posted Mar 18, 2010 11:22 AM by Joe Bush
Current Build Number: 3.0 Finetunig and fixes
What did you do?I made some minor changes to placement of objects, finetuned the spin on the runes in the Oubliette scene, fixed a bunch of layering errors on the grime decals. Mostly small little adjustments. I also added static cameras for viewing pleasure.
How did you work on the feedback?The feedback was short and simple, easily approached.
What problems did you encounter?Thinking how to get the layers to render correctly on certain objects was a bit of a logic puzzle, but it turned out to be simpler to just add new layers. Also, Youtube doesn't seem to want to accept my latest videos. I'm trying to figure out how to balance size, compression, speed, and quality. Its tough. Programs Used?3ds Max, Photoshop, External Lightmapping Tool, Unity, Picasa, Hypercam, VirtualDub
How did you feel before working?Lazy. It's been quite some time since I did much crunch on my MIT. I guess that's a good thing.
How do you feel about the feedback?Pleased to hear Professor Cherry so satisfied with it.
What was most exciting?Getting the static cameras to swap correctly. What was least exciting?getting frustrated at Youtube and virtual dub. |
posted Feb 16, 2010 10:25 AM by Joe Bush
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updated Feb 18, 2010 12:02 PM
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Current Build Number: 2.0 Grime Pass and Retexturing.
What did you do?I added grime on many textures and applied better shaders to several materials in both environments. I also made a pass over both scenes to add decals at Professor Cherry's suggestion. I moved the Lambent up and finetuned the lighting, especially in the Oubliette. I also added some critters flying around the lambent with particle trails. I put energetic particle effects around the lambent and sealed her up more with rotating glyphs.
How did you work on the feedback?I finally got a good chance to talk to my faculty about both environments. I compiled a list of things to try to change in the last entry and went to work fixing as much of it as I could. I was actually pretty nice to have some hard feedback to work on.
What problems did you encounter?Projectors in unity can be somewhat finicky. I had a lot of stuff shooting out backwards because of incorrect falloff textures. The lighting was hard to balance in the Oubliette scene. I also failed to realize that the decals are hitting the Lambent and some other objects that they shouldn't. Programs Used?3ds Max, Photoshop, External Lightmapping Tool, Unity, Picasa, Hypercam, VirtualDub
How did you feel before working?Rushed. I was pressed for time a lot this pass, but I managed to get a lot of work done very fast, because once I started, I was enjoying myself. The scenes are really starting to come together and that makes it enjoyable to work on, even when I need to work on it fast.
How do you feel about the feedback?I was excited to have a good direction to go on. I knew how to accomplish the things I was told to do, so it really was just a matter of finding the time to get it done. I will post the feedback for Build 2 when I talk to Professor Cherry. What was most exciting?Getting the decals to work correctly and seeing things look so much more grounded because of it was awesome. Seeing the new sky-shark critter in the Oubliette was also very cool. What was least exciting?Trying to juggle this and DFS was not exciting. I spent some of my time working on my MIT thinking about how much other work I needed to do. |
posted Feb 2, 2010 8:55 AM by Joe Bush
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updated Feb 11, 2010 10:22 AM
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Current Build Number: 1.0 First version of both scenes complete.
What did you do?Textured all objects and applied materials and shaders. Attempted to use the External Lightmapping Tool and ran out of time. Finetuned many aspects of the scenes.
How did you work on the feedback?I attempted to find a way to bring more variance in the opacity of the rune seals in the Oubliette at Professor Cherry's request, but I neither method I tried panned out.
What problems did you encounter?The ELT became difficult to use with large numbers of assets. I needed more time to get it functional and rendering for appropriate lightmaps. The lightmaps it outputs seem to be incorrectly laid out in UV space. Programs Used?3ds Max, Photoshop, External Lightmapping Tool, Unity, Picasa, Hypercam, VirtualDub
How did you feel before working?Daunted. I became sick right before I planned to do the majority of work on my thesis and I'm still recovering. It made it difficult to complete my textures to the level of satisfaction I would have liked.
How do you feel about the feedback?I will be seeing Professor Cherry about my progress this week, and will have better feedback then. Until then, I have found some pieces of feedback for myself: - Torches need to look burnt at the top.
- The Watching Lantern eye is not large enough to be interesting
- Textures are overall more interesting in the Dungeon than the Oubliette
- Better stonework on the walls could help
- The Silver Devices are not interesting enough
- Perhaps new assets entirely, like large Crystals?
- The Crystal Shader provided by the Unity community is wholly inadequate.
- Decals are needed for blood and charring in the dungeon
- Decals of something would be nice in the Oubliette as well.
- There seem to be tiling issues with the normals in the Dungeon
- Add Particle Trails to magical effects in the Oubliette.
- Perhaps move the Gate out of the way to show more of the Lambent
- Perhaps Add more strange geometry to the Lambent
Professor Cherry also gave me some feedback on the current build. - A general grime pass
- grime in textures
- grime in decals
- Add cloudiness to the glyph textures
- Move up the Lambent
- Drips and moss decals
What was most exciting?Seeing the lambent animating in unity was cool. I learned that if animations have positional data in the keyframes, they will snap to world origin in Unity when they play. Because I used the Biped, I couldn't easily remove the position data from the keyframes easily.
What was least exciting?Importing textures is easy, but takes a long time with large textures. I watched a lot of Heroes waiting for batches of textures to import for tweaking. |
posted Jan 21, 2010 9:12 AM by Joe Bush
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updated Jan 21, 2010 9:22 AM
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Current Build Number: 0.3 All assets unwrapped.
What did you do?All assets are now unwrapped and ready to be textured. I will be applying textures and shaders in the game and using Unity as my viewer for my final product.
How did you work on the feedback?I haven't had a chance to work on the implementation feedback that I have gotten since I started unwrapping. Several of my objects were very complicated, requiring a lot of unwrap time. Now that they're unwrapped, texturing should proceed fairly quickly.
What problems did you encounter?The two objects that were most complicated were the Lambent and the Rack. They are both very complicated objects, but I was able to finish them in a few days. Programs Used?
How did you feel before working?Unwrapping is one of my least favorite parts of the process of art creation, but I don't like letting the computer do it by itself. I don't like automatic unwrappers because they don't use logic to understand the asset and how it will need to be textured and unwrapped.
How do you feel about the feedback?I'm satisfied with what my supervisor has talked with me about, though I'm not sure I can find a way to implement it. The specific case is using a panning opacity map on the magical runes in the Oubliette to show how they are illuminated. I think I may be able to use a cubemap light projector and cull the light to only the magical runes to achieve a similar aspect. What was most exciting?Getting the rack unwrapped was pretty impressive. I'm ready to start texturing.
What was least exciting?the initial unwrap of the rack was a pain. I put a lot of different objects into that piece and it was daunting to figure out where I could gain efficiency by overlapping. |
posted Jan 8, 2010 10:30 PM by Joe Bush
Current Build Number: 0.3 Whitebox of all assets and effects in both environments.
What did you do?All work is present and accounted for in the whitebox. Preliminary versions of all special effects are also in place now. Since last post, I've implemented all the work that I've done so far in the Unity engine.
How did you work on the feedback?I haven't had feedback since the last post, but I've posted photos and video for people to look at and tell me their thoughts.
What problems did you encounter?I'm finding it difficult to lock down certain axes on a Lookat script. I've tried constructing the vectors myself, but that didn't work the way I thought it would. Also, I had a nearly catastrophic failure getting the potions in, and so they're not visible at the moment.
Programs Used?
How did you feel before working?All this work was done in the last two days. I wasn't especially excited to get it done, since I'd been working on Hyp3r and aching to play my new PSP, but I got my nose to the grindstone and started enjoying myself immediately. I was totally geeking out about how my glyphs are looking.
How do you feel about the feedback?N/a
What was most exciting?I love glowy stuff. Emissive planes ALWAYS look cool to me. So I made a bunch. This was precisely as I planned it.
What was least exciting?Waiting for an hour and a half for the computer to stabilize enough to save my work in unity before force-restarting it. That was lame. (But I played Crisis Core for a while so it was ultimately ok.) |
posted Jan 5, 2010 2:22 PM by Joe Bush
Current Build Number: 0.2 Another draft of the proposal and concept art complete.
What did you do?I've whiteboxed every asset and done concept art of each as well. I've also completed yet another revision of my proposal with help from Professor Cherry. I also added an item to my Field Review to further explain my concept.
How did you work on the feedback?Professor Cherry's feed on my third revision proposal was written very clearly in Word. It was very easy to incorporate each piece of advice this way because it was so specific. Previous discussions with the professors drove my concept art for the Oubliette scene, and I'm much happier with it because of that.
What problems did you encounter?I only wish I had allowed myself more time up front for concept art. Professor Cherry and I caught and fixed several problems lingering from a previous revision in the proposal.
Programs Used?
How did you feel before working?For some reason, I found myself working primarily on the Dungeon scene first. This led to a little uneasiness about the state of the Oubliette. I was nervous that I was spending too much time on one rather than the other, but that proved to be unfounded.
How do you feel about the feedback?Very good. Very, Very good, indeed. From the feedback, it seems that my paper is finally coming together and is starting to sound coherent to people who haven't read it eight million times.
What was most exciting?Designing the symbols, runes and glyphs of the Oubliette was a ton of fun. I ended up putting secret messages in the text, usually describing how awesome someone would have to be to decipher them. The glowy stuff is after all what this is all about.
What was least exciting?Probably rewriting the Conclusion of the proposal. I was not feeling well at the time but I knew I needed to get it done. I was also somewhat frustrated at the need to have a conclusion that would be later discarded anyway, but I got over it and used some of my more clear points from the conclusion in the earlier parts of the paper where they could help solidify my statements.
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posted Dec 19, 2009 11:24 AM by Joe Bush
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updated Dec 21, 2009 2:25 PM
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Current Build Number: 0.2 Beginning serious work on the Whitebox and Concept Art, as well as polishing the Proposal.
What did you do?I've currently got a very simple whitebox of both scenes. I'm also working on doing a serious revision of my Thesis Proposal. I plan to have time over the break to do an extra revision, so that my "Third" will be much easier to polish. This will afford me more time to work on the project proper.
How did you work on the feedback?So far, the feedback I've gotten has been of two sorts. Professor Cherry has been guiding me thorroughly through the paper-writing process and helping me refine and solidify my core concepts. Professor Toprac has been giving advice on the structure of the paper and formatting issues. So far, I've tried to take as much of the feedback makes sense, as some parts become irrelevant after other changes are made. The Whitebox is just beginning and I don't have enough of a complete structure to really discuss yet.
What problems did you encounter?Grappling with my concept is difficult. I find it hard to express my thoughts on the matter through words. I'm gradually figuring it out with the help of Professor Cherry.
Programs Used?
How did you feel before working?I certainly felt nervous before starting the project, but as I gain a clearer understanding of what I want to do, I come more confident. I feel much better about the documentation now that I have started the journal and gotten serious feedback from Professor Cherry.
How do you feel about the feedback?So far none of the feedback has been anything like an attack on my skill as an artist, it has been careful guidance on the documentation, which has helped tremendously in that area.
What was most exciting?With the help of Juan Martinez of Robot Entertainment, I was able to construct a MaxScript that will make it very easy for me to rapidly prototype concepts for whitebox. I was mega excited. The movie Avatar also inspired me to add it to my Field Review. I will attempt to work it in so that it can help me explain my point.
What was least exciting?I found the first chapter of the Proposal to be the least exciting thus far. I'm constantly rewriting it, and only now am I getting somewhere with it. It still daunts me to think about how to introduce such a deeply integrated topic.
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