theuniblogyear3

[theuniblogyear3]

Week 2

This week unfortunately was a very bad week for me in terms of the personal side of my life, sadly I missed Juan’s lecture on Tuesday as I had to go home to check on my dog as my parents had told me that they think something is wrong with her. I went back to my house again on Friday only to walk through the door and to be informed that she had died on the operating table at the age of 8 due to cancer which none of us knew about and so this hit me very hard.

Day 1 –

The last time I was here I explained how I created the model and a basic rig, well I went into university on Monday and I showed the team what I had done, and they seemed impressed that I was making progress. The problem though was that there was something very off with my rig and mesh. The rig only parented to the mesh on one half of the body and I could not figure out what to do. As well as this the model didn’t quite meet my expectations either so right then and there I decided to start the model again and it turned out extremely well. I followed the tutorials again but this town having known more tools and having more skill than I had with my first attempt it turned out very well and the experience was very enjoyable.

The rigging this time around was also a lot easier, I am constantly learning more and more new shortcuts in blender and I am really enjoying doing so. So, with the rig complete I then went on to the weight painting section. This part here I felt as though I could improve greatly, I wish I had more time to spend here but they again I am not very good at this yet and so I think I will have to put more of my time into this area. Weight painting is very important when it comes to animating because it controls the individual weight each vertex has on the players body and so is the key to the body parts function when moving.

After the weight painting was complete I then went to try and move the character to make sure everything was in order but for some reason now I had another problem. The IK bone attached to the back of the player foot was acting up with the foot bone, I connected the foot to the IK bone so that is stays straight and rotates as the IK bone does. Unfortunately, the foot bone was inverting against the IK bone and I cannot think as to why, I have tried everything, and nothing will work so I am going to leave this for now as I spent over 8 hours going over the same thing fixing errors. Despite that I really enjoyed creating the model again and I think the skills I have gained are very valuable and the experience in modelling is very important to me.

Day 2 –

After my trial and error with the model and rig, Lewis asked me to try and rig the model of the main character in the game, the ‘Gator’. I was really looking forward to trying to bring the character to life a little bit more with some basic animations such as walking, running etc. so I began the rigging phase and it went really well, I can now comfortably rig a model without any assistance from tutorials which I am very happy about, It’s good to see some progress by being able to complete something from my own merits. The rigging didn’t take as long as I expected but as I parented the rig to the mesh in order for the model to move together I hit a huge speed bump which would prove to be my bane.

I have no idea why, but the mesh really messed up on one of the legs every time I joined the two together. I tried it many, many times but nothing, I tried to paint the individual vertices with weights and that didn’t change anything either, it changed nothing at all which really annoyed me. This process of trial and error, me googling answers, watching videos and rinse and repeat was a waste of time but it was worthwhile because as I did it I was getting more and more experienced as I went along.

In the end I even took my laptop into class and asked the group for help and even they didn’t have any clue on what to do, at all. I spent at least 12+ hours trying to make the character work the way I wanted it to, but it just would fix the mesh. Looking back it was a lot of time spent on one thing but I’m glad I did it and I think the group are as it shows I’m actually persisting to solve a problem.

From this then I went back to the drawing board to find another solution or something else to practice with.

below are images of my second attempt at creating a place holder character and the rigging process of the ‘Gator’.

[theuniblogyear3]

Week 1

Creative artefact production – Semester 1

I am very excited to start the blog documenting my experience in my final and most important year here at uni on the computer and video games course. I honestly cannot wait to put to use all of the skills I have learnt over these two past years.

As well as using skills I already have whether it be technical skills or team communication I really want to have a good look back over my time here and think back on all of the decisions I have made and think about new decisions I can make which will aid me in the coming year and beyond that.

This year is a time for focusing, taking what knowledge I can from my lecturers and peers, adapting on my current skills and most importantly learning new ones in hopes to form the person I want to become by the end of the second semester.

From my experience in the second year I knew straight away that there were things I wanted to change and things I wanted to remain the same. One of the things I wanted to change was the people I worked with. For the past two years I have worked with the same group of friends, Toby, Brad, Paddy and Ryan and I had a great time working with them as we did work really well and productively as a team and a group of friends which was too good to be true and well let’s just say that it was.

This year I intend on giving it my all whether that be learning new skills or meeting and working with new people, I want to do it all.

One of my main priorities for this year is to start using a modelling software such as blender or 3Ds Max, I have always wanted to give modelling a go but instead I chose to do programming which looking back was a mistake but at least I was fortunate to make that mistake when I did giving me another year to really define a new skill and hopefully a new passion for modelling.

Another aspect I wish to improve is the people that I work with within a group, I really do hope to work with a group of talented and skilled people which really do want to succeed and make a fantastic game, if I get that then there’s nothing else I can do other than give it my all which is exactly what I intend to do so let’s have a great final year.

Day 1 -

To start the week off we had the first lecture with Juan who will be taking us through the Creative artefact module again which I extremely happy about. Juan is a brilliant and talented individual, he has had so much experience which he has shared with us which I think is invaluable, so I really hope to learn as much as I can from him this year and all of my lecturers for that matter.

He took us through the brief and told us all of the information we would need to know in order to make a start with the game making process and the first step of that would be to form a group and this is where my stomach sunk. Due to the fact that earlier this year I broke my leg, I was unable to attend uni for 2 months and so everyone had formed their groups without me. I was planning to work with toby before I left but when I was away he made plans with another group which seem like a very good team, I know the members in his group and they are very talented people who I would love to work with, they seem serious about making a fantastic game. 

At this point now there was no option for me, all of the groups were full and had no room for me, but even then there was only one group I wanted to work in and that was the group that toby was in, he told me about their idea and I really liked it and I knew I could bring a lot of things to the table if they gave me the chance. I’m not the best artist and I am certainly not the best programmer, but I am an amazing team player, great with managerial and producer tasks, I have a love for narrative driven games and creating stories and characters, I love drawing to fulfil and idea and most importantly I am an avid learner and will always strive to learn or adapt a new skill if necessary.

I was running out of options and Toby asked the group if I could join even though they were already a group of six and they were kind enough to plan all the work load to see if there was any room for me which was amazing but unfortunately it wasn’t looking good. It was looking like they were about to decline my join request. I went outside to think about my other options which was an awful feeling to not have a group at all, no one to work with is not a great position to be in and made me feel worthless.

Toby then came to find me and told me that the group had spoken and offered me a choice, a way to prove myself or prove to them how much I wanted to work with them and so my options were to make a short mini game in unity using C# or create a basic player model in a 3D software and provide 2 good standard animations with it. All of this to be done within two weeks.

There was no way I was going to try and program, that just isn’t for me in the slightest bit but modelling is always something I wanted to do and wish I had done and maybe this was my excuse to finally try it and make something of it, I had no previous experience at all but I accepted their offer, said thank you and headed home to start straight away.

As soon as I arrived home I downloaded Blender as I have heard it is a great software for beginners to start with and so I found a youtuber by the name of Blender Guru and began watching his 9 part series where the episodes were nearing an hour each and so I began following him along in his tutorial to learn blenders tools and started to create a doughnut and coffee cup in a scene.

I must have been using blender from 14:00 up until 00:00, I was so eager to join that group and learn this new skill and it turned out that modelling is so much fun and very addictive.

I kept pausing the video and trying to retrace his steps from my own memory just to force the information to sink in faster and I was really enjoying myself.

So it started off with a basic torus shape and then I started to mould the shape until I was left with a shaded version and then left It at that for the night, I was exhausted from all of the information I had to take in but at the same time I was very happy to make a start and I still am very happy and will continue to model through this last year.

Day 2 –

I had an early start this morning from around 9 o clock I was up and ready to model on blender, so I quickly had a recap off the keyboard shortcuts and functions and even found a PDF containing a list of the shortcuts and their functions for me to rely on through the process. I continued working on the doughnut and then had to do a little bit more advanced modelling and create a coffee cup which I know sounds very basic, but it was a lot to take in and so I gave it a go and the handle turned out just terrible, it was awful. Given it was my first attempt I deleted it and started again, and I think I may have made an almost perfect handle this time. I am very happy with what I did and how I made the right decision to try again and I can definitely tell I’m making progress which is great.

With the cup and doughnut almost finished I began to look at shading and rendering the objects in view mode and it looked very crisp and clean to my surprise and so did some research on how to use shading nodes effectively in blender, while using a beginner skill set of course. To say that this was my first attempt at modelling and even though I was watching a tutorial I am still very happy with the outcome and I think this has given me the inspiration to continue modelling for the foreseeable as I really enjoy it and hope I can make it into a full-time hobby and one day a career. If I were to go back and do this tutorial again I would definitely try and do most of it on my own and perhaps spend more time using the lighting equipment and I didn’t really bother with that and just focused on modelling instead which is what the group want of me and so I think I did the right thing.

After a full day of watching tutorials I had come to a conclusion with my doughnut and cup and although I hadn’t altered the lighting in render mode, I will insert an image of the almost finished product. Due to time constraints I had to quickly speed along and watch more tutorials but this time I had to model a basic character, so I quickly gathered some reference of a human body in front view and side view as that is essential in blender using the orthographic view mode to create a well scaled model. The character turned out to be a lot more challenging that I anticipated but I gave it my best shot and for me first time I don’t think it is too bad although I will definitely be re visiting character modelling very soon and try my best to improve. Shortly after I decided to try and rig my character ready for animation and once again I realised that I am not yet skilled enough to do this effectively so with the help of tutorials I managed to almost complete the rigging but due to the time being 2 o clock in the morning I decided to give it a rest for the day, besides I think 15 hours of practice is enough for one day.

I really did enjoy spending all that time modelling and I really hope I get into this group it would mean the world to me, but I will put the effort and hopefully it will pay off.

Day 3 –

Today I went into uni and sat with the group and it was such a great a day, even though I’m not sure if I am actually in their group officially it still felt extremely good to sit there with them and discuss the idea, due to my area of expertise being narrative creation and development Christina gave me the rundown of her idea for the game and told me everything she was thinking about changing and things she needed help with and so I did my best and I gave as much help as I possibly could, by the end of the session we had come up with characters motives, narrative pieces, basic dialog and a complete run down of the prologue and first mission of the game including ideas for the cutscenes within the game. The group seemed very happy with the work that I put it and it was nice to get to know them all and I can safely say that they are a group of extremely talented people and I really cannot wait to be working with them again.

I am very happy with the advice I gave and the narrative work I did today, I think I did very well and I hope I can keep this kind of work up throughout the rest of the year.

Below are my first attempt evidence images.