David has recently given Sintel an updated rig (with cool IK controls!). This is good news, but it also means a lot of our animations are going to have to be re-done. Instead of spending my month re-doing them to a half decent level, I thought it would be a good idea to let the community contribute to the project by helping out with the animation.
That is where you guys come in! Bellow is a link to the Sintel rig blend file. It also comes with instructions and a rig layer guide. What we are asking is that you either improve the current animations that are in the file, or make your own! Its up to you.
So its been a while since we updated this blog…yeah I know it seems like we say that every time.. Sorry about that..
Anyway during this period of absent updates we have been busily working away on a multitude of game related projects, from optimization to new content creation.
The docks level has had its poly count considerably reduced, without impacting the visuals I may add. Its also been adorned with voice over’s from the talented folk over at the digital bard (no need to read those pesky subtitles .. Unless you want to of course). We’re also taking steps to up the fun factor of the level, so look forward to some interesting game play improvements in the not too distant future.
The cave troll has been receiving some much needed T.L.C. Unfortunately he seems to have intimacy issues, and since we can not afford therapy you’d better prepare to engage with a much more formidable opponent. On top of his new found aggression, he’s been joined by an equally deadly companion. If you think this all sounds a bit unfair on Sintel, fear not as her combat system is currently being updated.
The bandit model is now game ready, you can check out a time-lapse of his transformation from high to low res below:
Geoffrey has been undergoing a complete revamp and many new characters are in various stages of development.
Below is a time-lapse of one of the new characters head being created:
Continuing our efforts to make Sintel the game look as good possible we are also experimenting with new material set ups, depth of field and even screen space ambient occlusions.
One of the new material effects can be seen below, its still a work in progress but we think it shows promise:
OK so I may have been stretching it a bit when I put real time SSS in the title. As I’m sure you’ve realized it’s a fake SSS effect, no subsurface scattering calculations going on. However it is real time and does not have any discernable effect on frame rate. (The slow frame rate in the video is due to the video capture)
Finally I know a lot of you want to know when we will be releasing the demo. I’m afraid we still can not give you a firm date, as there are still many things we wish to add and improve.
A while back we were contacted by Digital Bard, an indie team of professional audio engineers, translators, voice actors, and musicians. They have worked with projects such as Zeno Clash, Eufloria, The Ball and Divinity II. We are pleased to announce that we will be working with them to localize the game / website, in addition to in-game voice overs. Voice overs were not originally planned to be in the game because I felt voices could make or break the game experience. I am confident that Digital Bard will do a more than wonderful job. We are very excited to be working with them and we can’t wait to see what they come up with.
In other news, Noah will be returning soon, David is sculpting and converting characters to their low poly versions, and I am working on improving the fighting system, making it less awkward. Also, we got a twitter account. You can follow us for more frequent but smaller updates.
In the last post Malcolm mentioned ‘big news’. The big news is that we plan on releasing a demo to the public pretty soon. We made a small incomplete demo for the blenderartists.org competition but we want to polish it up before we release it. We’ve been working hard on improving gameplay systems based on the feedback we got from the pre-demo.
Recently, my graphics card went out of commission. My computer has been having issues for months but it finally gave out this week. I am currently running an extra card a friend had lying around. I would replace the old one, but my motherboard is too outdated to support a newer card. Looks likes I’m going to have to build a new computer sooner than I thought.
The reason why we don’t update as often as we’d like is because I have very little free time. I am a student, and I’m employed as a Conceptual Game Designer. Any spare time is spent doing homework and working on Sintel The Game. I will do my best to give you guys more news about whats going on. Thanks!
Hey there everbody, Malcolm here; story writer/ dialog writer. This is my first time posting for the site and I noticed that some of you have stated that we don’t post enough. The team would just like you all to know that we haven’t forgot about our awesome fans; we are just far to busy at the moment to make any casual posts to the site.
I have however been given the official word from Jon to tell you all that you should expect something HUGE! within the near future. Also you are more likely to find quick updates on our facebook page at:
Its been a while since we posted anything on the blog, so Jon asked me to give you a quick overview of our modeling workflow, and kindly let me show you some of the stuff I’ve been working on.
Below is the first iteration of the bandit character (an enemy Sintel will have to face during the game).
Because the bandit was the first character I had made for the game I was not totally certain about the style I’d try to create him in. As a result he has been subject to quite a lot of change during his creation. Even as I write this, I have only just finished re-modeling his head (below is a time-lapse of the process).
Below is just a quick mash up of the new head on the bandits body. Its only temporary but I wanted to check how well it fits. Seeing it altogether often gives a better read of the character; I’ve already seen a few things id like to go back and tweak .. But that’s a post for another day me thinks.
Heads in Sintel the game have some unique properties: some main characters like Geoffrey have their own unique mesh; however, many of the NPCs have interchangeable heads. We hope this system of “switching” heads and other accessories will enable us to fill the game with a variety of different looking characters whilst keeping unique asset creation to a minimum. To make head creation easier and to allow our system better flexibility, all NPC heads are created from these two base meshes, modeled by Noah.
The work flow used to create the in game characters varies from model to model and often includes a bit of back-and-forth between myself and Noah. Generally however I will start a character in blender by creating some very simple box meshes. From there I’ll either use the sculpting tools in Blender or export out to ZBrush. I use the sculpting tools to rough in the character and try to get a feel for the type of person/animal/monster its going to be. I often work with a variety of different reference images, from which I attempt to take the best bits.
The fact that I often don’t have a clear idea for the finished character is one reason why I like working with simple geometry. The lack of solid/defining topology allow lots of different ideas to be tested quickly and easily. Once I feel I’ve got the overall shape down pat ill move on to defining muscles and other secondary details. At this point I have to make a decision whether to continue working with the simple geometry, or to create some new geometry which better defines the form. Again the decision made here varies a lot, but as a rule of thumb I usually create new geometry if the object has clothes or a lot of separate accessories, and stick with the basic geometry if the character is relatively simple.
If I do create new geometry, I always try to keep individual parts as separate objects (the bandit for instance is split into 11 objects). This can be advantageous for a variety of modeling tasks as well as normal map creation.
Once I’ve finished creating the character and the rest of the team have had a chance to look it over and give their comments and critiques, I send it over to Noah. This is the point where the in-game character is born. Noah builds geometry over my sculpt maintaining as much of the form as possible whilst keeping the poly count low. Once this re-topology step is complete we have both a high and low poly version of the asset. From this point, all that’s left to do is bake down all the tasty high res detail into the lowpoly mesh.
And, voilà, we have a completed in game character. Well, minus texturing, rigging, weight painting, animation, game logic….
