3D Artist Application

[allen0410]

Do you understand that Wildfire Games is a non-commercial project, work for 0 A.D. is volunteer, and work is done for free?

Yes

Do you agree to distribute all your work for Wildfire Games under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license?

Yes

Name:

Allen O'Gorman

Email:

allen-uk@hotmail.co.uk

MSN Messenger:

allen-uk@hotmail.co.uk although i would rather use skype

Location:

Manchester,England

Availability:

10 hours per week

Age:

20

Occupation:

Student

Skills and Experience:

I have four of years experience using 3ds Max gaining a strong abillity and understanding of 3d modeling, I am also able to create texures for my models using photoshop. I have studied games design in college and curently studying it in university. In university I work as part of a team to create video game prototypes using UDK as well as working on my own making the assets for the game.

Motivation:

Creating things in 3D and completing a project gives me a great sense of achievement which me allows me to be a good self learner and self motivator

Personalty:

I am a creative person,easy going and can take constructive critisism

Short Essay:

I heard about o.a.d today. Through a gaming forum and from watching a o.a.d video it was reminisant of the orginal age of empires after downloading and playing the alpha my enthusiasm grew, i think the project is great and would love to be apart of its development to gain valueable knowlege and experience in the industry

Interests and Hobbies:

3D moddeling,design, watching motorsports, playing squash

Staff:

I don't know anyone here.

Community:devianART,polycount

Favorite Game:

My favorite games would probably be the total war series and other rts games like age of empires also with me being a big pc gamer i also like half-life series and battlefield 2 and 3

Work Examples:

college stuff:

uni stuff:

Other:

for more examples of my work follow the link below:

http://allen92.deviantart.com/gallery/

[Enrique]

Hello Allen! welcome to the forums!

Awesome work examples you have there!

What would be your primary interest modelling? Nature/organic, hardsurface/buildings?

We have currently moved our Art department forum to public and there you can see an approximate roadmap our Art Dept Leader made: http://www.wildfireg...showtopic=16220.

There are several things already done and it has to be updated but you can get an idea.

As you can see, you have a ton of gaia/flora assets to choose as well as some buildings for our last civilization included currently in developement: Mauryans.

I recommend you to pick a little asset/building to get to the working pipeline and once you feel comfortable, jump to a more complex one .

Anyway, it's your choice. You can ask here as many questions as you want as well as WIP images of your progress for the team to show/ask/review/suggest/critique

[allen0410]

Hi Enrique

thx for your quick reply and comments

I would prefer to work on hardsurface/buildings also i will be using 3ds max is this ok?

do i get concept art of what i need to model?also

how do i know if somone else is working on the same task as me? (is there a tracking doc) also

If i have finished a model where can i upload it?

shall I leave it unwrapped so someone can texture it?

sorry for the hugh amount of questions and thanks for your time.

[Enrique]

I would prefer to work on hardsurface/buildings also i will be using 3ds max is this ok?

Yes, it is ok as long as you can export the file to .DAE (which I think it's possible).

I think that some team members used 3dsmax. But the active 3D artists now are mainly using blender3D. I think there should be no problem.

do i get concept art of what i need to model?also

Normally yes. With Mauryans we are having some problems finding useful references. Mauryan (on 500BC-0AD) references are hard to find, but we have some of them around.

Usually you'll have some "artist freedom" as long as your designs are one way or another historically accurate

how do i know if somone else is working on the same task as me? (is there a tracking doc) also

We have a trac system http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ , but I think artists don't use it much (I never used it )

You can take a look to the Art Department forum and see if there is any task thread already in progress or start your own. We will try to keep the art roadmap updated soon.

If i have finished a model where can i upload it?

At first you can use this application thread for your first model. You can also install tortoise SVN to get the current developement version of the game.

Here's a guide to get it running http://trac.wildfire...rtoiseSVN_Guide

shall I leave it unwrapped so someone can texture it?

That depends on your ability. If you are able to unwrap/texture a model, it's always better to have it unwrapped/textured to export it into the game asap .

For buildings we usually have one or two "struct textures" that are shared by all civ's buildings. So normally, you only have to unwrap them into the texture(s).

sorry for the hugh amount of questions and thanks for your time.

Don't worry, as a new comer it's completely normal you have all this questions (and you'll have more ^^)

By the way, here's the artist design document: http://trac.wildfire...tDesignDocument

There are some outdated things, but you can gather some useful info from it

Last thing, some info to keep you up to date (to know what in the roadmap is done) The greek and iberian buildings revamp are done (except iberian corral if you want to give it a try), roman ships I think they're all done and walls as well.

Mauryan buildings/textures are currently being worked by Eggbird, one of our 3D artists team members. Once he has finished the first building and we have a better idea of the textures that are going to be used, we can help with the buildings to get the Mauryans in the game soon.

[Gen.Kenobi]

Hey Allen!

Welcome to our forums! You have an awesome portfolio! I really like that WW1 plane. Sounds smooth and low-poly. It's texture is just superb!

I'll try to answer your questions the best that I can.

We are an open-source development, so you can access all our current art assets from the SVN. You can either get the full code, via SVN - that receives updates daily with new art assets and programming stuff - or you can download the models and textures separately, so you can unwrap them on your models We recommend you to download the full code, so you can start to get yourself familiar with the basic Art Pipeline (it's for blender, but I believe you'll be able to adapt it to your 3ds needs ). If you wish, you could also read the Art Design Document, as a reference, since it needs some updates here and there.

Well, we don't work currently with Concept Art. They used to do so, around the old days - 2003/2004 - when the game was in early and closed development state. But there are some nice works that could serve as inspiration for you in the website. Buildings and Units here. But we mostly use historic images and references found around the internet.

You can pick anything you would like to do, and get it done, as a starters task. We have a priority list as Enrique said, for Alpha 11, if you take something from there and do, it would help us a lot.Them, as you progress you'll be assigned to tasks, or you'll be free to do whatever you like - that's pretty much the way it's working for us right now.

You can simply post a picture of your done model here - ingame too if you wish, to show that you know your way around the pipeline (that's not really necessary, but it's a plus when the artists can get their stuff ingame(i just learned that, and I joined back in 2010 - them, we'll work your way into the team with SVN commit access

I hope my explanation works

Anyways, welcome again, and I look forward to see your already awesome work, now for 0ad!

Best regards,

- Daniel

EDIT: Enrique beat me to it. I was already writing the reply when I had to answer the phone Sorry.

[MishFTW]

Welcome to the forums Alen! I like your killer ant

Other than that I don't really have much to contribute here

[allen0410]

Hi

Thanks for answering my questions with the help was very useful

Ive downloaded tortoise SVN and also got a program which will convert my models to DAE Collada.

Ive had a read of the art design document to get the better understanding of the art pipeline, but was unable to get the pyrogenesis 3ds max plugin working with my version of max (2012), so i may need someone else to do the propping when I start modeling, unless there is another solution.

let me know when the Mauryan buildings are ready to model, or any other models that need doing.

Thanks

Allen

[Gen.Kenobi]

We don't use the PMD file type anymore, so there's no need to bother with the 3ds max plugin

We now use only DAE files. The engine can read those, so it's much easier to export.

Anyways, you don't have to wait for the Mauryan buildings... On this list, despite being outdated in some areas, there are some nice stuff that needs new models and updating.

How would you feel doing new variations for the Iberian Venerated monument?

[allen0410]

ok I can DAE files.

would be happy to start on the variations on the Iberian Venerated monument, I will upload my progress on this topic.

[allen0410]

Here is 3 versions of the possible Venerated Monument. Not 100% happy with them myself, might be a bit to clean looking and not fit in with other building alike. feedback on any direction to go with them would be appricated.

[allen0410]

quick update

is this shape better?, will texture similar to existing monument.

Edited August 17, 2012 by allen0410

[Enrique]

Hi Allen!

Those are looking good!

I like the number 1 on your first image, and that new shape also looks interesting, let's see it textured we can use both as variations if needed.

Keep it up!

[Gen.Kenobi]

Yeah! They are looking great!

Let your creativity fly! Add more details! Do different shapes, with different textures! Don't forget to keep it somehow, historically based!

Keep it up, mate!

[allen0410]

hey

This is what ive been workin on

Both pictures are the same model, just mapped the texture differently.

1)

2)

[Enrique]

Hi Allen, excuse my late answer, I've been out on vacation...

I like the second textured one! looks nice! but the texture in angled parts looks stretched, try unwrapping those parts again and reduce stretching.

Other than that, it's looking nice! Have you thought or planned to add a statue in top of it?

[allen0410]

thanks for the feedback, ill remap the base and angled parts.

As for the statue on top, should i model it within the monument model or should i use a dummy within max as a prop statue node??

[Enrique]

As for the statue on top, should i model it within the monument model or should i use a dummy within max as a prop statue node??

You can do it in both ways, since it's just an statue on top of the altar is just a matter of few seconds to split both meshes and add a prop point on the altar, so you can also do it together if you want

[allen0410]

just a quick render of updated texture. also what should i use for the statue texture?

[Enrique]

just a quick render of updated texture. also what should i use for the statue texture?

Nice, looking better. I think the pillar should be higher, It's hard to tell without a unit/structure to compare. You can try to import the current altar used in the game to make it with similar size if you want.

For the statue, you can use a goldish texture like this one: http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=22601&PHPSESSID=8j9cp2c29uhm8gbc20dmsutr02. And make adjustments once you have the statue.

[allen0410]

I originally imported, what I thought was the altar from the game, but after double checking the scale against other buildings the altar i was using as scale reference was tiny, is this wrong or does the game engine scale it??. The model file is called iber_sb_mon_1. ive check throught other iber models for another altar but cant find any. is it named differently?. I could just scale my altar by eye against the other iber buildings? but i would like to get the scale correct as u suggested by using the altar from the game.

The iber_sb_mon_1 model is the untextured model.

Thanks

[Enrique]

That's the model, I don't know why its so small when you import it. I tried in blender and it imports in the correct scale. The textures that uses that sb_mon1 is iber_sb1.png in art extures\skins\structural

I can tell you to get the scale that the pillar is as tall as the handrail on the second floor of the temple. I hope it helps.

[allen0410]

update

scaled the model up, modeled a small bull for the top of altar. or should i model a different animal?

[Enrique]

update

scaled the model up, modeled a small bull for the top of altar. or should i model a different animal?

Yes, you should model a different animal, we already have a bull for the iberian altar statue. I'm not sure which animal may be historical accurate besides the bull... a lion maybe?

Someone with more knowledge on the area may post and enlighten us?

[Shield Bearer]

Yes, a lion would do

Your doing a great job of this, bro. Keep it up

[allen0410]

update

modeled and textured lion