UE 4 - Procedural Dungeon ( 2 )

Second update on the procedural dungeon!

Now supports user-defined rooms! The dungeon-making blueprint seeks out any room actors in the map file, which are all children of a master Room class, and adds them to a list of room definitions. They don't need to be added in by code or put in a specific location, the program automatically adds each one found in the map file (even duplicates) and converts them from a visual model to an X, Y grid format. 

For each of these room actors, grey = do not fill ever, blue = floor and yellow = doorway. These doorways act as a launch point for the recursive corridor generator.

I'll make a better video another time, I have other projects to work on for now!

UE 4 - Procedural Dungeon ( 1 )

Just started this yesterday, but currently able to generate the corridors for a procedural dungeon in UE4

Currently the grid has options for:
 -> grid Size ( X , Y)
 -> % chance to maintain current corridor direction
 -> % chance to connect corridors
 -> % chance to ignore the spacing between rows / columns (fill the gaps)


Goal for tomorrow is to implement pre-built rooms which will be randomly placed inside of the grid.

UE4 Platform Blueprint

Simple moving platform in UE4 ~ The user can set the start, end, and 3 midpoint positions that the platform will move along. Rotation tweens between the start / end boxes, and a motion path is generated using each object as an anchor point. Huzzah.

UE4 Advanced Materials: Rainbow Skull of Doooooom!

UE4 blueprint / advanced material practice. On contact the skull will fade from a normal color to a dynamic rainbow spectrum - it cycles through the rainbow! Also features glowing pink eyes, because reasons.

Pressing the 'G' key suspends the eye glow and pauses any movement / color changes.

Tech Art Script #2 - Random layout!

Working in Houdini on tech art assignments, script homework #2: Random distribution!

Querying the user for the grid size and object count, this script will generate that many objects on top of the surface. It also catches any serious intersections and ensures the objects aren't too large, while also evenly distributing the random colors and objects across the grid.

Here's 10,000 objects on a 25 x 25 grid:

Tech Art Script #1 - Circle layout in Houdini!

Working in Houdini on tech art assignments, script homework #1: Lay objects out in a circle!

Querying the user for the object, count and size my script will lay objects out in a circle pattern with a lovely color wheel which is randomly offset each time. Huzzah.

Animation #5 - Walk Cycle cleanup

Still needs a bit more work, but the current walk cycle:

Sammy Starfish #2 - Sculpt!

zBrush sculpt of Sammy Starfish. Based off of the low poly version and the concept art.

Cannon #4 - Presentation

I'll be uploading the UE 4 screenshot tomorrow, but here's the Maya final renders of the cannon:

I might have cheated and left the texture sheets at 2k, but it's still 710 triangles at least! Beauty render + Ambient Occlusion with some small Photoshop filters on top.

Animation #4 - Walk Cycle!

Hand keyed walk cycle animation ~

Animation #3 - Ball Rolling!

Hand keyed animation of a ball rolling down a small course.

Sammy Starfish!

Bam! 998 / 1000 triangles used.

Regular resolution with outlines:

Smoothed Preview:

Cannon #3 - Textures!

Textures, hoooo! I slaved over this for about an hour or so while paying attention to animation class. I'll take the results I guess. . . Diffuse was painted in Mudbox, the Specular was partially extracted from the diffuse result, and the normal map is a blend of the high poly bake and a normal map generated from the diffuse using the Quixel Suite. Yay.


Texture Maps:

Textured Model:

Character Model Sheet!

A group assignment, we were tasked with redesigning a character.

I was on a team with Steffen Vala and Katie Freeman, our character was Simon Belmont from Castlevania, we gender swapped him into a her and imagined if she existed in a Bladerunner type of world.

Katie Freeman's original artwork:

My model sheet based off of this design:

Steffen's environment design:

Animation #2 - Ball bounce!

I may have gone a bit overboard, the assignment was just to make a ball bounce... Oh well.

Cannon #2 - Sculpt

Cannon progress #2: UVed Sculpted! I had a productive day.

Maya UVed / Final Mode:

zBrush sculpt:

Normal map baked:

Photoshop #1 - The Tools!

I have no idea what's going on, but I believe I used all the tools :3

Cannon #1 - model

Cannon, pt 1: the model itself!

Got the model going for our cannon the other day ~

and now, to check it in Unreal!

Lovely.

Animation #1 - Animate.... Something.

I need a chair!

The key to a good animation is a good chair, it's just scientific fact! And as luck would have it, there is a chair on the server named Ultimate_Chair - that must be amazing!

So, the ultimate chair wasn't very. . . ultimate. . . It was quite the let down, honestly, so I remade it!

Originally, the ultimate chair consisted of a single control object with one pivot point along the back... Which is fine if the chair only ever tumbles backwards and never in any other directions. That was too boring for me, so I rigged the chair to tumble in every direction!

With an awesome chair in hand, I could finally make the animation I wanted!

Welcome aboard!

Good afternoon!

My name is Brian Kortbus, I am a super serious animator, rigger, technical artist, and all around awesome person if I do say so myself! How do I know I'm so awesome you ask? The secret is modesty, I'm probably the most humble and modest person you've ever met so you can trust me on this one!

Beyond that, this blog will follow my coursework and studies while attending FIEA, the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy!

Let the games begin!