Final Turnarounds in Second Life

These are my Final Images taken from inside Second Life after Applying the textures to the model. I feel that the waistcoat adds more sophistication to the character than just having the braces there. Here I have attempted some scene shots. If I had more time I would have liked to animate the character into explorer type poses. Looking for the horizon perhaps.
Although I am pleased with the final result, and I am glad I didn't stray too far from my original design. The Glasses I attempted to model within Second Life but even with previous modeling experience I found the object editor to be incredibly tedious and hard to model something onto the character's eye. In the end I decided to compromise with the one eyepiece, although it doesn't go with the original design, I feel that it was required as it adds more style to the explorer.

Here are the Shirt and trouser designs. I did these in photoshop, sticking to the original designs from my moleskins I then developed the final image below into textures. After scanning them in and adding some features and texture, I imported them into Second Life. I then had the task of fixing the shirts centerline so it was a seamless fit, and didn't look noticeable when looking at the character. A few other things such as the hair were tricky to combine the hair from my photos, to the hair of second life. All in all it was a very steep learning curve when introduced to Second life for me. However I am pleased with the final model and look forward to making many more characters.








Here is my final design for the explorer, with a lack of colour schemes to go on due to the time period, I went for earthy tones to replicate the material of the time. The texture on the trousers is undecided as I didn't know what it would look like within Second Life.

Developed Ideas

These are the final 2 designs I have made, I will be taking elements from both to make the final image, as I feel that they both have what I intended for the Explorer.
The first design features the explorer in a simple shirt with braces. This was the original look I had intended when I first thought up this character. The trousers would be a tweed like material, durable, warm and flexible. Both designs feature the durable walking boots, although in the second design I designed a waistcoat for the explorer. This definitely adds to the character's persona of the explorer. This with the monocle adds the professionalism I have been wanting to add to the explorer. I will be looking forward to seeing what this ends up like when imported to Second Life.

Moleskins

Here is my first real go at the explorer, in terms of the initial sketches. My Hard drive for my PC broke recently so the images of my old explorer (below) won't be so relevant now. I worked on a new look as the old one was far too rugged and macho for the role the explorer needed to be. I wanted him to not look the part but have a look of professionalism. Here are the Moleskin designs i came up with while sketching.

Explorer Research

Here are the research images I found that reflected the look i wanted for the explorer. I wanted the explorer to be instantly recognizable as the hero. Having not known alot about this period it was initially hard to know what to look for but i feel that a combination of these images heads me in the right way to the look i'm going for.

Explorer

This is the face jpg that was created in photoshop. I used 3 images of my flat mate to complete the full head. Scaling a few parts appropriately to fit the model. As the model didn't have the same facial structure as my flat mate Chris, it was hard to make the texture look realistic on the Explorer.

Front shot of the Explorer, I experimented with the Gestures to try and give the Explorer more emotion, but found it incredibly fiddly and found it hard to adapt from other programs to Second Life.

The back of the explorer. I used the hair texture from Chris underneath the modeled hair. It was difficult to avoid the hair from showing the textures underneath, I had to change the style to cope with this.

The jacket and trousers were tricky to get the texture right. The seem of the clothing had to blurred to help the front and back blend better when imported into Second Life.

Overall adapting to Second Life for me was harder than expected as a few of the view control i found very clunky and unreliable.

Explorer

Here are the explorer screens from Second Life, with the textures applied:

Poor Man's Gears?

“Army of Two is a third person shooter video game developed by Electronic Arts, it is available on the Playstation3 and the Xbox, focusing on two mercenaries fighting through war, political turmoil, and a conspiracy from 1993 to 2009.”

The gameplay is centered around the two player experience between you and your team mate (be it AI or a friend) working together when in combat situations to defeat your enemy.

There are mission tasks that are assigned to the plot, most of these entail combination switches or bomb defusing, which can all be done with the action button, so not too challenging.

You can upgrade your weapons, from the mag size and the barrel to even fitting shields on your weapons, and getting your weapon “pimped”, basically a gold gun...with a few diamonds, fun to some. I thought that this was the best part of the game for me, in the sense that it was something to work for as well as the main plot of the game.

They have a pretty cool, what they call, “Aggro Meter”. This basically increases when you fire upon your target, causing all the enemies to shoot at you, therefore creating Aggro. Once you have the firepower on you, your partner is essentially invisible to the enemy, this can last as long as you keep your distance or until your fire upon them.

So its a nice way of getting through tough combat situations you always find yourself in with some other team-play shooters.

Another thing that i though was interesting was that you and your player are constantly interacting to progress through your environment. For example when you need to climb somewhere you can perform a Step Jump/Pull Up. This allows one player to be boosted up onto the higher platform, however they do need to pull their team mate up before continuing. This can be tricky in some cases, especially when you are confronted with enemies and are alone on the higher level.

A cover system has been integrated into the gameplay, adding to the combat realism and quite frankly without it, this game would be impossible. You can dive for cover, shoot blindly over the top/around the side of cover, and can use grenades in the same way.

Including these elements obviously adds to the immersive experience but gives you ways to mix up your gameplay, and how you and your team mate will tackle each scenario.

Here are the rest of the Co-op maneuvers:

Back to Back:This is where both player go back to back shooting from all angles to defeat your enemies. It goes into a slow motion mode where enemies react a lot slower than you and your team mate, making it a good opportunity for a lot of kills. However in my experience I have not been killed in this mode even when taking a lot of hits, making it rather pointless, especially when this mode is only available at certain moments in the game.

Driving:You and our team mate can drive a hovercraft in the later levels, you have the option of driving or shooting from the turret, which fires machine gun rounds. This mode is fun for the driver (kind of?) but fairly boring and difficult for the gunner to hit the enemies at speed. There were supposed to be a few more vehicles in the game such as a Jeep and a Tank, but they were taken out as it sowed down the gameplay. I’m assuming these vehicles would have operated in the same way as the hovercraft, so I'm glad they left them out.

Kudos:This mode is pretty stupid. You can express yourself to your partner in a series of actions including, head-butting, slapping, air guitar, handshaking or a phrase. These are random trash talking phrases,I never used it apart from in training.

Healing:One of your team mates has to come and drag you into cover and then heal you, this takes a few seconds and you need to be in cover or you will get frustrated :) However both team players can fire at the same time, but with less accuracy.

Feign Death:You can fake your death so that the enemy thinks you are dead. I though this was a nice feature as in most cases when your team mate is alone they can play dead till backup comes. This can only be used once with each set of enemies, use it twice and they’ll shoot you anyway.

Co-op Snipe:This mode allows both players to use sniper rifles simultaneously, it splits the screen top half gameplay, bottom half two scope lenses. This mode is only used in a few cases in the game and isn’t required through-out. Also it can be awkward when using it in tight combat situations, as it is a bit slow to get out of.

Weapon Swap:This mode is simply where you both swap your currently equipped weapon. I don’t understand when this would ever be useful in the game. As each player has their own money to spend on their own guns, this is never used and is purely intended as the fun aspect of the game, but i can see most serious gamers ignoring this feature all together.

Riot Shield:This I found interesting. Any team member can rip off certain car doors and use them as a riot shield, or just pick a shield up in certain areas. Both team members can hide behind the shield while the person behind can shoot, making for a good team cover system.

Parachuting:This part of the game for me is purely frustrating, one of you can shoot, while the other controls the chute. Firstly the shooting is impossible due to the ever changing direction of the parachute. Your never going too fast but its enough to make the scope shake. Also another annoying aspect of the game.

In conclusion this game is a good play for you and a mate, but only for a rent. I don’t think i would buy this game personally. Also if your not under a budget go for Gears of War :)

Initial Sketches

Here are my initial sketches as a foundation for my development work. On the left is the 'Creature', and on the right the 'Explorer'. I will be working around these ideas as my work progresses, although the designs may change in the development process.

Sunken Temple research

This is my sunken temple research where I have included images and textures relevant to my initial thoughts. I will be using these images for my initial ideas, and refer to then throughout the design process, and work to intergrating them into my final design.

Making Custom Animations In Avimator

Avimator is a program in which you can produce your own animations, using the default male or female model. You have the option to rotate any of the limbs on the x, y and z axis. This allows you to create individual poses or animation. The frame limit is 30 seconds so for a smooth piece of footage, it would only last a second. I had a go at getting to grips with it, and found it extremely tedious. Due to a few errors such as crashing and not saving the .bvh file which is needed to export to animation.

After getting a basic animation clip of a 'wave' i can export the file to Second Life and apply the new animation (at a cost) to my character.

Sculptie Modelling in Maya

Today I was introduced to NURBS in maya, and how baked textures can be applied to them to create a wrapped seamless image.

Initially I imported the ref image into the image plane, to start the modelling.
Using a mixture of the vertex, scaling and positioning tools, i managed to get the basic shape of the pear.
I used the isoparm selections to add more detail to the top of the pear, this allowed me to model the stem and move onto the texturing.