Dive Time
Sprint 1
Steampunk, low-scifi. Heavy themes of machinery and flesh fusion.
3D side-scrolling underwater low sci-fi diving & fishing & mild thriller/horror. (Underwater ide-scroller diving/fishing/rougelite)
Swim, catch, sell, upgrade, and don’t drown.
Dive into the water, catch fish, avoid danger with your abilities, return to the surface and sell the fish, upgrade your equipment, then dive again.
For this project, I take on the role as a 3D modeler. This type of project is new to me in many ways including; modeling of a living being, a bigger team with those who need my work to progress, and a much bigger scope.
Compared to previous projects and classes, we have only ever works in groups of 2-4 and each person was their own 'lead'. This also is the first time taking 495 which focuses on a detailed game in a large group of 10-12 people. Work is also more spread out for different roles yet more stressful. In the sense we are passing a bomb around where each person relies on the other so they can do their work.
Comparing being a modeler in previous classes, we were in charge of all models rather than splitting up the work with others. This is also important for organizations, naming conventions, and UVs.
This sprint, I worked on 2 fishes, the toy bomb fish and the lionfish. I'm not proud of my work/progress for this sprint due to being a hecktick start of the semester with classes and Game Jam. I was able to finish the bomb fish and uving it then sending it over to our animators/riggers and towards the end of the sprint, I started the lionfish model.
Before starting my bomb fish model, I did some research on what my designers vision was for this fish. I learned that this wasn't based on a real fish, but rather the early 2000s pool diving toy. I found this reference image that fits our mechanical/machinery vibe. I also kept its movement in mind like how it would swim; by moving is a squiggly way as its body clicked into place.
I was overwhelmed when I was told I was going to be modeling 3D fishes because in my whole 4 years in this major, they never taught us how to model living beings such as this fish. I also had to keep in mind low poly along with what would make my animator/rigger be able to successfully give it movement.
I started with implementing this as a reference image in Maya then using the curve tool to sculpt the fish part by part. I wanted to try to mimic Connors old video of using revolving tool for curves to mirror a circular, plump fish. A few issues arose from this, the first being once revolved around, it because inverted which needed to be flipped inside out. A second issue I noted later was that I tried to keep it all together rather than separating each body part and fins, make it impossible for the riggers to break the fish up to move each part. I had to create a hole in the fish and add a long pipe like body.
Lastly, i had to turn this fish into even lower poly, but keeping it recognizable was hard after taking so many edge loops away and avoid triangles.
