Creating a Ship for Our Game

We had all designated different tasks in our team, George was going to be doing most of the code, Jay was going to be making the enemy ships while Ben was going to create the Space station. That left me with the task of creating the good guys. I had always been a fan of them. whenever I play a game I have to be good, it's just not in my nature to be a bad person, good is whats right and makes everyone take their own path.

We decided early on in the game development that we were going to have two different types of ships. One of the ships was going to be a colony ship, something that was going to escort the survivors out of the battle and was a ally that you needed to protect. The other ship that we were going to make would be that of the player ship, an old rusty machine that is the last piece of defense that the Space station has, so it needs to look grimy and old.

I first started off with creating the colony ships, this was fairly simple as I knew straight away what direction I would be heading in. This ship is suppose to be very bulky, with not a lot of weapons to defend itself, so I thought that the ideal inspiration would be that of the pillar of autumn from the halo series.

Inspiration: The pillar of Autumn and various UNSC ships (Halo)

I pretty much only had one idea on this section, I had been dead set on this one idea and I felt nothing could fill this ships spot. I went straight onto Maya and started to build it. It has quite a simple design to it, but the thing is that I wanted this to have not too many poly's. This was because this has not as many key features as the main characters ship. It also isn't an key part of the game, it is required as much for game play. I am fairly happy with the ship, it has no weapons on it but there is plenty room for improvement, which will be brought up if I have time, though when it is textured, it will look more impressive.

Rendered view 1 of colony ship.

Rendered view 2 of colony ship.

Rendered view 3 of colony ship.

Rendered view 4 of colony ship.

Update:

With our game we paid so much attention in other directions that it would now be impossible to insert this in game with any useful mechanics, so we, as a team, have decided that it would be best for the game to leave the colony ship out. This means that I can fully direct my attention towards the rest of the game, such as the menus and pieces of animation.

When it came to making the player ship, I already had some initial designs, such as the concept art that I had made earlier, but nothing really up to standard, so the best thing I thought, was to start from the beginning. I asked my team, as a collective, what they would like to see in the ship and we all settled down on an idea. The general feel was that I was going to be looking at not only spaceships, but jet fighters. everyone also agreed on a shape that they really liked, that od the one like in Star Wars, an extended triangle to spear head an attack.

Inspiration: Jedi starfighter (StarWars).

I was actually quite impressed with my design, it looked quite original and actually did look like a spaceship. Though there were several problems in the ship itself. The model was way too high poly. There would have to be an improvement on it if we were to stick it into the game and several things would have to come out, such as the engine parts and the vents. One point that I ma especially impressed with is the guns on the ships, they look like they would do the job. After removing all the excess poly's, the only thing that was left to do was to texture the ships.

Rendered view 1 of player ship.

Rendered view 2 of player ship.

Rendered view 3 of player ship.

Rendered view 4 of player ship.

Using what I learnt recently when it came to texturing, I sent about and got snapshot of all the polys in the ship and then took it over to photoshop. Here I attacked a scratched metal over a layer of silver and played around with the options until I got a result that I was happy with. The next thing to do was to add excess color and materials, such as the cockpit and the bullet holes on the ship. Then we saved this as a targa file. then by simply applying this as a material, we could then attach to the ship.

The U.V's being textured.

I was pretty impressed with the result, the only thing is that due to the low poly, the ship looks quite basic, which was something that could be improved later on, but for now, I was happy with the way that the ship had turned out. Perhaps if I adjusted the darkness on the ship, it will look much more gritty.

Rendered view of textured view 1.

Rendered view of textured view 2.

Rendered view of textured view 3.

Rendered view of textured view 4.