STARTING DATE: 16th of July, 2004.. Friday MIDNIGHT
CLOSING DATE: 19th of September, 2004. Sunday MIDNIGHT
This Challenge is open to Australians and New Zealanders only
The main prize for the winner of the challenge is a fully licensed seat of 3D Studio Max 6, worth around $5,500AU, courtesy of Discreet Asia Pacific.
The second prize is Hyperfocal Terrain, a professional texture compilation featuring 92 high-resolution terrain textures including grass, rock, sand, gravel and more, worth USD $99, [url="http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com"]courtesy of Hyperfocal Designs[/url].
THEME:
Survival/Horror genre (for a nice explanation on Survival/Horror, please read Pantmonger's post on this page below)
RULES AND GUIDELINES:
Model a medium polygon games model for use in a survival/horror genre game.
Must be an original concept but can be based on an existing franchise.
Model can be anything from a boss, a minion to an infected player.
No cannabilism. You cannot re-use old models and textures, it has to be new content!
Photosourcing permitted but MUST stipulate what for and how much is your own work.
VOTING CRITERIA:
General Aesthetics
Scariness
Does it fit into the theme
How effective it is as an in-game model
MODELLING REQUIREMENTS:
8000 - 8500 triangles. (you can use less triangles)
2 x 512x512 32bit TGA diffuse texture. (8 x 256x256 etc)
Alpha channel can be used for opacity, specular or bump map.
REQUIRED SUBMISSIONS:
Textured perspective screengrab.
Untextured ortho screengrabs with wireframe (front, side, back etc). for use in judging mesh creation.
If using either the spec, opacity or bump map then 1 or 2 lit renders showing the effect, pure software renders only, no external effects allowed.
Final textured flats.
UVW flats.
Wireframe shot.
Examples of screenshots dimensions for submission coming!
Optional:
Money Shot, go to town.
Brief about the model and its role in the game.
Post your work in progress and submissions in a new thread in the modeller challenge section like: Sumea Challenge #6 -3D- Yourname
Thanks to Malus for coming up with the brief, and use this thread to post any questions you may have!!!
Survival Horror is the theme.. Games that are in the survival horror genre are Silent Hill and Resident Evil.. so think of grotesque, fleshy, undead, possibly mutant, creatures/humans.... I think one of the voting criterias (apart from general aesthetics, can it fit in a game etc) will be how well you pull off making something scary. So make it scary!
Okay, so is survival/horror is just something that is scary? I?m just wondering what the difference is to fantasy? Like would something scary from LOTR?s for example be survival/horror? Or does it have to fit into the stereotypical survival/horror game? If that?s the case, I guess the character can only be undead, unholy, or mutated. Er, hope I?m on the right track.
Sorry about all my questions, but I?m confused because I don?t play survival/horror games much. I?m under the impression that the bad guys are all undead or unholy. Is that right?
And about posting concept art ? I think that fit?s into the ?Post your work in progress? requirement. So yeah, I think it?s necessary to show. [:)]
The survival horror genre is usually set in modern day, its creatures for the most part are perversions / mutations of man or other animals.
The creatures usually come from a theme consistent within the setting.
Examples
Resident Evil: The creatures are the results of experiments, done by the umbrella corporation, into the re-animation of dead tissue, with an eye towards the creation of unstoppable biological weapons.
Parasite Eve2: Corporate experiments into granting humans immortality whatever the cost, whatever form humanity might take to achieve it.
Silent Hill: A demon rules Silent Hill (having been successfully summoned in the first game) and he calls the mentally disturbed to him, to see if they will fall and become one with his cause. Those who enter Silent Hill are attacked by manifestations of their own fears and perversions.
The other main defining feature of the genre is that you are alone (or there are only a handful of others about) and ill equipped to deal with the situation. Lightly armed, if at all, fast running out of ammo etc the game is about running scared, choosing your battles, rationing your supplies, in short, surviving through the horror (Hence the genre title).
This influences the creature designs in so far as they are, for the most part, not unstoppable titans, or quick clever creatures dodging your blows. They for the most part are slow horrors, ever moving forward, ever closing in, legion in number, designed fill the player with the knowledge that every bullet they spend only stalls the inevitable and sooner or later they will fall at their dread hands.
Other then that I suggest you google for visual reference. Rent resident evil on DVD or something along those lines.
Pantmonger
Ooooo.. Horror! Love it! Anyway, I?ve got 2 questions.
Firstly, in rules and guidelines you?ve said nothing about how many characters you can actually submit. Should this go without saying, or can I infact do more then 1 character? Of course even if I do more then 1 it?ll still be to the specified tri limits.
Secondly, there?s probably a general discussion or rules about this somewhere but is nudity in anyway allowed in our designs? And no, I don?t intend on any thing pornographic, just wondering how ?bare? characters can be, if at all. My possible current design is a female who?s top half is unclothed.
Thanks, Thard
Moonunit: you can use any 32 bit file format that has an alpha channel.
Palantir: see Pantmongers explaination.
Livewire: As its not being judged on concepts, Concepts are an optional submission. If you do decide to post a concept I'm sorry but it needs to be your own concept only.
Pantmonger: Thanks for explaining survival / horror for everyone, its not about freddy kruegar mountain climbing if anyone thought that was it.
Discmage: Nightmares coming to life is pretty much the theme of these games, but generally they exist in a corporeal world so conceive of some way of the creatures being taken from your nightmares and made real then its all good. [:)]
Thardswrothe: I can't speak for Souri but I'd only like to see 1 mesh.
Nudity is up to Souri, its his site.
Cannabilism is using other mesh/texture assets as Wizenedoldman said, it makes for an unfair advantage when compared to those who have done it from scratch and it also makes it hard to judge your current skill level.
Yes, yes, I know its done alot in the industry, but thats for speed not a comp.
quote:Originally posted by eightbitnasty
nice brief, perfect. Different but still accessible [:)] Do you want our concepts for submission as well Souri?
The judges won't be looking at the concept pieces, so they aren't required for submission (so don't spend too much time polishing polishing them!). You're more than welcomed to post your concepts in your thread though! We all love to see them, and it's a great way to get advice!
quote:Originally posted by LiveWirecan i get a friend to do help out with the concept? i'm not to good at designing interesting characters past an initial idea, and i have friends who are really good at it.
No, it has to be your concept. If I allowed this, it's going to open up a big can of worms, I think.
Nudity is fine. Meshwise - 1 mesh. Whether you want to have two characters in that mesh is up to you, but it has to theoretically work in-game. If you have two characters standing next to each other, then that's obviously not going to work.
One final thing I have to stress. Following the brief is important! If you read the comments by the judges from previous challenges, you can tell they understand the importance of following a brief.. one example is the previous challenge where challengers had to produce a -marketable character- (that was one of the voting criteria), and I know many well made models were let down by that aspect... so follow brief - research suvival horror, do something *scary* (visually, and psychologically even), follow the rules and guidelines to the word..
quote:2 x 512x512 32bit TGA diffuse texture. (8 x 256x256 etc)
Alpha channel can be used for opacity, specular or bump map.
since there are therefore two (or more) aplha channels, could i use one for a bump map and one for an alpha map? (i would unwarp what areas i want bumped onto tone texture and what i want transparent onto the other). or do we have to use all the alpha channels for the same thing?
quote:Livewire: As its not being judged on concepts, Concepts are an optional submission. If you do decide to post a concept I'm sorry but it needs to be your own concept only.
now worries, i've decided i'm gonna develop it all myself now anyway anyway. better experience for one, nice way to knock off an assessment for another :)
For those who need some inspiration, here are two pages.
Game Critics. Has quite a few art galleries for many games. Most of the horror galleries do focus more around the characters than the monsters, but there is still some stuff there
http://www.gamecritics.com/feature/?cat=1&date=&critic=
McFarlane Toys. The different horror toys they make
http://www.mcfarlane.com/toys/categorytype.aspx?categoryid=6
Nice theme.
Little low on the texture side of things then I would have liked but I guees I will just have to keep that in mind when I'm doing my concept (which I have started.)
A few questions
- Will money shot be judged??
- Can we have more then one Textured perspective screenshot for judging??
- Can these Textured perspective screenshot be posed??
ok i got a Q that nees some A's
ok can i have sort of a beat that has a master like it is all under the 8500 and just has like a beast and rider both monsters and shit but yeah....
edit: and oh yeah my entry aint gore blood and guts but i still think it is horror so is that a prob cause i seen other ppls ideas and thay are all mainly gore..???
Hey RasTuS are you thinking about something along these lines ???
[img]http://home.iprimus.com.au/colmdoyle/thing.jpg[/img]
I think this is a good way of combining two characters together, cant remember where i saw this i think its a mod for quake or something
I've added the functionality to upload pictures through Sumea's forum and have them stored on Sumea's server.. so now you don't need webspace to show off you work in the forum - do it directly on Sumea! This is *ideal* for the Sumea Challenges, and I greatly encourage you to use this service since this way pictures from challenges don't disappear as you close your webpages/move stuff around etc in months or years to come...
When you post a message, you have an attachment icon to click (it's hard to miss). Upload your image** and post the message.
Unfortunately it will only show the link to your image - you can go and edit the message, click the attachment icon again and click "re-use", select the image you just uploaded and the image should be embedded in your post..
(** for those of you who are more knowledgable, you can change the code that the forum spits out here and just put [ img ] tags around the link so the picture to can show up in the post, rather than getting linked)