Finally!
Ive battled with numerous issues, from the project file messing up to loosing the UDK screenshot sequences and having to upgrade my laptop's HDD half way though putting together the final cinematic.
Its been a frustrating effort to get this project wrapped up.
So in summary: This is the final product of my 2nd year (1st semester) project for a digital media class at university. We had to work on an architectural visualisation and I chose to mix things up a bit and use a game engine for the rendering which lead me to UDK and to the 11 day level design tutorial. (Id never used UDK before, but Ive had several years experience using Blenders inbuilt game engine)
The building and surrounding environment is based on the Roman Ludus and terrain from the TV series 'Spartacus Blood and Sand' and 'Gods of the Arena'.
Id originally submitted a rushed version of the final cinematic for the actual assignment, but wanted to tidy it all up a bit more before uploading to youtube (thats the part thats taken so long to get around to doing)
Ive mostly used 3Dsmax for the modelling, but did a bit in Blender as well. Level blocking was done in UDK and Gimp/Photoshop for 2D texture work.
I did a lot of preproduction, including drawing up some blueprints for reference from scenes in the series and an entire design/planning document to refer to throughout the duration of the project.
And finally heres the cinematic:
Now, time to get into other projects :)
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Saturday, September 24, 2011
New YT Video - BGE realtime slideshow
Mid semester break from Uni is into full swing, one day in and I've already got a new youtube video up demonstrating a recent project from uni. The project was associated with a speech I had to do a couple of weeks ago, I chose to use BGE for the visual side of the presentation instead of a powerpoint slideshow. The topic of the presentation was something I'm very interested in: Nuclear Fusion.
Using BGE made the project into something interesting and motivating to work on, rather than several boring hours making powerpoint slides. It also gave me an opportunity to have a mess around with videotexture, something Id wanted to use properly for a while.
And of course theres also the advantage of having a presentation which engaged people more directly than what boring PP slides with a few pictures could do.
If I have time over the next couple of weeks Ill be working towards finishing a couple more projects, most which have a large percentage of the work already done, just in need of some finishing touches.
Using BGE made the project into something interesting and motivating to work on, rather than several boring hours making powerpoint slides. It also gave me an opportunity to have a mess around with videotexture, something Id wanted to use properly for a while.
And of course theres also the advantage of having a presentation which engaged people more directly than what boring PP slides with a few pictures could do.
If I have time over the next couple of weeks Ill be working towards finishing a couple more projects, most which have a large percentage of the work already done, just in need of some finishing touches.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Mars
Ive had a lot of uni work to do lately, so not much time has been spent on blender projects.
This morning however I thought Id do one of the new tutorials over at Blender Cookie, just as a break from the uni work. The tutorial was the planet/space scene one found here: http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/08/24/creating-a-scene-from-space/
Heres the result after following the tutorial:
And the current node setup:
Considering the amount of time it took to setup, its not too bad. Theres still elements Id like to improve on however. Mars itself looks too clean, it needs some kind of subtle atmosphere. Also the lens flare needs obvious work. Im also trying to find a higher resolution texture map, the one I used here was 2K but it doesnt seem to be enough. A normal map would also help...
It was good fun to set up though and I learnt several new tricks with the node editor, I'll be trying to do more BlenderCookie tutorials in the near future I think.
This morning however I thought Id do one of the new tutorials over at Blender Cookie, just as a break from the uni work. The tutorial was the planet/space scene one found here: http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/08/24/creating-a-scene-from-space/
Heres the result after following the tutorial:
And the current node setup:
Considering the amount of time it took to setup, its not too bad. Theres still elements Id like to improve on however. Mars itself looks too clean, it needs some kind of subtle atmosphere. Also the lens flare needs obvious work. Im also trying to find a higher resolution texture map, the one I used here was 2K but it doesnt seem to be enough. A normal map would also help...
It was good fun to set up though and I learnt several new tricks with the node editor, I'll be trying to do more BlenderCookie tutorials in the near future I think.
Friday, July 29, 2011
The Past Month
*Warning - Massive post*
Ive been meaning to post at least once a week, apparently not for the past 4 weeks. Time flies :/
Over the past month a few interesting things have happened. Heres a summary:
----The first ever Blenderheads meetup took place in Adelaide.
I got to meet some very cool people who Id known and talked to online for several years. This included Ben Dansie who worked on Sintel, and Lee Salvemini who runs CGMasters (http://www.cgmasters.net/)
It was also great to catch up with the guys who run Monkeystack again (I did work experience with them at the start of 2010), they were very kind in hosting the event in their studio.
We had a pretty relaxed dinner and chat initially, then some people did presentations (including me) about work they've recently done or a particular area of Blender.
Lots of interesting things were discussed and my only issue with the night was that it ended so quickly, I felt like we all could have talked for days (even though the meetup went for several more hours than planned)
Theres a thread for organizing the event on Blenderartists here. This is where all future meetings will be organized.
Blendernation Post
On the forum thread Ben did a nice writeup about the events of the night, he explains:
Further meetups are more than likely going to happen, we all agreed that 2-3 months between meetups was a good amount of time.
My presentation was pretty unorganized and was on the topic of one of my current projects (the one hinted in a past post with a node setup) - it involved some 3D printing testing, Id only finished getting the presentation video together the morning of the meetup, next time I hope to have something more detailed prepared.
----Space Shuttle Atlantis launched - The end of the era of Space Shuttle flight
Might be a strange thing to mention here, since its not *really* related to my current work. But I did have a trip to America planned for this year - at the start of July - to see in person the final space shuttle launch. Unfortunately exams and money became an issue, so I wasn't able to see it in person, but I did watch it live online which is better than nothing.
Id planned to do some kind of mini documentary on the space shuttles, their history and my trip to America and back again, using a lot of footage Id take myself. Im thinking of doing something different now however, perhaps a 3D animation of some sort as a tribute to the 30 years of Space shuttle operation. We'll see...
----Ive purchased an 'Eleven'
Which is basically an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed and produced in Australia. Very nerdy, very cool, very fun.
Its a rather powerful little device, which lets you program microcontrollers. I have several little projects planned, and some larger ones. I might take on some graphics related projects with it, but a lot of them will be electrical engineering and programming based. Ill probubly end up posting stuff about it on here as well. One project relates to the next topic Ill mention below:
----I attended Avcon
Avcon is the Adelaide Video Game and Anime Convention. It happens once a year and is pretty much one of the only events in South Australia for geeks to get their geek on.
It was a pretty interesting weekend all round, lots of *interesting* cosplayers however (some terrible of course, but some surprisingly awesome)
This guy took the place of one of my favourite outfits for the event, it was something I was looking to do, but didnt have the time (and couldnt be bothered anyway)
SSSSssssssSSssssssss........
All that aside, I plan on definitely coming in costume next year.
Another highlight of Avcon was the indie games room (pretty much the main reason I attend the convention), its a place for indie developers (or even hobbiests) to display their games, and have them played for pretty much 48 hours straight by thousands of people. Its a great place to network, and I met several people there over the course of the weekend who were good to network with.
Next year I hope to have something to display in the Indie games room. Something to work towards...
----Operation Moonfall began
This one kinda came out of nowhere, but Im not surprised. In an interview only a couple of days ago, Eiji Aonuma stated that if fans made enough noise about it then Majora's Mask would be remade for the 3DS (MM3D) like Ocarina of time (Oot3D) was.
This was quite exciting to be heard, coming right from one of the top guys at Nintendo, the fact that theyre actually considering remaking Majoras Mask.
This is a game which has firmly sat in my top 3 games of all time, ever since I played it way back in the 90's on my N64.
I had plans myself, before hearing of any of this, to make it heard that MM3D needs to happen, and many other fans have been voicing this since Oot3D was announced as well. So to put it simply, I need to get my plans up and running a lot faster now, since now is clearly the time to make as much noise as possible.
Either way, Nintendo will be recieving a message from me in the near future, heres a sneak peak at part-of-something-to-do-with-it:
I should probubly drop the link to the main site as well while Im at it. So here it is - http://operation-moonfall.org/
Theres a petition to sign, and a facebook group to join + twitter feeds to follow.
Thats about it for the wrap-up of the past month. I have done the occasional 3D work, but not as much as I had planned and Im back to Uni as of this week as well, so finding time for this stuff is even harder again.
The Ludus Cinematic is still not 100% finished, hit a snag when all my file allocations messed up in Premier Pro and I effectively had to re-import everything to the timeline again from scratch (very frustrating)
The problem was caused by the way Id imported the files, and the way they were named after being dumped from UDK.
Hopefully this doesnt happen again...
Ive been meaning to post at least once a week, apparently not for the past 4 weeks. Time flies :/
Over the past month a few interesting things have happened. Heres a summary:
----The first ever Blenderheads meetup took place in Adelaide.
I got to meet some very cool people who Id known and talked to online for several years. This included Ben Dansie who worked on Sintel, and Lee Salvemini who runs CGMasters (http://www.cgmasters.net/)
It was also great to catch up with the guys who run Monkeystack again (I did work experience with them at the start of 2010), they were very kind in hosting the event in their studio.
We had a pretty relaxed dinner and chat initially, then some people did presentations (including me) about work they've recently done or a particular area of Blender.
Lots of interesting things were discussed and my only issue with the night was that it ended so quickly, I felt like we all could have talked for days (even though the meetup went for several more hours than planned)
Theres a thread for organizing the event on Blenderartists here. This is where all future meetings will be organized.
Blendernation Post
On the forum thread Ben did a nice writeup about the events of the night, he explains:
The recent Blender User Group meeting in Adelaide was a great success. Big thanks to Michael, Lee, Duann, Alex and Levon for sharing and again to Monkeystack for hosting.
After a pleasant round of chitchat and greetings, I got the ball rolling with a demonstration of the Cycles renderer with an emphasis on characters. (Slightly embarrassing side note, my drivers weren’t actually up to date for CUDA on the night so “only” showed off the CPU rendering.) Michael then continued on by showing some very high res Cycles renders (up to 7k from memory!) and talking about his findings as he pushes Cycles in its current form.
Lee gave an overview of creating the trailer for the CG Masters Rigging DVD – animation, rig controls, adding titles and the sequencer. Also of note were his recent efforts in talking to local schools about the potential to use not only Blender but the growing training material as well. This is certainly something I’m keen to keep an eye on.
Duann then shared about his work with Shapeways and gave a general overview of what the company can offer artists. Some really cool examples were shown including a very neat little walker. After some further questions and discussion, Alex shared his experience with getting a Shapeways print made and painting it. Neat trick – simulate the model falling in the BGE to see if it will stand on its own when printed!
To cap off the night, Levon shared some of his work on various projects and those of us who were left (rather long but enjoyable night) had a quick chat about future meetings.
Further meetups are more than likely going to happen, we all agreed that 2-3 months between meetups was a good amount of time.
My presentation was pretty unorganized and was on the topic of one of my current projects (the one hinted in a past post with a node setup) - it involved some 3D printing testing, Id only finished getting the presentation video together the morning of the meetup, next time I hope to have something more detailed prepared.
----Space Shuttle Atlantis launched - The end of the era of Space Shuttle flight
Might be a strange thing to mention here, since its not *really* related to my current work. But I did have a trip to America planned for this year - at the start of July - to see in person the final space shuttle launch. Unfortunately exams and money became an issue, so I wasn't able to see it in person, but I did watch it live online which is better than nothing.
Id planned to do some kind of mini documentary on the space shuttles, their history and my trip to America and back again, using a lot of footage Id take myself. Im thinking of doing something different now however, perhaps a 3D animation of some sort as a tribute to the 30 years of Space shuttle operation. We'll see...
----Ive purchased an 'Eleven'
Which is basically an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed and produced in Australia. Very nerdy, very cool, very fun.
Its a rather powerful little device, which lets you program microcontrollers. I have several little projects planned, and some larger ones. I might take on some graphics related projects with it, but a lot of them will be electrical engineering and programming based. Ill probubly end up posting stuff about it on here as well. One project relates to the next topic Ill mention below:
----I attended Avcon
Avcon is the Adelaide Video Game and Anime Convention. It happens once a year and is pretty much one of the only events in South Australia for geeks to get their geek on.
It was a pretty interesting weekend all round, lots of *interesting* cosplayers however (some terrible of course, but some surprisingly awesome)
This guy took the place of one of my favourite outfits for the event, it was something I was looking to do, but didnt have the time (and couldnt be bothered anyway)
SSSSssssssSSssssssss........
All that aside, I plan on definitely coming in costume next year.
Another highlight of Avcon was the indie games room (pretty much the main reason I attend the convention), its a place for indie developers (or even hobbiests) to display their games, and have them played for pretty much 48 hours straight by thousands of people. Its a great place to network, and I met several people there over the course of the weekend who were good to network with.
Next year I hope to have something to display in the Indie games room. Something to work towards...
----Operation Moonfall began
This one kinda came out of nowhere, but Im not surprised. In an interview only a couple of days ago, Eiji Aonuma stated that if fans made enough noise about it then Majora's Mask would be remade for the 3DS (MM3D) like Ocarina of time (Oot3D) was.
This was quite exciting to be heard, coming right from one of the top guys at Nintendo, the fact that theyre actually considering remaking Majoras Mask.
This is a game which has firmly sat in my top 3 games of all time, ever since I played it way back in the 90's on my N64.
I had plans myself, before hearing of any of this, to make it heard that MM3D needs to happen, and many other fans have been voicing this since Oot3D was announced as well. So to put it simply, I need to get my plans up and running a lot faster now, since now is clearly the time to make as much noise as possible.
Either way, Nintendo will be recieving a message from me in the near future, heres a sneak peak at part-of-something-to-do-with-it:
I should probubly drop the link to the main site as well while Im at it. So here it is - http://operation-moonfall.org/
Theres a petition to sign, and a facebook group to join + twitter feeds to follow.
Thats about it for the wrap-up of the past month. I have done the occasional 3D work, but not as much as I had planned and Im back to Uni as of this week as well, so finding time for this stuff is even harder again.
The Ludus Cinematic is still not 100% finished, hit a snag when all my file allocations messed up in Premier Pro and I effectively had to re-import everything to the timeline again from scratch (very frustrating)
The problem was caused by the way Id imported the files, and the way they were named after being dumped from UDK.
Hopefully this doesnt happen again...
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
New Series Intro Progress
Bit of progress over the past few days working on the intro for my new series.
Just been looking for reference images and styles and I think Ive got a good idea of what the intro should look like. Its based around a bunch of 'glass' looking slides with a certain theme to them, most of these themes will be cgi related, for example one slide is about python programming, another about Blender, and so on.
Ill probubly do a couple of other random ones with games I like and other interesting things. Its not overly important though, the slides are mostly just there for detail and to look 'technical' and loosely provide glimpses at the types of things that might be involved with an episode at some stage.
Heres a quick render I made to see how it was looking with all the moving parts. The video is unlisted so its pretty much a sneak peak for anyone following my twitter/blog or going to my website
(I want to do more of these in future!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5LPQ5ax4B0
This will probubly be tweaked a lot more soon, but its a good start for now.
And I think I'll save working more on this until next week, I want to spend the next couple of days finishing the Ludus cinematic once and for all, keep getting distracted! Gah.
*Edit* Ill change the little thumbnail images to the full images when my internet starts behaving itself again and I dont have to use Imageshack....
Just been looking for reference images and styles and I think Ive got a good idea of what the intro should look like. Its based around a bunch of 'glass' looking slides with a certain theme to them, most of these themes will be cgi related, for example one slide is about python programming, another about Blender, and so on.
Ill probubly do a couple of other random ones with games I like and other interesting things. Its not overly important though, the slides are mostly just there for detail and to look 'technical' and loosely provide glimpses at the types of things that might be involved with an episode at some stage.
Heres a quick render I made to see how it was looking with all the moving parts. The video is unlisted so its pretty much a sneak peak for anyone following my twitter/blog or going to my website
(I want to do more of these in future!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5LPQ5ax4B0
This will probubly be tweaked a lot more soon, but its a good start for now.
And I think I'll save working more on this until next week, I want to spend the next couple of days finishing the Ludus cinematic once and for all, keep getting distracted! Gah.
*Edit* Ill change the little thumbnail images to the full images when my internet starts behaving itself again and I dont have to use Imageshack....
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Exam Fortnight (arrrghhh)
One week of exams left, Ive only had 2 exams this semester which is nice, but it still means lots of sitting around in the dark corner of my room for days on end doing last minute study.
My first (and most difficult) exam was yesterday, my final exam for the semester is this upcoming Friday, and after that I have holidays till August (Hurray!)
I have, however, continued working on polishing up the Ludus cinematic (not too much longer!)
And Ive started blocking out shots for my secret 2nd project which I hinted to in the last post. At the moment I have just over a minute of blocked out shots finished (with a couple of the shots being pretty much final - odd at this stage but theres a couple of non blender things going on here as well)
Looks like full animation will be ~4mins, not including intro and credits. Havent posted anything that long for quite some time, but its nice to have a substantial animation in the works. Also due to its nature it *shouldnt* take too long to produce. I cant say much about why that is, cause it would give a lot away. Just got a couple more characters and environments to *restore* and rig up, then some animation and Im on my way.
Ah, and I really need to get this new video series on the go as well (I think 99% of all the people who follow my work wouldnt even know about this blog yet, the first video of the series will be about news and updates etc so thatll point people here as well)
Im in the process of designing the HUD for the series currently...
-Yes this series is so serious that it requires a HUD.. D:
My first (and most difficult) exam was yesterday, my final exam for the semester is this upcoming Friday, and after that I have holidays till August (Hurray!)
I have, however, continued working on polishing up the Ludus cinematic (not too much longer!)
And Ive started blocking out shots for my secret 2nd project which I hinted to in the last post. At the moment I have just over a minute of blocked out shots finished (with a couple of the shots being pretty much final - odd at this stage but theres a couple of non blender things going on here as well)
Looks like full animation will be ~4mins, not including intro and credits. Havent posted anything that long for quite some time, but its nice to have a substantial animation in the works. Also due to its nature it *shouldnt* take too long to produce. I cant say much about why that is, cause it would give a lot away. Just got a couple more characters and environments to *restore* and rig up, then some animation and Im on my way.
Ah, and I really need to get this new video series on the go as well (I think 99% of all the people who follow my work wouldnt even know about this blog yet, the first video of the series will be about news and updates etc so thatll point people here as well)
Im in the process of designing the HUD for the series currently...
-Yes this series is so serious that it requires a HUD.. D:
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Back to Blender [finally]
With exams on the horizon I havent been too active with 3D work(s), but thats not to say I havent done anything.
The Ludus project is coming to a close (finally! Im seriously about to boot the whole thing out the door) and now Ill have time to focus on finishing my other 2 current projects, plus starting a third.
Not sure if Ive mentioned this anywhere, but Im trying to buckle down with projects at the moment. Leaving myself with 3 running at one time max, so once one of the 3 is complete I can take on a new project. This means that I cannot allow myself to get distracted with other projects (lack of productivity lately has forced me to try to rework my project and time management to try and help get more projects finished)
Any other projects I come up with get written down in my notebook and are pretty much forgotten, to be started when Ive completed some other project.
Either way, the Ludus project is finished, I completed the A2 poster for it a week ago, its pretty simple with a wide view of the cliff as the basis, the Ludus perched on the side in the lower right of the poster. The whole bottom of the poster is a 'making of' section which describes the process of designing the level and theres a few other interior shots thrown in around the place as well.
Heres a final shot of everything together:
I still havent finished the cinematic, but will continue to work on it over the next week or so before uploading.
And finally, I havent mentioned anything about my 2nd current project, the screenshot below is a sneak-peak, many people should know where its from, and what it is.
The Ludus project is coming to a close (finally! Im seriously about to boot the whole thing out the door) and now Ill have time to focus on finishing my other 2 current projects, plus starting a third.
Not sure if Ive mentioned this anywhere, but Im trying to buckle down with projects at the moment. Leaving myself with 3 running at one time max, so once one of the 3 is complete I can take on a new project. This means that I cannot allow myself to get distracted with other projects (lack of productivity lately has forced me to try to rework my project and time management to try and help get more projects finished)
Any other projects I come up with get written down in my notebook and are pretty much forgotten, to be started when Ive completed some other project.
Either way, the Ludus project is finished, I completed the A2 poster for it a week ago, its pretty simple with a wide view of the cliff as the basis, the Ludus perched on the side in the lower right of the poster. The whole bottom of the poster is a 'making of' section which describes the process of designing the level and theres a few other interior shots thrown in around the place as well.
Heres a final shot of everything together:
I still havent finished the cinematic, but will continue to work on it over the next week or so before uploading.
And finally, I havent mentioned anything about my 2nd current project, the screenshot below is a sneak-peak, many people should know where its from, and what it is.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Ludus DVD + Cinematic
The DVD design is finished, and the Cover+DVD with the cinematic on it was handed up Monday when it was due. Unfortunately I had to rush the cinematic quite a bit more than what I wanted, so its very much lacking polish. Didnt have a choice however, I had to hand it up how it was because I was out of time.
This means I wont be uploading the final cinematic for at least another week, as I need to work on it some more first.
Heres some pics of the DVD
Next up Im doing the final part of the project, an A2 poster.
Cant wait to finish this and get back to some Blender projects!
This means I wont be uploading the final cinematic for at least another week, as I need to work on it some more first.
Heres some pics of the DVD
Next up Im doing the final part of the project, an A2 poster.
Cant wait to finish this and get back to some Blender projects!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Thoughts on 3DsMax + More screenshots
First up, some more screenshots (even some interior shots) over in the thread at GameArtists.net.
I mentioned in the post how I failed at implementing most of the decals, some kind of lighting issues going on which I dont have the time to look into fixing right now, so most of the decals I made were just a waste of time. *sigh*
Onto current thoughts on 3DsMax (beware, long and drawn out):
So Ive been using 3dsMax pretty extensively the past few months and I cant help but compare it to Blender in several ways.
Its been painful getting into it, but Im slowly getting the hang of using 3DsMax to model and UV map basic objects. It bugs me however, doing anything seems to be overly 'bulky' and/or 'slow'. Ive put most of that down to me not being experienced with Max, anyone familiar with a 3D program will know that they each have their own little tricks and quirks, and once youve gotten to know the program well enough everything starts to flow better. But even telling myself this all the time, I still feel like my inexperience with Max isnt the whole problem. I have after-all been using it for months and know the in's and out's of modeling simple objects with it reasonably well. But for me it seems non-intuitive.
Nothing seems to be in the place you automatically think it should be, or even the next place you think it should be. Max seems to be the product of getting a bunch of uninspired programmers in one room to throw together a program, no consideration for the artists at all.
Sometimes even simple tasks take a whole lot of (seemingly) unnecessary steps. For example adding a new face requires you to find the correct panel, make sure your in face mode, scroll down to the panel within the panel which has a button labeled 'create', activate the button, then the viewport suddenly has verts appear (even though your in face mode) and then the user must individually click every single vert, plus the first vert again just to create the face.
In Blender you select 4 or 3 verts, then press 'F' and the face (either a tri or quad) is created. Done - easy - it makes sense and is super quick. (theres also a button in the UI which does this, but the hotkey is slightly faster)
Another example is UV-unwrapping a complicated object.
First you need to choose the correct option from the modifiers (theres about 5 different UV mapping modifiers here), then change the modifier into face mode (hidden in the modifier stack), activate 'Select by element' in selection parameters panel, press the big 'Edit' button in parameters to bring up the UV window, all going well you can then use Mapping>Flatten map to get some kind of flattened UV map. No idea about making seams for the UVs however, didnt have the time to try to work that one out properly, as it proved to be more frustrating than a simple unwrap of the object to begin with.
Blender however, select the object, tab into edit mode, select all faces, press U (or unwrap in the side toolbar), select method of unwrapping from the dropdown. You then instantly have the UV's flattened out and viewable in the UV window. Seams are as simple as selecting an edge and using the shortcut Ctrl+E to either mark or clear a seam, or again the button(s) in the tool panel.
Again, maybe its mostly a lack of practice and instruction in 3dsMax on my part. But it doesnt take much effort, after using both programs, to see which is geared more towards efficiency and less frustration for the artists.
Additionally I found that 3Dsmax sucked up ram to a point where I couldnt have it running at the same time as UDK (which is also pretty intensive on system resources). This lead me to having to import into Blender the initial Ludus model I made in 3dsMax, so I could have an interactive 3D version of the Ludus to refer to as I blocked out the level in UDK.
Along with all this, 3dsMax takes 2-3mins to boot up on my system, Blender takes 2-3 seconds.
3DsMax 2011 student version - 1.53GB, Blender 2.57 - 74MB
And I still remember the days when Blender was <20MB....
I mentioned in the post how I failed at implementing most of the decals, some kind of lighting issues going on which I dont have the time to look into fixing right now, so most of the decals I made were just a waste of time. *sigh*
Onto current thoughts on 3DsMax (beware, long and drawn out):
So Ive been using 3dsMax pretty extensively the past few months and I cant help but compare it to Blender in several ways.
Its been painful getting into it, but Im slowly getting the hang of using 3DsMax to model and UV map basic objects. It bugs me however, doing anything seems to be overly 'bulky' and/or 'slow'. Ive put most of that down to me not being experienced with Max, anyone familiar with a 3D program will know that they each have their own little tricks and quirks, and once youve gotten to know the program well enough everything starts to flow better. But even telling myself this all the time, I still feel like my inexperience with Max isnt the whole problem. I have after-all been using it for months and know the in's and out's of modeling simple objects with it reasonably well. But for me it seems non-intuitive.
Nothing seems to be in the place you automatically think it should be, or even the next place you think it should be. Max seems to be the product of getting a bunch of uninspired programmers in one room to throw together a program, no consideration for the artists at all.
Sometimes even simple tasks take a whole lot of (seemingly) unnecessary steps. For example adding a new face requires you to find the correct panel, make sure your in face mode, scroll down to the panel within the panel which has a button labeled 'create', activate the button, then the viewport suddenly has verts appear (even though your in face mode) and then the user must individually click every single vert, plus the first vert again just to create the face.
In Blender you select 4 or 3 verts, then press 'F' and the face (either a tri or quad) is created. Done - easy - it makes sense and is super quick. (theres also a button in the UI which does this, but the hotkey is slightly faster)
Another example is UV-unwrapping a complicated object.
First you need to choose the correct option from the modifiers (theres about 5 different UV mapping modifiers here), then change the modifier into face mode (hidden in the modifier stack), activate 'Select by element' in selection parameters panel, press the big 'Edit' button in parameters to bring up the UV window, all going well you can then use Mapping>Flatten map to get some kind of flattened UV map. No idea about making seams for the UVs however, didnt have the time to try to work that one out properly, as it proved to be more frustrating than a simple unwrap of the object to begin with.
Blender however, select the object, tab into edit mode, select all faces, press U (or unwrap in the side toolbar), select method of unwrapping from the dropdown. You then instantly have the UV's flattened out and viewable in the UV window. Seams are as simple as selecting an edge and using the shortcut Ctrl+E to either mark or clear a seam, or again the button(s) in the tool panel.
Again, maybe its mostly a lack of practice and instruction in 3dsMax on my part. But it doesnt take much effort, after using both programs, to see which is geared more towards efficiency and less frustration for the artists.
Additionally I found that 3Dsmax sucked up ram to a point where I couldnt have it running at the same time as UDK (which is also pretty intensive on system resources). This lead me to having to import into Blender the initial Ludus model I made in 3dsMax, so I could have an interactive 3D version of the Ludus to refer to as I blocked out the level in UDK.
Along with all this, 3dsMax takes 2-3mins to boot up on my system, Blender takes 2-3 seconds.
3DsMax 2011 student version - 1.53GB, Blender 2.57 - 74MB
And I still remember the days when Blender was <20MB....
Final week progress
Got less than a week remaining for this project to wrap up (at least the major cinematic part, theres still one part of the project to do later but thats not so much 3D related)
The ludus is coming together well, Im just about finished making assets now, and the level has been rebuilt a bit for some extra rooms and the staircase connecting the ground level with the top, plus its all pretty much furnished as best as I can with the remaining time Ive had to work on it. Im starting on the new camera angles now for the full cinematic which will be rendered using Manitee.
I also spent a bit of time yesterday making a ton of decals. They should liven up the bland walls and texturing. Soon we'll be seeing walls with damage and chipped away surface, or the occasional stains, grime and blood splatters.
Last night I also got around to making a full 360 terrain object complete with mountains, which really adds to the overall environment. The terrain was modeled in Blender in about 10mins (would have had a migraine trying to do it in 3dsmax, Ill get to that in my next post)
Then I slapped on some rocky texture, which didnt really cover it properly (lots of stretching) but it doesn't matter because all of this will be in the distance, and UDK's DOF blurs the distant mountains anyway.
(thats the Ludus in the bottom right)
The ludus is coming together well, Im just about finished making assets now, and the level has been rebuilt a bit for some extra rooms and the staircase connecting the ground level with the top, plus its all pretty much furnished as best as I can with the remaining time Ive had to work on it. Im starting on the new camera angles now for the full cinematic which will be rendered using Manitee.
I also spent a bit of time yesterday making a ton of decals. They should liven up the bland walls and texturing. Soon we'll be seeing walls with damage and chipped away surface, or the occasional stains, grime and blood splatters.
Last night I also got around to making a full 360 terrain object complete with mountains, which really adds to the overall environment. The terrain was modeled in Blender in about 10mins (would have had a migraine trying to do it in 3dsmax, Ill get to that in my next post)
Then I slapped on some rocky texture, which didnt really cover it properly (lots of stretching) but it doesn't matter because all of this will be in the distance, and UDK's DOF blurs the distant mountains anyway.
(thats the Ludus in the bottom right)
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Ludus Asset Development
With the main level design out of the way and the teaser rendered out at a decent level of quality, Im now focusing a lot on creating assets for the level. My main concern at the moment is that its a bit too bland and undetailed.
Ill be spending all of this week and some of next week going though a relatively large list of objects Ive written up, its been slow progress to begin with, but I think Im finally at a stage where my workflow is pretty fast and efficient.
Heres my custom asset folder slowly being populated:
And some arrange for a screenshot:
Note that all of these assets have at least one low poly mesh, a collision mesh, UVW mapping and one diffuse map (more will have normal maps if I have time and theres a few with multiple textures), so its taking quite some time per object to get it into UDK.
A lot of the objects also have hollowed out collision meshes- the pots, bowls and wooden barrels in the picture for example are hollow and can hold other items. You can see one of the barrels is filled with rigid body wooden swords, with the barrel in turn being rigid body as well. This means you can pick up the barrel and move it somewhere else in-game, with the ability to spill the swords everywhere if your not careful. Also if you accidently run into it, the barrel will fall over, roll around spilling its contents everywhere. I cant explain the amount of time Ive wasted running around a test area putting pots and things into barrels and then rolling them down a staircase or just throwing them to see what happens.
Thats one of the great things Ive discovered with UDK - when you think of something a bit tricky, all you have to do is approach the idea in a sensible way and UDK tends to work out exactly how youd want it to. BGE (blenders game engine which Ive been using for years) is a more primitive for some of these things. I could imagine similar ideas in BGE being a painful task. In UDK it just works as expected.
So for now Im just going to carry on though the long list of objects I need to make, but at least Im at the stage where I can get a model into UDK (start to finish) in pretty good time, everything that was slowing me down previously Ive managed to overcome and learn for the most part (like using 3dsmax's stupid UVW system)
Then mid next week Ill start putting the final composition together while adding final objects and polishing up the scene further.
Ill be spending all of this week and some of next week going though a relatively large list of objects Ive written up, its been slow progress to begin with, but I think Im finally at a stage where my workflow is pretty fast and efficient.
Heres my custom asset folder slowly being populated:
And some arrange for a screenshot:
Note that all of these assets have at least one low poly mesh, a collision mesh, UVW mapping and one diffuse map (more will have normal maps if I have time and theres a few with multiple textures), so its taking quite some time per object to get it into UDK.
A lot of the objects also have hollowed out collision meshes- the pots, bowls and wooden barrels in the picture for example are hollow and can hold other items. You can see one of the barrels is filled with rigid body wooden swords, with the barrel in turn being rigid body as well. This means you can pick up the barrel and move it somewhere else in-game, with the ability to spill the swords everywhere if your not careful. Also if you accidently run into it, the barrel will fall over, roll around spilling its contents everywhere. I cant explain the amount of time Ive wasted running around a test area putting pots and things into barrels and then rolling them down a staircase or just throwing them to see what happens.
Thats one of the great things Ive discovered with UDK - when you think of something a bit tricky, all you have to do is approach the idea in a sensible way and UDK tends to work out exactly how youd want it to. BGE (blenders game engine which Ive been using for years) is a more primitive for some of these things. I could imagine similar ideas in BGE being a painful task. In UDK it just works as expected.
So for now Im just going to carry on though the long list of objects I need to make, but at least Im at the stage where I can get a model into UDK (start to finish) in pretty good time, everything that was slowing me down previously Ive managed to overcome and learn for the most part (like using 3dsmax's stupid UVW system)
Then mid next week Ill start putting the final composition together while adding final objects and polishing up the scene further.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
UDK Level progress
So I spent a decent whole day working on this Tuesday (samples of raw footage were required for the university assignment Wednesday afternoon)
For the most part Ive finished the majority of the level design, lighting, basic details, postpro effects and managed to animate and test render some camera movements using Manitee.
Heres a teaser of some of the better external angles so far:
So whats left to do? - Polish and detail mostly. Theres a lot of objects I havent modeled and added to the level yet, some stock ones from UDK I want to replace with my own and a lot of the textures need rework and tweaking. Then its time to render some more interesting shots and compose the final cinematic.
For the most part Ive finished the majority of the level design, lighting, basic details, postpro effects and managed to animate and test render some camera movements using Manitee.
Heres a teaser of some of the better external angles so far:
So whats left to do? - Polish and detail mostly. Theres a lot of objects I havent modeled and added to the level yet, some stock ones from UDK I want to replace with my own and a lot of the textures need rework and tweaking. Then its time to render some more interesting shots and compose the final cinematic.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Temporary front page is up!
Ive finally got around to getting a slightly better front page for the website up!
(before it was just the spinning 'Delta' logo)
The main site is under construction for now, but I still wanted somewhere for people to be able to see news and WIPs as things happen. Im not sure when the main site will be done, but Ill be working on it whenever I have time to spare.
And to announce all this I plan on doing the first part of a new video series on my youtube channel. Not sure when Ill get around to making that either, but the first episode should be pretty short and just news based, so sometime during May or early June I hope?
And how about a screen-capture, just for reference in the future:
(before it was just the spinning 'Delta' logo)
The main site is under construction for now, but I still wanted somewhere for people to be able to see news and WIPs as things happen. Im not sure when the main site will be done, but Ill be working on it whenever I have time to spare.
And to announce all this I plan on doing the first part of a new video series on my youtube channel. Not sure when Ill get around to making that either, but the first episode should be pretty short and just news based, so sometime during May or early June I hope?
And how about a screen-capture, just for reference in the future:
Friday, April 29, 2011
WIP's - April 2011
Currently I'm working hard on a 3D related project for University (Uni being one of a collection of things taking up the majority of my free time at the moment).
Anyone whos used UDK before will have instant familiarity with the screenshot below:
This is the very early 'blocking' out of a UDK game level which is the focal point for the overall assignment. Its coming together slowly, as this is my first time using UDK, but I hope to have a decent amount of work done early next week. Will be interesting if anyone can recognize what building it is and where its from. Key word here is 'Ludas'.
Consequently the logo sting I put up on youtube a few weeks ago is also related to this project:
More about this project soon.
Another project I'm hoping to finish soon - A Blender one I started in January, hoping to have finished it before the Uni semester began, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I got a bit out of control with the node-setup for the render and then Uni went back and I haven't really touched it since.
It was good practice with nodes at least - and much needed practice since Id hardly touched them in the past but had been meaning too at some stage.
Id say 95% of the node setup is complete, still a few things to tweak and tune, but overall that part is finished, all thats left is to animate the character and render it all out and compose the final clip together. Ill get to it again soon I hope, because it leads onto other projects I wont let myself start yet (trying at the moment to finish some projects before I move onto others)
Its looking pretty good at the moment however, nice lens flares, blurs, all kinds of lens effects, a functioning HUD just for the hell of it, plus a whole heap of render layers interwoven in crazy mind-cramping ways, and even some bubbles which refract the environment and character behind them (one hell of a pain to composite using nodes as I found out)
To finish this post off here's a teaser pic of the node setup -
Anyone whos used UDK before will have instant familiarity with the screenshot below:
This is the very early 'blocking' out of a UDK game level which is the focal point for the overall assignment. Its coming together slowly, as this is my first time using UDK, but I hope to have a decent amount of work done early next week. Will be interesting if anyone can recognize what building it is and where its from. Key word here is 'Ludas'.
Consequently the logo sting I put up on youtube a few weeks ago is also related to this project:
More about this project soon.
Another project I'm hoping to finish soon - A Blender one I started in January, hoping to have finished it before the Uni semester began, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I got a bit out of control with the node-setup for the render and then Uni went back and I haven't really touched it since.
It was good practice with nodes at least - and much needed practice since Id hardly touched them in the past but had been meaning too at some stage.
Id say 95% of the node setup is complete, still a few things to tweak and tune, but overall that part is finished, all thats left is to animate the character and render it all out and compose the final clip together. Ill get to it again soon I hope, because it leads onto other projects I wont let myself start yet (trying at the moment to finish some projects before I move onto others)
Its looking pretty good at the moment however, nice lens flares, blurs, all kinds of lens effects, a functioning HUD just for the hell of it, plus a whole heap of render layers interwoven in crazy mind-cramping ways, and even some bubbles which refract the environment and character behind them (one hell of a pain to composite using nodes as I found out)
To finish this post off here's a teaser pic of the node setup -
Sunday, April 24, 2011
News-feed Beginnings
So this is the first post for Delta Edge Productions. Its all been a while in the making but the site is almost coming together in its basic structure. Im working on getting it functioning properly at the moment, so Ill make sure to improve and change the look of the site in the near future.
This side of the site will be primarily for my portfolio work, personal projects and WIP news, while the other side is for more business type stuff (Delta Edge Designs), and wont be as active.
So keep an eye on this page and this news feed, Ill hopefully be updating it regularly (which I figure is a post or more per week) with current projects, tests, thoughts and overall things happening on the site and with my work.
/AD-Edge
This side of the site will be primarily for my portfolio work, personal projects and WIP news, while the other side is for more business type stuff (Delta Edge Designs), and wont be as active.
So keep an eye on this page and this news feed, Ill hopefully be updating it regularly (which I figure is a post or more per week) with current projects, tests, thoughts and overall things happening on the site and with my work.
/AD-Edge
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