$500 Mapping Contest! Sci-Fi/Horror Theme

UPDATE: Contest is over! See the post below for final results
Make sure you sign up for the newsletter at "www.probuilder3d.com", to stay up-to-date on the this and future contests!
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ProBuilder Mapping Contest #2
Theme: Sci-Fi/Horror, H.R. GigerTimeline: Deadline Extended to April 1oth!

Prizes:
Overall Best: $500, 1 Year Membership to CG Cookie
Runner Up: All 6by7 Tools, 3 Month Subscription to CG Cookie


Entries will be judged by a panel of industry professionals
Detail meshes and textures are encouraged for this contest
FreeSci-Fi textures pack provided by www.GameTextures.com!

Time for a serious mapping contest with ProBuilder!

For the second ProBuilder mapping contest, we want to see what you can really create, with the full power of newly-released ProBuilder 2.0. This is your chance to go all-out and show off a truly awesome level design, and compete to win a $500 cash prize.


Deadline
Contest deadline extended to April 10th! All entries must be submitted by 11:59 CST.

Detail Meshes
Detail meshes are heavily encouraged for this contest. We'd love to see maps that could be part of a real game, with details like light fixtures, crates and barrels, wires, anything that brings realism, life, and visual interest to your map. Of course, ProBuilder geometry should make up the majority of your map (around 85-95%). Also, to keep competition fair, any meshes must be either your own, or available completely free for anyone else to use as well.


Theme and Reference
The contest's theme is "Sci-Fi / Horror", and extra points will be awarded for any H.R. Giger style influences you can add. Some great reference materials are Alien, Prometheus, Dead Space, Doom 3, and Event Horizon. To help with this theme, the awesome folks at GameTextures are providing a totally free pack of their top-quality Sci-Fi textures, to everyone entering the contest. You can download the pack here: http://bit.ly/WnKcZv


Entries and Copyright
To participate in the contest, you will need to submit a zip file containing at least 3 in-game screenshots (no retouching) of your finished level, plus a copy of your full project. We prefer you simply send us a DropBox link, or similar. Your work remains entirely yours, including all rights/etc. We will only use the projects to verify your screenshots, and for judging. The images will be used in the contest and elsewhere for marketing ProBuilder, and will always display a link to your own site, along with the ProBuilder logo.

Judging
A panel of industry professionals will be judging the entries, and choosing a winner- no "popularity contests" here. Your entry will be judged on it's overall look, and adherence to the theme. Judges are:

• Samuli Viikinen (Max Payne, Alan Wake, Rochard)
• Eric Von Rothkirch (Quake 3, No One Lives Forever 2, Duke Nukem Forever)
• Spencer Kern (Offensive Combat)
• ...more to be announced soon!

WIP Prizes
Throughout the month, we will also be giving away smaller prizes for the best WIP art, so be sure to drop by the Unity Forums thread (http://bit.ly/VOQMpg), and post your work as it progresses!

Best of luck to everyone!
Questions/Comments/etc? Just ask!

 

1st Place


Brotherhood will receive the top prize of $500, and a full year subscription to CG Cookie! Congrats Brotherhood, and thanks for making such an awesome level with ProBuilder!

Runner-Up


Zedalis design will receive the runner-up prize of all SixBySeven tools, plus a 3 month subscription to CG Cookie! Amazing work Zedalis, I'm sure we'll see more from you in the future too

Honorary


AlexM_Infinite takes an honorary win- so we'll honor him/her with any SixBySeven tool for free, just choose. Great work, especially for a first time ProBuilder user!

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That's a wrap for Mapping Contest #2, folks- my sincere, humble thanks to everyone for participating, especially since I know many of you are first-time or early Unity/ProBuilder users. Your creativity and willingness to dive head-first into a challenge like this, is what makes the indie game-dev revolution so powerful! Keep at it!

Of course, thanks to the Judges as well! Much appreciated, having your votes and input really makes the contest more fun and serious at the same time. So that's a big thanks to:
Simon Dean of Games Foundry - http://www.gamesfoundry.com/
SamV - http://www.rochardthegame.com/en/
Megafiers Team - http://www.west-racing.com/mf/
EricV - http://www.redchurch.com/
BenColeman of U4iA - http://u4iagames.com/
Jess Rahbek of Zero Point Software - http://www.interstellarmarines.com/

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As always, all contestants can pick up ProBuilder, or any other SixBySeven tool, for 25% off- just email/PM me

Mapping Contest #3 is already being planned, and for various top-secret reasons, I am especially excited about this next one! Details will come in the next couple weeks, you can stay up-to-date via our facebook, twitter, or by signing up for the Newsletter (lots of goodies in there!). Thanks all!

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A note on final score calculation:
Rank 1 was given 3 points, Rank 2 gave 2 points, Rank 3 gave 1 point.
Total Scores were 19, 14, 9, for Brotherhood, ZedalisDesign, and AlexM_Infinite (respectively)

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Gallery Links for All Contestants:

 

which to send e-mail to receive the pack textures Sci-Fi?

 

Hi Pedro! I'm actually going to just post a link here in a couple hours, sorry for the confusion. Packaging the textures+materials for Unity right now!

 

Okay I'm waiting drafts ready to start

 

Awesome! I can't wait to get started and to see the WIPs...

 

Is it OK to use a level from my game? It's commercial.

 

Probably not. EDIT: Disregard.

Plus they said they want it to be mostly made with probuilder, so I'm guessing probuilder objects in-editor have specific properties. If not then there wouldn't be much of a reason to use probuilder if you can import geometry from a package you're more accustomed to using.

 

Awesome! Looking forward to your work on this contest as well, Mirt- thanks for joining up!

Sure thing! Just provide an image of where your current game/level is at, as of now, so we can be sure a month's worth of work is being done for the contest, of course. Great to have you participating, looks like your game is coming along well!

In TerraMelior's case, he's been building everything in ProBuilder already, so I'm not worried about outside geometry. Although, limited use of detail meshes is perfectly fine, if they are entirely your own work or freely available to all. That's important to keep things fair! Also, they shouldn't "overshadow" the ProBuilder geometry, naturally. Thanks though, StroggCmd! Judging by your name...any Quake re-makes coming to this contest?

If anyone isn't sure whether a mesh they are using will be allowed, just ask here!

 

Ah okay. Yeah I was thinking of something along those lines, but I'm aiming more for Aliens/Dead Space/Event Horizon.

 

Awesome, thanks! Here's an Imgur album that shows where I'm at now: http://imgur.com/a/gHWoM

The lightmapping is set to low quality as it takes way too long to bake. However, I think the visible artifacts are due to the lightmap resolutions I'm using, more so than the quality setting.

 

Awesome! Looking forward to that

 

Thanks, probably just the lightmap rez indeed. Keep us posted!

 

Some inspiration for everyone! A quick Sci-Fi "corridor" created with the very sexy textures provided free by www.gametextures.com:

 

Purchased pro-builder for this comp so its my first time using it, my experience from hammer editor is sure helping though. Not much but I am pretty proud of it right now.



I am making some kind of space station and this is the repair hanger. If the image is to small open in a new tab or view larger.

 

What are we submitting for judging? Just screenshots, the actual project folder, web version? What I'm getting at is, does the level need to be playable? If it does need to be playable, First Person, 3rd Person, isometric view?

 

Once again, thanks to yahodahan for hosting such a competition! Looks like this one is going to get very interesting. I'm hoping I can fit this into my schedule.

 

Very cool. Sadly I can't participate as I don't own a copy, but I hope everyone does well.

 

Thanks Johny, glad your Hammer experience is transferring over well Could you re-post that image? I can seem to see it at all, thought it shows an "Attach" in the quote here...odd.

Just screenshots! Since the Free version of ProBuilder doesn't include optimization methods, it wouldn't be fair to require playable maps. But they would be great to see, if you can!

You bet! I really enjoy seeing what people create, and decided to push this one even more with a "cash prize", since ProBuilder could really use some more display art to show off it's abilities. Looking forward to your contest entry, good to see you back!

Sure you can! Nothing says this can't be greybox, and at the very least you could win some of the WIP prizes

 

Heres a direct link to the image: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/53037760/Station_9.png

I get on doing work after posting that. So far so good.

 

Hey all! I wanna try and be apart of this contest. However, I'm slightly concerned about not having Unity Pro. I know that not having it shouldn't stop me, but it being horror themed, I feel that it would be hard to get that atmosphere across. BTW, this would be my first online community contest ever. So I'm kinda hesitant. Just wondering how you would handle entries that lack shadow support. Thanks!

 

Hi BigBite! This is a good question, and there isn't really a perfect answer. The purpose of the contest is to generate top-quality demo art, which ProBuilder really needs, hence the $500 out of pocket that I'm dropping on it. So, the scenes do need shadows, GI, textures, etc, in order to look their best. Especially, as you mentioned, for the dark, moody, atmosphere of this theme.

Personally, I've formatted and re-installed my entire windows installation at least once, in order to regain the Unity Pro trial, for various other contests. But I'm the geeky kind of guy who actually enjoys that, ha, so I'll look into better options for non-Pro users. I'd hate to exclude anyone!

 

Alright, I did some looking around and found out you can at least get baked shadows. Never looked into it before. I really thought that you wouldn't be able to. I guess Unity Free is not that bad after all .

 

That's true! Don't forget to also bake in Ambient Occlusion, that adds a lot to the scene. Set the amount to 1.0 and distance to .75, works great for most situations.

 

When do you need my first screen shot by?

 

No specific time, other than the final deadline. Just for fun, I'll be giving away special (smaller) prizes to the best WIP images posted each week, as well.

 

Sweet! I'll see what I can do.

 

Given that i have a lot of ideas in my head for what i think might be scary stuff (yes, i am weird like that ) I think i might give this a go (and the prize would certainly help me since i could see myself using all of it for asset store stuff... like a full version of pro-builder. )

I hope that the constraints of the evaluation version won't be a problem... though, when it comes to stuff, are we allowed to code in behaviors or just stick to the level? do you also need us to create a player object or is this a "just stick with the level design" thing?

 

Here's an imagur album i'll be using to document (visually) the process... Patience for now, the sketches phase is just to get things roughed out so they'll be a bit on the "unpolished" side of things.

http://imgur.com/a/u2Fbc

 

Hey everyone!

Got the chance to work on it for an hour today, give or take. This model will be a focal point in my scene. I have lots of details yet to add but thought I'd show my progress Oh, and I know you mentioned that we can use "detail meshes" but I'm going to do everything within my power not to as I want to utilize ProBuilder in every regard.

 

Alright I thought I'd have a crack at this.

Using the free ProBuilder, had a 10 second look at the manual and gave up when 90% of the buttons didn't work with the free version. So basically the free version can make cubes (already had that covered), stairs (actually these are damn good stairs, I really like them) and make lightmap UVs (already had that covered).

For the Sci-Fi / Horror theme I'm going for a top secret research lab - think SCP Foundation research site; finished it'll be about 100m wide by 60m long, 16m tall (4 stories) above ground and go underground about 100m deep. I find it's best to include contrast in a level to achieve a strong mood, so there's a nice, if a little well-guarded lobby (pictured) that leads to increasingly deep, dark militarized labs down below.

Completed so far is the graybox for the entrance, and one of the lab sectors. You can see the office/management/administration/conference areas at the top of the entrance block. The bottom pic is a grayboxed research lab, with rooms for the lead and assistant researchers, viewing area and test lab. Each level of the research lab has different entrance and exit choke points to go with the layout and contents of the room.



Getting the default FPS controller to go up the stairs without running out of steam meant I had to increase the max slope angle, but since this will be a fairly industrial area it shouldn't do anything too bad. Lightmapping works great, directional light at 0.5 intensity, set ambient occlusion to strength 1 and distance of 5 - easy fast way to fake Global Illumination right there, folks. Fog to Exp2 @ 0.008 and the same colour as the horizon.

Now, you said the geometry had to be Probuilder-made, but the lack of UV mapping is going to suck. I've got a way to export the entire scene to maya, whereupon I can UV the place, re-import, and it would technically still be using the ProBuilder geometry. Plan B is to roll my own worldspace shaders and materials on a per-cube/per-stair basis, which may be annoying, but wouldn't require an export.

 

Almost finished drafting this hanger type thing, beginning to work on hallways to the common and bridge rooms. I kinda feel the dark lighting is ruining some of the smaller details I put in. I have also been working on some detail mesh's to really make the level sexy, some which you can see here.

Here is a screen of what i have done:


unfortunately the screenshot doesn't look as good as it does in-game walking around, maybe Ill add a web-player so people can explore. I have also been working on a script that adds this dynamic infestation effect a lot like natural selection 2 just for fun, its not done yet but still looks cool.

In game there is alot of moving parts while with a screen shot all you get is static.

 

Great to hear! The Free version does have major limits compared to the Full version, but people should be able to work around that. You can still do quite a bit with it

Cool, I like that you are starting with 2D concepts. Keep 'em coming!

This is looking great, show us more!

 

Hmm, I think you might be underestimating the tool and yourself The original Greybox Contest show some AMAZING art created by users with the free version only, and that was with ProBuilder 1.x, which was, well...terrible compared to 2.0! Also, don't forget that if you use a standard cube, A) You can't modify it's vertices, B) You won't get the crisp, beautiful lightmaps that our auto-normalized UVs allow. C) It would be a nightmare to build anything complex (actually, impossible, since you can't edit the standard cubes verts). And that's just the Free version's abilities... Again, it's worth taking a look at the original Greybox Contest to see how much is possible with just the Free version.

Glad you like the stairs though!

Sounds awesome- agreed on the contrast+mood, especially for this theme.

Looking good, I really like that you have multiple levels- use those stairs! The soft AO/GI lighting makes for a very nice greybox too.

Ah, that's an area where the Full version helps- normally I create a custom collision item (see this tutorial) for the stairs, and disable the actual stair's collision. Much more efficient, and better game experience. For the Free version, you can cheat- just build a PBO-C like in the tutorial, then turn off it's Mesh Renderer, and also the stair's Collider. Not as easy to use as in the Full version, but it should work fine.

Just to clarify for viewers- ProBuilder has completely automatic UV Mapping, and you can control that UV Mapping in the Full version. You can also place any material on each individual face of any object. The Free version doesn't allow texturing or advanced manual UV Control.

I'm hesitant to allow exporting to outside programs, as that would not show a true use of ProBuilder. I'll think on this, but it's likely a no...sorry.

Thanks for the detailed info!

 

Hey Johny, this is looking very sexy indeed! Well, I can't see much because it's so dark, but what I can see looks very promising. Maybe find a way to bounce in just a bit more light...a skylight perhaps, or a few spot-beams/etc. Obviously, you don't want to ruin that mood/atmosphere, but light would be a big help.

Also, a webplayer would be great, but couldn't be part of the contest, sorry . What you mentioned about dynamic infestation sounds awesome, I'd love to see it, but it would be unfair to others to include "dynamically" in the final submission. Since not all of the contestants will be skilled coders/etc, and the focus is on the map itself. In the future, maybe we'll do a "Go all out do anything!" contest

 

Yea I totally understand all the webplayer stuff, I am mostly just messing around with that stuff for fun. Having alot of trouble with the lighting with keeping it bright but...still dark..

Just lost 2 hours of work because I didn't save and unity crashed....again.

 

I'm probably coming in with a bit of a disadvantage, but I'll bite. I also don't usually post heavy WIP images but, what the hell, might give me some extra motivation.

Since I haven't worked with ProBuilder before, I decided to start with a single room in order to see what the free version is capable of. I started out by scribbling a quick, and very rough, concept.


Then I decided to make a quick mockup using ProBuilder.

As you can clearly see, there's a lot of work left to do, but ProBuilder made it really fast and easy to get what you see pictured above. Some of the limitations in the free version makes things a bit more difficult, but I'll work around that. The only thing I can say that I'm dreading using the free version for is texturing; I'm not expecting the best results. However, that said, the tool itself is pretty good. There's a few features it could use but overall, quite handy.


I'll try to work on this as I can. Since I have a better idea of how ProBuilder works, I'll probably start working on some other rooms before I finish this one. That way I'll get the map more fleshed out before I start worrying about details.

 

I'd love to see the dynamic infestation you mentioned, even if we can't (sorry) use it in the contest. Sounds neat! Lighting == tricky indeed, especially when you need atmosphere like this.

There are some handy "autosave" tools on the Asset Store, useful!

 

Looking good, lots of detail in this already- interested to see the other rooms! Glad you are enjoying ProBuilder. Texturing without the full version will indeed be a pain, but we have to leave some things out, to get folks to purchase

 

Hey, that looks really good. Good job.

 

Hi, this is my first screenshot of my map, hope you like it I'm really enjoying using this tool it's so useful

 

Sadly I didn't get to work on it again yesterday, so no updates today.

Thanks. Yeah I understand the reason behind it. It definitely makes create a quick mockup a cinch, and some of the features it's lacking I'm sure are likely being planned for future updates. It's definitely going on my "buy list" if I manage to have some disposable income.

Thanks, man. You should take part in the contest too; it would be nice to see what you come up with.

 

Awesome, good to hear! Looks like you are making good use of the GameTextures library, those normals really pop, wow. Thanks for using the ProBuilder "created with" logo, too!

Feel free to list out those features you'd like! Always open to suggestions, and we might even be working on it already.

 

Hi! I've been working on my project, I decided I'm gonna make an abandoned Space Station. I've been working hard, I've got some problems because I want to implement some DirectX11 features. I already purchased my Unity Pro Student Version. I hope my code arrives tomorrow... and then ready to unleash the fury!!!

And here's another WIP image http://i.imgur.com/OnyYNlv.jpg

 

There's still quite a bit to do, but this is how my "power generator" room is looking so far. Only a few things have lightmapping, and it's set at super low quality. Everything is done with ProBuilder, except for the particle effects, the door, and some of the hallway outside. Haven't made a wall to block that off yet...

Also, the black smudges on the vents are (I assume) due to the grime casting a shadow, which I'll fix.



I'm not entirely sure what happened to the lighting of these pipes, but I thought they looked kinda cool. I tried making them with way more edges at first, but it was just too much to handle when making them bend.

 

Here, I'm constructing what will become the dome that encapsulates the scene

 

So, I finally had chance to work on this for a few hours. My idea is an art deco inspired futuristic horror, much like the movie Dark City or Bioshock.

The opening environment is a hotel, the shot below is a rough edit of the hotels foyer.




Will hopfully have chance to work on this a little more tonight.

Cheers Jay

 

Wow! Great lighting, and the textures look awesome.

 

Very impressive!

 

Ah, I now I see- cool, looking forward to more once you get that Pro code!

Neat to see more and more of this coming together. Bending those pipes shouldn't be too tricky, once you've snapped all verts on one segment? Still, tedious, yes!

Cool! Is some of that glass/etc, or all solid?

Very nice, this is looking great, especially for just a few hours! My only worry is it might not match the theme well enough just yet, although I know this is an early image. "Bioshock" is a whole genre/theme unto itself, and a very cool one at that. Might be a bit too steampunk for this though? Don't worry, I'm not killing your idea (I really like it), but it might be straying a bit from the reference- Alien, Deadspace, Event Horizon, Doom 3, etc. Looking forward to more!