Creating A Character – MagicaVoxel

 

I have been using Magica Voxel to create a character for my game. It was straight forward to use and I enjoy using it, it didn’t take that long to get use to as I started to pick it up as I was creating my character.

I am going to be working on this character it will be the main character and it will be a Viking. I am going to make him a bit different and try and change the colours and give him armour. So far all I have done is create his boots and legs I have started linking both the legs together and made a marking were I want them to join. The top of the legs are going to have either a kilt or maybe like chainmail waist to make him look cool.

My plans for this is to keep using reference of all the Viking characters in For Honor as they are so well designed. Next I will need to finish off his legs and I want more detail if I can also I am going to try and make the lower body complete.

Creating A Rig

 

Hierarchy: This is basically what is in control of everything, in game context this could be talking about the parenting.

Parent: This is when the object is grouped under a main one which is the parent of that group.

Child: This is when the parent does something the child will inherit what it has done to perform the action.

I created a character rig which I want to use it is going to be a snake but I separated all the body parts and changed it to look like pixels. I wanted it to look cool and different from other people. I have not created any animations yet I need to make some pivot points for the character first which will be the main pieces what do all the moving around it.

 

Art – Compositing

1 Point Perspective –

2 Point Perspective –

3 Point Perspective –

4 – Atmospheric Perspective

To find perspective in an image you need to look at how the image is set, such as is it a two way street. You would then have to see where the angles meet and then line up the buildings into the middle. When I was doing this I had to make a square within the points and I used images. I then scaled them and distorted the image to make it fit the perspective it was facing.

To do the colour correction I had to saturate the colours I could change the colours and change how dark and light it would be in the image.

I have used this technique to make my own environment as I was creating billboards and I used the distorting tools on images to fit the billboard.

 

 

 

After Affects – 3D Cinematic

This is the cinematic I have created so far, I have made it so when my character is running down the alley he gets blown back by an explosion.  I have also added a dust effect and I might add some more effects to make it look like there is a lot going on in the scene. I also like how I have created the explosion so when he falls back the fire is rising up off of the person as if he has been burnt on the ground.

I think to improve this I will need to make a lot go on around the side f the scene such as walls could explode or collapse. I am also thinking about putting glass smash maybe this could be at the front of the screen as the explosion ends. Another thing I could also add some audio such as someone be hit by an explosion and he screams or you here a thud as he hits the ground.

Juicy Pachinko Improvements

Improvements:

The player drop ball cannon now has a wiggle animation.

The goal now has a wiggle animation which is in sync with the cannon.

I have added level text to show which level you are on.

The background now pops into the game.

This has improve the game a lot because it’s almost as if everything is now coming together. The gameplay is not as boring as it was now the game feels a lot more alive as there is a lot more going on in the levels.

To make the game a lot more interesting I will need to add some audio and I want to make my text bouncy and move, I will also want to make the backgrounds pop in for all levels as well.

This is what has changed.

 

 

 

Unity Vectors and Cross Products

Vectors are when the direction and speed changes on an object this is what I have been doing today in my script is creating a 3D vector for my spaceship. On unity there is different types of vectors such as 2D and 3D vectors for different dimensions when making 2D or 3D games.

I also learnt about cross products which are binary operations involving maths and vectors which we had to solve. I will need remember this and get better at doing these sums if I want to work in the games industry as I now know how vital numbers are.

Another thing I done was create some scripts for my spaceship and it was for moving forward and being controlled by the mouse to turn and for spawning and targeting missiles. I had to import my spaceship from Maya and use a missile from Maya to make this look better. I made various different scripts such as a spawning, targeting script, spaceship controller.

A problem I had was when I put the missile spawned on my trees it just wouldn’t show any missiles coming out of the trees, something was stopping it from actually appearing. This is a problem I will have to look at the scripts to try and make the missile spawn.

 

Lamp Animation Review

Assessor name: Adam Savage

The lamp actually jumps so the animation actually works correctly which is really good, at the end it looks at the user so it involves the user. A couple principles that Jamie has used is timing and anticipation; the timing is used when it goes to land and the anticipation is when the lamp goes to jump. the timing works very well in this animation as it tells a lot when the lamp is moving and landing. There isn’t anything wrong but to improve, you could make it jump more or make it jump a bit more realistically.

Improvements:

I have been working on my pendulum animation instead as the motion was not timed properly and was to quick. So I have decided that I would redo and improve the pendulum. I have made it more smoother when swinging down and made it slower when it reaches the top. It is still not finished but it definitely getting there, because now you can see the difference of how good it is I just need to make sure that the animation stays smooth. So I do have some more tweaking to do but overall it is way better than what it was.

Modular Building Design

Today I have been creating my walls for my sky scraper, I had some problems but overall they are great for a first start. I was trying to create the exact measurements of a sky scraper but I had a problem the measurements were so big for Maya that it would not render correctly. So I had to make some slight adjustments of the building but that is what I need to do as a modeller not everything can be exactly right sometimes.

I made sure that the walls were the correct height so an average person could go in the building floors. I also made 5 walls which I could use for my sky scraper the just need some more detail and more texturing to make the look good. I had a problem with the geometry of the walls as when I was trying to bridge the sides it could only connect too one of the vertices. So I had to get rid of some of my edge loops to get it to connect properly and the problem was fixed.

I will need to finish of my walls next and will need to get some texturing done on the walls to make it better. Another thing is I am very happy with what I have done right as I am using references to make these walls which is helping as I have planned it out.

Blog Post – Juice

Juice – This is basically giving the game flavour in a way, such as making the game a lot more interactive and fun for the player. Juice is basically making the game stand out which could be shaking the screen big bubble text what moves. Furthermore examples of this could be Hearthstone which is a card game what has particle effects and stuff pop out of the screen. Plants vs Zombies, Peggle, and earlier games all exhibit great examples.

Game Feel – This is basically how you react to the game in a way such as how you like it, game feel is how the game is to you in your opinion. Such as the controls, the graphics the playstyle, all of this plays a big part in game feel.

Design Research

 

Simon Stalenhag – His artwork is very bespoke and extremely different to other artists. It has environments with robots and dinosaurs in and some of them have been merged into one. His designs such as the robots and spaceships are very futuristic but yet in our environments. The artwork makes you feel sad as though the robots are taking over and the atmosphere makes it feel like a wasteland.

Ian Mcque – His style of artwork I dislike as it is more steam punk and the drawings are rough and look bad. The artwork is quite dull it doesn’t feel like it stands out there is no bright colours or anything to draw the viewer in.

Fengh Zhu –  The artwork is very futuristic but is mixed with traditional Chinese artwork and it looks like a robotic samurai on one of his detailed artwork. I think his artwork is very cool his artwork is different to others and makes you not just focus on one point but everywhere.

This is what I have created and I used the liquefy tool to make these shapes. I really like experimenting with all the different shapes and cools as I could now use these as my background on games. To make them better I could add more detail to the designs.