Animation

The Animations in Blender

UNSUCCESSFUL

Was not very happy with the end result of my game level, did not turn out how i originally envisioned it at all which is unfortunate. I had my problems in unity and they were big enough that I did not allow myself enough time to fix them. No animation was a big one....really ruined the whole idea behind my level of toejam. the materials and bump map did not look at all how they had in blender, whether thats because i lot some of the quality or I could not get the lighting as effective could have been both. Overall I got it done with alot of minor hitches and was difficult to keep motivated with programs that piss you off! love blender but not unity....felt I was on track and doing well until it came to that. Never mind we learn from our mistakes....on to project 3.

link to game.....eeeek...play

http://taniahockings.com/final.html

Final

Final screenshots of level with materials and background and ground all intact, as well as lighting which I could not get same affect I had achieved in blender.

Problem 3....SCREWED

So can not get my animation into unity fullstop. neither can anyone else seem to figure it out...have no idea waht the problem but basically my level is screwed now. not at all happy. will have to remember to add a video of it working in blender so u can at least see it there.

Problem 2

Texture, turns out theres no way I can get those textures out of blender and into unity...welll no way i or anyone else i've talked to knows about! so am doing it the long way. taking screenshots of the materials in blender both colours and bump maps, openeing and editing in photoshop then reimporting into unity and having to reapply each colour and bump map to each foot etc. big mission and turns out I would have wasted alot of time in blender applying alll those textures in the first place

Problem 1

My base. Went back into blender to see what was going on, for some reason the texture is showing up on the bottom not the top, have tried to fix this and double sided is on. no luck. Gave up and added aterrain in unity....didn't work out exactly as i hoped but does the job....bit too much terrain tho.

Unity

Woah!!!!!! Huge problems in unity. For some reason I was under the impression I could just import into unity and everything would be working but no! never the case!
1. for some reason my base is not showing up so there is just a whole lot of feet looking like a huge mess.
2. none of my textures were there, I used bump maps and textures in blender so assumed they would come through but not the case
3. my animation is not working even though it was perfectly fine in blender.
I will go through and try to solve each of these problems and let you know how it goes!!!

Blender Complete!

I think I've done all I can do in Blender so ready to get into unity and it should all come together.
Another development shot of texturing...but not final....

Animation!

My animation in Blender is all work with the feet moving in and out and up and down at differnet rates and times, should hopefully work well when moving through the space but wont be able to tell until really "in the game". will add a video of later......

Texture

Have got textures and bump maps all applied to my feet and the base added to create my level

Environment

Have put the feet all together to create a track moving through where the aim will be to avoid the feet. I've changed, rotated, moved and warped the feet so they all look different, well to an extent. and will then put differnt texture etc amongst them. so far reasonably happy with the progress and how its going.....the main part to make it interesting an achieveing the result I want is when the animation comes into play.

bumps and colours

looking at some different bump maps and colours that will look effective and interesting with changing lighting etc.

Further Ideas

Quite liked the results of my feet witht the texture so have thought about going with the idea of cold, dead sort of lifeless and freaky looking feet that move, stomp etc. The whole environment will be moving feet through a track that you have to avoid so you don't get "toe jam!" or more accurately "foot jam".

Modelling

Blender have modelled up my feet and tried adding some textures that look successful...am happy with the results so far, used a bump map and colour with different lighting, now have to add more feet to start bringing the environment together.

Feet!

Decided to model up the feet side instead...right foot and left in as much detail as possible, hopefully using bump maps to get it more detailed.

Legs

started off modelling simple legs in blender but found that fairly unsuccesful, its difficult to get them looking how I want and changing each of them to look different...will keep trying but might try a different method

Level

Project 2, since my character is about fungus I want its environment to be about human feet. A landscape that moves and itches and triggers as the fungus moves around. Its kind of like a level with lots of feet and legs....quite hard to explain what I mean but it is something different and I kind of have an image and idea in my head! Guess will have to wait an see how it turns out. Am planning on modelling most of it up over holidays in blender then in the last week putting into blender and get things moving and activated, responding etc. Good fun!!

Concept for Project 3

Environment

Possible idea. Not a huge game player but have had a look around and the only one that seems to have some aspects that I like and or could develop is The Lord Of The Rings game, predominantly where the ents come out to play! I like the idea of a natural environment that changes as the characters become involved. I want ,y character to in some way control his environment, she is a fungil so can be both good and bad so when she enters a level surrounding objects could either "heal" and "grow" or "die" and "shrink" away, the environment reacts and is stimulated by the main character????? Just a train of thought. Here is a snapshot with the ents.

Project 2 Begins

Time to start working on our level........!

Environments

Researched some potential environments, settings etc for a bit of inspiration possibly further down the track. The first one is my favourite and more successful angle.

UNITY!!!

It wont work in unity! Hav exported from blender as an fbx, imported as a new asset into unity, the folder comes up, says everything thing is there when I drag into scene, even shows arrows to move it but there is nothing there not sure what's going on but very frustrating. Maybe model has too many vertices, not sure but have tried and tried again to import into unity but I'm not seeing any model! Sounds like alot of other people are having similar problems. Other than got my model and walk cycle all done, just been blogging it up and then burning onto CD now. Not sure what to do about unity will try again tomorrow.

Final Video - Fungil

Fungil shows her walk cycle and motion with a sneak preview of her in action with a defensive block.

Final Image - Fungil

This is Fungil, she's a tiny inspired fungus thats main ability is to defend against deadly air spread and contagious attacks. She has long stalk legs that help her move longer and faster and a round, flat head and waist that act and work as her defense. Fungil will always have to be careful though, while stopping and protecting from attacks she has to try not to spread her own fungal disease through her surrounding environment.

Final Kinks

My figure is al sorted in terms of form and look and have exported that as well as an animation as both an image sequence and fbx. The animation worked out well enough in the end...will explain more about it later.

Stuff Up

My weight paininting for some reason is all askew, thought I had already done that but for some reason it is all over the plac. Have gone back and fixed that hoping it will fix my earlier problem in animating, it hasn't has definitely helped control the armatures more and stop them spazing out but still having same problem with the animation it wont move and be set to where I am telling it to. Am just going to have to keep working at it and make the best out of it as i can.

Animation

Doing my head in!!!!! The keyframing is fine and all understandable but for some reason when I move the bone or amature it wont move to that position but do a half movement or less, only choosing to move in someways and not in others. Very frustrating, have been trying to fix and playing round with for ages.....not sure if I've stuffed something up earlier in the rigging, and if I did am finding it very difficult to figure out what it is!

Sculpting

Started sculpting up my model, giving it more of a fungi feel. Finding difficult to get the same facial features as my original model which is a shame but hopefully the lighting will help this. Rest of it shaping up well.

I think I have the rigging almost sorted, seems to be a bit more under control

Rigging

Have been struggling to get the rigging right, I think I must just be stuffing up one little thing but not sure what it is and so many different tutorials show differrnt ways of rigging etc, The bones seem to get to a point and then spaz out a little bit. Weight painting definitley helping this though will keep working on it.

Texture on the model

Bad lighting but attempt at getting the texture in the right places on my model

Texture

Have attempted to apply differnt textures! Is kind of working but not quite as successfully as I hoped...still difficult to cut the seams in the right places, but hopefully a bit of UV texture painting will clean up any imperfections and good lighting. Have figured out how to get the different textures in differrnt places through the unwrap and layout which worked out well.,

New Model

In its blocky Stage.....am struggling with the armatures, the legs at the moment seem to be working with a bit of help but the top half is all over the place, has something to do with IK solver i think. Have gone over a tutorial of a moving skeleton which showed a different way of attatching the armatures to the mesh.

Restart!!!

Class today, found out had to redo my model as was to detailed and had aplied to many multires to texture and rig. My model needs to redone as one piece rather than two and then do the rigging and texture when the model is still in the "blocky" form. Hopefully should not take too long...although will struggle to get the same similar detail I liked in the first one.

Textures

Attempted to add textures to my model but did not work out as successfully as I hoped, have to figure out how to apply different different textures to different areas and m struggling to cut the seams well, really struggling!!!! Have looked at a couple UV mapping tutorials, some very helpful others not at all.

These are some textures I've found that have been testing out with and could potentially use..

Fungus Model

Did this, which took me suprisingly not as long as I thought once I did some tutorials and started playing around with modelling and sculpting tools.

Research

My original idea and sketches was like a gorilla mammoth combo but relooked at it and decided I didn't like it much so went back to do some research and found some interesting images. Quite liked the fungus/mushrooms especially when u can make something quite interesting when combining and repeating

Modelling!

Just finished playing round with blender and modelling up my base shape of my character, rather blocky at the momoent! But ready for class to do some more work on it and start chiseling into a more refined shape!

Readings

Half Life - I found it really intersting how much thought processing they had to go through, thinking of every single little detail and having to regularly change, fix and improve anything that was not perfect. It suprised me that they spent a majority of their time in meetings discussing their ideas, and that someone would have a week of brilliance as such and then nothing! Overall I really had no idea how many people, ideas and thought processing it took just to get something like this partly off th ground.

Gish - This reading was cool because it showed some of the processes they actually went through in creating their characters. It was interesting that they used "base" skills, movements and overall the same general technical stuff for each character to save time and money but changed them each slightly so they were still individual works with their own character. I thought the fact that they had to cut back on some of their ideas due to time pressures was suprising, but overall really interesting the steps and stresses they go through to get the game up and running.

Blender

Did the Blender tutorials today which were helpful with trying to 3D model my character. I'm still struggling a bit to get the exact proportions and shapes right, but am sure will be able to get some help and figure it out in class tomorrow!
Doing the 2 readings tonight so will post some feedback on that tomorrow!

Sketches!

In the weekend begun playing round with some drawings and sketches of what my character could like like. Is inspired somewhat by a huge mammoth and possibly a gorilla?, still trying to get the body looking right.

Catch Up!

Bit of catch up have been a bit slack the past week! Last class begun researching phenotype and the idea of huge and miniscule creatures and things, also played around with blender, trying learn how to use it.

Welcome!

Project 1 begins.......