Sorry sorry, this slipped my mind. Didn’t help that our internet went a bit doo-lally for a few days (a fault at the exchange which, despite affecting the whole area, no-one reported for at least six hours until we phoned up).

Before I go any further – I have gone through the camera match tutorial, however my copy of Max was being slightly awkward and making adjusting proved nigh impossible. However, I do understand the basics as I can recreate things from photos quite easily, and will do so if I’m a bit stuck for something to do.

So, my visualisation project was recreating the palace of Xerxes from the Fullmetal Alchemist manga. Which went… Well, not disastrously wrong, just not as good as I wanted it to turn out.

As you can see in the last five, the shadows were being fickle again. And the interior dome… *cringes* I have no idea what went wrong, but Max would not let me fix it. Every time I tried: “Max has encountered an error”. And this was like 5 times in a row. I wasn’t about to push my luck really in case my laptop started smoking like a pop tart.

I think I probably forgot to alter the colour on the pillars, and lower the tile size of some textures, because it looks really nasty when viewed close up. And I mean pixellated nasty.

But overall I am rather proud of it – roll on the Xerxes flashback so I can compare!

Okay I admit it. This should have been up before now. In my defence I hit a sort of burnout after hand in and combined with me being scatterbrained it ended up low on the list.

I’ll say this: modelling and rigging characters = piece of cake. Wiring parameters also equals piece of cake. Cameras and x-referencing scenes to avoid a program crash (I hit double figures during this. You do NOT want to know how visualisation went in that regard) equals a pain up the arse. I also learnt to next time not model anything in excess of 100 units tall because this makes the sets you need to build ridiculously huge. Once you’re hitting 4 digits in the XYZ coordinates it starts getting unbelievably silly.

The best thing I ever learnt during this project was just how damn useful hiding stuff is. Even if you’re reaching stupid amounts of polygons, hiding stuff you don’t need is a lot less taxing on the processor. The best thing I learnt though on top of that was that you can hide some of the polygons of an object. It was an absolute godsend when using morph targets let me tell you.

Anyway, here are screengrabs, in order, of the three featured characters’ rigs, one character that never made it into the final animation (the proportions are considerably off on that one), a couple of the two ’sets’ and finally stills from the animation itself, where it becomes obvious that the lighting went bonkers.

The final animation has no sound effects (except for a couple of “voices”), instead I used royalty-free music from this site. I think I’ve also “Gainaxed” the ending (meaning that it doesn’t really make sense – “Gainaxed” refers to Studio Gainax’s ultra-confusing ending to Neon Genesis Evangelion). Also, I swear the shadows were turned on for the lights. *checks* Yep, they were on. They just refused to work how I would expect them to work (like, you know, actually cast a shadow on the other objects!). Also, can I just say that rigging and animation a 4-legged creature is very tricky? I may know a lot about animal biology, but trying to get it to walk right was still a serious effort. Anyway…

After The End is set in a world where humans are long gone, leaving being a myriad of weird creatures, which are constantly menaced by these robotic “angels” (I never figured a name). In this, it all starts when a strange wraith-like creature called Dormin happens across a broken piece of horn…

Couple of fun facts – 1) The reversed dialogue I used for the Angel is part of the Zagreus poem from the Doctor Who audio of the same name (yes, I am a total geek) and 2) Dormin’s arm does a rather bizarre 360 at one point (the bit when he reaches his hand out in the tunnel). It’s hard to spot due to the lighting, but it’s the only time it does that in the whole thing (I didn’t know how to get the elbow to work with a look-at constraint).

Not an update, more a heads up for anyone using Room 105.

I went to Uni without my laptop last night as they’ve finally installed Unreal 2004 on the computers. Couldn’t do a damn thing thing though, because at least half the computers (we lost count by the end of the evening) had pest alerts when I tried to access the P drive. Obviously there’s no decent virus checker on the network, because instead of fixing it it ended up crashing Windows Explorer and the task manager. This made them impossible to use, and it often happened when trying to use the P drives.

This morning I discovered that I shouldn’t have plugged in my hard drive into any of them (I was hopping computers like mad, and the only one that didn’t crash didn’t actually have a P drive at all), because I’ve now got a worm on it (there’s also a trojan in my portable version of aMSN, but whether it’s mistaken identity or not isn’t clear as I can’t find a mention of anyone else having in on the net). I’m getting my important files off my hard drive as I type (after checking they’re not bringing anything with them) and then removing the infections, because I don’t trust Sod’s Law one iota.

An update will happen at some point – I’ve made ground on both animation and games (well, sorta in the latter’s case), but first I’m informing IT services. Either way, I’m not plugging my hard drive into those computers again until I know it’s safe.

In which I start reaching new levels in downright weird.

Fair bit of the Easter holiday was spent working on my other main character, an “Angel.” The reason it took so long to do it was down to several glitches cropping up that required me to go back to a previous file (good thing I’ve gotten into the habit of using the Save As Copy shortcut), the reaction manager causing crashes (about 10 in the space of 15 minutes, that must be some kind of record) and the problems of not being able to remove any constraints you’ve added except for Undo. As it stands, a character that’s mechanical and doesn’t need bones is even more awkward to rig than one does.

Will add commentary later.

Whoops! Forgot that I hadn’t posted anything to do with this.

So, I decided my level would be a Steampunk airship hanger, because well, it was an excuse to draw airships in seminar. Anyway, I did some sketches of a layout and some design elements.

Yeah, excuse the confusing level map, I haven’t found that book of tracing paper I got with an animation kit a few years back yet. Rest assured I have a rather good idea of how it will look up here. *taps head* Just the dimensions that I have trouble with.

I went fishing for airships and steampunk on the net – Final Fantasy is a goldmine for this sort of thing. I admit I may have been channelling Final Fantasy IX with the airship sketches as I love that game. I also found some awesome pictures of industrial piping and stuff from factories.

I’ve been building the airship in 3DS Max as hopefully the right size to put into the level. However, I’ve quickly discovered that getting it into Unreal Editor isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Here’s the rough airship, looking very… ship-like. The little dark blob in the bottom left corner is my character height guide. Now, when I put it in the editor, I got this:

Looks odd, but I only wanted it for judging my placement (I’ve already mucked up the floor, the pit’s not meant to be all the way along), I can add the final thing later. So I run the level to check the size in-game and this happens:

Holy smeg I’ve got a ghost ship! I have no idea why it’s doing that, and I’ve been looking online to try and find the reason (the book only covers Maya, and while I may be good at translating from one program to the next, I have limits). May have to rethink being able to go inside the ship (but I’m sure as hell making sure you can go on the deck) but once I’ve figured it out I’m sure it’ll be easier to do. I’m currently trying out unwrapping the UVW and giving it a proper texture file to work from. Slightly fiddly, and I haven’t even got to the mast yet.

I’m still incredibly amused at the fact one of the set of faces turned out like an axe. I’m sure I’ve seen one of those in World of Warcraft.

Erm… other stuff when I can sort through my files (I have a fully rigged character for animation done, pending a couple of tweaks).

Okay, still haven’t got the stills from the Bulwell project (I need to apprehend Ed’s hard drive at some point), but I have the design ideas for the section project – and, I’ll be honest, I may be stretching the definition of “description from a novel” just a little. But, if anything, I’ve got myself a mammoth undertaking.

I’m a sucker for old ruins and ancient architecture, and during one of my many zone-out moments I thought it would be awesome to recreate the ruined city of Xerxes that first appears in chapter 4o of the Full Metal Alchemist manga. So I grabbed a load of pages with the ruins from OneManga.com with the hopes of at least piecing them together enough to recreate as it was.

Then after looking it on Wikipedia (because I’m woefully behind on the manga and also nonplussed about spoilers for it), I found there’d been a flashback to it before it became a ruin. “Great,” I thought. “Makes my job easier.” Well… it didn’t really, it just let me discover that not only did the author seem to forget to match the ruins up with the complete building, but she seems to have borrowed from at least 4 different styles of ancient architecture. Just as well I’m a huge geek for that time period.

The main problem, I found, was the fact that sequential panels are more confusing to piece a place together with that descriptive prose. At least with the written word it gives you general directions that the character is walking in to get from A to B, but with the manga I’m still trying to work out which direction the first image in this post is facing in relation to the exterior.

We get indicators of these:

But despite these visual references it’s still a nightmare figuring where these features are placed. The interior’s even worse, as we’re given no real hint of a floor plan and I’m having to go off what I know about Greek Temples and the Palace of Knossos on Crete.

Anyway, I started tackling it in my sketchbook. Couple of mind maps:

Elevations and floor plans, complete with what is essentially me talking to myself (most of my notebooks end up like this):

That first one has a brilliant example of how crap my sense of perspective is when I’m working from memory. I’ve got a book on perspective, but I think Hayley borrowed it and now it’s AWOL (probably buried in her room somewhere).

And finally, I broke out Wings 3D again for some test models:

The first one was before I found the flashback, and was what I originally assumed the hall to look like. The second one is much closer to the exterior shown in that chapter.

Now I need to ask my brother what books he has on Ancient Rome, Greece, Byzantium, Egypt and Minoan. Good thing he’s a history fanatic.

Just to show I have actually been doing something, here’s a progress report for my animation project. Visualisation will have to wait till I can get the stills from Ed (and after we’ve done this blummin’ presentation – am I the only who finds having one group doing Victorian architecture and another doing Industrial Revolution architecture (my group) to be a bit silly and redundant seeing as they’re around the same time period?).

I started off with this:

Didn’t get very far with modeling it as you can see, because it felt rather… safe? Uninspired? Anyway, I’ve filed it away for future use – I’m particularly fond of the rough sketch in the bottom left. I also quite liked the quick (and unfinished) speed paint I did:

But after watching Jojo in The Stars in our animation lecture last week, my brain took a decidedly weird turn, and I ended up creating this guy, who is now almost fully modelled.

Things got odder when I found this little flash app called SCRIBBLER – which takes a drawing that you create in it and makes it scribbley (is that a word?).

Before:

After:

I ended up playing around with it when I really should have gone to bed, and came up with these… things.

It’s like walking the pencil on steroids. And when I started to use some as a basis for extra designs, things got decidedly weird.

I’m starting to think my subconscious goal for this project is to see how much I can creep everyone out.

And this was me doodling when I should have been listening to the lecture yesterday afternoon. Although apparently they’ve proven that doodling actually helps you concentrate (not sure if it still works like that when your mind starts thinking about things like plot and visual style mind you). In case you’re wondering, they’re sized relatively except for the one on the far right.

Memo to self: Look at some other themes because this one is a bit on the narrow side.

We got our mum a cheat disc for her birthday last year – she plays Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia but isn’t as quick with her thumbs as she used to be. The infinite health cheat was a lifesaver during the boss fights for Tomb Raider Legend, but it turned out it was about as helpful as a chocolate fireguard when facing the final boss. Why? Look at this video and see if you can guess.

Spot the problem? There’s no lock-on. Sure they put the symbol on the target, but with the Excaliber sword it may as well be there for decorative purposes since it only hits if you’re facing the target head on, otherwise it goes flying off to the side (even more annoyingly, you have to be pixel perfect in which way you’re facing). Now, we were at a disadvantage because our view of the ‘arena’ was a lot narrower than in the video, but that was because Lara had this infuriating tendancy to get stuck on the scenery and we had to keep near the thing because there’s only a short window of opportunity to hurt while it’s down. My mum had several goes before asking me to try – I ended up this close to hurling the controller at the screen. I miss the days when the camera always followed a locked-on target, and Lara always kept facing no matter which direction she went (also, I want to know which prat thought that having the fire button set to R1 and not have it fire when held down was a good idea).

The funny thing is, Legend is actually a good game, or at least, it’s a good game when compared to the direct sequel Tomb Raider Underworld – whose developers need to be strung up for several reasons:

• For leaving an unbelievable amount of glitches in the final game (the PS2 version at any rate) – Hayley had the foresight to get footage of these glitches In The Wild, so to speak. You can see them here.
• For once again giving us a dubious lock-on system, this time accompanied by a temperamental grapple tool which made some sections longer than they should have been because more often than not it wouldn’t attach to the hook.
• For managing to miss the point when they said they’d be going back to what made the series great, by having most of it underground (I know it’s called Tomb Raider but when the players starts complaining that they’re still underground you know you’ve taken it too literally), having so few enemies it was bordered on ridiculous (because it still used the musical stings for when danger’s coming even when there wasn’t) and having zero boss fights. The only one labeled a boss fight just sat there.
• For a completely WTF plot – I ended up writing a late night rant on that part alone over at my LiveJournal I was that infuriated by it.
• And, in the most baffling bit of marketing I’ve ever come across, releasing a level from the middle of the game as the demo! And not only that, they included the plot recap in the loading screen. I’m starting to think that they just didn’t care.

I’d better stop here, because I could keep going where Underworld’s concerned and most don’t have the endurance.

Was watching Ed play this in our Games seminar last week and I had to blog about it.

YouTube Street Fighter

Quite possibly the greatest use of the annotations feature I’ve ever seen. Which is why it’s a direct link, otherwise it screw the flow of play up.

Aside from the unsurprising amount of time I spent absorbing ridiculous amounts into my brain (damn you Wikipedia), I did do something constructive other than Uni work, if a bit sporadically.

Sorta surprised myself with just how much I pulled from my sketchbook and hard drive (memo to self – make list of stuff that needs revisiting).

Scattered amongst the dragons (hey give me a break, I hadn’t drawn any for ages) are some attempts at human figures – mainly Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist, since there’s a popular concept from that series that won’t leave my brain alone (it’s from the fandom itself actually, but still annoyingly persistent) – and some sketches from an afternoon in the Arboretum next door to our Uni building; which reminded me that drawing animals is incredibly tricky since they won’t keep still. I may need to bribe the squirrels in future. With the dragon sketches, you can actually see one particular idea evolving – there are 3 sketches of the same subject; two are very similar (the computer doodle came first), one has a reworked composition.

There’s also the black and white beginnings of a map, which might be recognisable from my Showcase last year (I might post that again, I quite liked that map), and a very strange mash-up of Lemmings and Doctor Who – I drew a Lemming version of the 4th Doctor for a laugh, and now I’m working on the set.  I hope they won’t be too long with Matt Smith’s costume shots, because I need to work out how to make him a Lemming.

3D work was much of the same – the 3D minfig, of which there are two versions, one for full bones animation, the other being a virtual equivalent of a real one (I’ve inadvertently discovered WordPress’ weird way of handling galleries it seems, the images I wanted to post separately have been added to it. Oh well, you’ll just have to guess which is which from the thumbnails [good luck on that]), and a 3D Lemming. That last one was, honestly, purely for fun and done (mostly) in one afternoon. I amazed myself with how accurately I’d modelled it, because I was working purely from memory – I might rig it and see what I can do. A friend asked if I was going to make a 3D Lemming Doctor – one thing at a time mate.