Black Sun is a part of the Lour Saga, whose driving arc is Throne of Armageddon. This world is my life's work, a universe I have been creating since the earliest era of my youth.

In this subsection of the Developer series I create videos tailored towards explaining a specific process, design mindset, or methodology behind my work. They are not intended to be considered pure guides, but serve more as tutorials into understanding how I function. They are considered supplements to the developer series and do not serve as replacements to dedicated, written tutorials. Also, the way I do things is entirely tailored to my environment. It is expected that developers are smart enough to glean information pertaining to their own demands.

Like all of my video projects, the dialogue is politically incorrect and I take all responsibility for ruptured rectums with a smile. If you're looking for casual back-patting and circle-jerking you won't find it here.

3ds max to XSI to Sins conversion pipeline.

This video covers my process of bringing models out of max and into sins. It does not cover modeling, texturing, or UV's. I won't make a tutorial for those. Not good enough, sorry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAra8yHozNU

Particle Editing Primer

This video serves as a gateway into my particle editing process and design. I explain my approach to Retribution's massive revision projects, the mindsets behind my changes, and talk about making the most out of sins and its ancient particle technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glSswl14vxc

Public Developer Videos

Particle demo circa May 25 2013

http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/ret_particledemo.mkv

Salvation was "finished".

This is a rebuild of that project entirely, as what it should have been.

Rebellion fixes some of the pathing and makes the lighting significantly better, so those were certainly pivotal in deciding to rebuild it.

I will keep track of this until 2014 and even afterwards.  I would have loved to make a movie out of Sins myself, but I doubt I could do it justice like you could, IskatuMesk.

I look forward to following this project in the coming years. Just don't give up, please, I already had to deal with the sudden and sad death of Dawn of Victory.

I just discovered Black Sun Salvation from this thread, watched a bit of it, and will finish it later. Just don't have 51 minutes and 38 seconds right now - but it is fantastic. FANTASTIC. Strikes me as a dark, twisted Star Trek, Dune, and anime mixed together in a universe so different from anything I have seen before and so well done I cannot believe that this comes out of Sins. The effects so weird, the soundtrack so varied, dramatic, and fitting, the voices so, well, weird also.

To remake this anew in a greatly enhanced, expanded version would be a blessing to the Sins community and anyone else who happens to watch it. I wish you luck, and just from watching a bit of Salvation I know that Retribution can be nothing short of undeniably, indescribably awesome.

Edit: Please don't say this was all an elaborate April Fool's joke...

My friend, that is a beautiful pic of your creation. Quit depreciating yourself, you are an outstanding artist and the vo work you have done is great. And I'm not just saying that...

I can confidently say that at this point in time the projects are already incomparable. The biggest question of this project is going to be the UDK. That will make or break this.

iskatumesk, as a person that had received art training starting as a small child, all I can say about your work is that in this case the artist does NOT appreciate the excelence of their work, and has therefor misjudged the quality, and as you have already learnt from the issues you hit during the production of the previous excelent work, all that can be said is that it is going to be WORTH enjoying the next work(s).

harpo

I shall show something else today.

Salvation had mangled textures for ships. The Xy`Kranasha's normal map was bugged and the Anahn textures were problematic in general. A while ago I took it upon myself to redo all of those textures. It is true that Retribution will still not have unique uvs/textures for ships. I do possess reasonably adequet skills to tackle this if I really wanted to, but the game's ram and texture entry limits would prohibit such an effort. I have only done one major texture project, and while it turned out reasonable...

... I do not feel it is necessary for this project. However, anything I put into the UDK will certainly receive some kind of special treatment.

I shall show you today a preview of one of the new Anahn fighters and the new Anahn texture. It was created by one of my internal viewers.

- My revision process in Retribution consisted not only a huge overhauling of all meshes themselves, but I also fixed all of the smoothing issues, texture normal problems, particles, and many other things. At the end of the day, Retribution barely resembles Salvation.

I hope that through my enormous revision process and the massive expansion of the existing races, that I can breathe new life into an old idea. The particles are leagues beyond anything shown in Salvation, and through the extensive Developer series I go through my lengthy particle design process and all things therein.

I am not aiming to make a work of art, however. There are grave and fatal limits to what I can do as an individual. But what I am hoping to do is create an experience. A tiny glimpse into the world I have spent my life building.

I have decided to release two of my tutorial subsection videos for the developer series. These and further releases for this section will be found in that second post that I reserved. It goes without saying, but if you are easily offended you should steer clear of my casting media.

Also I don't really care that the sins forum resizes those banners, I am too lazy to make ones just for this forum.

Today I shall post the something significant for this month.

Last month I showed you the DyiithJhinn Mel-Type Dreadnaught. The follow pictures were a part of my release media. It shows the new Anahn texture.

Some people seemed to have been confused with the Xy`Kranasha having similar texture schemes to the Anahn in Salvation. This was unintentional, but at the time I didn't have the resources to make a new texture for them - plus, I wasn't sure what exactly I wanted.

After some internal critique and a lot of hard searching, I found the texture set that is likely to suit the Xy`Kranasha in release.

Yeah, their bio-armor is supposed to look like faint segments, and it is a shiny from their film. The old texture had plating which broke all kinds of canon and looked bad with their shapes.

Yeah!

Like that, do you? Here's another one of the models from Armageddon Onslaught. I didn't do any of the textures for it myself, though. Someone I used to know did the entirety of this one (and the originals for that first one which I had to rebuild myself when I put it into Starcraft 2 and remodelled a bunch). I think this is circa 2009ish.

Unfortunately, that guy who helped me with those textures became far to much of a badass to have anything to do with commonfolk like me and broke contact many years ago. So, unfortunately I can't enlist him to help with the UDK stuff. The few skills I picked up working on that Onslaught Juggernaut will be all I have to help furbish the UDK portion of this project.

I've been trying to get OBS to work for my desktop recording (for the dev series) so I can ditch the piece of shit known as camtasia, and finally reliably record desktop audio in addition to my mic. I'd just use fraps, but the desktop composition is always disabled from the programs I use. Unfortunately, despite OBS claiming to support vegas it has yet to be able to encode a video recorded by that program. So, I don't think the developer series is going to cover audio editing. No loss, I guess; no one really does audio editing these days and probably wouldn't be interested.

Speaking of audio editing, I am probably going to pick up on that sooner than later. I'm aiming for every single impact and weapon type to have a set of unique sounds, and there will be unique sounds for every explosion type, too, of course. Only Xy had engine effects in Salvation, and while they aren't really necessary for this project, I'll probably make/steal some more for the other races. I expect around 2-3 thousand new files will be created for this project.

For music, I have a lot of options that weren't available in Salvation. I have assembled hundreds of tracks for consideration out of my 1.5tb of music, and I guarantee most of them you will not have heard before. While most mods and videos in games are content to copy paste trailer music or E.S. Posthumus, I go through considerable lengths to avoid using mainstream music as much as possible. I was talking to one guy about getting his vocalist to help make a credits track but somehow I think that's not going to happen.

As I detailed in that video, the graphics in Retribution are basically entirely new at this point. I'm aiming for a mix of anime and cinematic style, and those who have seen the test footage so far all agree that it is a tremendous improvement over the previous project. I'm not content with improvement, though. I will continue to push the limits of my abilities and the limits of sins until the very end.

Obviously, accurate scales are impossible in Sins. From the 200 meter fighters to the gas giant-sized battlestations to the Fear and Pride, real-world depictions just won't happen. However, a lot of scales in relativity in Salvation were kind of screwed up. I went through the effort of rescaling a lot of assets during the process of revising them, so they are more accurate to each other in terms of canon. I also upscaled the fighters a bit anyways, so they should be easier to see in fights. There are now Corvettes as well, and many ships (like the Bishop and Leviathan) who had inactivate guns in Salvation due to the weapon limits now have their fully functional armaments.

Beyond sins, the biggest thing this project is getting is actual character representation. I'll be able to graphically and vocally represent some major faces and the world in full to-scale glory. This will be done through the UDK which, of course, I need to learn to make it happen. Again, as some individuals are aware, I've already made progress in that regard.

This area is where things get a bit more complicated. I can, without a doubt, given time, complete the sins portion of this project. The groundwork is laid out; all I need are ship models. That's it. Ship models are very tough because I am incompetent. But it's a matter of time. The UDK is more of a gamble. My learning disabilities, anxiety, and difficulty in focusing make something this complex troublesome. But it's not impossible, and I swore to do it.

The project has been sleeping for close to a month now as I recover. My CTS is a real annoyance and I often just don't feel like doing anything. Because of this, I doubt I will make any major trailers in 2013. Not unless things really pick up soon. But what I am considering doing is making a very short teaser of my particles.

I will tell you what will be the absolute most difficult part of this project content-wise. I intend to make two of the major battles in the UDK. The limits of sins impede these special fights far too much, so I'll be custom animating them and everything. I know it is possible, and within my ability to do. The hard part about it will be not losing hope and giving up before I even try it. That is my greatest weakness. I cannot commit to something and I cannot stick to it to the end.

What kind of developer video content are you interested in?