Workshop Project (Tails' Workshop) - Breakdown

Hey! This is a full rundown on my final 3D project my first semester of Junior Year, Tails' Workshop!

It all started a few years ago..

I was playing Sonic Adventure, minding my own business, when I decided to go inside of Tails' Workshop and noticed that something was glaringly off:

 

The airplane in the game (that would be stored inside this very room as it is taken out of here in a cut scene) wouldn't actually fit in here!

Below is a pic for reference. Take a look at how big Sonic is in each of these pics when compared to the plane. It's a technical impossibility! Now, the below pic is actually from the DX version of the game so the model is a tad spruced-up from the SA1 counterpart, but when it comes to their proportions to the world(and the plane), they are identical:

This fact has irritated me for many years.

Now fast forward to DFA class this year. We are hot-off the Hero Prop assignment, which was required to emulate an existing IP. So, I assumed that since it was expected that we put our Hero Prop inside our Workshop, I thought the Workshop also had to adhere to those IP guidelines. My DFA teacher said that that would be fine, so after he approved my first idea and then next class told me it wouldn't fit the criteria, I decided to make Tails' Workshop so that there wouldn't be any more confusion about it being a WORKSHOP. Specifically, the main hangar of Tails' Workshop in the Mystic Ruins from Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast. Finally, the plane would actually FIT!!!

Below is a GIF of all the progress I made on the modeling end of the project while it was in pre-pro (or, DFA) Don't worry, before I made anything I asked my DFA teacher if this was okay. He said it totally was so I got to work! My goal was to get all of the big things in the workshop placed down in 3D before I went in to conceptualize the details for 3D:

Here is the final submission on the project for DFA. I mainly used this to plan out miscellaneous details and solidify the lighting scheme:

From here, it was all detail-detail-detail! My biggest goal now that we were officially making it in 3D was to exceed the concept piece above. It's always infuriating to finally see the concept art for a game you've been interested in only to find that the concept art looks eons beyond anything in the final game. *Cough* Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric *Cough* This was one of the main driving forces for me modeling as much as I could in pre-pro as it was insurance to make me feel safer about actually delivering on this area when the time came for it to actually be made in 3D; It was being designed for 3D from the get-go!

Now, what IP project would be complete without referencing the franchise? Get ready for a lovely list of the ones I packed into the scene! *Cracks knuckles*

I'll start at the large set of hangar doors at the far end of the room and go clock-wise.

- The three picture frames hanging on the right are all drawn in a different style that exists in the Sonic franchise. From left-to-right they are: Comic, 3D and Pixel.

- The first of the three frames (far left one) tells the story of the workshop using the same story telling methods used throughout Sonic 3 & Knuckles (my favorite entry in the franchise) Since this method requires you to interpret what is given to you, I'll just say what it is a picture of: A five-year-old Sonic on a trip to Green Hill Zone with his late Uncle Chuck.

- The middle image is of the exterior of the building as it looked in Sonic Adventure.

- The right image is of Tails standing in front of his plane in a similar fashion to a WW2 pilot image taken at Neo Green Hill Zone from Sonic Advance on the Game Boy Advance.

- The electronic things sitting in front of those frames are Chaos Drive Analytic Machines. Chaos Drives were the power sources for the G.U.N. (Guardian Unit of Nations) force of robots from Sonic Adventure 2. You could collect them and use them to boost your Chao's stats in the Chao Garden Mode of the game. This dual-usage of power from an inorganic and an organic system made me think that Tails would definately be researching the capabilities of these things considering he made an engine that ran on a Chaos Emerald back in SA1

- The door's tombstone shape is the same shape used for that door in Sonic Adventure. This same door shape was actually used for Sonic and Tails' house in the Sonic Boom TV show.

- The notes on the cork-board are a slew of references to both the Sonic franchise and avionic engineering.

- The blueprints sitting below are actually wire-frames of both the SA1 airplane model and the Sonic Unleashed airplane model.

- Going around to the other side, the monitors are actually displaying M.E.O.S. (Miles Electric Operating System)

- The version (v1.24) is the same OS version that Tails uses in Sonic Colors:

- The numbers scrolling vertically across the screen are actually Tails' theme-song from SA1 written in Binary code. This is a reference to the binary in the screen shot above which when translated says, "If you can read this, you are a geek."

- The OS hud itself is actually the Windows 1 OS interface which was the closest real-life OS to the one in the screen shot above. You can actually emulate Windows 1 in your browser here: http://www.pcjs.org/devices/pc/machine/5160/cga/256kb/win101/

- The radio-esque consoles actually contain the front and backs of the SEGA Dreamcast Development Kit and it's GD-R Writer. Here's a link to full specs and images as well as motherboard configurations: http://devkits.handheldmuseum.com/SegaDC_Katana.htm

- The SEGA Dreamcast is the most modded console of all time with games coming out regularly to this day.

- If you run the workshop in-engine, the radio at the back-left corner of the room plays 'After The Adventure' by Jun Senoue. It is an elevator music version of the 'Theme of Station Square' from Sonic Adventure (Also composed by Jun Senoue) that I modified using Garageband and Audacity to sound like it was playing out of a speaker system from the 60's.

- The engine mounted to the crane is a combination of a Radial and Rotary engine. While similar in look, they are functionally quite different. Here's links to their wiki pages: Rotary Engine, Radial Engine It is more likely that Tails' plane uses a Rotary Engine as all early Sonic mechanical designs are based on WW1/WW2 military tech. Since this project is a modern redesign, I opted for a 60's tech look while retaining the older-era designs for the aged pieces.

- According to the blueprint for the engine, the version number is 9.9.99. The same day that both Sonic Adventure and the SEGA Dreamcast launched in North America.

- The pink flowers can actually be found in the Green Hill Zone.

The rest of the choices are primarily a mix of artistic design, IP accuracy, and cold, hard logic. Throw all that in a blender called UE4, and you get this:

We were required to use no more than a total of 4096x4096 pixels of texture space on the project. Below is all of my textures laid out on a 4096x4096 document. As you can see, I am well under budget:

Cheers,