They're here!

We are not alone. In a dark field in Minnesota, the huge craft sets down, and strange beings emerge into the night...


What I was after here was to try and get some of the backlighting effect from the scene in Close Encounters where the aliens come out of the mothership. It didn't quite work, because we can't do bloom in the same way that real film and real lenses do. But I'm quite pleased with this still.

I started by making a wall with a gap, and putting a small room behind it, then facing the wall with the new SF wall sections. Then turned the ambient lighting down really low, and whacked up the directional light so it was coming from behind them. This didn't work at all. All I got was shadow.

I then added a bunch of lights on the ceiling above the aliens to give a bit of extra illumination and some visual interest. And then I added follow spots. Lots of them. And then some more. I think there are about 15 in that set. They're all trained on the central character: most of them are in a tight circle behind him, with just a few in front (behind the wall), and two behind the camera, spaced quite wide. And finally I put the directional light coming from the front at an angle: there was enough light from the spots behind, and the directional light gave me just enough extra light to make out the wall features.

I cropped the still down to widescreen because the top of the shot was unexciting, and then added a few effects in post for the hell of it.

Can't wait to see what you guys make of the SF pack when we release it!

More fun'n'games with aliens

More ways to use the upcoming sci-fi assets for Moviestorm, mixing and matching human hairstyles and costumes with the alien faces and textures. And yes, that's a bit of a spaceship set you can see in the background there... with luck we'll have some nice sets to show you later in the week, using some of the neat tricks twak and the boyz have been putting in.

"OK, here's the plan. I'll seduce the alien princess, and you disable the tractor beams..."

If only we had a Star Trek license, eh?

To Protect and Serve

Alien head, lady cop uniform, new gun, zombie, domestic living room plus cel-shading. Anyone remember V?

In the cantina...

So, our artists made us some lovely aliens, and expected us to create amazing space operas and intense science fiction. Errr, nope. We stuck them in silly costumes, gave them musical instruments and let them rock on. Because we can. Well, if Luc Besson and George Lucas can have rock'n'roll aliens, we figured you'd want 'em too.


All together now.... doo doo doo doo doo-doo doo, doodly doodly doo doo......

Scrolling UVs

Just added a scrolling UV's option to the modder's workshop. This'll let you modders out there cheaply animate textures...

Here's a demo of quantum trees as a taster -


(this might be useful for sci-fi stuff?)