Car Paint Shader Improvements

I'm am finishing up the final features of the car paint material. Already, there is a functioning masking system and the added ability to use custom normal maps which affect all layers! The last couple of features I would like to add are: grunge/rust based on either mask or vertex colors, and maybe a rain layer. As soon as I implement a feature, there is another good idea around the corner. 

Here is a little preview of what's now possible with the system. 

Teaching a College Course

This news is slightly belated, but I am teaching a course in 3D composition for video games at Columbia College Chicago! It's really exciting to be back at Columbia, where students are learning the skills it takes to be a part of the industry. 

If you yourself are an aspiring artist, or maybe a developer who wants to learn their way around Maya, you can follow the tutorial series I give my students. You can find them on my youtube page: Asset Creation Playlist

Car Paint Shader - Tutorial

Over the summer I spent some of my free time developing the car paint shader which I plan on using in Cafe Races. Initially, it started out as a simple idea, but it quickly evolved into a massive project. It grew in complexity and the graphic qualities also grew. Now I have a system which can simulate hundreds of different types of car paints, and if you are a UE4 developer, I want to share it with you! The tutorial is being hosted here at CafeRaces.com you can find the specific page here: tutorial 

If you give it a shot, I wish you luck. The effort is certainly worth it!

A few 4K captures

I have spent the day creating a few images to help drum up excitement for Café Races. These images represent the final quality of the motorcycle assets. The final car paint shader has been applied and I used more complex lighting methods in UE4 to render the scene. All together, it adds up to images of a bike that I want to hop on and ride into the distance. 

Link to full quality images: http://imgur.com/a/f8tnM

A Newlywed

At 4:30 PM on June 28th I was wed to my best friend and girlfriend of nearly five years.

The night was the bet of my life. Every preparation and every handmade craft was well worth the effort. Our wedding was classic video game themed. We spent countless nights creating centerpieces, invitations, a miniature arcade machine, and in secret; my wife's wedding ring.


Now that the special day has passed I will have my free time back, which enables me to develop my game at a much quicker pace. I will be publishing a tutorial on my process for developing a car paint shader soon, to give back to the UE4 community, which has been so helpful to me so far.

I will be adding some footage of early, early in-process game play physics as well. And I will be finally putting together a kickstarter to gain the funding which will enable me to work full time on the game. It's going to be a very busy couple of months as everything begins to get underway. I will also update this blog much more frequently! So keep a close eye!


Cheers,
-Vince

Showcasing My Shader / Vehicle Movement

While working on my current goal, developing the dynamic metallic paint shader, I have continually posted my progress on the UE4 forums. The forums are extremely useful for sharing techniques for development. My posts have received some attention from the guys who develop the engine at Epic, and they decided to showcase it on their new list: "Seen And Heard In The Forums"

A link for the list is highlighted in the UE4 launcher, so I am thrilled! I have had little time for production work these past few months, but I am proud that my passion for developing this game is enough to produce results worth highlighting by the guys at Epic.

I have a lot more work ahead of me but Epic's updates shrink my task list all the time! In the next release of UE4, Epic is releasing code for their custom vehicle physics system. Although it is not optimized for motorcycles, it will work as an excellent base for my own system. I believe it is going to save me weeks, if not months of development time. It also means that the game will be playable much sooner!



If you are interested in being one of the first to play test my game, please send me an email at caferacesgame@gmail.com

More work with the paint shaders!

I have been spending some time putting together a fully dynamic car paint shader. It now handles reflection with added flake effect.

Take a look!