UnrealEd

This is the Ozer. It’s a devastating war machine piloted by a single person based on a tank. I modeled and textured it in Maya and brought it into UnrealEd and set up it’s guns and physics. I wanted to design a nimble vehicle that was not only deadly, but avoided most common vehicle problems (fitting into tight spaces, stuck due to large turn radius, grounded on protruding mesh or terrain, etc.)

I built this map as a demonstration for a mod team that we could take heightmap images from a classic game and generate terrain from them. I took the resulting geometry and smoothed it out so it could be traversable. I then took and decorated the landscape in accordance with reference images, adding my own personal touches here and there, and set up pathing across the whole thing so AI could traverse it all. Although it is rather large it is meant to be a streamed piece of terrain connected to many others to create a very large world. The proof of concept worked well as we were able to stream levels in and out as desired.

This multiplayer map was built as a learning experience for myself, wherein I reacquainted myself with the various areas within UnrealEd. I scripted Thunder and Lightning through Kismet, set up various animated objects using matinee, set up some particle systems with Cascade, and heavily staged many areas of the map.

Speed mapping sessions are one of my favorite exercises. Usually done as a small group, where we have 1 hour to each make a map. This includes paper design layout, construction, and object placement. Usually we impose some restriction on ourselves each time, like it must have 3 floors, or you must incorporate a specific weapon. At the end of this time we then playtest the maps together critiquing each others work. Here are the results of a few of those sessions.