Been working with the relatively new CryEngine 3 SDK recently. I like it (minus the occasional crash). The tough part is that I used to rely on Crysis assets/settings to quickly get the look I wanted, but now I have to create almost anything in the picture (textures, models, etc…). The ocean, for example, was completely overhauled and it takes A LOT of tweaking to get something I like…
Of course you could just capture the image visible directly in the editor, but in order to take screenshots of a higher resolution than what’s displayed in the view port you’ll have to follow this method. First make sure the console is visible (press the ‘~‘ key by default), then type in the following commands:
e_screenshot_width XXXX (sets the screenshot’s width in pixels)
e_screenshot_height XXXX (sets the screenshot’s height in pixels)
e_screenshot_file_format jpg/bmp/tga (sets the screenshot’s file format)
e_screenshot 1 (takes screenshot)
The image files will be saved in this directory: /Crysis (Wars)/Game/Screenshots/HiRes.
I’ve been reworking the overall organization of my character pipeline, and here’s the result. On the figure below you can see the way a model is broken down into basic building blocks which are then assembled into the final puppet.
The picture below shows in more details the overall Maya folder structure of a single character (let’s say a biped). In the right-hand side is a list of MEL scripts used to assemble all the pieces together.
The great thing in following such a precise organization is that you can then follow the same rules for any character you build without having to stop and wonder where you stored this or that file.
I’ve been working a lot lately on the technical side of things, all in preparation for the short. I’ll post some more tools when I get them ironed out, but for now here’s an update of my weight saving and loading tool called seithWeighTools. It’s made specifically for Maya 2011 (and up) and uses both MEL and Python code. And hopefully, it’s still very easy to use!
Update: It also works with Maya 2012!
This time I tried a portrait (quite different from the generic monster, you’ll agree) and was able to get there in about 2 hours. I feel like I’m starting to get a hold of it. Sculptris truly is a fantastic tool to quickly sketch an idea from scratch without having to plan anything ahead. A little bit like taking a blank sheet of paper and starting to doodle…
Another picture strip of a Sculptris sketch. Not really happy about where I ended up (not enough sense of design here), but at least I got much faster at shaping things up and it served as a good reminder about facial structure. I might decide to take this up again later and move it in another (hopefully more interesting) direction…
Here’s a picture strip of “fishboy” showing the progression of the sculpt from a simple ball to a completed sketch (before taking it to Zbrush to finalize it).
