Vending Machines and their Concepts

I was told that one thing that we needed for the environment, with it being a shopping center, was the creation of vending machines. These vending machines would be right in the players view so needed to have a large amount of detail to them. I felt there were two machines which I needed to construct, the food vending machine, that would contain snack and the drinks vending machine.

Before I started the machines, I needed to get some real world inspiration. I looked at machines that were around in the 80's, which besides the button layout, looked fairly similar to ones that are around today. The brand that made it is laid across the front, with it only selling products from that brand. Due to copyright issues, I cant exactly use a product such as Coco Coal or Pepsi, so it may be appropriate for me to create my own brand for the game.

Inspiration for Concept.

This new drink that I was going to create needed to take inspiration from the products that were already out there. The product also needed revolve around the time period that it was set in. I decided that the drink is was going to create was going to be called "Core Cola".

I got the measurements for the front of the drinks vending machine by creating a U.V snapshot to make sure that it fitted perfectly. Then I decided to use my knowledge of Photoshop in order create this piece. I first started by gathering images that suited the project in order to put them together for the final piece. These included the can, the pouring liquid, ice and a synth wave back ground. By putting together these images with a combination of filters and adjustments to the color I managed to get something that I was happy with. The next step was to add the text and detail to the can, such as the strips and water droplet to help finish the piece.

Art that I created for the front of the Vending Machine.

To make the Vending Machine illuminate but to keep the rest of the machine unlit, there were several things that I needed to do. I firstly needed to make the parts of the vending machine separate meshes, this meant that when I took it into Unity, I could put a separate material onto these two parts of the mesh, then put another non-emmisive material on the bulk of the machine.

As mentioned earlier, these two will have two different materials, with the front door panel and button being the emmisive, with the rest not. The best way to do this is to select the faces that I wanted to light up and press the "Extract" button in Maya. This made them their own meshes. Then to take these into Unity, I had to make sure that when I exported these objects, the button was turned on.

Parts of the Model that I wanted Emmisive had to be separate.

With the food Vending Machine, I didn't have anything to illuminate, however, I had a glass plane which would feature over the front of the snacks, the way in which I could achieve this was again repeating the steps that I did in the previous model, with using the same "Extract" tool.

This model was fun to create, especially since I had to create all these bars of chocolate and crisps that will go into the machine, ready for people to buy. This is the extra level of detail that I was told to put into the model. We originally were going to make this model similar to the one that we had made before, where I would design the food front and then place it right next to the drinks machine. However I wanted to separate the two, as I believe that variety around the map gives the player something different to look at.

The Transparent window had to be separate from the Vending Machine. 

Again the Two Vending Machines had to share a U.V map, this saved on the amount of materials that we were going to use in the game, especially since we had a map that would be fully dedicated to the illuminious material on the front of the drinks vending machine.

Once I had baked the basic color I.D map and textured the majority of the items, I then had to move onto the snacks. I have done a lot of adjustments on the Albedo and Normal maps when it came to these two to help give it a nice finish. I started off by adding the numbers and icons that would be on the front of the buttons. The next step was to create all these concepts for the snacks. I combined some ideas that were around when I was a child, with my imagination.

This looked fairly interesting when the map was complete. however I understand that the U.V space is not used well and when I am to continue with this idea of U.Ving more than one model onto a texture map, I need to use the space more appropriately.

By putting two models on one texture sheet, it saves using more materials.

The Illumination map was fairly simple in the end. I have never attempted it before, so this was something me to learn, I started this off by putting the front and the buttons of the drinks vending machine that I separated from the mesh earlier and put them in the same texture map. I then grabbed a U.V snapshot of the meshes, then putting the concepts that I created earlier to work. I also decided to create some concepts for the buttons, including drinks such as "Core Cola" and "Jump". The way that this map worked was everything that wasn't black would be illuminated, as long as it was U.V'd correctly.

A separate map is made for the Emmisive part of the model.

Im fairly proud of this model, as I designed all the brands that feature in machine are all unique. I fell that as a model, it looks quite nice, but a way in which I could improve upon this is to sort my U.V space out and to use it more wisely. As part of the game, I feel that this works, because if a player wants to look into it, they an then see all the different variety of the machine.

The Food Vending Machine.

Even though this model was fairly simple, I am really happy with the way that it turned out, more so than the food vending machine. I especially love the fact that the concept that I created looks perfect for this machine.

The Drinks Vending Machine (Illuminating).

Even though these models were relatively simple to create, I really happy with the way that they have turned out. I feel that with these placed around the environment, it gives us that extra something. I am also proud that all the concepts for the drinks and the snacks have been completely made up by me, with me getting a chance to try something different on this project.

Assets in the Game.

It was now time for me to work on different parts of the environment and incorporate what I had learnt here into different aspects of the project.