Level Design Insperation

The game that featured a really unique level design is "Super Paper Mario" on the Wii I believe. What makes this game really unique is that the game perspective can be changed from 2D to 3D. So from the start the game has this really retro 2D platforming game feel, but a little way into the game you gain the ability to change the perspective of the game to 3D to overcome obstacles and challenges. The trailer below demonstrates how this game mechanics work:


The reason I choose the game is because I really enjoyed playing 2D platformed in the early and mid 90's, super Mario for example. And I really want to re crate the fun, look and simplicity of a 2D platformed, with an added 3D twist!

End of Project 1

Start of Project 2

One last image : )

Finished character

Here is a rendered picture of my finished character:

Finished animation

I put this video together to show off my character, This includes the walking animations and some rather excellent 3D views. Please enjoy.



I am pretty happy with the way my character turned out, if only I could import it into unity without any mesh loss...

Where are my faces??

Just when I got my model all done and textured, Unity gives me a huge kick in the nuts. When I imported my Mesh some 20% of the faces have become invisible (As seen in the below picture), and also the animation is messed up :(. I tried to find out why but I am stumped. Cant find any reasons.



But at lest I got a the mesh all textured and animated, and I am pretty happy with it : )

UV map

Here Is my totally crazy UV map, I finally got it sort it (Like a puzzle :)

After countless days and countless seams, I think I managed to cut up my UV map so at least it makes some sense (only took me 4 tries).



I will add the textures tonight, since I am running out of time I hope it all works out

The character of many faces....

Here is my problem, the UV map that I finally managed to unwrap (took countless hours) is so complex it leaves me scratching my head and thinking what the hell do I do now. I started looking into other methods of texturing, like texture painting or vortex painting for example, but I cant be 100% sure that Unity will like that... O well I will try and sort this UV map out.

Development

I decided to post some development images of my character, just so people can see the process...

Little change in character's characteristics

Since I was told that the characters walking animation is not that good, I decided to change the character just a little. So from now on the character will be using the Tree's "Roots" to get around and preform actions. I want to make it so the roots will grow as the character needs it. Will hope to have some new concepts of the characters actions and also hoping to upload some texture shots.

Thank god for that extension! yay

Update

I found out that making the roots on my character 3D is not the best way to go, because once I start animating the movement there will be problems with clipping. Also there are way too many polygons that make up the character. So I decided to start again, but this time keeping polygon count in mind, and I will also make the roots of the character a little less complex.

Update

Here an update of how my character is coming along in blander.

you can see the characters basic shape and also the roots are coming along nicely.

It might be a little hard to get the textures on, but I am not up to that stage as of yet.

Update

I decided to try and create roots in 3D for now. Might be a little hard, but I will give it a go.

Character Concepts

Here are some character concepts I have designed:

Character: Stump


This character is called Stump, Stump is a rather heavy creature who jumps around like a rabbit. A special ability of Stump is that he can actually dig himself underground leaving only the tree stump on his head visible.

Stump is around 1.5M tall and .85M Wide









Character: Puddle

This characters is called Puddle, Puddle's entire body is made of water, it can do some neat stuff like transform itself into many shapes and forms. Puddle is tiny and can only move on water or other wet surfaces

Puddle is around 1.5cm Tall and 1cm Wide (this can very from shape to shape).









Character: Roots

This character is called Roots, this gigantic character is huge, while he is very slow, he is also very strong. It's very hard to tell what this character looks like because his whole body has been coverd by the roots of a tree, which is kind of an advantage because this gives him the ability to easily camouflage.

Roots is around 5m tall and 2M wide.

Update

Made some concept sketches of some characters for my game, but because the scanner in the digital media lab does not work i will have to find other means to upload the pictures onto my blog.

Character pictures and descriptions should be uploaded by tonight.