Overall I feel that the project met the aims that I set out with at the start of the year. However, my scope may have been to large and I perhaps should have narrawowed down the level and made it more detailed.
I am encouraged to move on with the project and hope that it performs well in the Dare Academy submission. It has been a great learning process.
Progress on the project has been so fast over the past few weeks that Ive not had the chance to update the blog very much. Since images speak louder than words, here’s a few screenshots of the current build of the game in-engine.
A wee GIF of some my absolutely fabulous barbed wire!
Last year I shyed away from trying to model and texture any of the World War 1 machine rifles/guns due to the greater complexity of their shape . But now I think it was definitely time to push myself a bit further and jump into modelling.
I decided to start off with the French Chauchat, or the Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG. The French machine rifle was one of the first light, automatic rifle-caliber weapons that were designed to be operated by one person. The design went on to become used in 
more modern 20th century machine rifles in that it was fully automatic yet portable and easy to manufacture.
With conditions in the trenches and the low quality metal of many of the parts, it gave way to many shortcomings and was soon phased out by the French army soon after World War 1.
http://world.guns.ru/machine/fr/chauchat-csrg-m1915-e.html
Since I’ve modelled the Lebel rifle I thought I’d better model a bayonet for the weapon as well.
There are two variations of the Lebel bayonet. The first features a nickel-silver handle and a hooked quillion. In 1916 however the need for metals forced the French to redesign the bayonet without the qullion (which seemed to keep getting caught on equipment anyway) and a brass handle.
As soon as Louis Barthas arrives at the front lines it seems as though he as entered a whole new world – one where death and danger lurked around every corner. On the way to the front line trenches Barthas describes crossing “three or four hundred meters of open ground, crisscrossed by enemy bullets. You’d have thought we were crossing a firing range on the day of a target shoot. They didn’t need any more goads to spur on the laggards.”
Barthas even describes the French front-line trenches as something that “would have made the Romans of Julius Caesar smile with pity” and that they were “the kind of trench we dug before the Germans showed us just how to make them”.
It is also here we see Barthas first penning his attitude towards the feelings of those back home: –
“This bit of trench could have been our grave, “our glorious tomb,” as the newspapers of that time would have called it”
Barthas witnesses his first bloodshed not long after arriving at the front – a Private Cau from Mont-Louis.
“He was the first man to be killed in front of us; it was the first blood we saw flow, and it-affected us painfully.”
2nd Notebook Page 27
2nd Notebook Page 30
This week I focused on some of the simpler objects that I would need to model in order to recreate the items which a French Poilu carried.
I’m always a bit apprehensive before I start modelling for a project, so I decided to warm up by modelling the French Adrian Helmet.
I then went on to model the French Lebel 1886 rifle while I talk about in my first blog post.
Stuart Vivers - Honors Project 