Business Research: Gearbox Software

Gearbox Software was founded on February 16, 1999 by five members of the content team from the defunct developer Rebel Boat Rocker: Randy Pitchford, Brian Martel, Stephen Bahl, Landon Montgomery, and Rob Heironimus.

They started with developing expansions to Valve Software's Half-Life. They subsequently work on or helped with every expansion to the Half-Life game and have produced and work on such titles as Brother’s in Arms, Duke Nukem, to Alien: Colonial marines, ( but the less said about the Alien game the Better).

They are an American company based in Texas and currently have 187 employees.

Working for Gearbox studios would be a dream come true and from their catalogue of games you can see that they produced a lot of First Person and Third Person based games, but within very different settings, styles and themes. They have a diverse range of environments from realistic war settings to futuristic dystopias.

Some example Titles you may recognise:

One of the main reasons for wanting to work for this company they produced my all-time favourite game sagas Borderlands, and with the announcement of the 3rd game in series to be released in the autumn this year I am a super excited.

Borderlands in want for a better word is a BADASS game. It appeals to wide audience and incorporates an adventure looting game with a FPS. This accompanied with a fantastic storyline and a multitude of diverse characters, and displayed within a visually stunning style, it was everything an OCD comic book lover like myself needed.

The game is crazy, it has crazy characters, crazy weapons and a crazy game style, visually and to play. It has references to many other iconic games and the humour and story is what grasp your attention and the re-play and levelling capabilities mean hours and I mean hours of fun.

I will stop fan-boying now but in all honesty I would love to produce work for a Borderlands game. The art style is unique the design of vehicles character and is quite caricature but yet credible, plus the creatures and weapons within the game are just as entertaining as the main characters. Yes a gun can be entertaining, trust me play the game you’ll understand.

The mechanical characters, vehicles, and environment props, really are where I could see myself working on. The game has extremely wide an open maps that allow for exploration, and I can see myself dressing sets with props and creating the iconic Borderlands crate. The Borderlands crates are more than just crates there’s a distinct hierarchy of ammo, loot, and special crates throughout the games.

Borderlands has a tongue in cheek humour and it is very fresh with its comedy, the comedy is introduced via characters throughout gameplay and one other reason to be Borderlands fan is the most annoying yet amazing sidekick/ guide in a game, the Claptrap. A tiny robot with a massive ego, but an amazingly engaging character.

I feel that if I were to apply to Gearbox it would be to specifically work on a Borderlands title, as the other titles such as Brothers in Arms and Half Life have seemed to die down in recent times though there is talk of a new Half Life release coming soon.

I feel that I could adapt my style of working to the style of the games that they produce and I really love my war based games, but the way they have a dynamic change of style between series would take time to get used to. I would have to get a few years’ experience behind me before applying here of course but with a minimum require of 5years experience and having to apply for a working visa this would be a job in a couple of years after gaining experience.

Samurai Robot: Pre-Production

I decided for one of my projects that I wanted to produce a stylised character. I was in the repetition of producing props and vehicles and decided that I needed to show that I can also change my style of modelling and also show I am capable of producing characters. I was deciding between producing a hyper realistic samurai or Mechanical character, I wanted to try and stay with hard surface elements but wanted to show a variety of surfaces and textures during this piece.

I have a passion for hard surface modelling and wanted to replicate armour details and decided to try and design a concept mixing elements form traditional Samurai armour with a mechanical elements. There was another class member (a good friend) and we both decided we wanted to do a samurai character. I decided in order for there to be less competition between our two project to change my design to a robotic character with samurai influences.

As a start to the project I decided to research a variety of classical armour types and focussed into the samurai armours.

The pre-production of the project can be accessed from the link below ( Caution Spoiler Alerts):

Samurai Pre-Production PDF


I wanted to try and portray an underdog sort of character and reflect an unassuming appearance. I wanted the armour to create a sense of mystery about the character and also to reflect the hidden potential of the character. Samurai armour was very glorious and decorative and yet and crated a sense of power, I wanted to take inspiration from certain elements such as wrist and leg guards, shoulder pads, and assets, but to tone them down from being decorative, and more worn.

I looked into futuristic armours and more in depth into Mech designs. I found that Mech designs followed a very similar pattern and that I needed to create a slightly more original design or risks it looking like a modified version of a Mech character.

I decided that I wanted to keep humanistic elements to my design, a sort of android appearance. I developed a premise for the character as I thought this would help focus the character and perhaps help me clarify what exactly I wanted to produce. I had and idea but it needed polishing.

After I had worked out a story I found it easier to think how the character would work an feel to the audience, and I went back and re-searched elements further and then decided to concept some ideas.

 One thing I wanted to avoid, was to make the deign too heavily Samurai influenced, and to make it look like a lesser version of something that existed. I tried to keep the inspiration subtle and to work it into the design rather than juxtaposition objects and hope for the best. I played with a variety of ideas and played about with the amount sci-fi / samurai influence I put into each design.
 I decided to try and create a character that the audience could sympathise with so exaggerated the eyes and proportions of features  to make the character look younger, and this would to help reflect the underdog theme to the character.
 I narrowed down the character and decided to block out features as something that works in 2d will not always be achievable in 3d and will not always work as well. I decided to block out features and play about and tweak the design.

Once I was satisfied with proportions and  general fell of the piece I decided to go back and look at what weapons and assets I wanted to include. As I developed the premise for the character to be stranded in a western setting I decided to take a spin on the samurai katana and developed a gun sword as well as a more futuristic katana. I took influence form StarWars lightsaber pommels and looked in to sawed off shotguns with under mounted blades.

I decided that I wanted to try and keep the theme quirky and and yet try and hit upon the robotic android feel, the final textured gun will have a engraved patterns and details that relate to the character in a similar way that the Japanese did with their flint lock pistols.This detail will be sculpted into the base meshes in Z-Brush but I will take a majority of the details into the software in order to get the desired feel.

After finishing off the the test weapons I decided to play about with the belts and tassets ( the man skirt things) and I felt the need to add a rice paddock hat I liked the way it did help towards the samurai feel I think this needs a little more work to make it feel samurai like but still link with the robotic theme.

I found it easier to block out details and check scales my modelling as opposed to drawing turnaround sheets, however I did concept prior to modelling and always research and design before jumping into modelling.

There are  few areas I am going to revisit before finalising the design but I feel confident after the design is unwrapped and textured it will look more credible and convey the themes I desire.

There are a lot of organic shapes to unwrap as well as a mixture of hard surfaced details this is going to take a while to unwrap and lay out properly.

Let the fun begin and I will update when finished :) 

Please feel free to crit and comment, as always any feedback is greatly received.

Futuristic Bi-Plane: Finished

Sorry for the double post in one day but also finished the plane project.

Despite having near heart failure as my hard drive corrupted whilst saving and I couldn't access my work for any projects the plane took a day longer than required as I tried to salvage the documents.
 However the cause and a solution to life's problems Alcohol and You tube yielded a result where I recovered all my work and saved money in the process.
 Needless to say I was close to breaking point when it happened but remained calm -ish.

I took elements form the base mesh such as the fuselage and engine and decided to work upon these in Z-brush. I wanted to add some form of surface details and some mechanical looking sections such as rivets and cut detail into the fuselage.
 Also I needed to get used to Z-brush once again after and absence due to the OUTMODE project not requiring much Z-Brush work

Z-sculpts 

I used a variety of masking and custom alphas to produce the details and  played about with the the paint job trying to replicate a accurately as I could my concept designs. Each sculpt was fairy easy to produce and i quickly managed to get some effective maps out of them. The really lovely thing about Z-brush was being able to get metallic surface shaders instantly. Not only did it save me trying to replicate the material in Maya numerous times over but it also showed me how the paint work would be affected by the material pre-set.

I tried out a variety of shaders from chrome surfaces to toy plastic and oddly I found myself preferring the more plastic like surfaces as they created the desired effect better.
 The only catch I found was trying to get the Z-Brush mat-caps out of Z-Brush into Maya and despite following a tutorial to the letter I was unable to get them working correctly. ( However with a bit more practice i'm sure i will be able to).

Once I had extracted the maps and desired surface textures I took theses into Photoshop and played and tweaked with details in order to get them slightly more accurate to liking.

I wanted to create a sort of worn and washed out paint effect as opposed a pristine new one surface, I played about with the diffuse and specular maps until I was satisfied.

Before taking the mesh into the MarmosetToolbag2 software, I played about in Maya to try and replicate surface details and materials. However the curse of using Marmoset is that you lack the patience to wait for renders when you can use MTB2 and get instant results. I wanted to try and get some glow effects off the engine to mimic the arc reactor from Iron Man. I though the cold blue light would make for a good contrast and also bounce light of the the reflective engine. In Maya I spent too long trying to tweak it and get it precise as unfortunately when applying a glow material you need to render the whole image as it will not show in the IPR render view. This took a while, and when sleep deprived patience is not your ally.

 I played about and managed to get a relatively solid result. I then exported the mesh into MTB2 and then set up the lighting and materials. Low and behold what took ages in Maya took seconds in the software and the glow effect was completed within seconds. I REALLY love MSTB2.

Renders and Maps

I was really pleased with the materials settings in MTB2 and also found they had custom pre-sets for metals and plastics. I played around with these for a while but decided to stick with the default shader and custom settings. I posed the plane and decided it looked ok but needed a little bit more something to ground the image but not to the extend of modelling an hangar, or something too ostentatious. 

I decided I should pose the plane and a plinth of some sort with a surface to break the plinth up and add some details to make it more credible.
 I took a basic cylindrical object and played about in Z-Brush to create a rocky environment set upon a plinth.

Posed and Plinth

I angled the plane slightly and added bullet stream coming from the barrels as if the plane was doing a fly by.

 I added some crates and applied a chrome texture to the outside of the plinth just to create the diorama sort of feel.

 I think this grounded the image better and makes the piece feel finished s opposed to stuck on a background. With more time I would love to model a hangar and work further details into the plane wings. I finished the project on schedule and and this leaves me the remainder of Easter finish my Samurai and Locomotive sculpts. 

I feel that the project came out well and I once gained learned valuable texturing skills and continued to improve my understanding of Z-Brush and third party software.

Plane Video

A quick Video to Finish

To quote Cage the Elephant ( a good band) " There ain't no rest for the wicked !!"

Time to crack on and start the Samurai Robot project. As always Crits and Comments are welcome and appreciated.

OUTMODE Assets: COMPLETED PROJECT

Its been a while since my last post but for Good reason, I have been a very busy bee and managed to complete everything for the project. With the deadline I set myself looming I decided to finish and get the assets functioning into the games engine. There were a few problematic areas and after addressing the various issues found its too long since my last post

The last couple of weeks have been a cycle of MODEL< TEXTURE<  RENDER < REPEAT not much time for sleep at all. However I managed to grasp an understanding of importing and setting  up work within the UDK engine. I have learned how to create custom collision meshes, and how to ensure these work correctly within engine. Needless to say with any games engine software the bugs are what took up most of my time fixing.

For this I project I created an array of simple and complex assets, and it would have taken the director a while to work out each material and where to assign it to on each model. In order to save him some time and introduce myself to the UDK editor software, I  spent a week setting up packages so that all he had to do after receiving the file was drag and drop them into place. It took me a week because of labelling and testing all of the assets and also learning what I was doing as I was going along.

I handed all the packages over to the director and then began my next project of completing the BI-Plane project.

Below are the final presentations sheets  for each asset. I learned how to use the software Marmoset Toolbag 2  as on forums it was recommended for games assets as it has the capability of showing real-time renders and it renders out high quality work quickly. It did not disappoint. The software saved me hours of render time, the amount of control you have over lighting and textures within the software is incredible and it is shown in real time, no need to wait for slow renders and then tweaking.

The Assets:

Trams & Mine Karts :

Cranes:

Cars:

So it was nice to finally see a light at the end of the tunnel for this project, but rendering and creating videos ate up a load of time and has set me back a few days on other deadlines but I am sure I will be able to catch up.

I made and effort to spend more time getting each render to a good standard ready for my website as I am starting to get a lot of work out of the projects I have completed. There will be in engine videos to come as well as individual turnaround videos when the finally upload.

I am glad I tackled this project first as it has warmed me up and made me aware of techniques that I wouldn't have known about if not for completing this project. You can see through out I also improved from asset to asset and I personally feel more confident with texturing despite my earlier maps not exactly being perfect. I have produced work that overall I feel happy with, despite knowing there are key areas I can improve still. I aim to take what I learned further  in my next project and improve on areas of weakness.

Please let me know what you think any crits and comments are always welcome.

OUTMODE Asset Production: Cars Textured

Its taken me a bit longer than expected but I managed to texture the cars ready for the game. I ran into a bit of trouble with the the UV's but I had to go back and redo some work so it set me back a little. However I cracked on and got there eventually.

Starting Base Flat Colours

I approach texturing by adding flat base colour and working out where the corresponding uv shells  are on the map. As I went back to the UV process I learned more about correctly unwrapping and laying them out. I unwrapped all my models internally in Maya 2014 and Painted Textures in Photoshop.

The cars are going to sit just outside the playable boundaries and the player will not get extremely close to the models even so I had to try and replicate a fairly realistic feel to the piece.

Once I applied colour flats I worked on the details and developed the rust and damage layers. I decided to try and make the car feel as though you could inhale the dust and grime off them so I went over the top with the rust and weathering effects.

I continued to experiment with variation of marks and levels of contrast with the details until I was fairly happy. I went back over details to try and make them more credible and conform to the weathering and ageing process.

For some final touches I added some bullet holes and played about with the size and frequency. I decided to keep them small and wide spread as the model looked more like a dalmatian dog when they were larger.

 I repeated the process for the other 4 cars but I wont kill you with words but here are the result.

Larda 

a quick size comparison to the Pick-up Truck.

Audi 

Jeep

Van

After Producing a Single texture map I was able to rapidly produce another variation just by filling in a block colour over another layer. I made three variations for each vehicles and to try and break the repetition of the same textures during the game. I made sure the colours were quite bland and not extremely bright as to try and fit with the scrapyard theme.

Below Images show colour variations and testing.

The Variations of each Vehicle

After producing the textures I then went and scaled the models down to the correct size and started experimenting with  positioning them in a wall like structure like previously posted. The long wall may have to be broken into a few smaller sections and perhaps I can go back and make these sections tile across the map.

When I complete the Normal and specularity maps will upload the finished texture sheets along side the effects on each model. The next stage is to export the work and get them into engine and then finally tackle the rest of the assets left to finish. Once I clarify with the director I will also have to go and create collision meshes for the assets and export these alongside the models.

Personally feel that the project is coming along well, I will crack on with the other assets and hopefully by the end of next week will have a majority of the work finished and ready to upload.