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Done and Dusted! (Under the carpet in the hope that no one will ever find it...)

3ds max transit van university

So today marks the hand-in date for the van project I've been doing for the past few weeks during game production! I had great fun during this project, and a hell of a lot of stressing occurred! Due to having two weeks of intensive workshops, it meant I wasn't able to work on my van as much as I'd have liked to (wah). For this project, the brief required me to model and texture a Ford Transit van of my choice. I had to gather a range of reference images of my chosen van, and any details such as badges/lights etc. The van has to be under 5000 triangles so I’ve had to plan out what my limit is for each area of the van. I’ve also got 3 texture sheets to work with: one 1024/1024 32bt tga for the main body of the van including an alpha channel for semi-transparent windows.  One 512x512 for the interior, and one 128/128 for the lights. It’s extremely important to follow these guidelines as it ensures that the model will work in a game. I encountered a stupid amount of problems when making my textures, the odds definitely weren't in my favour to say the least. Although I did manage to remove all of my nGons...which is a start! However, I feel as though I’ve learnt a hell of a lot throughout this project and if I had the time to make another there would be a lot of things I’d change. I’m still figuring out how to use the mind boggling program that is 3DS Max and although it may not always show, I think I’ve made a lot of progress since I made the Dalek! Or as I've taken to calling it, a very oddly shaped wonky cylinder.

3/4 view (front)

3/4 view (rear)

So now this project has been completed, we've all been set a new one! This time we've got to model a low poly Gladiator with 2500 tris and 300 for any extras such as weapons & armour. I'm reeeeeaaaallly excited about this project and so far I've had a few attempts at box and strip modeling the body during my free time to see which method I prefer. Unlike the van, I've planned my time out better and have made myself a timeline on what areas I need to work on each week. So adios half transparent box, and hola hopefully successful Gladiator!