Exhaustion...

Well, basically I redid all the textures in the babys room, last time they were mostly flat, coloured materials, and looks really flat. So now all are painstakingly mapped with image textures, applied occlusion, bake, applied colour in photoshop, bake again, and here goes.

Created this comforter design with some reference. I love it. Do you?



Teddy now also have a face. Cute eh?



My com can hardly handle the occlusions... so slow... damn. I need some extra rams, maybe extra com too.



Worth the labour? Screen shot straight from virtools player. No touchups. Whaddaya think?

Also, a preview of my next levels.

Yeah, thats the nanny watching "The Haunted Mansion" on tv. Hmm....

While its been satisfying to see my new room, when I put it in virtools replacing the old ones, the collisions just doesnt work anymore, even when I reapply and all. Damn*.

Strangled, choking, ... *losing mah mind*

The Next Step...

I can't get myself left out, so I did my boards. Some heavy render with a total of 14 lightings in one room. Its illegal, I know. But...it gives me the look I wanted, so blah.






This is unconsulted and all. Hope Puan Seri will like it.

As for my apps, I managed to find the right script to make objects clickable..Yahoo!! Then it shall appear on the baby's arms. Actually, more like, it flies to the baby's arm. Hmmph....miraculous. But sometimes, it gets stuck along the way.

Next, I'd like to apply proximity sensor, so that the baby only gets to pick it up if its near. It only worked half way for now. Still struggling to find a way to make it work. And.... How can I make the baby animate with a press of a button? Still questions left unanswered.

Things I managed to do:

• Make camera follow mouse movement
• Apply collision to slide and bed
  
• (Halfway) Picking up objects
• Cubes
• Teddy bear
• Milk Bottle
• Ball
  

Yet to do:

• Make slide rideable (No idea how)
  
• Apply physics to ball (No idea too, since there isn't even a single sample related to physics)
  
• Insert nanny
• Make animation for nanny (as per storyline)
  
• Auto-animate for nanny.
  
• Animate door.
• Apply second camera to nanny.
  
• Insert sound.
• Smoothen baby walk cycle
  

Additional tasks:

• Apply shadows (Tried the basics, but didn't seem to have any result. Wierd wierd virtools)
  
• Retexture some object
• Bake texture
• Create main menu
• Exit menu.

I cry.

Critical Crit: Baby Steps...

Puan Sri said I need to darken the lights for a better night-light effect.



Before value: 3



After value: 1.3

I think the contrast is a little high. I wanted to make it slightly more ambient. No idea how. And the supposedly translucent night lamp drowned in darkness too.

But whatever it is, gotta keep myself focused for the crit this Thursday...Focus...

List of things to do:

• Make camera follow mouse movement
  
• Apply collision to slide and bed.
• Make slide rideable
• Picking up objects
• Cubes
• Teddy bear
• Milk Bottle
• Ball
• Apply physics to ball
• Insert nanny
• Make animation for nanny (as per storyline)
  
• Auto-animate for nanny.
  
• Animate door.
• Apply second camera to nanny.
  
• Insert sound.
• Smoothen baby walk cycle
  

Additional tasks:

• Apply shadows
• Retexture some object
• Bake texture
• Create main menu
• Exit menu.

Long list. Hope I didn't miss out anything.

Until Thursday's crit, good luck to ya all...

Edit: The previous problems about floating legs was fixed by deleting some IK handles and repositioning and un-rotating the root joint (pelvis). However, the character is still a little jumpy. The first person view ended up being abit of a err... earthquake-ish when walking. O.o

Interaction: Step 1 - Walk

Yeah, I took that long to finally make it walk properly. But there are still problems.



On start, its feet stays on floor.



On next step, its feet floats in the air.

And on and on, so baby bounces up and down, up and down... And as you can see, it floats within the bounding box. Sigh...

But anyway, managed to attach camera to baby's head, based on Fuad's tips of parenting it, though I wasn't sure exactly how, but I put it under the group where the skeleton of the eyes are.



Just drag the camera to the eye group within the hierarchy manager.
And in case you are not sure how to open hierarchy manager, you can just right click on your object and choose.



Or just go to the menu bar, Editors>Hierarchy manager.

And MUST remember to set IC (Initial Conditions) for BOTH CAMERA and CHARACRTER.

And here's the resulting first person view. (Camera lense field of view set to 24mm).



Happy virtooling... X_x

Because I'm abit cuckoo...

Yay...baby does gymnastics...

Ok, its not just me. My model too... Somethign wierd happened when I exported baby into virtools.



Yeah...headless baby. Its creepy. I don't know where the head go. I tried reexporting. To no avail. I applied the walk animation, and I played it. Damn, its freaking creepy....



I dont know why, its just baby. Cos nanny looks fine.



Though she seem to be having extra smoky, ultra smear eye liner...

The overall ambience seem ok, though the shadow contrast seem pretty high.
Later.

The New Boards...

Latest...





Rendered with maya software. The second one with raytracing.

What makes a VR look good? Nice textures, bump maps, baked textures. I assume. Now, how hard or easy is that?

I suck. I screwed it I know.
My spirits are low, I'm feeling miserable here. All these are making me miserable. Can anyone help me??...

Max Vs. Maya.

I thought that Maya will win. But then, I might do the baking in Max. So umm... is 2 better than one? Depends. An ongoing conflict and union of two, like a marriage.

Can Max marry Maya? Now, with the help of Obj (Wavefront Object File) importer-exporter, I have mind bogglingly switch between the 2 softwares to create accurate and hopefully problem free 3d models.

This must be crazy and I'm totally nuts and wasting my time.

Has a couple of problems along the way too. Anyway, here goes todays miserable update.

Characters:

I've managed to apply skeleton on Baby and try to do some animation. Its scary, cos the last time I tried animating my character, its all awry.

Baby walks...

Baby says hi... ooops!!

Somebody help me, seriously.

Heres ma hot nanny. Still inanimate though.

Context & Environment:

When I first reimported my stuffs back from Maya, Max gave me a heart attack, in the form of something like this...

It was in fact worse the first time around. This is considered "generous". I wonder why does max do this. Is it a problem with my models? Is there something overlapping? I don't think so. And so I try to render.

You see anything? Looks fine to me. One thing, the beauty about Max is that i can easily apply and change colours to all those objects. At least it represents my ideas on how the overall look should be like.

Oh, and I added new furnitures for baby, like

a new closet and a scrap of the slide...

...a more proper pillow and a bedside table.

I still owe baby a nightlamp, as seen on my method board.

Work work work. Driving me crazy.

Heres a different angle to my cozy/messy little apartment.

Till my next update, keep it up people!

Wish I can have it better with my method board. :(

Method Board 3: Final

Presenting my finalised method board...

So, I have added colours to the scene and cleaned up the lines. I think its so clean its almost vectorish... Then I start wondering why I painted in the first place. Ahem, but nevermind. So umm...there it is. My final one. I think I like how it turned out, though not perfect. And guess its beter this way. Like it? not? Comments welcome.

Method Board: 2; Critique

Progressing on to the the following day, we have our critque session and my hours of painting resulted in this.





















They commented that I should add some colour to the child area, which is the foreground and also to correct my perspective. So umm...more painting to go for next Tuesday's submission (Tuesday right?). Oh, and one thing, I think all of you guys should watermark your images if you are to upload it here on the net. There are lotsa art thieves around. You never know who will take yours and do whatever with it. Well its not like totally preventable, but at least makes the process abit harder for them. So, cheers to all my fellows who made it thus far.

Method Board: Work In Progress 1

For the latest method board submission, I'm still currently working on A3 size at 300 DPI. Gosh, its hard enough on A2, I wonder what am I supposed to do to enhance it in A1. (Can't my graphic card help me? I have no clue.)

Anyway, here's my first method board, that I consulted Pn. Seri with. A combination of painting and photos. Very raw and inappropriate, I agree. She commented about the composition. I showed her another rough sketch of mine and she preferred that positioning and adviced that I add in the baby girl into the picture as well, instead of focusing on teddy bear.

So I painted a new one from scratch, based on that rough sketch I had.

As of 05:05 pm, this is my level of progress.

The aim is to capture night lighting and atmosphere. There is supposed to be a night light on the bed-side table as well as some light from the outside of the room, to be reflected on the hallway and the lady here. Strange how it look more brownish in photoshop and so jet black in here. Still very raw though. But right now, I wanna go for some shooting action. Be back with more.

In the mean time, some sneak peek onto my environmental modelling.

Just the apartment block itself. Not much. Realised that there were a few mistakes. Gotta fix it after I'm done with the method board. Later.

Part 2: Execution.

I started a little of modelling during the holidays. Very little. :p












Milk bottle, 85 poly.

Iron, 42 poly.

Ironing board, 26 poly.

But apparently, we're not that quick into execution yet. So we have to come out with some method board:

Well this version has been rejected, but I decided to post it up here just for fun. Happy photoshopping, people...

Lazy Artist: And a Panic Attack

Finally willing to come back here and do a little update.


Heres my screenshot for the precon billboard. Simple and lacking, but it'll have to do. For now. Will be back soon hopefully. Ganbate all.

Finally...One Major problem solved...

Yeah...what a relief... sigh.
I guess we sometimes just feel like giving it all up. But you just gotta hold on and keep holding on until it happened. Yeah...have faith that it will...the end, will happen. Well, sad to say though, I haven't rid myself off my good old "disease". Sorry lecturer, sorry mom, and teachers, and counsellors. I just... can't help myself sometimes. But I tried. Really. But at least, this time, I "almost" made it. Better than before. A lil improvement is better than nothing. Really. You just gotta take it step by step. Keep it up and you will find yourself there one of these days.

So, you see, I spent my last night doing some of it, then slept at 2, woke up at 9 and continued doing it. I had to sleep. I just had to, even though I feel like I should just finish it up first. But, i think I'm not so much of physically tired, but more like emotionally. Like c'mon, I need a break. And then again, usually the ending parts are the hardest for me to go through. I don't know, I just have a problem "finishing" aor "wrapping up" things. Its like, I dont want it to end somehow. Maybe because I'm afraid to be judged. A "work in progress" can't be judged, cos its not completed yet. You don't know how much more that person can do, how much better it will get. But once you put your pen down, you put it up, and announced to the world and say, "yeah, im done, and this is my work." people will start deciding whether its nice or not, and you have no excuse. So, I guess it gets better with practise. Maybe its not so bad afterall after you get used to it, right? Hmm...yeah....so despite that my sketch book is still crappy, a few things not-so-done in my pre-con billboard, there IS a certain time where you have to just put down your pen and say "yeah, I'm done, and this is my work." So there it is.





















Still sux, I know. Just not as bad as last time, but somehow, something just doesn't feel right isn't it? Does it feel right to you? too empty? too sketchy? I dont know. All I know is, Ive printed, pasted on the board, and had been over with. Yeah.

And then there is the precon billboard too. I think its fun, cos Now, i have most of the basic models of the house already. Great yeah? but when i think about my characters... like >.<
Relax....calm down........breathe........
Nevermind...

Anyway, the nightmare's not over yet. Cos I still have SRI to do. And the number of respondents I get is just 18. Sad huh.... My target was 100. Ahahahahaa.....
Nah, it wont happen. I thought I'll be happy with just 30 something. But damn...
Well, like before, after sometime, you just gotta tell yourself that, ok, thats it. I gotta move on to the next stage and make do with what I have. So, good luck to ya all, for your SRIs... ganbate. And at the same time, have a nice holiday. ;) Cheers~.