Simple Rigging and Weighting My Car

I have just finished rigging and weighting my car last week, right now it can be driven in the UDK! I am so happy about that. Here are some screenshots of the joints I made:

The way I put those joints are like the scorpion in UDK. I also lifted the body of the car a little bit. Here are the weights on the car.

Concept Painting of my Racing Map

I have actually finished this painting long time ago. I did not plan to post this because that it is not actually finished in my opinion, I pretty much leave all the trees with flat green. The castles are too small for those cars to pass through. Overall I do not like it very much, but I need to post this drawing so people know the theme of my game map.

Racing Game Intro Appreciation

"F1 Race Star" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TbwZF_6v7w&feature=player_embedded

The level intro in this game is very short but there are plenty of valuable things that I should learn. First of all, I like the first shots a lot, where the camera pans and zoom on the back of one of the cars. That shot has clear depth: foreground, mid-ground and background:

Then the camera fly throw a group of castles, I suppose that's the shot of the landmark. Then the camera shoots every car, I think I need to give some quick close-ups to some of the players.

Another thing I have noticed is that the camera is constantly moving, as a viewer I feel the movement of the camera is very smooth. It might not give the viewers' brain enough time to "process" all those epic shots, it is like the impressionism painting, viewers only get some epic "impressions".

But the intro does not really show much of the track.

Baijiu Racer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzK33CuQVNU

I like it shows the prettiest scene on this level at the beginning. It starts from the sky and top of the mountains then rotating the camera and focus on the lake, dragon boats and the lily flowers.

Like the "F1 Races Star", it does not show too much of the map, it does not show any of the stunts and obstacles. I want to do the same, which I want to spend most of the shots on the beauty shots of my map and the players' cars.

Here is another video I found that is interesting, it is not a game map intro but some of the shots inspires me a bit. The game is called "KartRider"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBoTw9UNF7s&feature=player_embedded#!

Racing Game Arts and Styles Appreciation

I have been hanging around on Youtube.com and search racing games that have epic arts and designs. I mainly focused on finding games that have Chinese culture themes. I am making a racing map that has lots of Chinese elements.

Color Schemes:
"F1 Race Stars": https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1TbwZF_6v7w#!

Here are some videos of 3 racing games.First, in color scheme wise, I really like the "F1 Race Stars". It has a map that players race among castles.

The colors are consistent and harmonious.It seems that colors with similar temperatures are placed together. The forests and mountains are greenish and bluish, and the castles and buildings are yellowish and reddish. I feel very comfortable and not too dazzling.

The surroundings in the above image is greenish and bluish.

The colors inside the castles is yellowish and reddish

I have also discovered that, those areas in between castles and forests are in light yellow, or they mixed yellow and green. By doing that, the overall color schemes can be gradually and smoothly transited.

The sky, the shadows and the buildings in the background are all in purple, they seem flat, therefore the foregrounds seem very popped.

Style and Concepts:
Apex of the Racing:
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S2nIpAMXGKg#at=37

The reason I choose this game is because it has very consistant and unique styles on every map. The link above shows the map called "Le Mountain Buddha". The design of this map is all about "Buddhism". I really love the consistency of the style there: the Buddha's sculptures and classical Chinese buildings fit in the overal style of the map.

Character Block Out in Maya

We have started modeling our characters! I am very excited about it, this is what I am doing in my free time right now. We were given a default character model(A GUY NOT A WOMAN......) by our teacher, it was properly rigged in UDK skeleton system, we are supposed to sculpt on that character without changing much of its anatomies. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, my character is a Chinese S.W.A.T woman, this character is probably the most challenging character in our major as she has lots of pockets, belts, buckles and folds.I am going to have tons of sculpting works in Zbrush later, but that is me, that is my style, always picking hard works and accept whatever challenges I am given. Here are some screenshots of my simple block-out in maya, I am going to sculpt her soon, so stay tuned!

  

Vehicle With Diffuse Maps

I have done with modeling and painting textures for a while, I am now still making its normal maps,specular map and reflection maps, so I haven't rendered it.I am pretty happy with the end result, I managed to keep its poly-counts under 5,000 faces. I triangulated my model, so it reads 9000 faces here. I could continue to reduce faces, but it might ruin its UVs. I tried to bake normals from a higher res model to this low res one,But I don't like the results, so I gave up.I painted most of the textures, but we are allowed to used photos on some parts,like the wheels and lights, so I downloaded some photos online, hopefully they are allowed to be used. Anyhow here are still some screenshots in Maya, stay tuned while I'm making other maps. Thanks!