The Calm Before the Storm

By James Ball

This past week has been what I can only describe as The Calm Before the Storm. I have nearly finished with the game student collaboration and Finished off the 3D Characters Rig set up ready for animation.

First off, I'll talk about my collaboration Julian Chau. a Tri 6 game design student working on a game that centres on one major theme of meditation and is Titled Halcyon. Halcyon will have 2 Game Modes. Trace Mode which is a game mode similar to that of a game called Lumines and Tetris. with looping animated backgrounds depending on where you are in the level. The Second Game Mode is Relaxation mode Which will give you various audio guided meditations. the animations are saved out as (.swf ) Flash files and will be implemented into Unity using a free Plugin called "GAF: Flash to Unity" which as the name suggests is a plugin that enables the use of Flash 2D animations in Unity.This is goo because I am now able to keep the 5 second long animation loops at a the screen resolution of 2560px by 1440px and still have file sizes of less than 1MB without losing image quality. you can so the final animation loops for the Trance Mode in the video below.

In other News, I have  finished off the two 3D animation Characters Rig and am now on the finishing staged of the scenery and sky-box assets for the 3D environment. I'm also about a day behind on the Pencil testing side of things and should have the pencil tests complete by tomorrow evening at the latest to make a start on the clean up.

#10hourButterflyRig . . . Never AGAIN!

I found some unwelded verts in the first round of skinning so I went back and fixed them up aaaaand I had to re-skin the whole dame thing.

 Look at dat noyce 3D animation Rig.

And this one too!

"Hey!"

 

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Butterfly Character Model and Vagabond Rigging . . . This Blogpost is also My answer to Life and everything in the Univers :-P

By James Ball

So this week has been draining but worth it to say the least. I am about a week behind scheduled on the 3D side of this assignment and to compensate I have cut out about 5 seconds of footage I will have to animate to save time. But I have managed to make a fully working Biped Rig with custom attribute spinners for the hands and feet, for my Vagabond Character in the space of 3 days. The plan for today is to skin the character and add morph controls for the face. The Tutorial that I followed is really in depth and you can find the beginning of it here.

http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/complete-human-character-rig-in-3d-studio-max-part-1--cg-17244

 In any case, enjoy some more progress pictures.

The Initial T Pose.

 Custom Attributes For Both Feet.

 Custom Attributes For Both Hands.

 A Running Pose, all of the joints are working correctly.

Testing Right after adding the Skin Modifier to the Vagabond Mesh . . . Dat Skinning!

This Past Week, I have also Made the second character for this Vagabond story, The Butterfly. I took 2 days to model to Model, Unwrap and Texture this Character. If you would like have an up close look at this character, Then you con go here https://skfb.ly/Nn7G

 Modeling done.

 UV Unwrapped and Texel Density is looking Good.

 Texturing Work Done.

and Just for Shits and Giggles lets look at the Wire frame . . . Mmmm, Topology!

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Vagabond Texturing Complete

By James Ball

As the Title suggests, I have completed the texturing faze on my Vagabond Character Model. If you would like to take a look at it I have provided a Scetchfab link below.

https://sketchfab.com/models/8414336ef4734901afe91970d3ae14aa 

To keep a similar look and feel to the 2d version of the vagabond character, I opted to go for mostly flat colours with Photo Textures, Light shading and painted in details for Seams, Zippers and Stitching. I then took the Diffuse Texture maps into Quixel 2.0 and generated the normal and Specular maps. I have also Nearly finished the third shot of my Pencil Test.

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Pencil Testing/Layout

By James Ball

Pencil test or Layout Stage, which ever you prefer.

I'm Working on 2's for time constraint reasons and I'm animating in Flash with Backgrounds made in Photoshop.

I have also Started on UV Unwrapping.

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Trimester 4 KPI Reflection

By James Ball

So this week at Uni we had our Mid Trimester KPI Meetings. The following is my reflection on the work I have achieved thus far and various topics we discussed in the meeting. The Topics I would like to reflect on are Time/Project Management, response to criticism and feedback, and Thing I need to improve.

Time/Project Management

I have created a time sheet to keep track of how long it takes me to do a particular task and I have been putting in an average of 25 hours a week into this MDU220 unit. I also have been keeping mini deadlines for work that needs to be done each week and have kept to those deadlines. I have also been utilising the Gantt chart and time sheet I made back in the planning stage and keeping to scheduled that way also. At the Time of writing this Post I have put in a total of 157 Hours and 15 minutes into my MDU220 Unit in the past 7 weeks.

Response to Criticism and Feedback

In the script writing faze of this project, I went through the process of write, edit, review, repeat and ended up only having to making 4 Versions of the Script because I took on and experimented with the Criticisms and Feedback that I was given.

Thing I need to Improve

Most of the time I am quite comfortable around my classmates now, even the new ones which are in our class this trimester. In regards to Self Confidence I have made a lot of improvement with standing up for myself and saying no to people without feeling I have to explain myself to them all the time and say "Hey sorry buddy but my Degree work comes first." But I can still improve by listening and thinking about my answers more during casual conversation. Another area for improvement is working well under pressure. I can work well under pressure, but I really don't enjoy myself for the next several days after the Pressure session and neither do my eyes or sleep patterns. Ways to combat this is to be well prepared and to keep to the weekly mini deadlines so I’m not bogged down with a lot of work at the end of the Trimester.

Overall so far for this Trimester in general, I will say that I have been quite successful and I haven’t experienced too much hassle. No if you would excuse me I have a Comic Con to go to!

Also I finished off the modelling faze of the Vagabond character.

 

Progress 8 by James Ball.

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