Search Results
The Pointy End of Camera Matching
Hello everyone. My name’s Stuart Attenborrow, and welcome to the semi-regular update on camera matching! This topic has been covered extensively in the past so I’ll try not to repeat what you already know. However, for those that are new to the project: camera matching is a term we use to describe a range of […]
Camera Matching
Topic: Camera Matching Team Member: Everett Location: Boiler Island Challenge: Creating perfectly accurate scenes For the first post on our brand new dev blog, I thought I’d explain the ins and outs of “camera matching”, a process we use to recreate the environments of Riven. At the time of writing this post, I’m deep in […]
Marking Riven’s 25th Anniversary: An Update from the Starry Expanse Project
Greetings from the team at the Starry Expanse Project! It’s been some time since our last update. Trust us — we know! With today’s exciting announcement from Cyan and the accompanying Open Letter to Fans of Riven, our team has been given the opportunity to speak publicly about our collaboration with Cyan. We are beyond […]
Happy New Year 2019
What a crazy year it has been for the Starry Expanse Project! We pioneered new methods for both camera matching and browsing the original Riven’s files, welcomed you all to a new community Discord server, and joined in on the Myst#25 celebration. All of this on top of the most productive year the project has ever had, with […]
On the Right Track: Deciphering the Cart Tunnel
Happy September everyone! Stuart Attenborrow here, a 3D Artist and one of the team’s camera matching specialists. As you know we’ve been focusing on Boiler Island for most of this year. That trend has continued post-Mysterium and we’ll share our overall progress with you soon, but I’d like to take a moment to take you […]
Piecing it Together: Building Boiler Island
Connecting the disparate parts of each of Riven’s islands together so they are both accurate to the original game and ensuring that they make realistic sense can be a challenge. Often it feels like assembling a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces never quite fit together. It’s no secret that Cyan cheated all the time when […]
Reaching New Heights: Boiler Island Terrain
The Starry Expanse Team would like to congratulate Cyan on the conclusion of their Kickstarter. Well done to all who contributed to make it such a success. What a result! It’s been a very busy month for us here at the project. We’ve made significant headway on multiple fronts, from several innovations in our development […]
Cool Under Pressure: The Boiler
Happy belated New Year from The Starry Expanse Project! It’s been a while since our last update, but don’t let that fool you into thinking we’ve just been sitting idle. Over the holiday break we took the opportunity of the downtime to critically review our pipeline, and get all our ducks in a row to […]
Wrangling Frames: Matching Animation
It’s no secret that here at the Starry Expanse Project we’re sticklers for accuracy in our reproduction of Riven, and at the center of this endeavor is camera-matching, the placement of cameras in a scene that represent individual shots from the original game. This process isn’t exactly complicated, but it can be finicky and requires […]
To Divide and Conquer
Last month we shared some of our recent camera-matching work on Temple Island, and we noticed that there was some great discussion regarding the coloured region map we used to place the SuperDome. To answer your questions, we thought we’d go into a bit more detail about what those maps are and how they help […]
Monthly Update: February 2017
Last month, our art team worked hard on two primary tasks: creating assets for the greybox scenes we presented last year at Mysterium, and camera-matching new ones. Here’s a sneak peek at some examples that have been shared by various members of the team. Remember, all of this work is still ‘in progress’ — and […]
July
Wow, it’s been a while, hasn’t it! Sorry about that. Rest assured, the last few months have been extremely active for us, and we have a lot of cool stuff to show for it! Our camera matching has come along really really well, and we’re in the process of loading our matched assets into Unreal […]
Help Still Wanted!
We have a really incredible team here at the Starry Expanse Project. Our artists are talented, our developers dedicated. Even the guy who runs the blog is alright! What’s more, we’re always looking to expand our wonderful team. If you’re interested in joining up with us, there are definitely areas where we could use the […]
Matching Pace
It may not have escaped your notice that it’s been a little quiet around these parts recently. It’s been a slow couple of months for the Starry Expanse Team, a lot of us have been very busy with other commitments that pull us reluctantly away from the project. The first quarter of the year has […]
Forest for the Trees
The process of recreating a game like Riven requires a lot of guess-and-check work. Matt, one of our artists, has been gradually figuring out the exact placement of each tree in the Jungle Island jungle, and the precise shape that the pathway follows. This is a constant struggle for us – the placement and shape […]