August 21, 2012

Game Art, Game Engine

Two Seneca College Game Art and Animation Program thesis projects created at the Seneca@York campus, just across the street from York's Centre for Film and Theatre:

The Wastes

"Created from concept to UDK deployment by five post-grad Seneca students, The Wastes evokes a survivalist shelter in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Gritty details such as rifle parts laid out on a concrete table, a collapsed highway overpass, and the clutter of found objects suggest the hard-boiled man who lives there.

Assets are created in 3DS Max and zBrush, textured in Photoshop and nDo2, and placed into the UDK engine for realtime environment. We designed this showcase game environment within five weeks for pre-production pipeline arrangements and conceptual schematics, five weeks for production, and a week for post-production and cinematics.

Credits
Blake Withers - Art Director, Environment Modeller - blake.withers.ca/
Tanya Kan - Producer, Environment Modeller - tanyacreative.com/
Kolin "KC" Warren - World Builder, Environment Modeller - kolinwarren.com/
King Mugabi - Environment Modeller - 3dmugabi.blogspot.ca/
Minh Nguyen - Environment Modeller - hellominh.blogspot.ca/

Wastes Game Mod cinematic from Tanya Kan on Vimeo.


Sky Raiders

UDK Mod Project, Seneca College Game Art and Animation Winter Class 2012:

Sky Raiders UDK Mod Project from Lauren Bamlett on Vimeo.

UDK, or Unreal Development Kit, is set of tools for modifying ("modding") a game engine originally developed by Epic Games for the 1998 game Unreal, which was released free to the general public in 2009. Wikipedia describes the term game engine thus:

"a software framework that developers use to create games for video game consoles and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine ('renderer') for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection (and collision response)... sound... [and] animation. The process of game development is often economized, in large part, by reusing/adapting the same game engine to create different games."

Game engines are also useful for anyone who wants to create real-time animation for previsualization... or, say, live theatre....

(Hat tip to Seneca character and environment modeling and texturing instructor, Verold product manager & designer and lead 3D artist, and all-round renaissance man Aaron McLean.)

Posted by Alison Humphrey at August 21, 2012 02:34 PM