazing.

Elevator Evacuation Greybox Update.

So i've finished blocking out my gears of war level up until the start of the berserker fight.
I have decided that i'm going to leave the end boss fight in this level for now as I really want to get this level finished quickly so I can put it up in my portfolio. I may return to it after I have finished the level.

Anyway I have finished blocking out all the basics for the level.
Been a lot of mucking around with kismet as i'm learning all the basics. Moving an elevator with button triggers turning on and off was a bit of a pain.
If you watch the Video below you will notice there are still a lot of lighting issues with the elevator as I'm having trouble getting the dynamic light to move with the elevator.

Also the second courtyard fight needs a lot of tweaking as the enemies tend to just run forward towards the player instead of being defensive. Im guessing setting up proper cover groups might fix this.

Another thing to note the basement where you encounter wretches doesn't look that hard in video but in the final version of the map this area is going to be really dark so its going to be a lot harder to see where the wretches are.

Anyway any feedback at all is appreciated

Please see the HD video on youtube. below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLQTwHo6hY0