I have finished the last part of the BadAss Rabbit graphics workshop (part 4 of a series) for the German game developer magazine ‘Making Games‘. In this series I created a 3D lowpoly game character model. You can find the workshop in Making Games 04/09, which is out now. Here you can see a test animation from the workshop:
Bad Ass Rabbit – Testanimation
Chris
Popularity: 61% [?]
Here you can see Stripe from the movie Gremlins. He is the second movie monster based on a suggestion from our blog readers. The original idea came from Benita:
By clicking on the image you can see a bigger version with a short Tutorial on how the image was created.
Chris
Popularity: 78% [?]
Designing an appealing and huge game world from scratch will take even really fast designers a looooong time: valuable time that can be spent in better ways. This is where generated content comes in handy. With the push of a button a designer can create a whole world (oceans, land, forests, deserts, mountains, cities, … ) in an instant. So this is what we decided to do for our game … and here is how we got to the finish line:
On the bumpy road to an actual working map generator we decided to split all map generation tasks into small modules: heightmap generator, water generator, forest generator, desert generator, and so on. In the map-generator GUI the designer can put these modules into a task list and define the order in which they are executed. Each module also has parameters that affect the characteristics of the generated map. Even though it is supposed to be a random map generator it is especially important to have deterministic behavior. Consequently, each module that actually generates content has at least a “seed” parameter for the random number generator. With the same seed the generator will create the same results every time. Changing the seeds will create a different map.
In the little animation above you can see the output of some of the modules.
Heightmap Generator
At first we create a heightmap. We use Perlin noise since it is built into the AS3 BitmapData class and it is amazingly fast. In the beginning we experimented with our own implementation of the diamond-square algorithm, but it was way too slow.
Water Fill
In the next step we apply water to the world. We simply declare everything below a certain height level as being under water.
Mountains
By looking for local peaks we detect mountains and flag the areas accordingly.
Humidity Map
By defining a water contingent that grows over water and decreases over land we can flag dry and wet zones on the continents. To make things easier we define our whole world as a west-wind zone. The centers of most bigger continents will be dry (yellow), coast regions will be mostly humid (green) and continental areas lying east of a big stretch of water will be very humid (dark green).
Climate Zones
Next we define climate zones in the world: tropical areas, temperate zones and polar regions. With this information we can easily place polar caps in the world.
Forest Generator
Using the information from the climate zones and the humidity map makes it possible to place different types of forests into the world. Jungle (purple) will be found in the hot and wet regions around the equator, while coniferous forests will be found close to the polar caps.
Desert Generator
The desert generator also uses the information from the humidity map to detect dry regions and place desert areas into them.
Well, now you had a look at some of the modules in our map generator. They are not only capable of creating earth-like maps (like the small sample map above) but also completely different maps by changing the parameters: a lake landscape, a waste land, a desert or whatever our games may need. With this we are able to quickly create new game content of any size for the players to explore.
Cheers,
Manuel
Popularity: 100% [?]
Hi, my name is Peer. When I am not studying Media Design at the DHBW Ravensburg, I’m one of the busy artists working on Rough Sea Games’ premiere browser game. I have known the majority of the people here for years and I very much enjoy being part of this great team. This is my first blog post.
What if you wanted to create a lot of 2-D graphic assets, like for a map, which need to be very detailed and have a painterly look?
There are two ways. One is to paint; the second is to do it in 3-D and use the pre-rendered graphics. Sadly, pre-rendered objects in browser games tend to look very lifeless, sterile and, well, pre-rendered. The result is reminiscent of mid-nineties PC games.
Painted objects often carry more expression, more color, and more variation. To achieve that in a 3-D model would require a lot of small detail work. To get a highlight or a crack at exactly the location you want it to be is quite cumbersome in 3-D (it is also like shooting sparrows with cannons if the final graphic asset won’t be very large). But painting everything while keeping a good amount of detail and coherence would be an enormous task.
Both approaches have their advantages, so why not combine them? What you are after when you need to produce dozens of objects is:
- Detail
- Coherence
- Reusability
- and of course, it needs to be done fast.
Over time you produce a huge amount of reusable assets. Those can be used in other objects to quickly add detail while maintaining a coherent style. By using the same lighting setup and materials you ensure a coherent style, even if you have to create dozens of models. Because of the similar ‘base’ for each model, it’s also very easy to split work between several artists.
Another important aspect is that, during the 3-D phase of the workflow, it’s very easy and quick to rotate, scale and retexture objects to create variations before deciding on the one you want to finalize.
Let me demonstrate my workflow with an example: 
(The small lighthouse used in this post doesn’t have anything to do with our title; I did it tonight for demonstration purpose only)
1) First, you build a 3-D model while keeping in mind the camera position and scale it will have in the game. Don’t try to be too exact in the 3-D model. Everything can be quite rough and blocky. Details like surface imperfections, interesting highlights and minor details come later, in the painting stage. Very faint textures can be mapped onto the objects to create some ‘meat’ for the paintover. Don’t be too perfect with the mapping: simple boxmapping is often quite enough.
2) The first stage in painting over is to get some more variation in the shading. Because of the small scale, a very simple brush is enough. I just picked up some colors from the render and tried to get rid of perfect shading and all too straight edges. Then I painted some small details like cracks, dents and highlights. The 3-D rendered base model is a solid foundation, because the perspective and the lighting is already there. You can also experiment with blending textures of the picture to dirty up some areas.
3) The final stage is the color correction. Always do some color correction afterwards to make some areas pop, or to mute some others. I added some levels and selective color corrections with layer masks to further emphasize the lighting direction and to get some more bluish tint into the shadows. Then I selectively sharpened some areas to increase the contrast.
The lighthouse took me a little more than 1 1/2 hours from start to finish.
I hope you enjoyed my debut as a blogger : )
Best regards,
Peer
Popularity: 80% [?]
I have finished a new workshop (part 3 of a series) on how to map a 3D model and how to create and paint a texture for this model.
You can find the workshop in the new issue of the German game developer magazine Making Games 03/09, which will be out soon.
Chris
Popularity: 73% [?]
You can read an online interview about my comic project MAYA, which I am working on in my spare time, by clicking on the following image (which shows the main character of the series)… 
In the interview I also was asked about my work at Rough Sea Games… so what are you waiting for?… check it out!
Chris
Popularity: 34% [?]
Here you can see Chucky the first movie monster based on a suggestion from our blog reader Mr. Boomerang:
By clicking on the image you can see a bigger version with a short Tutorial how the image was created.
Chris
Popularity: 41% [?]
Last time I told you I already know what I will draw next for my new blog series Famous Movie Monsters. And here you can see one of my personal favorite movie monsters…
By clicking on the image you can see a bigger version with a short MakingOf.
I already got some feedback and ideas for the next images in the series but if you still have a favorite you want to see write a comment to this post, name your movie monster and I will see what I can do…
Chris
Popularity: 46% [?]
I hope you didn’t take Manuels last blog post too serious.
Currently I’m working on a new series for the blog called Famous Movie Monsters. The series starts with Dracula (You know… the guy with the sharp teeth and sun allergy). By clicking on the image you can see a bigger version with a short MakingOf.
I know what to draw next, but if you have ideas, wishes, suggestions… feel free to add them in a comment to this post and who knows… maybe you can see your favorite movie monster here on our blog soon…
Best wishes and a happy easter!
Chris
Popularity: 16% [?]
“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has undergone more makeovers than Madonna”
… and I am the reason for it!
Let me explain: Last year I was asked to redraw a comic cover another artist did for the Female Force comic book series (Publisher Bluewater Productions: “The Female Force comic book series showcases influential women who are making and shaping modern history”). U.S. comic publisher Bluewater Productions asked me to redraw the other artist’s cover, because his first version wasn’t what they had in mind for the book and the number of the stripes in the American flag was wrong. So I drew my version of the cover and everyone was happy… everyone except for Hillary Clinton:
“…Clinton disliked the cover, which had her sporting a blue suit whose buttons were straining over a chunky hourglass figure. Think more Lara Croft and less America’s top diplomat.”
Now my cover will be the back cover for the book. I feel a little bit bad about this, but my game artist’s heart is pumping faster because of the comparision with Lara Croft… hehehe.
Oh… and the story isn’t finished yet…
“Bluewater asked artist Vinnie Tartamella to create a new, less-sexy cover”
So this means my canned cover is the sexy Lara Croft style version! … NOT BAD!
You can read the whole news at www.rollcall.com. You can see here the different cover versions for the book:
First Female Force Cover (with too many stripes on the flag)
Second Female Force Cover (this is my version!)
Third Female Force Cover (final Tartamella cover)
Chris
Popularity: 14% [?]
