Finishing the Mass Effect Portal FX

Hi there!

I know it has been a long loooong time since my last post. My project in school and some other things like looking for a job and my final exams etc ate a lot of my sparetime. But I finally did it! Here you go!

 And I can tell you this: It was a real pain to capture this video. Unfortunately my RAMs broke a few weeks ago and now I have to work with 4 GB. What a drag!

However. I pushed a bit the colors and worked with different masks for the stripes. The particle itself barely changed.

Now I am so glad that it is done. New projects are waiting.

Have a nice day and see you next time!

CoalBanana

Time to start a new project!

Hi there guys!


So I played Mass Effect 3 and saw a really beautiful particle effect. You can find it in the Geth Entity and it's used as kind of portal.

This is just a shot I took from a youtube video. It would take days until I reached this part by myself

I would like to build it too. And this was the time when my "Mass Effect Portal Project" was born.

My first action was a particle breakdown. I wanted to know how it works and what it would take to build it. This is my result:

This kind of approach is really worth it. I started to work it out for me while working on my current project and it feels better and more efficiend. A quick visualization, asking for feedback, build it! It's good for getting ideas.

So after the sketch I built some meshes for the outter ring, the inner ring and the floating cubes in 3DS Max.

The next step was to create it in UDK. Below is the current status.
Still a lot to do ;)

The most materials are just basic colors at the moment. For the blue cylinder I used a depthbiasedalpha-node to prevent clipping-edges. Unfortunately it raises the costs of the material but that's the price I pay for a good appearence ;)

I encountered some problems with the floating cubes. At first I used just one emitter and gave it the size-range from x: 0.1 y: 0.1 z: 0.1 to x: 0.4 y: 0.4 z: 0.4 but it refused to stay to the origin relations and spawned a lot of  rectangular shaped cubes. I am pretty sure it works with just one and I just forgot something but my quick solution were three emitters with fixed sizes. (But I will work out how to do it with one emitter!)

My next step will be to add the glowing stripes, tweak a bit and create proper textures/materials.

Thanks for reading until this point!
See you next time!

Coal

Shader and material testing

Finally you can see the lowpoly model in-engine. I now try to figure out how to make the textures to achieve the best result in combination with our toon-cellshading shader.

Yay, it's Sunday!

Hey there lovely individual,

it's Sunday and the end of a very busy week. Our current project is growing and I somehow offered my help for two other studentprojects to support them with visual effects. I know this will kill me but there hangs a piece of paper at my wall in my flat that says:

Your final year at uni should be really tough. If it isn't almost breaking you, you're not working hard enough.

So okay. Try to break me, final year! I am ready!

Here is what I worked on the last few days:

Slammed door-particle concept

Hit right in the face-particle concept

A friend showed me how to animate in photoshop and thats pretty cool because now I can make moving concepts for my particles...AWESOME!

Currently I need more experience and exerciese with 2D animations but that's just a matter of time

Today is my relax sunday. I finished my last tasks with this post. Yay, freetime :D

Have a nice day!

I am afk and offline.


Coal

Some cloths

I created a pair of pants, a beanie and a shirt for the character. Now in combination with the crappy toonshader of Max he slowly gets in the right shape.

Being someone special...

I am not slow - I'm just patient! :D

As  CoalBanana  and Monaghan  are already one post ahead I need to SPEEEEEEED UP!!!

Today I reworked my CV and had some approaches on a motivation letter towards a veteran of the games industry. That's why my wording needs to be super crispy!

Unfortunately I am not applying for a position as an artist or designer so I can't post fancy pictures. But still I want to show some stuff too! :3

 

Everybody has special skills!

Also I want to share with you my personal statement of my objective inside the games industry. And I highly recommend to everybody who is interested in getting a job inside the biz to do the same.

"My personal goal inside the games industry is to be involved in the creation of a massive multiplayer game which is not only providing fun towards the players but also catches them with respectful atmosphere and immersion. I see myself in the role of an assisting Producer who navigates the team through the development with a clear vision and is able to help out at departments if time is running out." - RN

What do you think about this?
I would appreciate to read your honest feedback or your own statements in the comments.

Thanks and bye :)

Tweaking!

I spent the whole day tweaking the anatomy of the basemesh. (No, not the feet xD) And I also watched some tutorial videos of Marvelous Designer. That program is just great and I can´t wait to learn how to use it properly!