VIDEO

Done (To a point)

OK i have made the most of the things that i can do i am still trying to get my model into unity with all of it but thats ok. I have done all the rest of the project requirements. Sweet here is a short video of the walk cycle.

Ok quicktime is having a cow so no movie on the blog.

Jeff Logging out. . .

Yay Unity Works! ....... NOT

Yay Unity Works! with a cube. How awesome. I guess i could pass with a cube!!!!!!!!!! NOT!!!!!!! ROAR ROAR ROAR SWEAR SWEAR SWEAR. So i think that the problem is in the weight painting or the amount of vertices i have in my model.

Issues with Unity

Ok i went home and tryed to make the model in blender simpler. I cut out heaps of vertices in the sucker! This didnt working unity. So i cut off the sucker. This didnt work in unity. (And yes i am selecting both the armature and the mesh in blender before exporting) I then took off the bump map, as unity said it had an error with two materials. This didnt work. Then i cut off the sucker and the more complex parts of my model and the texture! This still wouldnt work!!! Yay i am loving blender and unity now!!! ( sarcastic!!!!!! )

I have also checked that i have weight painted everything in my model. So at least one bone has a light blue over everything!

OK. Now i am going to create a box in blender and export it into unity. I wonder if that will work?!!!! Probebley!!! Man i hate this!!! ROAR ROAR ROAR, SWEAR SWEAR SWEAR!!!!

That is all,

Cool, calm and collected Jeff Logging out. . .

Just before bed

OK, after much f**king around and trying to get things done when I'm half asleep, i have started to create a back story for my character to try and increase the believability of it. I don't want to reveal much but, its name is Heliopod. I am working on a style sheet for him. So tomorrow when i present I can show people what i was thinking and how this little fella lives!

Tired and very sleepy Jeff Logging out . . .

Development pictures

Here are a few more development pictures:

This image was me blurring the bump map so that the bumps were a bit smoother:

This is after i have refined the bump map and the textures:After getting home and starting to do some more work, blogger was working fine on my computer so i uploaded some development pictures.

Jeff Logging out. . .

Am still having issues with unity

I have been able to get some of the parts of my model into unity. I chopped off the lower half of him and then re-imported him. This worked. So i think the problem is in the sucker in the lower half of the model. I am still working on it. I am also have issues with blogger. I cannot seem to be able to upload pictures to the net. So i think i will go home and work on the other aspects of the hand in. and come in tomorrow refreshed and work on the unity side of the hand-in. Sweet i'm out of here!

Im starting to go insane. Aaaaarrrrr!!! I guess i shouldn't have gone to Jack Johnson. Oh well it was a sweet concert. So what ever!!!

Jeff Logging out . . .

Issues with Unity

I am currently having issues with importing my model into unity. Jackie says that i might have to many vertices. So am going to have another look at my model and see what i can do. Otherwise go back to a earlier model and trying to use that. I probley shouldn't ha ve left it until the last night. Oh well. What's a night without sleep?

Yay ... NOT!

Progress

I have been making progress with my model and the animation. I am now currently rendering out a "walk cycle". I have also made a few changes to the bump map. I think it looks much better. Yay. I am as soon as the render finishes, going to take my model into unity and make him do all the things he needs to do. Sweet.

Jeff logging out . . .

Texture Mapping Render

I have uv mapped the texture to the model and have also mapped the bump map:

What i think is wrong. I need to blur some of the color in the texture so its not so sharp and also create a bit more of a gradient in the bump map so the bumps aren't so huge. They need to be more subtle.

Textures and a bump map

Because my model floats and doesn't really have a walk cycle. I think that i need to work more on my textures. So i have been tinkering with colors and have just made a bump map so that the textures have abit more depth to them.

Intital Texture: At the start i was think about a blue and red texture:


Here I was adding more darker colors to the texture to define the curves:
Again more darker colors were added:
I was not really liking the color of the texture and in earlier posts i said that i wanted to use reds and yellows. So i think that this is a much better color combination:
I was happy with the colors , and i wanted to add more depth to the model so i created a bump map that i will be applying to the model today:

Jeff Logging out . . .

Yay!

Just after i blogged up the problem Tim walked in and showed me how to fix it. Yay. So am now just tinkering with the textures. And trying to find a cool modifier.

Jeff Logging out . . .

problems and progress

After taking saturday and sunday off to go to the Jack Johnson concert up in Napier. I have started to do some work on my model and the textures on him. I have been using the uv unwrapped picture to apply my texture. I think it is looking pretty good until I wanted to see what it would look like after a render with the texture on the model. I now cannot seem to get the texture to render through. I get a shaded model but no texture!!! ARRRRR!!!

Here is a render so far: (I have been messing around with the edge settings!)


I will figure this out. I mite take a break and do the animating on the character for a while.

Jeff logging out . . .

Got some stuff done

In class yesterday i worked out a few issues i was having with the weight painting and UV texture mapping. I am now at the stage of making the texture in photo shop and animating my character. I still have a lil bit of weight painting to tweak but it is generally pretty sweet. Texture shouldn't take to long. On Friday I am hoping to spend some time at uni working on the unity side of the project. Also i want to finish with blender on Friday. But i think i will have to make some time for the render. Judging on the 205 renders last year.

Jeff logging out . . .

Unity Tutorials

Tutorials: Last night Mouse, Ash and I went through the first two tutorials and had a go. They were all pretty easy. Well thats what i thought. But when we came to the third. I think we had, had enough of school for one day. As we had, had a class before. So we all went home. After i got home i downloaded the pdf, and had a look through. This will be a helpful tool. I think i can do most of it at the moment. I just need to spend some more time in unity and get myself up to speed with the software.

Model Progress: I have rigged up my model and it is moving but not quite right yet. I am also this morning working on unwrapping my model and working on its texture. I know Kah is going to give me s**t, but I forgot how to do this after he had shown us all. But i found a great tutorial on you tube and am making great progress now.

See you in class!


Jeff logging out . . .

Progress

Sweet i have had a kind of productive weekend in gaming. I played Army of Two for a few hours. This i feel is game research. Ha ha ha. The game was pretty cool. It was awesome that the storyline and game play were based around two people. So about 7 on Friday night me and my flat mate sat down to play. I went to be at 3. So we got pretty far in it and had heaps of fun.

So if you get the chance. Sit down with an amigo, and give this game a crack. It is defiantly work a look. But onto 385 game design.

I have been tinkering with my model in blender and have made the rig for it! It is not quite moving the way i want it to but its getting there. I am also today going to start to make the texture for it. I am trying to do a render of my model. So i can upload it to the blog, but my computer is having a hard time keeping up. So I am going to do a few at school today.

What am i think in terms of textures?
After basing my model on the jelly fish i thought that that could also be a nice texture idea. Am not sure hoe see through it will be but there will defiantly be some see-through stuff going on. At the moment I am thinking reds and oranges, with blue high lights.

Sweet stay tuned for updates.

Jeff logging out . . .

Lack of Progress

To be honest. I haven't really done much since last time. I am about mid way through modeling my character. But i am hoping to have the rigging done in my character done before class today.

Concept Sketches and First Images

OK here is my first sketch, It looks like a jellyfish with eyes.

Im not sure what i was think when i was drawing this but i had some idea about a jellyfish like creature that lives in the air. Just drifts and chills out. It goes at its own pace! Can be manipulated by wind but still has some control.






After this sketch i wanted to to look more like a balloon and less like a jellyfish. So this is concept no.2



This concept is shaped more like a hot air balloon. Which is kinda what it is like. The tendrils are more for stability through the air rather than stinging, like a jellyfish.

The main idea behind my character is that of a membrain or very light and very thin skin. The character feeds on carbon in the air and carbon residue on the surface of things. Then it produces the gas helium. This helium is then caught in the balloon like dome, and gives it lift. My character can manipulate the amount of helium in the sack so it can rise and fall. But it has no or very little way of moving left or right. It get carried by the wind.

Next after some thought about the way it moves and needing to rest and feed etc. I started drawing suckers, and maybe how they might attach to the body of my character.

I was unsure if i wanted one or three suckers on the bottom of my character. I quite like the simpleness of the one but i think i mite go for three. I don't really know why but i tend to just like the idea of three.









I have now moved onto more development of the tendrils, im not sure weather i want them to just be as they are or have more mass so they can choose to drift in different directions. Or have weights on the ends of them so they stay upright? Am not sure.

Jeff logging out ...

More Research

After looking into different things to do with my character i came across a few links that are quite interesting.

10 most horrible deep sea crastures:
http://www.oddee.com/item_79915.aspx

Freaky Tiny humaiod creature:
http://www.rense.com/general31/tinyt.htm


After looking at these links i had a bit of a look into sea creatures that mimic the types of styles i wanted to put in my character. One of these creatures was the octopus. It has no bones so can squeeze itself into beer bottles and other tiny places. But the main reason was with my character i wanted it to be able to grab onto things and rest. So i was looking into the suckers on the octopus when i came across this amazing website. With a wicked video! You should check it out! Link is below:

http://www.aqua.org/animals_octopus-video.html

The video has the most amazing images of the suckers close up!!! It is sooooo cool!

Research Into small creatures

I have started my character design by doing some research into tiny creatures. I wanted to go small rather than big. Why did i choose small? Small is a generally unknown area for humans. We can see small and look right down to small things using tools, but big is different. If we are relating small and big to the average size of humans. We can see big easily, we do not need a specific tool to see large things straight away.

I also think we as humans have an affinity with small objects or mammals. From the perspective of a girl. Things are cute when they are small but not quite so much when they are big. Like Paris Hilton and her small dog. I think that if she had a larger dog she would need a much larger handbag for one. And i think we would see a different attitude towards it. But from a scientists perspective small things are more intricate and delicate. Small things seem to have a strange almost magical power over humans.

This magical perspective of small things is what interests me and why i am designing my character small.

I started by thinking what is less than 10 grams, bugs, fish, bacteria, other macroscopic things. On friday i went free-diving with my mate, we go out at and spear fish, collect paua and crayfish. While we were out there were a heaps of jellyfish out in the water. The way they moved and the way they looked really got me thinking about my character. They way it moves and the way it looks.

This style of create started to effect the way my character moves and the way it looks. Key issues i was looking at were, colour, shape and movement. Going along the same lines as the jellyfish i have decided that my character has some influence on how it moves but it just goes with the flow. It drifts from place to place not really knowing where it will end up.

Stay tuned for character sketches and development images.

Jeff Logging out...