I know this might be controversial for some, but bear with me and I will explain.
I want to build a War Memorial in the UE4 engine and release for it free.
Why? I spent six and half years in the US Army. I served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have lost friends to these conflicts, most of them to the scars of that these wars have left on them. My first duty station was in Germany, where I visited the Luxembourg World War Two memorial and cemetery. When I was there, I realized just how far removed a lot of these memorials are from the general population of the United States. There are a lot of young people who will grow up never having visited a war memorial and thus never realizing the breadth of sacrifice that has been made by the Fallen. Building a digital memorial that can be accessed for free by anyone young and old is what I am trying to do.
Do I have the skills? I have a website with some older work, and this memorial will be handled with much greater care than the projects I have completed for my class work. For those who are curious, I am currently a student at a proprietary art school in Raleigh, North Carolina. You can find my portfolio here if you would like to do view it: http://www.visualmachinations.com/#!student/cm60.
What all will be included? I have completed sketch art for the memorial center piece and have gotten the first stage of modeling done. I have a pretty good idea where I want to go with it. I have included a simple concept render below.
The sectioned sphere in the middle is a representation of our divided world in this time conflict. It will be textured onyx with stainless steel textured bands in the dividing lines. On the cubic portion of each surrounding pillar, will be the names of the fallen. The cubic portion will be textured with onyx, the flatter stone will be textured with bloodstone, and the long base of the pillar will be textured granite.
I would also like to include the names and portraits of the all of the Medal of Honor recipients on the walls of the room that the memorial will be placed in. I don’t know if this is a possibility but I would like to.
Where am I now? Right now I am trying to get an A-Z listing of all the names, just the names, of those who had died during OIF and OEF. This is vital and I cannot move forward without these, aside from the additional modeling and texture work that needs to be done.
Am I sure I can do this? I don’t really feel like I have an option. This is something I have been thinking about for some time now, and I feel the time is appropriate, for me at least, to be getting serious about doing the work that needs to be done in order to make this happen.
What are my tools? I will be using UE4, Substance Painter, Maya, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Mudbox in order to complete this project.
If you have any questions pertaining to this project or if you have any information on how I can get the names I need please let me know via posting in this forum. I will try to check it as often as possible.
