As I said in an earlier post, Due to an overwhelming consensus that I should rework all my demo reel projects, I have done just that. The laser Rifle got trashed all together as I mentioned earlier. So here's some screenies:
Pripyat
1) Remodeled the following objects to increase visual quality(mostly adding on polys since they were WAY too simple): Gurney, radiator, sink.
2) Started the lighting over completely from scratch. Lighting has more mood to it now, with stronger shadows.
3) Normal maps show up better. Not sure if it's a result of a better lighting setup, or that this version of the engine displays normal information better. I suspect a bit of both.
I can't get over how much better the lighting looks in this. I'm not even so sure that I did a lot differently from the previous lighting setup. I think I just have a better handle on all the different lightmass settings than I did 6 months ago. Learning gooooo!
Desert Straggler
1) Made the shadows cooler, to better reflect how outdoor shadows look.
2) Added a VERY low ambient light to give the overall level more brightness.
3) Made a lot of changes in color choice. Trees and sand are less saturated, rocks now match up more with mountains and cliff side, grass now matches surrounding terrain and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.
4) Retextured the terrain and optimized terrain layer setup. Ground now has gravel and grass layers to give more surface variation.
A huge world of difference. Everything seems to work better, mainly just due to altering colors and adding more detail to the ground. Not really much else to say. The results sort of speak for themselves.
Whew, it feels good to have all of that out of the way.
Now, all I have to do is recapture the video footage of both projects and put them back into premiere to edit in. Should only take one day, which is tomorrow. I'm also trying to find a better way to post my demo reel to the web, as youtube's uncanny ability to degrade my video quality isn't quite cutting it right about now.
After that's squared away, I'll dig into the RPG project a bit more. There won't be any pics posted from that until the game demo is actually out, so don't expect to see anything from that anytime soon. I'll still be working on that side project with Joe in the meantime, which he is about 1/4 of the way done with, in sketching. Once we have a better idea of the details and the drawings are done, I'll make a nice big post about it.
