It’s been about a month since my last update and I thought I’d share some in-progress screen shots of what I’ve been up to. Having worked on the village level for over a year I decided I needed a fresh new level to work with.

I want to try designing a larger more open level. I decided once again to use a modified height map from trespasser as a foundation. Basically bringing a height map from Trespasser in to Photoshop, smoothing out the chonky pixels and making adjustments before bringing it into Unity. From there I can sculpt finer details using Unity’s built in terrain tools. The built in tools leave something to be desired but it works well enough.

I wanted a large open level. That was a toss-up between either one of the Ascent levels or the Pine Valley/Demo level. The Demo level holds a special place in my heart. I only had access to the demo for a long time before I got my Dad to buy me a used copy of the full game. I spent dozens of hours messing around with the editor making structures with objects and of course making the guns fire 1000s of bullets a second. I could make the T-Rex fly across the map with those lol.

Here’s a comparison of the original level and my take on it in unity.

With such a large open area to work with I have things more spread out and can have things less concentrated. More to explore!

I also got the urge to model some big assets again. I decided to finally start on the much requested Embryonic Administration.

This has been a very interesting and challenging design process. It’s been almost as difficult to design this building as Operations. Ops had the challenge of all the reference material either being darkly lit night scenes, or grainy late 90s pictures.

EA(Embryonics Admin) is shot during the day (yay!) but there are other issues.

The EA set has a lot of layers with the strange awnings that obscures the underlying details.

The EA set was digitally extended in the full frame shots. These shots are from a distance making it difficult to make out details.

Finally the biggest issue is that the EA set was a façade slapped onto the front of the Ops set leftover on the Universal back-lot. This has its own list of speedbumps. This building was presumably designed by the same architect as ops (in universe) as it has many similarities. However we only see it from a straight on line of sight, never viewing the sides or other angles. So I have to use a lot of artistic license to determine what architectural similarities/themes were intended. We see the inside of the building in the film and it’s very clear it’s the same set as Ops. Same rafters and general layout. This presents us with a Tardis situation. The full frame shots have been digitally extended and that makes rectifying with the interior more challenging. Kinda like how in the first film the interior of the Visitor Center was larger than the exterior. This is the reverse so I need to figure out how to fill it out more.



This has become very long winded so I’ll end with some screen shots. These are really just to see how it looks in engine. It helps make sure everything is the proper scale.

Now with these areas I’m not trying to recreate a specific scene I’m trying to make more original locations environments.

It might be a bit before I get the EA building finalized and textured. In the mean time enjoy and thanks for the support!