I’m finding out that the Zbrush to Maya workflow is a very tedious one. I haven’t run into any roadblocks as of yet, but the process of using a program where the “art” comes first and the logical part of modeling comes alittle later is new to me. In a good way.

As of now, the sculpting part of Tim is done. Once I figured out that I wanted his hair to be a part of the main geometry (in the interest of not completely crashing Maya), finishing it only took about 3 hours. The experimental hair was only worked with for 30 minutes.

new hair

old hair

The model’s mittens were finished (about 45minutes) as well.

mittens

I’ve begun working on the topology- this is the process of taking the organic shape that I’ve fleshed out and pretty much recreating the geometry face-by-face. It works by starting with a primitive ZBrush calls ZSpheres (think balls of clay) and using that as a base, the new geometry webs out from that point as I place each new vertex. This way I can use a low resolution model and apply the detail (the result of millions of polys) as a normal/displacement map. So far the retopo’s had about 3 hours put into it. Here’s the guide that got me started for anyone who’s interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeTg5xuzgCs

Tim’s about 45% done (texturing, finishing the retopo and the rigging are still looming)

retopologizing

new mesh

I also dropped the time machine model into the Team folder so that it can be used in one of the device cards. I had a couple of my models saved in my hard drive that I keep for populating environments also. I thought that I could contribute them to the creation of the library’s environment- included was a column,a grand staircase, a potted and three different kinds of light fixtures. I spent about an hour just cleaning up the mess that was their histories -time machine included- and gathering up the specific texture files so that they would be easy to access.

This week I worked on the particle effects for the Deus Ex Machina effect.  We figured out that we’d like to render each of the device/lexicon cards’ effects with their own camera (not overhead) so that helped me figure out how I should design them.  Currently for Deus Ex Machina I’m using a curve flow with an instancer (in Maya) so we can choose to substitute in any object we’d like.  As of right now the animation is working, I just need to adjust the path, speed, frequency, etc.  I’m going to figure out how to make a nice golden metallic shader and see what I can do in terms of motion blur or a particle trail to give it a more dramatic effect.  The picture below shows both the original flow of particles and the instanced particles next to it.  This is not the finalized shape, just a proof of concept.

I’m going to work on finishing this up for Tuesday/early in the week.  Right now I think it’s around 75% done since the hard part for me was just to get the system to work.

I also did some research about glyphs/patterns used with the FLARToolkit and tried to get familiar with some of the coding we’ll be using.  I found this great application that will allow us to create our own custom glyphs in photoshop and convert them into the .pat file we’ll be using in flash.  Most augmented reality applications/games use generated checkerboard patterns, but with this application we can use basic silhouettes of our characters.  We still need to use black and white for our colors since detection works best that way – Otherwise the lighting in the room can throw off detection by affecting the colors.

http://flash.tarotaro.org/blog/2009/07/12/mgo2/

Jason and I will be meeting on Monday night to go over some of the basic coding and work on getting a shell of the game laid out.

This week I spent around 15 hours either doing research/working on tutorials or working on actual assets.  I am around 90% complete with my work for the week and plan on being at 100% by Tuesday.

This week I had three major goals. I wanted to finalize King Arthur’s head and get it ready to be pelted, I also wanted to start making progress with the Library. I have put together a list of assets the Library will need, it is as of now still open to have items added by anyone who thinks of anything I forgot. In one of our group meetings we also decided on the final look and feel of the Library. I also spent some time figuring out the Gantt chart issue in one of our meetings, more on that later.

King Arthur’s head is ready for texture at this point. I spent another 6 hours or so adding the rest of the geometry and then sculpting  some final touches, the head is at 80% I would say. In all I think the head turned our well, the ears might be a bit small now that I am looking at the completed head. They will be covered by a hood once King Arthur has had the full costume treatment so I am not terribly worried about it.

The look we are going for with the Library is highly inspired by the Library of Congress, I think you will see that in the sample images provided below. We want to incorporate the old feel the Library of Congress and old hardback books with the feel of space age technology which will come from things like the pillars, lights and other furniture. The asset list and some sample images of the Library are below. I spent a good 10 hours or so creating assets and assembling them in the Library. The Library is at about 30% or so.

Object                                               Modeler          % Complete
Door                                                  MIKE                Modeled
Book 1                                               MIKE                Modeled
Book 2                                               MIKE                Modeled
Book 3                                               MIKE                Modeled
Tall Shelf                                            HESSAM           Modeled
Small Shelf                                         HESSAM
Lounge Chair
Desk                                                 HESSAM
Desk Chair                                        MIKE                 Modeled
Computer
Computer Kiosk
Windows                                          HESSAM            Modeled
Front Desk
Book Cart
Book Return Bin
Floating TV
Floating Sign
Floor Plant 1
Floor Plant 2
Hanging/Floating Plant 1
Hanging/Floating Plant 2
Pencil/Pen Cup
Laser Printer
Large Light                                        MIKE             Modeled
Small Light

Finally I have gotten to the bottom of our Gantt chart issues. It all comes down to the template used when exporting. The first one we used did not export the red and blue lines, even though they were turned on in the file. The second template we used did not export all the contact info for each resource. For this export we have used the default template. The default template does include all the information required.

After a lot of searching and playing with different things, I have gotten the glyph tracking to work and have found the code commented in english since the code was originally created in Japan and actually has to be downloaded through a site written in a different language. Below is a screen shot of it working for me through flash player. The second picture is the glyph that is being tracked. As you can see we will be able to use curving objects instead of just basic block shapes. Still need to do some testing to find out the minimum size we can use on the cards and if we are able to use the text already on the cards for tracking.
Research Time and Testing : 8 hours Playing Station Completion: 40%

I have also gotten a tool that allows us to convert our own custom glyphs into the required .pat file for camera recognition. The tool works through Adobe Air to capture what the camera actually sees from the printed glyphs which leads me to believe we should be able to use anything including images to track with as the tool converts what the camera sees into a series of shapes. More testing will need to be done to determine the accuracy of different methods of this. Tracy and I will be meeting on Monday night to work through the code some more and get a proof of concept for the tracking portion of the game done for the coming weeks.

Time for glyph creation research and testing of custom glyphs: 3 hours

Alright, another busy week! I spend most of the past week on modeling and web designing for the project. I finally finished the head of Robin Hood, and I’m pretty happy with it. I have to say modeling the ear was a nightmare for me and took me a while to get what I wanted. Here is how Robin looks like, un-textured and un-bothered:

I already started facial rigging of the character and I’m hoping to have it done by Tuesday. Thanks to Ben, we have a generic body for some of our characters and I will tweak that to match what we want for Robin Hood. A huge time saver, so I can focus more on Theme developing.

Hours: 6 Percentage: 100% (considering the head only)

I also spent some time modeling a window and its curtain, a corner book shelf, and a sofa for our library. Here are some screenshots of them:

Hours: 3

Website Update:

Almost everybody voted on template  #3 from the last week PPJ (except for myself, I’m a huge fan of template #1), so the goal was to push that design a little further. The redefine design is based on 960 grid system which is a standard UI for many of the web designers.  I will also take Yahoo! UI standards (known as YUI,)  Eric Meyer’s guides, and CSS frameworks highly into consideration for developing the theme.  Here is a screen shot of the new template. However, this design will be subject to some changes after our group meeting this week.

Hours: 4 Percentage: 95% (designing the theme)

I also set up a MySql data base for the website and installed Drupal 6.15 on the server. Installing Drupal is not as easy as Wordpress. During installation I encountered many errors, and warnings. The most important one was the memory limit for PHP. Drupal needs 16M of memory in order to run, and most of the host providers set that to 12M or 8M by default. So I had to modify the php.ini on the server. Since our server is running Vdeck 3.0, it took me a while to find the php.ini (it’s called PHP script under CGI and Scripted Language Support in Vdeck.)  To cut a long story short, I modified the PHP settings of the server, and now it’s able to run Drupal perfectly. (thanks god all those changes didn’t damage the version of Wordpress that we are running for PPJ on the same server!) Here is the link to our new Drupal site that is ready for theme development:

www.lexiconquest.com

Hours: 2 troubleshooting Percentage: It wasn’t on the gantt chart

Hello!

Be thankful, this week’s post won’t contain the wall of text you were abused with last week. No, since that hurdle, the work progression is rather basic: work, dammit, and work hard on creating assets. Once these are established, the groundwork for the actual game may begin. Regardless of the heavy amount of work that’s required here, we’re very much on track, with many models nearing, at the very least, the halfway point. Additionally, everyone is digging into their past assets (and freetime) to help create a full looking library environment for everything to take place in. But, for the time being:

Ben- Work continues on the two characters of Tin Woodsman and Billy Pilgrim. Minus a few modeling touch ups (and a consideration of cloth/alternative methods– see the concept art for the little cape he wears), Tin Man has been more or less completed and is ready to move onto the next step of being textured and rigged. Billy Pilgrim, as he is a bit more sophisticated (and almost two characters in one, given the Tralfamadoran), is taking a bit longer but is developing nonetheless. Shave will be utilized for the hair, and modeling for the body has begun. The head is ready to be textured.

Additionally, work continues on in-game art assets, specifically the logo and card back.

Mike – The Library, based on the Library of Congress, is coming together. All assets for the Library are being developed with a futuristic motif. King Artur continues to grow into a full fledged character as he moves into the body and costume portion of our program. He will have very minimal hair if any. If the decision is made to use hair on the model I would like to use shave to keep consistent with Ben. I have also done some digging into our Gantt Chart issues, they have been since sorted out, more on that in my post.

Hessam- Robin’s head is nearing completion, and so is the web’s design aspects as well as usability, database and Drupal updates.

Lauren- Completing up the lovely Tiny Tim model and preparing its topology for the “real world” (aka, non-Zbrush environments), and contributing toward the completion of the library environment.

Jason- Working with the flartools glyph tracking code in actionscript to both get it working with custom glyphs and for our purpose of only tracking what cards will be in play without tracking their real time positions. Modeling on the tripod continues with the legs finished being modeled. The body is all that is left.

Tracy-Working on particle effects in Maya for the “Deus Ex Machina” animation.  The particles are working, and have instanced geometry, just need to work on the actual path they’ll take and finalizing the shape.  Researched customizable glyphs for the cards instead of using the basic checkerboard patterns most augmented reality applications use and started to get into FLARTools.  Found a great application online that will convert our glyphs into the proper .pat file.

UPDATE:

Billy Pilgrim with Hair and texture

What is there to say, really? It was another great week full of all-out crazy modeling, with little interest in anything else. The greatest benefactor of this rush was the Tin Woodsman, who has gotten to the point of near completion. I’m very much pleased with how it turned out. Check it out:

He’s not completely done; if you’ll look back to the concept art, you’ll notice a short white draping cape-like article under his shoulder pads. I’d still like to use this, but I have to figure out how. Using geometry is probably no good because it would severely limit his range of movement, and cloth isn’t a good option either because, well, it’s a pain in the ass (and wouldn’t come into play until after animation was done, anyway). I might have to see how he he looks when he’s textured to see if he even needs it (which is the next step).

Hours: 10 Percent Complete: Roughly 90 % (in terms of modeling)

Billy Pilgrim

Billy Pilgrim didn’t really take a back seat, per se, but progress was a bit slower. Unwrapping and texturing him proved to be a nightmare (as in, it hasn’t happened yet) because, well, of a lack of software to make it possible. Headus UV Unwrap is expected soon, so it should happen shortly. Meanwhile, he’s got hair! I’ve opted to go with Shave for admittedly selfish reasons. I began confronting the intimidating plug-in last term in Advanced Animation and, while I managed to make it out with my life, I was battered and beaten from the experience. So, call its use a bit of a vendetta; its a personal goal to be successful in its use. It’s LINUX only for the time being at least, which is something of a hurdle, but the results are nice:

Some more tweaking needs to be done, and I have to further educate myself on some of the settings but I think its the best route. I know there was some concern about modeling consistency and I’m aware that this could potentially deepen the divide. I defend it not only with my personal ambition with this software, but also with the fact that Billy was inherently supposed to be one of the more “realistically” modeled characters. That said, I’m willing to help another team member utilize Shave to some extent in their own model (with King Arthur having some potential– some hair could drop in front of his face from under his hood).

Additionally, I have begun modeling a generic male body for use with not only Billy, but also Robin Hood and King Arthur. The latter two will require some tweaking and modeling additions, of course, but the body itself, tall and lanky, is met specifically for Billy. Regardless, I hope it will still save time for Mike and Hessam. Pardon the turkey-esque appearance, there’s still some sculpting and details to be added (not to mention hands/feet).

Hours: 15 Percentage (for all of Billy): 50

Anyway, Billy is somewhat two characters in one, and I’m fairly pleased with how the Tralfalmadoran is coming. He’s nearly complete.

Please note the textures are still very much temporary, and how he will connect to Billy is still up in the air as well, but this is likely a matter of extruding along a path.

Oh! The card back is tweaked as well. Now with correctspelling!

Lauren and I are meeting this week to iron out the final card details and colors as to ensure consistency.

So, yeah, another good week!

Ben