Where new stuff comes to light.

A random showcase of things I come up with, in no particular order.

[warmoer]

FN-FAL/R1 mods

Early in 2019 I helped a friend out with a mobile game he was working on in Unity. While he had already created the bulk of the assets for the game, he needed a sniper variant of his FN-FAL/R1 rifle for his recon/sniper class character. Being a “boardgame” type experience, high definition was not a requirement and vertex count needed to be managed. 

Taking his existing unpainted FN-FAL model, I made the following changes:

Replace the rear sights with appropriate version used by SADF in the Angolan Bush War

Add a flip-up front sight for long distance/grenade markings

Replace the safety and breakdown latches

Replace the upper end of the receiver for accuracy

Approximated and modelled a scope mount and Kahles scope

Added a quick and dirty dash of paint in Substance Painter

The end result turned out quite reasonable and performed well. I could have added a lot more detail, but this was not the goal of this exercise.

[warmoer]

Low-poly crop spraying

Back in May 2019 I started playing with the concept of a low-poly crop spraying scenario. While the first version of Microsoft Flight Simulator I ever played was 1.0, I think it was FS 4.0 that had a crop-spraying adventure mode. This involved flying over a square grid representing an agricultural field, and the shading on the squares would change signalling successful coverage of that area.

My first test involved setting up a spray system in Unity that releases balls at a set interval. These balls are “launched” form the nozzle(s), and fall towards the ground. When x amount of balls collide with a square, the square will change colour. This is a very basic but effective setup that can be tweaked to find a sweet spot between altitude and speed of delivery.

With a basic spray system in place, I changed my focus to modelling my first low poly aircraft. I decided on an Air Tractor AT-401B as I love the old radial engine and the shape is fairly simple. Low poly modelling is easier when one is used to building up geometry from scratch, as opposed to using subsurface modelling and then deriving shapes from a highly detailed approach in my view. The challenge is knowing where to draw the line of course, and this can be very subjective at the end of the day.

After modelling in Blender, I was keen to see what basic PBR textures would look like on a low poly model. After a few iterations and brushes in Substance Painter I am happy with the result. Whether this will fit in a game setting or just over complicate the level of detail is a different matter altogether.

Here are a few screenshots from various stages of progress (top being the most recent).