/ Lighting
I know a little bit about lighting, but mainly the aesthetics of it. A lot of lighting in concept art and illutration is faking it. When it comes to the techical aspect of light I'm pretty much starting at square one - Optics, I guess?
Still, I have intuitions about the look and feel I want for Vesper. I could have tried to describe it, but I probably lack the language.
Instead, I just started experimenting. After playing around with shaders and lighting for a good while I arrived at this [↓]
I also considered rim lighting to help accentuate the shapes.
I'll keep experimenting.
Having a lot of fun figuring out deformation.
Looking for strong shapes for the helmet design.
Experimenting with halftone shading.
[♪] Lustmord, Bohren & Der Club of Gore - Plateau
/ RIGGING & SKINNING
Again, no real experience here.
Modeling a first draft of the main character.
[♪] Sea Power - ZA/UM
To keep things moving I decided to translate one of my concept art pieces into a 3D scene in Unity.
Some exploratory concept art.
Part of my reason for doing Vesper has always been to explore my intuitions about concise 3D, lighting, and shader design. I'd like to see if (and how) those ideas survive impact with reality.
[♪] Kvelertak - Skoggangr
/ Animating Vesper
I've never really animated much. That, paired with my inexperience with 3D and I really should get started.
Needs work. We'll get there.
One of the things I want to explore in Vesper is a sparing use of textures. This goes to that. My first draft of the cassette deck had texture for the decals and wood grain textures, so I went back to change that.
[↓] Procedureal wood grain.
[↓] Mesh decals. I have no idea if this is a good way to do this, but I enjoyed the work flow and I likethink it turned out pretty good.
/ Unity
Biggest take-way from previous attempts at this is to stop planning and just get into it.
Took a bit figuring out export from Blender and import to Unity.
Hooked up some basic animations and button logic.
[♪] Tool - Sober
/ 3D
I have close to zero experience with 3D. Never really got into it. Vesper is going to be a 3D game, so I need to learn.
Started by designing this cassette deck and modeling it in Blender.
/ Vesper Devlog
Never really kept a devlog before. Main reason for trying it out on Vesper is to put something out there, Be visible. Transparent even. Also, to have something to look back on - especially when the going gets rough.
It'll be what it needs to be. Probably short posts and a bunch of work-in-progress screengrabs, GIFs and art with comments. Unless inspiration grabs me I don't expect to post any extensive write-ups. We'll see.
/ Vesper
Vesper is the game I'm working on now. It's a compact sci-fi adventure game about a person trapped in a small, derelict space ship in a slowly decaying orbit around a far off planet.
I began working on Vesper back in 2019, but inexperience and bad luck eventually made the project a misery. Hadn’t figured out my process yet, and sorta skirted around the work, fretting and revising plans.
I used to think I needed to know everything there was to know about what I was making and be able to answer any question. Have it all figured out. Slowly I discovered that making games only works if I keep the freedom to experiment and rework. For me, it's about trying things out and learning.
Happy new year!
I‘m moving from monthly updates to something a bit more frequent and light-weight.
[↑] A sketch of the fjord outside the window one morning during the holidays.