One year retrospective

Hey friends!

I have been working on a lot of different things simultaneously in the last few months and wanted to give you an overall update. This is a one year review. A kind of retrospective to look at all that got accomplished toward my overall goal. My goal is to make a total Blade Runner conversion. I want to be able to entirely convert the game into Blade Runner (as much as is possible for me) I don’t know if I will be able to mod all the sounds, and I will have to come back to that. This journey all began one year ago…..so let’s take a look at it. One year ago, I had never used blender and wanted to find a way to make this Blade Runner project. I am not an experienced 3D artist either- that also began one year ago. I dabbled with TK17 starting last summer and that’s the first 3D anything I’ve done.

 The title shot of this entry is my first attempt to make Rachel one year ago and then my most recent attempt.

So, keeping the goal of making the game in Blade Runner…here is where things stand. Up to this point, I have made:

Cubemaps

This is where things began. My very first mod! I needed backgrounds for photos and for lighting.

Here’s my original Rachel character in the first cubemap I created.

 

Here it is in the background of the Sector Four room

These have worked out so well to provide a sense of place and the largeness of buildings without needing to build them all.

 

 

Umbrellas-

(these are ported and reworked)

 

Clothing

(ported and reworked)

Batty coat

This one is terrible. I’m not proud of it and I will return to remake it better and more faithful to the film.

 

Deckard coat, shirt and tie- the weight painting on this one is not the best. I will return and learn how to wieght paint and make it better before releasing it.

 

Transparent Raincoat- I have a whole unreleased series of these. But I want to make them better. Then I will release them.

 

 

Vehicles

(ported and reworked)

 (there are three more colors! I may rework and improve these as I go, we’ll see!)

 

It was so exciting to learn to animate this blimp- getting the searchlights to move and getting the screen to be animated!

Here you can see a video example of what I mean:

 

I learned how to make animated and hologrpahic ads! This allowed me to create a dancing ballerina with spinning text banners and a fully animated coca-cola ad on the side of the building!

 

Rooms:

Sector 4- this was a collaboration with @Sexvision so he could teach me how to make rooms.

 

What  joy this was! @Sexvisionused this to teach me how to use blender and how to create rooms. He spent so many weekends talking me through all the steps and answering all my questions. I can never thank him enough. It’s been a real priviliege to know him and have him as a mentor in all this. I also need to thank @Kraegar , who also taught me so much about texture, light, UV maps. I would not be able to do what I can now without those two. Thank you both for all the problem solving, question answering and mentoring

 

Sector 7

(origianl work)

!

Bradbury Balcony

(original work)

 

Bradbury Building- Gorund level

 I discovered I needed to learn to make things differently in blender and that forced me to have to scrap my room. (A room that was nearly done!)

 

 

 Best decision I could have made! It’s forced me to have to learn so many things. I’ve needed to learn to make things better and to make them from scratch. I have been learning how to UV unwrap, how to pack UV’s, how to bake textures and optimize them and how to make clean UV meshes.

 

If you’re following my work, you’ve seen that I have been making vehicles from scratch

 

Making backgroud and environmental elements

 

Making Iconic buildings from the film

 

More recently, I began making new heads for the main Blade Runner characters

 

Rachel- this is a sneak peak of some of the process

 

This is using a temp texture to get the shape right and make sure it works

 

Here she is with the final texture

(and what she would probably look like loaded into the average game)

Because this is not a typical game head, I can’t use the hook 5 skins, so had to create the face textures myself from scratch

 

And if you spend time on the lighting you can get her to look like this-

 

I am learning to make hair but so far, I’m not too good at it yet. I’ll come back to it as there is a lot of other things to do!

 

Deckard

still perfecting him- but he's pretty far along!

 

Pris

temp texture

 

final texture

 

Still working on Zhora, Leon, Roy and now Gaff

 

 

Making clothing and fashion for the background characters

Police uniform, hat w visor, tactical vest and pants

 

Fashion hats

 

Functional hats

There are more coming- but none that I have good photos of…

 

I didn’t create this- this was created by @sadekhnd but it has been a big part of my development and a part of how I decide to build things now

The crowd generator. I can’t brag about this enough on his behalf! What an amazing tool!

I can’t wait to use it in the new room

 

Overall, this has been a very productive year! I am closer to my goal than I ever thought I would be by now.

I have started work on the new room and will post some updates about that soon.

So much thanks to all my friends here who have been supportive and kind.

I am grateful for you and all you've shared with me!

@Sexvision

@Kraegar

@sadekhnd

@dirtnap

@Morius

@amaronap

@hexd33

@x17

@sexybastardo

@Driver

@hfg2

(If I've forgotten anyone- my apologies, my brain is now melted)