Building an FPS from scratch

After completing my first indie release, Blagmoz, I wanted to branch out into the world of 3D games. But 3D art was a mystery to me, and I wanted to explore the process of modeling and animation so I could create the games I imagined without relying on asset packs. I spent a couple months learning to use Blender so I could make my own models and animations. Then, knowing I had experience developing multiplayer games, I set a goal of creating a first person shooter in Unreal Engine 5.

Modeling and Animation — Viewmodel Draft 1

I started by modeling some sci-fi style hands and arms, and then moved on to designing and modeling the weapon. To the right, you can see the first draft of animation after I rigged my models.

It took me about two weeks to get to this point, troubleshooting and reworking time included. But I really wanted to take my time to learn how to do things right.

Polishing the viewmodel animation

My first draft used procedural materials created in Blender, but I wasn’t completely happy with the results. After a quick trip into Substance Painter, and a careful session of UV unwrapping, I managed to make the models look quite a bit better and be ready to import into Unreal.

I also took a polishing pass at the animation, adjusting timings and editing the animation curves to make it feel snappier and more interesting.

The video to the left is a Blender render using Cycles, and the sound effects were added in post with Ableton Live 11.

That’s all for now!

I’m happy with what I have so far as of November 23, 2024. I’m in the process of building the project in Unreal, but it’s not ready to show yet. I will be adding to this section as I progress. My experience in Godot is certainly speeding up the process, and there are many parallels between the two engines, but there’s still a bit of work to be done before I have something I’m ready to show.

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Indie Steam Release: Blagmoz