Death and Rebirth

My character can die! Yay! He also respawns. The part of the tutorial I went through included creating a fallout catcher, to figure out if Lerpz, or anything else for that matter, falls off the game. It then destroys or repositions them correctly.

I also created respawn points, which are activated when cute little Lerpz walks next to them. One is activated at a time and provides him with a place to be reincarnated. He loses a life each time though, so he's not quite invincible.

Hippo Model

I have finished blocking my hippo out and now I am working on rounding it out.

Fan Progress

Working on UVs an finishing modeling. Need to add hinges to animate.

Hippo has some curves!

I have been able to add some more details, and make my hippo have some nice curves to his backside. I also got his ear up and tooth. The eye process seems daunting, because I have some eye lids that are a little complicated for me. Over all he's coming along!

HE HAS A HEAD!

Dino is taking shape quite nicely. I added his stubby fingers, spikes, and I am now working on his eyes. He still has no mouth. Perhaps he will lose some weight since he cant eat...

got rid of all the engons

well the bottle and handle are complete

hi

 
 here it the finished rounded object. Below is the solution to making my hangle inside this connect to the object. I had to extrude the shapes around it and then connect the dots from the extrude shapes.

Sep. 27

Yay! update. I did manage to kill off my triangles... now all that's left is that darn n-gon.

The hope is the last to die

Here is what I made so far. I hope finish in time. 

Fly Rod Progress

Here's what I have so far on the fly rod. Next I'm going to work on the reel.

My headless dino

I imagine he will look even cuter after he has a finished head... If that is possible. ;)

Blobs and Jet Packs

For the last couple parts of the tutorial, I went about adding a blob shadow and pretty jet pack effects. The blob shadow was added kind of like a spotlight above the character, appearing underneath him after I removed the part where he receives the shadow himself. It now helps show exactly where he will land when he, for example, jumps.

Secondly, he received some awesome animation on his little jet pack thrusters. I added a couple directional particle emitters under the jets, as well as a light. They only appear after he jumps, as he reaches max height and floats down. It looks pretty sweet.

Fan Progress

Need to work on detailing on fan. Exhaust vents, on/off switch and more plug. Materials will pull this together.

My hippo is coming along!

:)

This is what I've got so far. I think that she's coming along well, I just am having some issues with triangles and n-gons that I'm trying to solve.

well i did it

here is the work i have done so far.

So far...

Slow and Steady

Little by little I've been getting my model fine tuned. I spent a day or two on the bosom, and while I still have some awkward boobage going on, It's much better then it was. I've been working with my model mirrored, because it makes it so much easier (imho) to round when you can see both sides!

I made an executive decision to model slightly less realistic, and more stylized. (Shortened the torso slightly, elongating the legs, etc.) Because of this, I started to look more at the model instead of the reference picture, making sure it looked right, versus my drawing attempt. Still think the proportions feel slightly off and I'm trying to make it feel more... natural, instead of forced.

I also started trying to add some of the natural curves and definition. Now to move on to muscles! At least I think so... but have no idea where to start. Also, started noticing some n-gons that I don't know how to get rid of, without making tiny, beautiful triangles.

Trying to avoid face, ears, hands (fingers) and feet until I get the rest how I want it. Though, I'm worried about adding more definition, which would probably make the mentioned even more difficult. Hmmm. Also wondering, if I want to model clothes seperately, when should I start them, and should I try block style, or Maya's handy dandy fabric tools? Is fabric as bad as hair/fur/gravity? If this is the case, I just may change the clothing design...

Also, I say also an awful lot.

Crash

Downloaded Maya 12 this weekend. Spent time in the lab and at home working on my fan. Experienced my first Maya 12 crash. Sweet!

Intro to Platform Gaming

I didn't get to spend a lot of time in Unity, but I did get a taste of how the tutorial will be working. The assets and scripts are all ready and basically I drag and drop things into the engine and onto assets and prefabs to make them work.

On one side, this isn't such a bad spot as it begins basic enough to learn the program itself. On the other, I want to know exactly how the scripts function. Being fairly straightforward Javascript, it wouldn't take too much effort to look them over, but I kind of wish the tutorial had me build them from scratch.

At this point we got the main character in the game and set up the differing camera views that will follow him, reminiscent of Ratchet and Clank. He can move around with either the arrow keys or wasd, and space makes him jump. The animations for each action were attached as they had been created in either Maya or 3DS Max.

If I figure out a better way to show progress, other than screenshots, I'll go to that. For now, that's all I got.

Beginning with Unity

I got going with installing Unity over the weekend and taking a look at the 3rd Person Platformer tutorial I will be working on for the class. It appears the tutorial assumes the user has at least basic experience in the Unity engine, so I took some time with the beginning video tutorials to get a feel for the engine. As well and taking a look at the Angry Bots game that came with the install.

The basic plan at the moment will be to take a few weeks getting to know the program and starting the tutorial. Hopefully within a couple weeks time I can have the game set up as instructed and begin tweaking and changing things at will.