NUUUURBS

OK so i did a bit of experimentation as to how I could construct hair on the model. I spent a lot of time working with nurbs to construct my first design. Mid way through its development I realised too late that unity3d DOES NOT accept nurbs into the engine. Instead it will only take polygons. Great. Once again I am held back because I quite simply do not know the capabilities of the game engine OR maya.

BTW, i am aware this hair style makes the character look like the medieval village idiot  hahaha

More modelling

Ok so today I made a lot of progress working from home because the group was doing other things. I have been racking my brains as to why I keep encountering problems and I think its because I am trying to make things way too realistic. Our game is not all about the graphics nor is going to be immensly details and close up on the character, hence why I have decided to just freestyle model and try something entirely new.

A few of these attempts were a giant waste of time, but in saying that with every model I make I learn something new which I apply to the next model. Here's a botched concept I was working on earlier today.

And through all the chaos with no reference here's what I came up with today. I am quite pleased with it because it looks like a small child but at the same time there's just SOMETHING creepy about it and I just cant quite put my finger on it which is very fitting to our nightmarish game.

I also attached the head onto the body to see exactly how it all fit together. Overall I am very proud for producing this base mesh, all that is left is to add details such as hair, clothes etc and I'll be ready to rig and animate this character.

The Crit

After our crit I realised that we have been focusing more on creating a game than actually focusing on our concept of exploring story telling through games. I feel as though we need to once again go back to the drawing board and rethink exactly what we are trying to do with our project.

I think that we can rectify the situation by expanding our world to tell the same story in multiple ways. For instance, when someone is playing a game they always assume themselves to be the 'do gooder.' However perhaps we can have another character within the game that is playable so that players can experience playing the game through the villain's point of view.

I found our crit very rewarding as it has set us on the right track again.

DAVID CAGE

David cage heavy rain - investigate this person

GREAT IDEA?

I was just thinking to myself while watching some tutorials online about how to model woody from toy story in Maya. I thought to myself that we could mould our current story about a boy waking up in limbo with a story about a boy who falls asleep and wakes up in a fantasy land where he himself and the environment around him has been transformed into a world of toys and plastic. I was thinking that this would drastically reduce the amount of detail needed in models and make generating things like buildings and structures very easy as it wouldn't require a whole look of minute details to immerse the player. Because at the moment we are looking at a details environment with a not to details model. Which is a bit contradicting. If we were to use toys I I could for example replicate models such as Lego men and apply different textures to the lego men to greatly cut the amount of work needed. Just a thought. I know everyone will hate me for bringing up another concept in the works and mucking things up but regardless it cant help to suggest new things especially when we are stuck in a rut.

I have also been working on my edge flow within my 3d models as I intend to be animating the character. This is imperative because if the edge flow is terrible it means that the characters movements will look very jagged and nasty. I am in the midst of creating a male human character which could "potentially" be our main character. Although we are talking about using a child as the main character. This could come in handy at some stage no doubt. I have been working in very low poly so that the character wont slow our game engine down a whole lot. I have also investigated Z brush and become familiar with is however it is mainly used for fine details and bump maps which I don't think we will be needing for our character.

Most of the work I have been doing has been aimed at learning 3d software like Maya. I have become quite good at it however I have run into many problems with the software. For example, i made a few models and at the end of making them realized that the vertexes were doubling up on each other because a certain setting had be unchecked. Hence all my work went to waste and it meant I was not able to rig up anything earlier. However i think i had addressed the issue and am now working on a character model that is almost complete. I have set up several meetings with Karin and have some very nice tutorials to go off. I feel as this stage fairly confident that I will be able to have a rigged model ready for Tim to add into the game.