Vehicles, Architecture, and Levels

[Chirp Chirp]

Thanks Brashen, I'll be sure to pass on the complements to Wassermelone. Job wise, I design games and Wassermelone does concept art.

[DanielC]

This stuff's amazing. Must be quite something to walk around in those levels. Can't wait to see more !

[Chirp Chirp]

I should have posted these earlier.... The 4 screen shots I exported from SketchUp to create the previous image.

[Chirp Chirp]

Simple car I doodled last night then jazzed up in PS. 3hrs total.

[Jorge Gecov]

Awesome!
I must learn this software.

Post more!

[Twelve]

Wow, this is some good stuff. I like your vehicles and architecture in the first post. I have just got my copy of SketchUp so this is what pulled me to this end of the forums. Great stuff and very inspirational. Thanks for sharing.

[Chirp Chirp]

Thanks for the encouraging posts everyone. It seems to help me get off my ass and get busy. Here is some more vehicle modeling experiments. Both of these models begin life using the sandbox terrain and tools to push\pull the mesh around.

[mugen1]

beautiful

[Chirp Chirp]

Started working on a old vehicle I never finished. WIP

[ehaft]

Whoa I just want to say that this is some impressive stuff from both Chirp and Wasser. Thanks for sharing it.

[Portus]

Truly inspiring! You should consider doing a SketchUp 101 modeling video, I would be first to buy it!

[Chirp Chirp]

I feel a bit like a newb since I only now realized there were these little "thanks" buttons next to peoples posts. DUH..... So a belated big thanks to everyone for the replies!

Portus - Training vid... umm well that would be too much like work. So as a compromise I've been making mini sketchup tutorials for people with questions or problems. I have a few more in mind that I want to do such as one on organic modeling in SU and another on moving the world and local origins around to help with modeling on axis. I need to start another thread and collect them in one location so they will be easy to find later. If anyone has more sketchup questions on how to do something or what ever let me know and I'll get busy.

My wife has been messing around with the Unity game engine and we started making an underwater sub game. So first things first, sub shape exploration and concepts. Here are a few quickies...

[phate89]

amazing dude!!! your work is a insperation to people that are trying to break into level design...if you have any tips PM me.

but again wow!! amazing work mate.

[Chirp Chirp]

Tutorial on how I created a propeller. This should give you guys an idea on one of the ways I do more organic modeling in SU.

The .skp wouldn't upload here so I put it on google warehouse. http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...266a444f3e927e

[Chirp Chirp]

Hey thanks Phate89. Glad you like it. Here's some more level design pics for you. First two images are together. I used the black and white SU fog trick to create a Z depth mask to do a lens blur / depth of field on the first image.

Second set is not really a level but a work space where I am designing a building piece kit for others to do level design with. One of the challenges of my current work project is that all buildings need to be architecturally correct because of destruction! So everything I design and build needs to have all the space accounted for, be structurally correct, have a good game flow, and fit into the damn memory budget.

Oh and for game industry advice. http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=76898 Seedling started the thread a long time ago but I've added several pages of advice from a game design point of view.

[Chirp Chirp]

Rendered shots of some game levels. Almost everything in the overhead shot and a few buildings off screen are completely navigable. I had to design all the buildings which have functional floor-plans built with structural supports in mind. Soon it will get passed off to art for polish and detail.

And a few wips pics of that car I keep working on. I swear I'll finish it one day.

[Tonic]

Very nice renders. What renderer did you use?

[Portus]

I like the lineart rendering engine of SU but those renders look amazing, would never imagine they were modeled in SU.

[Chirp Chirp]

Cool glad you guys like them. I used Maxwell for the rendering. After seeing some of the stuff Tonic was rendering I though I would give it a shot. I really like Maxwell since its more like doing photography than a render app. They've also improved the SketchUp exporter significantly since the last version I used.

[Tonic]

What did you mean with "more like doing photography than a render app"?

[Chirp Chirp]

Well when you set up a camera you tweak the film iso, shutter speed, aperture type, focal distance, fstop, ect. Also because it bounces the light around the environment, I like to set up various sized faces of color to help back light and bounce light onto the shot. I feel more like I am creating a real set for a photography shoot than messing around with arbitrary numbers trying to get everything to look right.

Here is the original scene in SU I used to set up the lighting, bounce light and backdrop for one of the vehicles in my first post.

[Tonic]

Thanks, that explained a lot. Now I'm interested enough to try this renderer

[Chirp Chirp]

Last week the company I worked for closed down so now I am jobless! 14 years in the industry gives you a six sense about these things thus the nicer portfolio style renders I've been posting of late.

One thing I think you guys will appreciate and I am really going to miss was the level design pipeline I put in place. We had the ability to export directly from SU to our game engine and within seconds run around and blow shit up. These two videos are over a year old but it should give you an idea how powerful and cool it is.
In SU http://www.playuptools.com/csroby/video-sdif1.html
In Game http://www.playuptools.com/csroby/video-sdif2.html

Pdf file for GDC talk never happened that talks about using SketchUp as part of a game development pipeling. http://www.playuptools.com/csroby/me...ketchup_09.pdf

And here are a few more shots of some levels and buildings.

[Chirp Chirp]

Results from a game design test I was given five days to complete. First image are shots from the final map. Second image is the final top down which was exported from SU to Illustrator as an .eps then cleaned up and organized.

The next set of images are the renders of the map in progress as I was designing it.

Last image is of the characters I designed for the mission. Several ended up getting cut from the final submission.

If anyone is interested in reading the cooresponding mission walk through you can find it here http://www.playuptools.com/csroby/me...esign_Test.pdf

[Chirp Chirp]

Another WIP I started a while ago.

[orgelf]

you work a lot ;-)

really nice models

i really like your paintings renders as the submarine and the car upon the orange spaceship .

and your last wip, the armor, is really imspiring (I think armors are the most difficult models to do )

for the view of the town with some orange buildings , did you use Vray for Sketchup or Maxwell ?

[Chirp Chirp]

Orgelf: It might seem that way but your looking at a collection of work I started back in 2005. I feel like such a slacker most of the time.

I totally need to finish that submarine. I have this habit of getting bored with projects before I finish them.

This is my first shot at doing something humanoid. I am terrible when it comes to proportions of people but all the robot like posts in here got me itching to give it a shot. Currently I'm trying to finish it up but struggling with the hands atm. Thanks for the complements and pep!

Orange building render is also in Maxwell. I've never tried Vray.

I've been experiementing a bit with render settings and thought this was kinda neat.

[Tonic]

Neat, indeed. It reminds me a ferrofluid (image).

Updates sweet as usual, but I'm loving the walking electronic parts. Brilliant!

[Jalc]

these are brilliant just goes to show how far you can take sketchup in the development of ideas!

[Ximenes]

Holy crap... I would kill to have your skill (yes, I know that rhymes). Phenomenal work.