Week Three: In Which There is Much Modelling

I posted last week that I was working on the level and had a version to use for our game. This week I was working on editing it to make it look better as well as creating other models to use for vehicles and characters. First off, the changes to the level. Previously the level was basically just a flat surface with a bunch of walls, because that was easier to do when we did it in OpenGL, but now with Maya, we could go crazy with what we wanted. Because our game uses space ships and they fly over the ground we decided that we could use the ground to create some scenery as you fly around. I first made the whole track bumpier to make it look more realistic (you are racing on the surface of a planet, They aren't typically perfectly flat). I also add some craters and started work on a volcano to go with our lava that we already had.

Crash landing, probably caused by all those Ss

I've so far completed two more ships to be added to the game, whether or not they will be used as actual racing vehicles is yet to be determined. One ship I modeled, specifically, to be a crashed ship, and has been add to the course in the bottom of a crater. It was merged with the course and had faces removed to lower our poly-count. I have also done work on a Millennium Falcon type ship. If this doesn't make it into the game as a playable vehicle, we talked about either having it fly over the course (the Millennium Falcon is huge) and have it crash in the background, or have pieces of it scattered about the game field. I've also been using this ship to test out texturing in Maya, but we're still not sure how that will transfer over into OpenGL. Also this week I worked on a model for a racer, which is definitely more difficult than making a ship because you have to make it look more organic. So far I have completed the head, with teeth and everything, which means I still have the body and will hopefully be able to rig it before the semester's over.

- N. Gale