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Half-Life 2 Mod Team Seeking 3D Modelers

Posted: January 18, 2010
Sir Alexander
Hello, I am posting here on behalf of Team Chivalry. We are the team behind Age of Chivalry, a first-person multiplayer modification of Valve's Source™ engine with a heavy focus on melee combat and objective-focused team play in a medieval setting, and in order to further improve our mod we find ourselves in need of more 3D Modelers. We need more modelers because we're working on a major update for AoC right now, and we need to be able to produce models fast enough so that the rest of the crew doesn't get bottlenecked waiting for them.

About Age of Chivalry:
The initial public release of Age of Chivalry, in late August of 2006, was a success and the mod has since undergone several major updates, won a 2007 Mod Database "Mod of the Year" Editors Pick award, and has become popular enough that in 2008 Valve Software selected it to be one of 5 mods released on Steam. We intend to expand on our success to date, to continue improving Age of Chivalry, and generally to strive to make this mod the best melee combat game ever made.

Unfortunately I can't post links to our homepage, YouTube account, or Steam store page here, but if you want to find out more about our mod then we're only a Google search away! You can also download Age of Chivalry from Steam for free to take a look at our work to date, though you need to have a Source engine game registered to your Steam account to play AoC.

Expect No Pay:
Before you decide to apply for a position on our team you need to understand that this is something we do just for fun. None of the team members get paid for their work, and Age of Chivalry is distributed on Steam for free. Despite the lack of pay, there are many benefits to working with our mod team. For example, you can expand your skill set by working with other highly talented game designers, and improve your portfolio/resume.

Job Description:
Any modeler who joins us needs to be able to model/unwrap the UV with 3ds Max. 3ds Max 8 is the version we're using for the mod, and Maya can be used instead as long as the applicants are able to export their models for us to be able to use in 3ds Max 8. That means that if you use Maya, you'd have to export in .obj, a mesh file format that is readable by both 3ds Max 8 and Maya.

Applicants should also know how to use ZBrush, or Mudbox, to make high resolution version models to create the normal maps. Knowing how to use xNormal to bake textures would be a plus (you can create the normal map and ambient occlusion in that software if you load both your low and high models).

The rigging is made in 3ds Max 8 with "skin" modifier. Knowing how to export the models in source would be a plus as well.

To simplify, the requirements for this job are:
    You need to own a Valve game that comes with Source SDK Base, so you can actually run our mod, and it's dev build. Half-Life 2, Half-Life Deathmatch Source, CounterStrike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Team Fortress 2, or L4D would all work.
    Be able to create your low resolution model and unwrap its UV in 3ds Max or Maya.
    Be able to create your high resolution model in ZBrush or Mudbox.

If you can meet those requirements, then the other modelers on our team can help in the other areas.

How Do I Apply?
I'm afraid I can't actually post the email address for applications to be sent to here, but I can tell you how to find it on our homepage. Google "Age of Chivalry", go to our forums, scroll down until you find the "Jobs" board. It may be at the very bottom of the forum index right now, as the forums have been undergoing some rearrangement recently. Once you've reached the Job board, just open up one of the open positions threads, like the 3D Modeler one for example. Near the bottom of the post you will find a sentence telling you what email address to send your application to.