David R.S. Palumbo
Game Art
BUCKiT
Timeframe: 3 weeks
Platform: Oculus Rift DK2, Homemade "cockpit"
BUCKiT is a game designed specifically to be featured at the 2015 Building Virtual Worlds Festival. The arcade-style game takes place on the alien world Cygnus-17, an ocean planet full of colorful creatures and undersea riches. The player is to explore the environment within their specialized mining pod in search of treasures to give the companion Briefing, Utility, Collection & Kinematic Transport robot, BUCKiT.
Due to the game's exploration mechanic the performance requirements of virtual reality, BUCKiT's environment had to be big, beautiful and easy on the GPU. All of the in game models are designed with minimal polygons, but the world remains entertaining and immersive.
BUCKiT herself was originally designed and animated with dialogue in mind. Though the final version of BUCKiT is silent (due to negative feedback on the voice), the design allows for lovability all the same. The rig used to animate her allows for movement of the arms, and bucket, as well as the multiple layers of her faceplate. Two eyelid controllers allow for emotional expression.
For more information about BUCKiT, click here.
Ogopogo, Inside and Out: Ogopogo Tours
Timeframe: 3 weeks
Platform: CAVE
Ogopogo Tours uses the CAVE--an immersive virtual reality platform where projectors are directed to three of the walls of a room-sized cube--and it's motion floor to provide guests with a goofy, thrilling boat tour experience. The experience takes two guests on a guided tour of Okanagan Lake (a real-life lake) which is interrupted by Ogopogo (a real-life lake monster).
Ogopogo was based off of a few cartooney I found when looking for reference images. I wanted to see what the Ogopogo story had become, and then reverse engineer a prehistoric monster off of that.
Ogopogo's head was sculpted in zBrush and then retopologized from a new model in Maya, from about 700,000 polys to less than 3,000. This was my first try at topologizing and was a great learning experience.
Ogopogo's stomach was also sculpted in zBrush, but it was reduced down to a usable size and had normals projected onto it from the original sculped. I then rigged and animated and it remains the only environment skeleton I have ever worked with.
Lava Oni: Dance of the Water
Timeframe: 1 week
Platform: Myo Armband, Android
Dance of the Water is a a rhythm-based combat game in which was originally built for the Myo armband. The guest takes the role of a samurai with a blessed water sword, defending his villiage from a demon--or Oni--that has emerged from a volcano. The player is to approach the Oni, defeat it through a series of motions. Ultimately, the project remains unfinished, though we are moving into developing an app for Android.
The Oni is made of three seperate parts. The mask was inspired by the representations of Oni in Kabuki theatre. The body is made of two layers: a rock layer and a lava layer, which, when rigged, makes the Oni's form feel fluid.
The Surly Sea Adventures of Bredd & Chum
Timeframe: 2 weeks
Platform: Oculus Rift DK2, PSMove
As my first BVW world, The Surly Sea Adventures of Bredd & Chum holds a special place in my heart. Built for a VR headset, and hand-tracking controllers, B&C aims to immerse the guest in the wacky world of paper pirates as they face town the mighty kraken. Each asset of Bredd & Chum was built with sense of performance paranoia. Bright cartoon textures and custom shaders bring the world together.
The tentacles were built and animated to be intimidating (if a bit silly). In VR, their scale is imposing and the animation brings them in and out of the guests personal space providing a sense of tension before they crash down.
The krakens head was designed with narrative in mind. In the game, the guest must fight their way through waves of tentacles, each wave punctuated with the rise and fall of the kraken's head. The head is designed to look like a squid's when just poking out of the water, and an intimating four eyed monster in the final moments of battle.
Dragon
Timeframe: 1 week
Platform: PC
For our first BVW assignment, we were tasked to design, model, texture, rig, and animate a dragon in Maya, to be used in Unity. The model was to be created with under 1500 polygons.
For this design I wanted to create a dragon that was less traditional, and decided to move away from the standard, reptilian dragon. I wanted him to feel ancient and wise, at least visually. In animation, he feels more animalistic, but friendly--like a big, old dog.
For the assignment, he clocks in at 1494 polys.
