Rebuilding an Engine

In recent weeks, I decided to revisit an old project that I had started towards the end of 2012. ‘The Engine’ that I built all those years ago was not all that I wanted it to be. I had left it in a rather sorry state. When I opened up the Max file, I was greeted with a piece of work that was clearly in need of some attention.

The mesh was a mess, and the design was borne out of what I could achieve at the time rather than what I really wanted to build.

So, a few weeks ago I set myself a challenge…..

An interpretation of the 4-stroke Internal Combustion Engine

The Creation(of rotational motion) through Chaos(Explosions!). That pretty much sums it up.

I have loved engines ever since I can remember. I used to draw them when I was younger. I was always trying to make vehicles that I could drive. I loved cars and I loved go-karts and model aircraft and buggies and, well, any vehicle with an engine.

In 1995 my dad bought me a 160cc ‘Briggs and Stratton’ engine from a Cash Converters in Subiaco. I remember having it running at idle on the brick path one day. It was vibrating all over the place like a crazed animal. It scared me a little but at the same time I was fascinated by it.

To me it was ‘alive’…

Content optimisations in BlastPoints

BlastPoints was a game that Pub Games released on iOS and Android back in 2013.

Check out the following video (Blastpoints Trailer) , for some insight into what BlastPoints was all about.

One of the challenges we faced during development, was delivering a quality experience across a large number of devices with varying hardware specifications. At the time, high quality 3D mobile games were arguably still in the early years, with many of them being developed by larger companies using proprietary engine technology. Not only that, but there were several different mobile chipsets each requiring a different texture format and each, having their own associated challenges.

We wanted BlastPoints to reach as many of these devices as possible, so we had to come up with a few clever ways to keep our package size and draw calls to a minimum.

Our biggest overhead was sure to be content, with planned content for future updates set to be a regular thing. Textures and skeletal meshes were two of the more significant performance bottlenecks and we needed a system or feature that would allow us to optimise our use of both.

Unreal engine 3 had such a feature, but the trick came in figuring out how to use it and then designing a system that would work easily for content creators moving forward.

A few of us devised a solution and I designed a rig to allow us a high level of flexibility for our content design. The following is an internal guide produced to help streamline the development process for the members of our art team.

Although UE3 has since been superseded by UE4, several of the concepts still have value and you may find it an interesting read.

Enjoy!

Mesh Compositing in Unreal Engine 3

Rebound Environmental Assets : Atmosphere Turbine

I have been working on a few things over the last several months and after hitting a few walls with one of them, decided to knock out a few quick level assets for one of our current projects. Trawling through some concept art on Rebound led me to a particular level paint over done by one of our contract concept artists. It looks like some sort of high end commercial air conditioning vent and given the context of the project in question, I decided to reference it as such.

Initial Rebound level ‘paint over’ concept by Adrienne Giuliano