Final Sophomore Spinout Racing Trailer

Here it is, my final trailer for Sophomore Spinout 2017! Our levels were only taken up to a greyboxing stage, but they're pretty fun regardless. Enjoy!

Racing Trailer Analysis: Gran Turismo 4 Intro

Although the Gran Turismo 4 intro starts out with prerendered footage, about halfway through the mood changes and it switches to using in-game clips. This trailer plays upon loading the game, and has a good mix of everything-- personal, dramatic close up shots, long shots of the race tracks, and exciting racing footage. It starts out with the prerendered footage backed by an opera song to build up an "epic" feel, set up the drama and tension of the racing atmosphere, and provide some beauty shots of one of their cars (the Ford GT.) When the race officially starts, the tone of the trailer quickly switches gears and jumps into Panama by Van Halen, setting an exciting, upbeat pace for the rest of the intro which consists of racing footage-- getting the players hyped up for the fast-paced action they're about to experience as they play the game.

Particle System: Final

Here's a neat little video showing my final acid explosion particle system.

This was a fun time to work on (when is exploding things over and over not fun?) although there is still a weird bug that I'm going to try to figure out where the debris sometimes has the correct Material applied and sometimes doesn't. Regardless, it was a really great learning experience! I ended up having X emitters: Flash, Radial Burst, Body, Splash, and Debris. I combined the Particle System with a Decal spawner in the exploding frog Blueprint to create the splat effect on the floor. Gameplay-wise, I also got a custom-made damage-over-time volume to spawn over the splat so if you stand in it, you take 10 damage per second until you leave it or hit zero health.

I messed with other kinds of particles for my racing level as well including a "magic beam" and some mystical ambient dust and I honestly found it very enjoyable. It's a different way to look at building something that's very detail oriented.

Particle System: Research

For my first foray into making custom particle systems, I decided to create a sort of "acid explosion" to go with my exploding barrel that I made a few weeks ago. Ideally, the statue would explode, spraying acid and bits of debris and leaving a puddle in its wake. There aren't really any real life examples of this specifically, but I had seen videos of exploding fruit before and knew that I wanted a similar sort of consistency and look, so that is what I decided to base my particle system on. Below are some good slow motion videos of exploding fruit that I've been referencing in planning my different emitters.





Finally, here's a short video I found that's somewhat in the same vein as what I'm trying to do, including the residual puddle after the explosion:



So far it seems like I'll need to have at least four emitters: one for the sparks at the beginning of the explosion, one for the main substance or "body" of the exploding acid, one for the splashes that travel further out, and a mesh emitter for the debris.

Exploding Barrel: Final

Here's the follow-up on the exploding barrel I made for Programming class. You can check out the concept work here, and check out the "barrel" in action in the video above! Below I've included all the Blueprints used to make this work, which as you can see are fairly straightforward. When the Actor receives a hit, it essentially checks the strength and, based on a pre-assigned range of values, decides whether it's a small bump (nothing happens,) a hit (it begins to burn and then explodes after a random amount of seconds,) or a big hit (it explodes immediately.) In addition, the "barrel" deals damage and pushback upon exploding.

Racing Level: Concept

For my racing level I was interested in recreating the feeling of exploring the twists and turns of subterranean caverns like the beautiful Cave Without A Name found in my home state of Texas. I thought this would provide an interesting opportunity for both large and tight spaces, as well as effective visual guidance due to the flexibility of the environment, and perhaps a chance to make use of cave-ins, multiple levels, or secret caves to add interest to the level. Here are some of the inspiration images I looked at in designing this level:


Different parts of the level could transition between moods and therefore color palettes-- here are the two main ones I'm looking to use, the left for most of the cave (enclosed areas with some manmade lighting) and the right for a cool, more naturally illuminated look of one special section:


Here's a rough layout for the map, with cave-in that prevent players from taking old routes marked with letters. The place marked A is a cave-in where the floor falls out from underneath the players that allows cars to fall back to the starting point/finish line, marked in green.

Exploding Barrel: Concept

An ancient frog statue tasked with protecting the Frog Temple. When hit, it begins to emit noxious fumes-- when severely damaged, it explodes in a rain of deadly toxins. Below are some references of frog statues similar to what I'm aiming for.