Car... In progress :P

So I've been working on a pretty basic car at the moment, was a bit of a pain at first and ended up restarting when I noticed at some point I'd managed to add a load of vertex's inside the thing and it became a mess lets just say.

Anyway, I made sure to check 'ignore back-facing' was on this time, and have been focusing on mainly getting the shape together before 'prettying' it up.

I'm not really much of a car person so if people know of a particular make that would be suitable (seeing as they're meant to be visiting from the city) to work towards replicating that'd really help over the next few days or so.
Still have some cutting to do to get rid of some triangles and stuff before-hand but so far it's really low poly at 224. Also Tanguy suggested UV mapping when it was still low poly to avoid having to mess around later with potentially strange lines, so if it seems alright I can try an get a map together as well?

FINALLY

Oh god the upload rate here is atrocious D:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnj2a5nejQw&feature=youtu.be

So I made a quick test menu, it was very fussy with the font I wanted to use so I've just settled with it being Arial for now, I thought a 3d main menu would look pretty effective because it allows for some nice ambiance. I might add more sideways movement to the torch so it doesn't look like the person holding it is on a shop. I made a special spotlight cookie for the male shadow on the left :)

Rigging and Animation

Hey everyone,

As you all know I have been working on the character rigging and animation and as requested I am just updating you all on my progress.

To begin with I have learnt something this week... Animation is not easy.

This is the rigged aunt character that Katie made, each join is named accordingly so its fairly easy to work with. All of the major joints have selectors and controllers attached to them, so I can work with them through the mesh.

I did a bit of a test to see how the rig works, just a basic pose, I know she wont be getting into a fist fight but I thought it was a nice, easy generic pose to play with.

I created what is known as IK handles, which can be used to bend multiple joints as a whole. As you can see in the image the knee is bending as I move the ankle towards the hip. Another is connected to the toes for easier manipulation.

A problem I have been facing is the skin weights. Skin weights basically control what vertices move with certain joints. As you can see the mesh has stretched and deformed quite a bit with the movement of the shoulder.

I will be moving on to work on the walk cycle when I can but this week is already a bit hectic as it is, I'm doing some overtime at work, its my birthday on Friday and I will be working on my dissertation throughout the week.

If you want to see anything else, give me a shout and I'll see what I can do :)

Jack - Recap of bunch of work I've done.

So I've done a bunch of work and haven't updated after I've done it, so going just list everything here that I've done.

I've been doing random texture tiles and just features like key holes from some of the reference pictures me and chloe took while in Kent. Some to be just used as a tileable texture or just being ready to be used as part of UVW texture.

My mum got a vase from my grandmothers recently that looks sort of modern so decided to model something similar. Though it could be an object that would pass through the ghost maybe since its contemporary. Just basic cylinder model extruded down to make the well of it and moved loops around to make the lip. Also UVW'ed it and textured it, also has little easter egg on bottom... well for me an Katie its an easter egg.

I also started a broom model for some reason, but when it came to UVWing it alot of edges/seems were broken. 

Failed at Alpha mapping a weather vain, but recon it was because the actually diffuse part was tidy enough.

Started to try and learn blender since a couple my mates want make a game with me next year and want  to try and use 3rd part "free-ware" programs instead of 3DsMax and PhotoShop. So have been trying work out the interface and make a dolls house at same time in it. Blenders kinder like the best parts from Max and Maya combined. Hardest part so far has been trying to work out how to texture the model.

Made a mushroom model and textured, since its all the craze in everyone else's projects.

 

Created a normal map during Tanguy's tutorial about them. But then afterwards realised the PhotoShop Nvidia plugin doesn't work on Mac, so found an alternative. Its not as good but still it works fine for creating them, as I made one for the title screen wall for Katie (she'll probably posting a cap of that soon) and also decided to make one for the teddy bear since I got excited about make them.

So just found this, make the ghost kinda like this? it's pretty much exactly how I imagined it!