9-9-09 remembering 9-9-99

ok, ten years ago we had another set of nines. I remember last time there were two major video game related releases. so I go to look it up forgetting exactly what they were. ok dreamcast was one of them, but I remember as a kid thinking how stupid they were to release on the same day as something else, so why the hell couldn’t I find it? I thought at first final fantasy 7, but I was one off it was final fantasy 8. I guess that’s why no one really remembers, cause ff8 really wasn’t all that great, and people want to forget about it or something, lol.

oh well, not like it matters, both were in the end flops. but I still think it deserves to be recognized that dreamcast was not the only thing released on 9-9-99.

Monday update

ok, so I started looking at my map file format. originally I had a big clunky xml file. I was going to try using zlib compress some data blocks, but ended up scratching it as well. In the end I found a much nicer solution, Boost::Serialization. this class is able to take just about anything from a class, and turn it into a file. even if things are pointers in the class. boost serialization is smart enough to grab the value its pointing to, instead of the address it holds in the pointer. it also deals with vector objects, which I use a few times in my map class, so it works out well.

the only thing left to decide is some behavior issues of characters. like how do I get them to follow a specific path. though I don’t really need to worry about that for this game, since all the characters walk straight until they bump something. well minus the robot, but he still doesnt follow a path, he follows the hero. I’m also gonna have to think of spawn points later on as well. spawn points will have to have a list of characters that will come out, a percentage for each, umm potentially event triggers. because of having several triggers that could cause different things, maybe I’ll make it possible to have multiple spawn points overlap… but then I would need to make sure they don’t spawn at the same time…. hmm, so maybe not.

#ifndef MAP_H_INCLUDED
#define MAP_H_INCLUDED

//add boost includes
#include
#include

enum directions {NORTH, SOUTH, EAST, WEST};

struct tiledata
{
// Code for serialization
friend class boost::serialization::access;
template
void serialize(Archive & ar, unsigned int version)
{
ar & tileHeight;
ar & texGround;

Monday Update

Ok, this week has been mostly a productive rigging week. Hands are now pretty much finished, minus the thumb, but once I get that the arms will be pretty well done and I can move to spine temporarily and then on to the head. the face is going to take a bit of work, but it should be worth it. I’ll try to get some demo videos of the arm and fingers pretty soon.

on another good note, the finger rig should work pretty easily in blender too. The rest of the arm on the other hand, may take a lot more work to get working in blender(my current rig is in max)

however, last night I did manage to get some game code specific stuff done. after looking over the tile code a bit more, I decided it was time to stop just looking at things and just start coding. so I got a tiny bit written. a struct to hold individual tile data, and the start of the class for map creation.

////////////// tiledata.h /////////////
#ifndef TILEDATA_H_INCLUDED
#define TILEDATA_H_INCLUDED

struct tiledata
{
//height
short tileHeight;

//textures. one ground texture plus four cliff textures
short texGround;
short texNorth;
short texSouth;
short texEast;
short texWest;

//tile slope
short slopeNW;
short slopeNE;
short slopeSW;
short slopeSE;

//tile corner cliffs
short cliffNW;
short cliffNE;
short cliffSW;
short cliffSE;

//east walls
short wallEN;
short wallES;

//west walls
short wallWN;
short wallWS;

//north walls
short wallNW;
short wallNE;

//south walls
short wallSW;
short wallSE;
};

#endif // TILEDATA_H_INCLUDED

//////////////// tiledTerrain.h ///////////////
#ifndef TILED_TERRAIN_H_INCLUDED
#define TILED_TERRAIN_H_INCLUDED

class TiledTerrain
{
public:

void loadMap();
void loadMap(int x, int y);
void loadMap(heightmap image);
void loadMap(const std::vector &tileData);

private:

};

#endif // TILED_TERRAIN_H_INCLUDED

Low Poly Joints

quick video on how to set up low poly joints for games. you’ll need something a little different for elbows and knees. this is mostly for fingers, but with more geometry in elbows and knees, you may be able to adapt this as well. a neat little trick I used to make this video and to test skinning is to create a plane to skin to, that way you don’t need to worry about weighting the backfaces. doing that makes for testing weighting quick and easy.

main foot rig finished

Video 4 is finally out, and with it, the foot is basically done. still need some extra control for the toes, but other than that, we’re all done. In this video we did some action constraints, copy location, copy rotation, and limit constraints. you can see the foot in action at the end of the video, showing a couple quick poses.

3rd blender rigging video

ok, I’ve got the third rigging video up. The reverse foot rig is almost done. One more video to take care of the constraints. Then all that will be left is the independent toe control, and the knee. The fourth video is gonna come much quicker than the third one too, because I recorded it with the third video, so all that needs done is a little bit of editing and dubbing.

Two new shirts!

I just added two shirts to the store, well currently thats the only thing in the store. One is a plain white t-shirt, with a nice logo for the digital artist, I’m not white, I’m rgb #..

The second new shirt is a maternity shirt sporting ctrl – c on the tummy.

With time I’ll add some more shirts and other products so check back every so often to see what’s new. I’m sorry about the price of the maternity shirt though, I only add 1 dollar to all products, so there isn’t much I can do to make it cheaper.

Blender3d rigging video 2 – Reverse Foot Rig

ok, video 2 is done and ready to view. In this video I go over how to make a reverse foot rig to control the ik goals that I created in the previous video. I also do some housekeeping and get all the bones named before we get too far.  In the videos to come, I’ll be adding a control object for the animator that will move and rotate the foot, and I’ll also add a scale function that will control the foot roll.

New Blender3d Video on Youtube

I just posted the first blender tutorial on youtube. You can find it in the blender3d section of this site for future reference. This video goes over the basic leg structure at the core of my leg and inverse foot rig. I like this base as it gives you the flexibility of the inverse foot rig, without tearing the mesh like some do unless you add complicated leg stretching functions in.

Grand Opening

Well, I have no content for this page, but that is soon to change. I will be posting a music video in the next two weeks. Along with that , I will post several links to some tools that I have found particularly valueable.