Worked on the girders and rafters today.  There is still some work to be done with them but that is for another day.  This is a render from Max.  Once things are worked out better I'll start tossing it into UDK but for now I'm still working a lot with the layout and nothing is that close to final yet.

Technically there is still work to be done on the Graybox but I think I've moved pass that some by modeling out the catwalks that are further in the distance.  I need to break the upper catwalk on the left and have pieces dangling and the damage of the toppled missile will have to be worked out too.  The right side is still up for grabs and I need to decide a few more things for the foreground but that will get done.  It's not as though there still aren't things to work on yet.  At this point my poly count is really really low so I'm feeling good about the amount of detail I can afford to put in and with all the repeated objects texturing shouldn't be too daunting.

I continued grayboxing tonight (need to find more time to work on this stuff).  I made the room longer and wider to give it more depth and to give better parallaxing.  I may lower the floor so it can't be seen to make it seem higher as well.  I plan on changing the metal floor plates to bigger metal framed steal mesh so that more of the room can be seen.  I'm also considering making the fighting platform wider still because most fighting games I've played have fairly wide stages.  Any ideas on what I might be able to throw in to fill in space are welcomed.  I still have a few ideas but the more interesting items I can put in the better.  I've decided to throw in control pannels here an there as well and rockets with removed pannels and plenty more steel girders.  Would a slightly vaulted ceiling bee more interesting?  It would make it so the larger girders weren't flush with the ceiling and hanging from other rafters instead and would give me a place to hang the chain from shown in the original level.  Done rambling time for bed.

I got a start on the graybox tonight.  I gathered a good chunk of reference last night but I could still use plenty more.  Still a lot more to do and to plan out but I hope to be working on the real models this weekend.  It feels good to be working in Max.

Decided to do Polycount's Brawl challenge instead of Dominance War.  I'm glad they decided to incorporate environments into their contest.  The premise is to take an existing 2D or 3D stage from a fighting game and create a new scene loosely based on it.  I'm taking this Zangief stage and turning it into a rusted out Russian munitions plant.  Here is a rough drawing I worked up during my lunch break today.  I hope to start gray boxing it soon so that I can see how things work together and see how all of the catwalks will appear in 3D.  The concept should really tart working itself out then.  My PC thread.