December Build Preview

The big update is finally done! I apologize for not making my usual monthly updates here. I’ve been working some large new assets and have been revamping a lot. There is quite a lot to cover in the post so stick with me!

Since I took most of these screen shots from the latest build there will of course be many things in the background that would be spoiled should I choose to reveal them in a certain order. That being said I’m just going to make a list of the new assets and then talk about them.

Small assets –
Trucks
Crates
Monitor Dust Covers
PC Towers

Large Assets –
The Boarding House
Geothermal Plant
Water Tower

Cool now on to juicy details!

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Site B trucks –
Shockingly in 10 years of 3d modeling I’ve never made a car or truck. A mixture of intimidation and disinterest are to blame. I think they didn’t turn out half bad. I just looked up some early 90s trucks and went from there. Aside from adding some nice variety, they do a great job of giving a sense of scale to the surroundings. A sense of scale is something much needed especial in an FPS setting.

I made two variants; one with a bed cover and one without. Then I beat them up a bit before texturing. I settled on a color scheme that mimicked the Ingen logo.

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Equipment Crates-
One of the many things on my list is more small set dressing, so I came up with these vaguely Pelican-esc cases. I was trying to extrapolate detail out of the yellow cases seen in Trespasser and create some variants along the way. They’re populated mostly in the Operations building but they can be found in some other places in the village.

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Monitor Dust Covers-
I actually finished these about 3 months ago but kept forgetting to export them from 3dsMax. In the films it was evident that Ingen had covered up the electronics before evacuating for hurricane Clarissa. I’m not entirely satisfied with the results but I think they’re good for now. I may rework the materials later.

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PC Tower-
Boxy. Beige. Simple. Enough Said.

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The Boarding House-
So this has been a long term modeling project. I actually started this one back in November of 2017. I had worked out the dimensions and then a lot of other things came up and it was pushed to the back burner. I only picked it back up about a month ago.

The boarding house presented several challenges.
The first issue is one plaguing the whole project, that is, lack of photo reference.  If I thought it was hard finding good pictures of the ops building, I had no idea how hard it would be for the boarding house. I mean I get it, the boarding house wasn’t exactly the most interesting thing to take a photo of as one was taking the Universal back lot tour. There is like one decent picture showing two sides. The rest I had to extrapolate.

You may recall from a previous post that I discovered the Ops set was used for an episode of Sliders. Well following a hunch and some more research I discovered that the ENTIRE village set was used extensively in 3 episodes. In fact most of the fourth season of the show was shot on the Universal back lot following budget cuts.

I never watched the show; it was a bit before my time. I was watching Dexter’s Lab and Courage the Cowardly Dog when Sliders was airing. Now I couldn’t find anything on the net listing what episodes the village set appeared in. I figured the internet would answer my call for detailed information on a minor cult classic from the mid to late 90s. lol No luck. I just had to scrub through EVERY episode from that season to get screen shots. They really did use just about every set at the back lot; multiple times in fact. It’s really, REALLY obvious. The Bates Motel even makes an appearance!

They didn’t make much effort to hide the fact they were reusing sets. The Ingen logo is even facing the camera in a few shots.

What’s really interesting,(probably only to me) is they even used the unfinished inside of the boarding house and kiln hut. You can see how there’s no walls or floors, with spray painted markings from production. Not really helpful but still fascinating.

What was nice was getting some screenshots of the geothermal plant. I mean they’re not the clearest shots but it’s better than we see in the film.

Other than that I also got some nice shots of the gas station for future use.

Getting back to the boarding house; it was a challenge to figure out the best way to make the exterior. The Spanish roof was another hurdle. Finding the best way to create the illusion of hundreds of tiles was fun.

There isn’t an interior right now, but I might add one later on.

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Geothermal Plant-
Making good use of the screenshots from Sliders, and using some of the concept art as inspiration, I made a variety of…things and stuff…that are passable as a geothermal plant. Not much to say about these.

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Water tower-
Now I’m fairly certain there isn’t a water tower in the film. There is some structure in the corner that vaguely looks like a radio tower but I’m not sure. But there was a fallen water tower in the concept models for the film and subsequently in Trespasser. I really liked the idea of a collapsed water tower so I made one.

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Besides model work I revamped pretty much all of the environment. I reworked the lighting and completely re-textured the terrain. I got rid of the procedural 2D grass. I wasn’t happy with the way it looked. So I purchased a couple foliage packs from the Unity asset store. Redressing the area with more dynamic foliage had a great impact on the realism of the area. Unless you’re in a meadow, grass tends to grow in patches. So those packs added a lot of variety and give the village a more natural appearance and increase the overgrown look.

I also added some post processing effects such as a better ambient occlusion filter, bloom (needs tweaking) and a touch of motion blur.

And that’s about it! The rest of this post will be screen shots from the current build.
I hope everyone enjoyed it and have happy holidays and new years!

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Sneaky sneak peek below

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