From Paintings to Polygons: The Lab

By Alfonso Callejas  

Ever wonder where the buildings in Servo come from? They might look like they are constructed on a satellite and then dropped from space but they're ACTUALLY made by a team of artist and programmers at BonusXP!

So how are they made? I'll lead you through the process of making buildings for Servo. Please keep your arms inside the vehicle at all times.

Most buildings are incubated in the head of our concept artist, the talented Andy Cotnam. We'll usually get a few riffs on a theme.

      Concept by Andy Cotnam

After a group discussion, we decide to go with the middle one. We decide that in addition to looking great, it has some great animation potential!

Once we've decided, it's time for a modeler (in this case, yours truly) to make a 3-D version.

First I use primitives to block out the basic shapes.

      She ain't much, but she's got potential



With a little refinement, we start to see the hint of the Lab!

      Secret facility where clowns are made.

At this point, I make two copies of the base model. One of them becomes the high-poly version - it'll provide us with most of the texture information that we need.

Then, I take the 2nd copy and combine and remove any polygons that are not needed. I'll also adjust the low poly's silhouette to match the high-poly more closely.

I line up the two models and press the magical "Art" button and voila!

      Whatever you do, do not press the "Not Art" button.

The models are prepped to be animated, showing the different states of the buildings.

Following a few touch ups here and there, the model and it's textures are brought into Unity.  

With some further tweaking, we eventually get the end result that you get to build and occasionally (frequently) destroy in Servo!

 
      Brand New Lab! Giant Servo Guardian not included.