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Description
Part 0 - The Boring Introduction

Hello everybody !

Friedric P here. Today I'm starting a series of articles about one of my past, erm, "creative experience". I hope that a few lads and gals will find this interesting or sometimes useful, and not too boring. Well, that's just a hope . As I do not have the time to currently work on my personnal website, I will write all that stuff here instead, before everything is forgotten... And sorry for the spelling mistakes that I will surely do, english is not my native langage ^_^.

Also before starting, I would like to thank the good old KRMZ, the project manager - without him, all that would have not been possible.

So, here we go.

From february 2005 to january 2008, I did have the unique opportunity to spend a lot of time on a modification for Relic Entertainement real time strategy game Dawn of War (for those who don't know, it is a video game based on Games Workshop Warhammer 40000 Universe). A very interesting yet exhausting project, the Witch Hunters mod was an incredible experience which gave me the chance to extense my skills in many graphical areas - most notably character animations, realtime FXs, mapping coordinates, low resolution textures, and realtime optimisation.

During this time I was able to create 18 new units with models, unwraps, textures, skinning, animations, FXs, and in-game integration. I did the same with 11 buildings. I was involved in the developpement of 8 others models, doing bits of integration or complete animations for those ones. And during my "free" time, I also made 2 game levels (3 more were left incomplete ).

Doing this stuff completely alone was far from being easy - I now clearly understand why video game studios have large staff those days. Really, it's hard to keep motivation on such a long project, especially when (I love stupid challenges) you are trying to beat the original graphical quality of the game, alone in a cave while there are 50 guys on the other side. But despite being nearly dead in the end, this project was incredible for learning, and gave me some nice reliefs - the most interesting being a job offer, and a good laugh when my models were used (by mistake) by Games Workshop for promoting an official Dawn of War extension.

Alas, despite a state of completion close to 99%, the mod was left uncomplete for many reasons that I will explain another day.

I am still quite happy with the experience, but it's clear that I won't do that anymore. So before everything disappear in the wind, I will take a little time to show some work that was never published, explain how and why I made the Witch Hunters that way, post some textures and explain a little my way of working. Maybe it will give some interesting ideas to fans of warhammer 40k, or to aspiring old-gen 3d realtime creators

Ah, and of course :

This project is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited.
Adeptus Astartes, Blood Angels, Bloodquest, Cadian, Catachan, the Chaos devices, Cityfight, the Chaos logo, Citadel, Citadel Device, Codex, Daemonhunters, Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, 'Eavy Metal, Eldar, Eldar symbol devices, Eye of Terror, Fire Warrior, Forge World, Games Workshop, Games Workshop logo, Genestealer, Golden Demon, Gorkamorka, Great Unclean One, Inquisitor, the Inquisitor logo, the Inquisitor device, Inquisitor:Conspiracies, Keeper of Secrets, Khorne, Kroot, Lord of Change, Necron, Nurgle, Ork, Ork skull devices, Sisters of Battle, Slaanesh, Space Hulk, Space Marine, Space Marine chapters, Space Marine chapter logos, Tau, the Tau caste designations, Tyranid, Tyrannid, Tzeentch, Ultramarines, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k Device, White Dwarf, the White Dwarf logo, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, units, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2008, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. Used without permission. No challenge to their status intended. All Rights Reserved to their respective owners.

Dawn of War is ®, TM and/or © Copyright THQ / Relic Entertainement.

Plop !

Description
Part 0 - The Boring Introduction

Hello everybody !

Friedric P here. Today I'm starting a series of articles about one of my past, erm, "creative experience". I hope that a few lads and gals will find this interesting or sometimes useful, and not too boring. Well, that's just a hope . As I do not have the time to currently work on my personnal website, I will write all that stuff here instead, before everything is forgotten... And sorry for the spelling mistakes that I will surely do, english is not my native langage ^_^.

Also before starting, I would like to thank the good old KRMZ, the project manager - without him, all that would have not been possible.

So, here we go.

From february 2005 to january 2008, I did have the unique opportunity to spend a lot of time on a modification for Relic Entertainement real time strategy game Dawn of War (for those who don't know, it is a video game based on Games Workshop Warhammer 40000 Universe). A very interesting yet exhausting project, the Witch Hunters mod was an incredible experience which gave me the chance to extense my skills in many graphical areas - most notably character animations, realtime FXs, mapping coordinates, low resolution textures, and realtime optimisation.

During this time I was able to create 18 new units with models, unwraps, textures, skinning, animations, FXs, and in-game integration. I did the same with 11 buildings. I was involved in the developpement of 8 others models, doing bits of integration or complete animations for those ones. And during my "free" time, I also made 2 game levels (3 more were left incomplete ).

Doing this stuff completely alone was far from being easy - I now clearly understand why video game studios have large staff those days. Really, it's hard to keep motivation on such a long project, especially when (I love stupid challenges) you are trying to beat the original graphical quality of the game, alone in a cave while there are 50 guys on the other side. But despite being nearly dead in the end, this project was incredible for learning, and gave me some nice reliefs - the most interesting being a job offer, and a good laugh when my models were used (by mistake) by Games Workshop for promoting an official Dawn of War extension.

Alas, despite a state of completion close to 99%, the mod was left uncomplete for many reasons that I will explain another day.

I am still quite happy with the experience, but it's clear that I won't do that anymore. So before everything disappear in the wind, I will take a little time to show some work that was never published, explain how and why I made the Witch Hunters that way, post some textures and explain a little my way of working. Maybe it will give some interesting ideas to fans of warhammer 40k, or to aspiring old-gen 3d realtime creators

Ah, and of course :

This project is completely unofficial and in no way endorsed by Games Workshop Limited.
Adeptus Astartes, Blood Angels, Bloodquest, Cadian, Catachan, the Chaos devices, Cityfight, the Chaos logo, Citadel, Citadel Device, Codex, Daemonhunters, Dark Angels, Dark Eldar, 'Eavy Metal, Eldar, Eldar symbol devices, Eye of Terror, Fire Warrior, Forge World, Games Workshop, Games Workshop logo, Genestealer, Golden Demon, Gorkamorka, Great Unclean One, Inquisitor, the Inquisitor logo, the Inquisitor device, Inquisitor:Conspiracies, Keeper of Secrets, Khorne, Kroot, Lord of Change, Necron, Nurgle, Ork, Ork skull devices, Sisters of Battle, Slaanesh, Space Hulk, Space Marine, Space Marine chapters, Space Marine chapter logos, Tau, the Tau caste designations, Tyranid, Tyrannid, Tzeentch, Ultramarines, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k Device, White Dwarf, the White Dwarf logo, and all associated marks, names, races, race insignia, characters, vehicles, locations, units, illustrations and images from the Warhammer 40,000 universe are either ®, TM and/or © Copyright Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2008, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. Used without permission. No challenge to their status intended. All Rights Reserved to their respective owners.

Dawn of War is ®, TM and/or © Copyright THQ / Relic Entertainement.

Plop !