Star Wars: Attack Squadrons
I was responsible for all the ships in this multiplayer space combat action game based on the Star Wars IP. This included creation of the initial ships, pipeline development, documentation and working with outsourced talent to ensure that subsequent ships and skins were approved by Lucas Arts.
The game reached beta before Disney closed it down as part of a major restructuring of their publishing division.
X-Wing: Red 5
This was our first ship, which means it was our test bed for pipeline development as well as approval process. I modeled the ship and created the UVs, normal map and AO. My good friend Matt Bell generated the diffuse texture using Quixel's dDo. While the texture looks great, I decided the process used was far too cumbersome and error prone to take into full production.
I used nDo2 for generating normal maps and initial bakes (AO, Spec and Cav) and dDo as part of our pipeline. However, I changed the way dDo was used in order to facilitate quick turnaround of texture assets. We wanted to be able to generate a lot of them and easily modify them in order to accommodate Lucas Art's stringent approval process.
Lucrehulk Game Play: Beta
Here you can see some footage [starting :30sec in] of our Lucrehulk Map in beta. There was still a fair amount of work to do but you can see things shaping up. The game play was just starting to come together.
Death Star Game Play: Beta
This map was really coming along. There was even an epic space battle taking place off in the distance that would cause a massive ship to slam into the Death Star to signal the end of the match. The X-Wing is wearing the simple grey starter (default) skin in this footage.
X-Wing: Red Five
The overall look we were after was something between the original movie's practical models and the concept art of Ralph McQuarrie. There's always room for improvement but I'm pleased with the overall results. The lighting and shaders work well together and achieve much of the look we were after.
X-Wing: Skin Variations
The target triangle count for the ships was 8,000. They used a diffuse, spec, gloss and normal map - all at 2048x2048. As mentioned above, this is the first ship I modeled and I'm happy to say that it passed approval with very little revision... which is not to say that it wasn't poked at an awful lot before even being submitted for approval. The attention to detail of this IP is mind boggling.
The skins were created by some really great outsourced talent based on a template I created that had a base texture for all four maps to paint on top of and adjust as needed. This meant that once we got things rolling we were able to generate new skins very quickly. This was important since skins were to be monetized.
Y-Wing: Skin Variations
We created a slew of skins for each ship. I remember being in love with the look of the Y-Wing as a kid. This is another one of the early ships that I created and used as a guide for our outsource teams.
Firespray: Skin Variations
What a great, iconic ship. I love the unconventional design and I'm amazed at the amount of fun the folks at Disney/Lucas Arts allowed us to have with the skins on this puppy.
A-Wing: Skin Variations
Love the way this ship and its skins turned out. It was really fun to fly in-game as well.
TIE Line: Skin Variations
I was surprised by just how well the skins worked on the TIE Lines in game. They didn't feel quite as showy as the other ships in our original concepts but once we got them in the game, flying around, the skins worked really well - mostly due to the fact, I think, that it's like a flying billboard.
YT-1300: Skin Variations
This ship was a challenge on so many levels... triangle count - UV layout and scale... she's just a beast. And man is she worth it! Once again, amazing work by our outsource partner on the skins. These were some of the last skins to come on deck and I think everyone on the team was blown away by just how great they looked in-game. It was really hard to choose just a few to show.