I hope everyone has had a nice X-Mas holiday and New Year! I haven’t done much developing since the last post because of work, however, the busy season is over and my schedule is more relaxed now. I’ll be able to get back on the horse pretty soon and do more regular updates! See you then!
Hello! I’ve decided to update with the last of the vehicles that I was working on. I can’t imagine needing anymore vehicle types; I think I have my bases covered in that respect!
It’s been a year since I’ve started the new job and man, how the time has flown. I worked really hard to excel at it (it wasn’t until recently that I worked up to 6-day weeks and usually had split weekends if I didn’t!) and am now in a position where I can actually fund this project to some extent. The busy season is upon us in my line of work but I will still be hammering away on Out Of Hell as I always have!
It was such a shame that the previous Sculpt Modeler was unable to continue work due to pressing responsibilities that came up. I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement since but I continue to leave the door open. What I would be looking for is someone who would take a pre-made, unwrapped medium poly model and detail it in ZBrush. You would then send me back AO and Normal bakes as well as the high-poly sculpt. That’s it.
If this is something that interests you, email me with a link to your portfolio and a ballpark quote for pricing and we’ll see where it goes!
Just dropping another update on the vehicles; this time with rigs and military trucks and a military jeep. All the vehicles so far may be missing some really minor details and some optimizations but that would be taken care of before I import them into the engine. I’ll probably be using a polygon reducer on these models since they’re static objects and don’t have any organic bendy parts that might deform improperly during animation!
So, I have a change in plans on how I am going to approach what to do next. Originally with Out Of Hell (UT2K4 Mod) I did most of my mapping before I did animations and importing. The problem with that method is that mapping can take a really long time to do and I got caught up in the mapping and neglected everything else. What I’m going to do this time is I am going to finish all the animations for the characters, creatures and weaponry. Once the animations are complete, I am going to import all those items into the engine and get that all working first before I start any mapping. I figure that this way, it would make testing how the map flows for gameplay much easier if I could have things to shoot and run from as I go along.
There is some unfortunate news in that the Artist (Julia Pishtar) that did the detail sculpting for some of the monster and character models up until this point is unable to do any more work for the next little while. I am unsure when she will be able to return to it so I will be doing that myself from now on. I am however, keeping the door open for any other Artist who may be interested. What I need is someone with experience in ZBrush or MudBox who would take a low/medium poly model I have created, sculpt in the fine details (for example: wrinkles, muscle tone) and then send me the Ambient Occlusion and Normal bakes for it. This would be a paid, work-for-hire contract and if this is something that interests you, feel free to drop me a line through email (do not respond in this post) with a link to your portfolio or other examples of your work, a general price quote and we can talk!
Just wanted to drop a line everyone! Here are the static vehicle models I’ve been building lately!
My next order of business will be Military vehicles, helicopters and freight vehicles/trains. After those are done, I will be jumping straight into Mapping (end of this month) and I’ll try getting some beauty/atmosphere shots in UE4! Yeah baby!
By the way, I’ve finally worked out the new Logo for Out Of Hell. It isn’t too different from the original but I spent about 3 or 4 days coming up with alternatives and couldn’t find one that I liked as much as the original. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it I guess!
Hey guys, I normally don’t post items like this but I am just so excited about this upcoming film that I had to spread the word. 3 of my favourite horror films of all time are Jacob’s Ladder, Event Horizon and John Carpenter’s The Thing. This upcoming movie Harbinger Down is a film akin to John Carpenter’s The Thing and heavily features the use of practical creature effects and animatronics as opposed to CGI.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjiCQgiM7-I
Official site: http://harbingerdown.com/index.html
Harbinger Down wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbinger_Down
From what I’ve read, the folks at studioADI were responsible for the traditional creature effects in The Thing prequel, and had much of their hard work replaced by CGI. While CGI has its place, I am of the camp that prefers the more traditional methods of doing this as I find that CGI sometimes fails in creating convincing and natural creatures and effects. Apparently this wasn’t the first time that this has happened to them and so they took to crowd-funding to build an Independant movie and ‘…an opportunity to bypass the studio system which had been compromising their work in the past.’ (quoting the wiki)
It sucks that there is this sort of Hollywood mentality and formula for doing things in movies today that I sometimes don’t agree with and because of this, I find most mainstream movies today (whether they be Action, Drama, Comedy, or Horror) really pale in comparison to movies in the same genre of the 80’s and 90’s and to some extent, the early 2000’s. Can anyone really admit that the new Robocop is better than the original Robocop movie? Or the new Terminator movies an improvement over Terminator 1 or 2?
The Game Industry also has a certain mentality and formula of doing things (similar to the Movie Industry) which is, in my humble opinion, why most mainstream games for the past 10 years or so have been utter garbage. For example, Resident Evil Remake, 1 DC, 2, 3, Veronica are far superior to anything post RE: 4, especially in recent years. I still play Silent Hill 1, 2 and 3 (finished all 3 just a little while ago again) and have only ever played through Silent Hill: Shitty Memories and Downpoop once before it returned to my shelf to collect dust. Compared to the old, this new generation just completely misses the point from an artistic, gameplay and psychological horror standpoint. The slew of Call Of Duty and modern FPS games don’t hold my interest when compared to the original Half-Life 1/2 or even Doom 1/2 (I actually played through all the PC episodes (1/2/TNT/Plutonia) and then through the PSX version of Doom 1 and 2 a couple months ago)
…but enough of my game rant (I’ll leave that for a future post) and back to Harbinger Down.
Much respect to studioADI for doing this out of the love for the craft. I simply cannot wait for it.
Oh, it also stars Lance Henriksen (YESS!)
Thanks for voting in the poll! It would appear as though the original ‘Out Of Hell‘ name resonates the most out of all the other choices! This being the case, the mod version will probably be referred to around here as ‘Out Of Hell (UT2K4 Mod)’ and the commercial version ‘Out Of Hell‘. That being said, I’m going to throw another poll at you:
I’d also like to show off a few of the cars I’ve been working on. None of them are skinned at the moment but still, I can’t wait to get them into the game!
I’ve also got some vans/trucks in the works and it isn’t taking me long to crank these out at all (So much so that there will probably be several more unique base car models) When I was shopping around for freelance modelers, it would have cost me anywhere from $500 to $1300 per vehicle which, depending on who you talk to isn’t unreasonable but if I’m already able to do it, then it makes more sense to just do the work myself and save the money.
In Out Of Hell (UT2K4 Mod) there was only 1 car model that was used over and over and most of the details like grooves/indents/lines/small details were all textured on. I’ve tried to limit that sort of thing here and use actual geometry wherever I can for all of my models. I also plan to use a special material that will apply a randomized color variation and dirt/grime/damage for every model, weapon and monster to keep things fresh!
I’ve been toying around with different names for the new project and can’t seem to pick one out. This is where I’d love some input from you guys so please vote in the poll below on which one you like the best! Please keep in mind that this is going to be a complete overhaul of Out Of Hell in a lot of ways. So something that sounds like a spiritual successor or re-imagining but not too sequel-ish…if that makes any sense!
LONG NGUYEN | Digital Artist & Game Designer 