3D Week 2 – Creating Crates

Greetings!

So, as the title suggests This week of 3D class, we’ve been creating crates. Three crates to be exact. One theme for each crate.

#1 Sci-fi

The pure characteristics of science fiction is sterile surfaces and everything having a function, except for lights, lights are just put all over the place because it looks cool. Oh, and control panels! Everything needs control panels. Often this theme uses simple, geometric shapes with smooth textures.

This is concept art from the upcoming game Star Citizen. A game where you fly around the universe being awesome.  And as is demonstrated, very sterile, simple shapes, and light everywhere.

So that’s the interior How about the cityscape?

Very grandiose, simple shapes. And might I add that there are lights everywhere.

Halo 4, for those not familiar, is a game set in the sci-fi theme and also has these geometric shapes and unnecessary lights. One thing I’ve noticed while playing a ton of Halo is that compared to other sci-fi games Halo’s architecture (specifically Forerunner architecture) can be quite aggressive.

Crate – Weapons Crate

Since I was a little toddler (almost) the game I’ve stuck with the longest is the Halo franchise. So when I thought about how the crate would look I wanted something in the style of Halo. And to not just make a simple crate I decided to create a weapons crate. A simple design similar to those found within Halo.

As I said before, human tech in Halo is very square and simple. And so is this crate! What would’ve been something fun to do would’ve been to make something similar but smaller, and give it a case handle, and make it like a mobile weapon stash. But that is something for another time.

It was very quick to create, since it is so simple. One thing I could do is separate upper and lower piece to make it a bit more functional, but seeing as we’re not going to animate them I felt it was unnecessary.

#2 Medieval

The gritty medieval setting. My favorite is when people use this theme and makes it really dark, not brightness wise, but thematically. I personally think that dark medieval fantasy is the best.

The medieval theme is mostly used together with fantasy. And so that is what I look to the most, since I’m a sucker for it.

The Witcher immediately pops into my head when thinking medieval. It is a gritty but still beautiful world. Witcher has everything that I think a medieval themed game should have. Strife between rich and poor people, superstition and fairy tales everywhere, although here they come to life. Fear controlling peoples lives and so on.

It was from Witcher’s royal and rich quarter I got my idea for the crate of this theme. The props found in this quarter are very ornate and over the top. Gold, gold everywhere. And reds.

Lichdom: Battlemage is also a game I’ve been playing extensively, also one of the fantasy genre. Although the game does not have such an expanded world as The Witcher, it does have similar aesthetics when it comes to struggle between rich and poor.

Looking closer at it it seems to be a big theme in medieval themed games, such as Fable for example.

Crate – The Rich Man’s Chest

No, it’s not a pair of man-boobs (it’s funny because if you where rich in medieval times you would probably be fat as you could eat all you want). I’m the best at jokes.

It looks simple does it not? Yeah, I want the texture to do the work. I’ve worked with 3D for a good few years, but I’m still more comfortable in 2D. So my work with this crate/chest will mostly be shown in the texture I hope. Also, 3DS Max is not the best application to use when creating ornate objects, it would be better had I taken some time with it in Zbrush. Maybe another time.

#3 Urban Contemporary

The first game I think of when thinking about an urban theme is Grand Theft Auto. You could say that GTA is a sort of caricature of the real world, making everything insanely crazy at times. and an even more extreme example might be Saints Row.

There are not that many games that take place in an urban environment, maybe because it’s not that appealing? I mean we see it every day. Oh wait, just remembered another popular game, The Sims.

What then makes an urban theme? Well, simple. What we see around us in bigger cities today. Cement, brick, graffiti(?). Boring gray squares.

Side note – Me, After the Fact

FPS. Many shooters take place in sci-fi settings. But there are also many in urban environments. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner. The problem there is that they are all very generic, I subjectively think that games based in urban environments would do better in either a future theme of medieval, because the world we live in today (I think) is incredibly boring looking.

Crate – A Valuable Shipment

I’m not too impressed with urban themed games, I find them boring most of the time. So when choosing this theme for my third crate I wanted to create something generic with a twist. I thought about the docks and big ships with all kinds of crates with differing contents. And then I also thought about Indiana Jones, because it’s just that good of a movie.

The Ark of the Covenant! It may be a regular crate made out of wood, but in it lies the Ark ready for shipment to some big secret building somewhere.

This might be on the borderline of actually being something urban contemporary. But I think there nothing a texture of some graffiti on the side of the box would fix.

My big struggle was to figure out just how detailed I would make the decor on the tog of the Ark. But I left it quite simple and if I would like to add details I’ll just do it with a texture as the Ark is mostly hidden inside the crate anyway.

Conclusion – The Two Sides of a Magnet

It’s interesting seeing how many of these themes have some tropes that follow them and rules almost that really makes them part of that theme. Color schemes, shapes, atmosphere. That was the most interesting thing about this whole thing, just viewing it in a bit of a different way than you usually would.

Crates, it’s a struggle to make a box interesting. It was a fun challenge, and from what I’ve noticed there has been quite a lot of freedom when it comes to just how creative we can be. Crate or chest about the same thing. So that was quite nice.

Having opened this window of perception I definitely look at games in a different way. Just asking myself questions like, “Why did they choose this color scheme?” Or, “Why these shapes in this alien structure?”

I actually started to write a rant about the difference between the human architecture, the covenant architecture and the Forerunner’s. All in the context of Halo of course. But it turned out to be too long so it got cut. I might make a blog post just for that rant. But till then, look it up and think about it yourselves.

That is all for today!

Have a good one!