Baby Levi attacking the Pravarthak Making Max Q as a VR film has had a ton of challenges. Many of them technical (still seems to be no way for us to render a 360 video with Unreal Engine 4.26 using the Post Processing materials we need for the water surface and underwater world!), but just as frustrating, many of them
Dev Diary 29 – Content complete The film is almost finished! As of August (2024), all final creature animation has been completed. Effects animation is completed. Final programming is in progress! Other than final testing and optimizing the performance for VR, getting the sound mixed and fine-tuned is our final step, and we wanted to share a few tidbits about
Character Animation Finished So I’m not great at posting … partly because only about 2 people check the site, one of which is probably my partner … but also because about a year ago we found out we had been denied the EPIC Mega Grant after being in communication with their team for a few months. That hit us
Making the Buxiu Qixi station The BuXiu Qixi, meaning (we are assured) “Immortal Breath” The concept In the universe where our film takes place, massive corporations have created their own megastructure space stations that travel from solar system to solar system with one purpose in mind: collect data so they can sell it for huge profits! These stations will arrive
Space truckers As part of the world-building for the Max Q universe, we wanted to make the space around the station Buxiu QiXi feel alive. One idea we settled on was to have essentially a highway of gas-hauling vehicles, carrying mined gases from one of the planet’s satellites to a refining station. Designs to Model to In Game We had
Dev Diary 19 – sometimes devs are dumb oops.
Featured Video A second pass on the VFX for the shuttle entering the atmosphere. Much closer than before (particles actually following ship vector, now!) but the lighting needs some refinement. Also a blockout of the actual viewscreen designs. We’re realizing this will be more time-consuming to design and animate than we’d originally thought. There are at least 4 main “scenes”
Teaser!
Emergency signal received Octavia and Heulfryn listening to the SOS from the Pravarthak “by myself?” Heulfryn reacting to Octavia’s suggestion that he could get a shuttle back to another station on his own. “He would want us to try…” Octavia trying to convince Heulfryn to help her on a rescue mission
Dev Diary 017 – The start of the film It’s been a bit since we posted our progress but we’ve been working on some polish details for the start of the film. Obviously none of the sfx are 100% finished, and most of the modeling and texturing for the exterior of the giant mothership (the BuXiu Qixi) is in production,