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RPD Recreation

Remaking the exterior of the RPD from Resident Evil 2


Being a massive fan of the Resident Evil games, I really wanted to model an environment from one of that games to see how well I could recreate it. I settled on going for the RPD exterior from the remake of Resident Evil 2 (Capcom, 2019). I believe that this was a good choice for me as the majority of my work before hand is made up of different styled interior environments and I had never made a large scale exterior before. The mix of the dark night, having a variety of vehicles and also some foliage too, gave me a variety of modelling oppurtunities to experiment with in order to recreate the setting to a high standard.
A benefit from doing this as well was that I was able to directly compare myself to what is a high industry standard and see how well I was at meeting this level of quality.


RPD Exterior


Genre: Exterior Environment
Software: 3DS Max
Development Period: Approx 1.5 months
Type: Still Render


RPD Reference Image

Resident Evil 2, RPD Exterior, Image taken inside the RE Engine.


DOCUMENTATION



Environment

Did good job, Looks very alike the source material. Small details even to help give some extra depth to the closest building on the left. The idea for this came from when I was playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice(FromSoftware, 2019), I noticed while hanging from certain rock walls, that the main portion of the wall was flat but then the edges had actual modelled rocks to give the illusion that the whole wall had the same amount of depth. This is something I really enjoy doing while playing games, in a moment where I can be still and there's no action or anything, I love to look closer at the models to see how they made certain things and give the impression of realism, so that I can use these ideas in my own work.

Close up of a Wall from Sekiro
Screenshot from Sekiro, highlighting the edge rocks being modelled and the rest of the wall being flat.

Close up of the edge of the closest building
In the yellow sqaures here is where I used the technique that I discovered in Sekiro.

Car Modelling

Since my only experience with modelling vehicles had been with my Neon City project in third year, I felt like this would be a good opportunity for me to revisit modelling cars. I believe overall, about 40% of the modelling time for this project was spent on the vehicles themselves. I spent a lot of time trying to accurately recreate the shape of all the different cars as possible. However despite my best efforts I feel that they all still look a bit incomplete, or not as realistic as I would like them to be, even though I spent some time learning about modelling vehicles as well as using Car Paint materials to try and help the realism of the vehicles.

Early Bus Blocking

Work In Progress Bus Model

I think one thing that may help improve my vehicles is if I texture them using real world images of the cars for things like headlights, tailights, plates etc. It might be the missing piece that I need for my vehicles to feel real. I feel that no matter how much I model the vehicles to the best of my abilities, I was never happy with the result of the textures. After this project I will spend some time on one vehicle and try to recreate it as realistically as possible as it is an area I need to practice.


Imagers

I love to render every so often as I am modelling and texturing so that I can see the progress I am making, as it helps to keep me motivated in my work. I noticed that when I reached the lighting stage of the rendering that there was a lot of noise between the light and dark areas and I had no idea how to remove it. I spent a little time searching for solutions and discovered Imagers and began learning how to use them to improve the final results of my renders. Using things such as Denoiser, Colour Correction, Vignette and a lot more to post-process my renders in engine. I used these Imagers to help create the right exterior look that I wanted.

No Imagers

Without Imagers                               With Imagers


Foliage

The Trees were also a bit of a challenge for me too! I had never tried to create any sort of foliage before, so this was a bit of an experiment for me. Trying my best to create something that looks aesthetically pleasing from a distance. I feel that from the distance that the trees are viewed from, I was successful in creating the the trees.
However, in hindsight I've realised I can recreate the same trees with a smaller poly count as from this distance, the bends in the branches are very hard to see, so I would have been able to have one single poly for each group of leaves, rather than around 8 polys that have had all their vertices moved to make it look more natural.

This was a good learning oppurtunity for me as I have never really attempted foliage or more natural objects in my work.


Self-Reflection



Areas that I believe that I did well on during the process of this project;

  • Overall really happy with how this turned out and I feel like I was successful in achieving a high standard of quality for this render. I spent a lot of time making sure I was as accurate as possible to the source material as well. As well as being successful it was really fun and motivational to work on something I was so passionate about!

  • Learning about Imagers was beneficial to my work. I noticed a lot of noise in my renders with the lighting and the shadows. So began to research a way to atleast mitigate most of the noise and came across Imagers and began to learn how to use them. Imagers ended up doing a lot more for my renders than just reducing the amount of noise in them, I learned how to use certain things in 3ds Max such as colour correction, vignettes and more.
    This will help me to a lot of post processing things in 3ds Max itself without the need for a second source. However I feel that a second source might be needed even if for just 1 or 2 aspects.
    With what I learned I was able to go back to my Saw Render and used some Imagers to help polish up the final render for it as well which was nice.


  • These are some areas that I believe I could improve upon.

  • Cars are hard. Mine are fine and do the job for what I need here, however I would need some practice and then come back to it later on. Perhaps even remodel my Neon Tank and take my time to see how it would look now. I did learn a bit about the car paint material in 3ds Max and understand how it's values work to create a nice paint colour, however my car models do need work.
    I want to take time outside of this project to practice and learn how to model better vehicles.

  • Also while I feel that the trees, from the distant they are in the render are good. I feel that I could still cut down the poly count of the leaves as they are quite high. (Tree Pun Intended)
    I will continue to learn about foilage and ways to model more organic things in nature.

  • I feel that perhaps taking my render and trying to polish it up more in a photo editing software could be beneficial to my work and is something I want to explore in the near future.
    Adding things like the rain and perhaps a couple of burning vehicles may have boosted the final render.


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