Glacial Church Final Rendition – Ben Skiba

My concept was that of an abandoned and frozen over occult church of sorts that players were meant to explore. Initially there were supposed to be frozen corpses littered throughout the level, as well as collectible items. These were scrapped as the due date quickly approached, but everything else was kept and built. The indoor space has stone and brick textures, all covered in a film of ice that reflects the surrounding lantern light. My companion Fridrickstien was animated and reacts to the players presence. The animation did not allow for the textures to be visible, much to my annoyance and distress. Unity had already smudged my texturing, so it was just the icing on the cake. Overall, I was able to keep to the icy and eerie feel I was aiming for with this project. The music provided from the audio class really rounded out the entire project. I was quite happy with how the statues turned out and with my companion model.

When making this project there was little I didn’t learn for the first time. I picked up Maya, Unity and Substance Painter for this course. I really enjoyed making things in Maya and feel I did quite a good with my modeling. I really enjoyed diving into Z-Brush again in order to make Fridrickstien and I am quite content with how he turned out. Unity spited the living hell out of me all the way through, I do not like it much in the slightest, but I made it work. I kept having issues with the first-person controller, as it will not let you jump even after saying I was able override that lack of ability. Which really sucked as you have to walk solely on the canals so that you don’t get stuck in one place. Despite all of the issues Unity threw my way I made it work to a functioning game that I find some pride in. I enjoyed using Substance Painter as it really helped give life to my character. I liked futzing around with the settings of the textures to make the base textures unique and more dynamic. This entire class really showed me what level of work needs to go in to get a level. Though it is difficult and time consuming, it was very satisfying and made me content. I learned that I prefer the design aspect of the whole pipeline rather than a deep dive into the details.

4 Comments Add yours

  1. Kirsten says:

    This is a really unique environment and character! I like the character’s details, from the puffy coat to the backpack and the mask. The whole area has a creepy feel to it, and the music really adds to that.

  2. Daniel says:

    This character is so cool. I like the modeling you did for the hands. I also like the music in this came. it gives off a creepy and mysterious vibe. I like animation for the NPC character. I was creeped out just looking at it. The center piece in the middle of the level was also a good idea.

  3. Wade says:

    Ooh, spooky. This whole place has a really good unsettling vibe to it that really fits the frozen-over church setting.

  4. Griffin says:

    The Church is effectively scary and dungeon-like. The character looks stunning I wish unity didn’t screw with the textures so it could be seen in its full glory.

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