MOST RECENT WIP SHOT:


Figured I'd take a stab at this one.

King of Fighters XII, haven't played it or many fighters really, but this image jumped out at me as I was searching.

Plans for re-imagining are focused on a dieselpunk aesthetic at present. I'm sure the inspirations will shift throughout the course of the project, and I'll update this first post to reflect that as time goes on.

Looks like an ambitious undertaking! Can't wait to see what you'll come up with.

Nice choice and great inspirations. Good luck!

Love the idea man, I'll be following this

wow, the original is so incredibly complex. I hope you can pull this off

Originally Posted by suburbbum

I hope you can pull this off

Hahaha me too. Thanks for all the well-wishes guys! So today was a never ending slog through the internets and some books for reference collection. Amassing a pretty solid chunk of pixels, so that'll come in handy going forward. Unfortunately that also meant getting less work done today than I had planned, but hopefully I can play catchup tomorrow after work. Anyway, reference moodboard #1:



I'll probably make more of these as I continue to gather reference over the course of the project. Helps me really focus each time I re-analyze the direction, rather than just making one in the beginning and not updating it. I'm hoping to make a very cheerful, playful, and festive atmosphere in the midst of oppressive living conditions.

This is a really quick asset test in UDK, just checking out how some of the blockout primitives are working. It's really just a tease; it has little relation to the final composition I'm working out.

More developed/useful blockouts to come tomorrow.

I love your influences and I cannot wait to see how you apply the colors to this scene! I'll be anticipating the grey-box out of the scene.

Too long no update! Well now that I have successfully downloaded the internet as reference (no small feat at < 96kbps ) I'm ready to really dig in. Here's the first blockout pass. I'm not totally happy with the composition but I'll be working on that next. Some questions for you all:

1) Does anyone have any character models that are scaled properly to UDK, ideally something from Unreal, that I could steal? The 96-unit-tall box just isn't doing it for me anymore.

2) Is there any easy way to setup a camera for the play mode of UDK specifically for 16:9 resolution? I realize it captures based on screen res, but I'm looking also to get it set to a fixed viewpoint so that I can always be sure it'll render the same.

3) Lighting is very very rough obviously (not even baked), but the direction in general doesn't feel entirely dieselpunk to me yet. Maybe I'm just too used to the "moody overcast" look and need to find more varied inspirations there. I'd really like to keep the bright and colorful feeling of the original stage in the main arena area, while pushing the background areas to be more dreary. Any suggestions on how to go about that? I'm wondering if I'll be needing to mess with fog or post-process volumes/etc.

1. search for skeletal mesh in the content browser! Also did you see JordanW's technique of blocking out a brush man? I like that it doesn't look as out of place as the available character models.

2. in editor, pressing ctrl+1 (or ctrl+2, or 3 etc.) saves that camera angle, and pressing 1 (or the appropriate number) returns you to it! Just like an RTS! There is a camera actor and a little bit of kismet love will set it up, but I have no idea how to off the top of my head right now! (let me know if you find a good link!)

3. fog is a good start but post processing is even better. I can't recommend a specific free tutorial as I've been using the eat 3d UDK lighting and post processing DVD all day, but it's not much of a stretch (and fairly well documented) to set up a post processing chain that would make brightly lit areas bright and light blue, whilst shadow areas are desaturated and orangey brown.


Haha, your actually asking all the questions I was asking myself earlier today! So I'm not a massive help, but hopefully that should get you started.


edit: to answer 3 a bit more, if you look at your references theres alot of light, bright, sunlight with warm reddish-brown diffuse colours. If you follow Tekkonkinkreet as an example it's a very run down city but created using a very warm and saturated palette.

Hey Fearian, thanks for the reply!

1.) Yeah, I use the skeletal mesh in UDK, but I want to export something like that out as geometry to test against in Maya. I've tried a couple of export methods but whenever I import the file it always ends up empty. I did see JordanW's brush man, that made me LOL when I saw it. I agree about it not looking as out of place as some of the characters, but it's a little tough to imagine certain heights; things like proportions for a chair or a table, etc etc. Doors and walls aren't too bad, but it's those details where I feel like I can lose proper sense of proportion when working off of something like a block.

2.) I love the bookmarking system for the editor, it saves my life when I'm working there. I want something that's like the bookmarks but in the play mode where I can render out tiledshot. I was thinking of going the camera actor/kismet route, but since I've never done it I wasn't sure if it'd be exactly what I need. I'll give it a try though and let you know!

3.) Man, I actually have that DVD too, but haven't watched it in months. I completely forgot about it! Thanks for the reminder, I will check that one out again. It sounds like post-processing would be the way to go, so once I get my composition more worked out I'll spend some time to nail that. And good point on the reference color palettes. Gonna have a play with that as well, hopefully my next update will have some of that down better.

Love the composition on this so far. Very interesting shapes, will be really fun to light this scene.

Some more work on the layout.




I'm a little worried about the composition, mainly as a result of the camera angle; the fact that I need to label these objects, and they're mostly kinda awkward to see makes me think it's not reading well. Maybe I need to push and exaggerate proportions based on the final view? I'd love any insight anyone has here!

You are most def heading in the right direction. I'd clean up the right side a little. Seems like the assets push into the fight area. The foreground elements work well. Add a second level of background aswell and we'll be cooking with fire.

I know its alot of extra work but it would be interesting to see into the right restaurant/store aswell. Kinda like the fight could spill over into it.

Worthy entry for sure!

Awesome, thanks for the crits Wahlgren. You've got some very good points and I'm going to try to get that all in over the next few days. You said add a second level of background, could you expound upon what you mean by that?

NICE

I thought your avatar was a beer glass at first ;)

I mean isn't everything a beer glass when you really get down to it anyway?

Truckin along. I'm really happy with this updated direction, starting to shape up the way I had hoped. Background buildings are hidden while I flesh out the interior.




I'm mostly satisfied with this as a blockout, and I'll probably adjust composition as I begin working up the assets. I think next on the agenda is texture and material tests.

Lots of new reference. Found some great winspiration in Cannabis Works by Tanaka especially.

Nice! I love the new background, It's all looking very detailed, you got a fair bit of work ahead of you!

I love it so far! Really hope you finish this!

wh00, lookin good man

Lovin it so far man, keep it up.

Thanks guys, and yeah it's probably entirely too much work for sanity's sake. All good though, I got myself into this mess, I gotta live with the consequences now.

that's coming along quite nicely! keep it up!

I'm really liking the reference images. Any plans for how you're going to texture all those assets yet?

Hey Gannon, I'm going to be working up some style tests in the next few days for texturing. Originally I was thinking of going for photorealism, but after putting the characters into the scene and really trying to think about what the character of the environment was, I think I'm going to try out a couple types of handpainting. I'm mostly leaning toward a style somewhat like Bengal; on my influence map in the first post it's the third image down on the far right (girl fixing the white robot).

If you're just asking how I'm going to manage to get it all done, I guess you're asking the wrong person But really, although it might be hard to tell in the blockout, there are a lot of assets that are intended to be instances or variations of each other, so I'm counting on heavy, smart re-usage of objects and textures.