This will probably be my last entry for the unit, the thought of going to INB380 and the amount of work that have to be put seems daunting but interesting nonetheless. I

Still have the video and storyboard to fix as well so yeah this would be the wrapping up for the blog.

Game Description and Critique

Overground ideas was based simply as "the future sport of rollerblade racing game". These rollerblade itself would have a sort of "boost" mechanicsm attached to it for instant surge of speed. Players would be racing around the game world trying to outskill and outrun their opponent. Instead of doing this alone, like most racing game, players actually have to cooperate with another teammate using the grappling moveset. This actions can be used as both offensive and defensive style of play.

The gameworld is pretty vibrant and cartoony so that both children and adult alike could enjoy the game without actually focusing much on the graphics.

Area 1

Area 2

Area 3

Some of the objects such as rail and boxes are meant to be interactive where player could actually interact to it and even as a meant of hindrance to them.
The ultimate goal is to give the player a simple yet pleasing look of the world that match well with the character they were controlling.

In terms of critique, character lack of facial expression and missing of ingame powerup would be the top of my list. 

Granted that the player will constantly be looking at the back of the character, still it feel a little off when the camera was facing the front of the character (or if the player actually lose the game), yet the model will still be seeing stand and smiling his life out. 

Regarding powerups this have to be discussed again as we do actually wanted to implement an item to help the players (nothing fancy like in Mario Kart) with a sufficient quick boost. Unless we could find a way around it, the game pretty look just like a simple "car race" where player doing it repetitively.

Conclusion (Reflections)

Question taken directly from the Assigment 1 pdf file.

 What was your overall assessment of the process, and the outcomes?

All this time, for the past 3 years, we were learning the pipeline and process of game development in theory and memorizing some of the terminology for exam. Those shit doesn't really counts till an individual actually sits down and actually bring those theory to the ground and use it to practice. It's has been really an eye-opener, getting good feedback week in week out and fixing things accordingly not because of an individual satisfaction but for the game.

Working with people with different language and diverse skills just make things better, Everyone have a role in the process, going back and forth just to make everything looks right. At times it could be so frustrating when you had to re-do a certain process all over again and again till you get it right.

An artist should not just be drawing without understanding the limitation that programmer facing due to the engine and vice versa. 

Think this process that Laz and Alex had set up for the team really shown what we had now in the game. It really feel "real" to the real world work experience if that even make any sense.

 What role did you play/tasks assigned that was least satisfying to you?

This might sound a little strange but given a choice,  I didn't even want to be the Lead Artist or anything to do with drawing actually. I would prefer the role as a game designer and helping a little of the artist stuff here and there. I was also actually aiming for the PM role as well but after looking at the team composition and the team skill-set I knew right away I had to do it and take the lead in terms of art. 

The thing that annoyed me the most was "babysitting". I know its not part of the process in the game-development but it does feel like I am doing this to an individual. I love to help and share the skills I knew with the team so that we could make the game better. 

Disabilities is not a mean of an excuse to not understanding and learning new stuff. I seen and work with people who has it worse and yet doing stuff better than me. 

Granted he wasn't an artist at all but that is the same for our game designer who actually learn asap by himself just to ease the artist burden. Thats teamwork.

This happens throughout the whole semester and i mentioned it in details on the blog itself.

While I do not want any of my team to fail, I can't be wasting time next semester fixing and unwrapping others shit stuff over an over again. The best thing is each time a question was asked the reply I will get "I cant...blah blah.." to an extend it peeves me  a little when I ask for an assistance to download a simple mp3 background music!

 What were the tasks undertaken that most used your skills and abilities?

UNREAL engine. No brainer here. New stuff, new platform and really confusing. Thank goddess i do have a little understanding in scripting and could actually work things out on my own without troubling the programmers too much.

Another worth mentioned off is getting back to 3D. I have not been doing any 3D works for the past 4 years, this was why I started the job earlier than my other team members as I need to retrieved all those skills and shortcut mantra back to my brain.

 What were the lessons learnt with regard to time management, task planning and team processes?

Crucial. Time and time again we found ourselves in deep shit because the PM didn't actually assigned us dedicated timing. In fact he did nothing at all. The team pretty much waited to get our ass-fXXX bad in the ass in desk critique, feeling miserbale, work like mad dude to prove people wrong on the next desk critique. That's pretty much how the team time allocation goes. I HATE IT.

I already told the team in the face now, we are going to plan for INB380 right after monday presentation. 

In fact I am actually thinking of taking dual role which already feel crazy enough but someone have to do it or we will face the same issues again where we wasting time re-doing task and even left unsure what to do next.

 What plans do you and your team have for the next phase of development of your project?

BIG. This going to be in steamlight and kickstarer!!! LoL.. nah I'm just pulling one leg.

In due seriousness there a massive stuff we need to redo. In fact some of it have to broken up again from the ground and build it up all over again.

• Character currently have certain holes that need to be fixed (i mentioned in details on previous blog)
• The character physics have its flaws as well so we will be looking in to that
• Networking
• Implementing 4 characters

Will have to work as really hard for this. I even was planning ahead that I should have all 4 polish characters model out before 380 even started with some animation for them

Reflection of the day: While some of this event occurs in the team seems maddening, I really believed I am working with a group of skillful people with "weird" personalities. 

The class conducted by both Laz and Alex itself is rewarding. The way the feedback was layout to each team had never been degrading but it feel encouraging and keep us on our feet to never slow down our progress even for a week. 

28th May 2015

Here we are reaching towards our final goal for  INB379, preparing for the presentation on Monday,and cleaning up everything necessary to be handed in as a group portfolio.

Had a great feedback yesterday regarding the video presentation but I would like to explain myself a little towards "the artist seems to have waste their time in making the dance animation" from Alex.

The dance was actually created for a test for the rigging, weight skinning check and exporting animations to FBX. That was why the range of movements from the character. It's shouldn't even be in the game initially but when I showed it to the group they liked it so much that they wanted that to be "taunt" actions for the character. 

I do agree that those time could be used to make more animations for the game but I had to say it wasn't a waste of time.

26th May 2015

Working on the video for tomorrow presentation and hope to impress both Laz and Alex. Still this not what I wanted to talk about.

During the last critique, Laz was saying I need to be more descriptive in the blog on WHY the character and the world end up like it is now. So here goes (again do note that this artstyle didn't just come in a day in fact it  took me appx 4 months or more)

Early stages Concept

The early planning stage itself, we already knew as a team that we wanted to make a vibrant-cartoony-looking game which artsyle closely follow Disney big Hero 6. Another reason was due to my own personal liking from the Pixar The Incredibles created by Brad Bird. and the other members obsession with the anime Air Gear. We compromised and I start sketching out drawing which looking at it now, it make me goes "WTF" and shocked how much the character changed compare to it was first initial planned up.

"WTF ART 1,.1"

"WTF ART 1.2"

We did actually follow the advise by Laz and Alex to look at other alternative style such as making things more realistic etc, still we believed this style work best due to the time we had and skills that each artist had. Still we decided to stray away from "toon shading" style after Alex was reminding us how does this make us different from the other game out there which were more well known and polished.

My initial blogging shows how I came about with the main character look, I was actually planning his character traits first before I actually designed him pieces by pieces.

Character Traits: Confidence, playful, childish and obsessed to get his love known

This are his traits and I was deigning based the main character based on this traits.

Early days Tecca

The color palette was later change to red, yellow and black to make him more stand out from the crowd, to give a distinct look for players and viewers alike, telling them this dude IS the main character in the game.

Mid Concept

The world was planned in terms to make the character stands out. Simple and as i mentioned earlier, vibrant looking. It fall nicely to some of the concept I shown in the blog at the earlier stage. It was meant to be a "Boxy" busy world with cars moving around and area where players could glide and do tricks anywhere around the game world. There still a lot of stuff to work at but the current build we were doing starting to show the initial concept ideas. What we lacked is artist. Currently there's only me and John who were doing this texturing and it is really hard. John isn't much of a 3D artist as well and I am pretty much doing and planning stuff ahead so he could then match the style intended. This is the reason why we had so many initial texturing problem at the earlier stage, not until i show how to fit 1 building to the gameworld that he start to understand on how to get those assets up.

Initial concept proposal to the team

How the game look now

If you remember looking at my previous blog I was describing 2 other characters as well. A girl and a mask dude. HOW ARE THEY DESIGN? Simple, I was referencing everything back to the main character.

Risa - Main character love interests (thus his obsession)
Mask (Not given a name yet) - Is a character who were actually designed to be his close friend but soon become his rivals as I found him to be too cool later on.

Character Traits (Risa): Obnoxious, self-centered individual, assertive and always thinks she is better than anyone

First look

This is how she actually look like initially when i first actually talk to Stan, this is how I portrayed her in terms of design after our first discussion on how to attract other artist to join us.

She came along way in terms of design as she lost that "friendly" look but the goggle still stays with her

Character Traits (Mask): Secretive, mysterious, powerful yet dumb

Hmm..I have to admit I design him with the thought of "holy shit i have to model 3 diff character faces!" thus that the reason of the MASK. LoL. Strangely enough I like him straight away on 1 design. There's a little tweak here and there but nothing major. If you realised his hair was based from the villain in The Incredibles. His color palette was simple as well; a direct counter to Tecca

The final character was designed by John so I could not really described how he came about making her. All i knew she seems to fit pretty well with the Mask character due to her lolicon look

Johnson initial concept

Switching John's character to fit the style of the game

Mask man

Risa

tecca

Thats it! This was how I designed all the character and game art to fit accordingly to the style we had set earlier. It certainly go a long way in terms of how the character was initially planned to what they look like right now.

22th-25th May 2015

Spend most of the day doing some recording the video and actually played our game for the very first time together. I am not sure about the others, but it feel so fulfilling and proud to actually make it working. Yes there's bugs and the game seems broken beyond reason but we find ourselves enjoying the game, running around the world amok, grappling and pulling one another.

John was still sicked on that day while Miguel only came for an hour and bailed saying he had to meet his friend. Why he even came to the group meeting then is beyond my reasoning. This happen on the Saturday.

After reaching home to sort out the footage recorded, I realised some of the crucial shot was missing and we agreed as a team to redo some of it on Monday, 25th May 2015

Reflection of the day: It's pretty hard to describe the feel-good feeling seeing the character moving around the world jumping and actually did the grappling and other skills. Again it doesn't look polish, FAR FROM IT but it gave us an insight view and issues we have to fix for 380. 
Also i feel the longer we spend time together as a team the closer we get and knowing each and individual strength and weaknesses

Working on stuff..and stuff..and stuff

it feels like in the army, where brotherhood was bond from eating food together in a circle

22rd -23th May 2015

Here I met another hindrance to my progress; "How do i actually get a sprite to work in Unity like i want it to be in 2D world?" The arrows, as feedback from Laz and Alex, lack of textures make the world "dead". Texturing the cars wouldn't be a problem, the 2D sprite is. Spend quite a few hours in trying to figure out how does sprite works in Unreal and took me quite sometimes to get it working.

Once we get it to worked, Joe and Stan realised this was not really the correct way to do it as they need the sprites to be INSIDE a materials as they need to make  as a spline. I recommend you to look at Stan's blog on how he actually managed to get it done in the end. While i did the sprites he single handlely managed to solve this issues we had for the past 2 weeks!

After this was fixed, I had to get back texturing. What i thought to be an easy task for me turn out to be a frustrated morning once again. Woke up at 430am only to find myself to really start working on the assets at 730am!

Why you might asked? The lack of project and assets management. Again, I didn't want to sound like a bitch, but I had asked Miguel to check and clean up the assets needed to be textured ages ago, upon returning back to the folder all I found are files laying around everywhere.

If this has been done it make life easier for me and John to complete our task at hand. Nonetheless I managed to get the car that is needed for texturing but what lies after that gave me more headache.
Granted he isn't an artist, but so do Joe (our level designer), but he took an effort to learn when i pointed things out, with Miguel I am lost of words as i had mentioned him over and over to be careful of the "edge loop" when modelling any stuff. I didn't even asked him to model complex stuff yet it took me a total of 3 hours to textured and retopo the edge of his car model!

shit that i have to put it with 

.

after fixing the edge loop and unwrapping it nicely

Reflection for the day: I beginning to realise, while I know I am a patience guy but getting this issues repeated over and over even after pointing it out to an individual kinda tires me out

20th May 2015

Same critique feedback. In truth I was actually expecting those criticism to hit us due to the fact we did not implement stuff such as sounds and lighting etc in the game, Still I am not really concern (well I do but not that much) as this is easily fixed before the presentation. What i wanted to do now is to get the group together and conduct a quick short meeting, aka a Project Manager role, and show to Miguel what it should be like to plan things out for the team.

After a good solid 25min meeting, I'm pretty sure all of the group members understood WHAT we have to do for the next meeting. Assigning each individual member WHAT and WHEN I expect this to be done and be firm with the decision on dateline.

Md Rizal

May 20 at 12:14pm

Miguel u need to note this down as a PM in a nicer document format. In future meeting next semester you wil have to do wat i did just now. kinda like a scrum master

Riz: Promo Art, Curved Slope, Training Area, Crosshaier(?), Animated 2D(?)

John: Area next to museum segment, Sounds, ground pavement, traffic light(?)

Joe: Ligting, particles, Rails

Programmers: Networking, Countdown
Sounds needed: Grapple, jump, Bump to wall, railgrind and wallride

This was the outcome from the discussion and the goals that have to be met before next week presentation. I would love to a Project Manager but again it's not as if I had a choice to do this and overtake someone else role for the week; this was literally been missing since Miguel took over as a PM and I was to occupied with the workload of the game assets, character rigged and animation

21st-22nd May 2015

Well as I am the guy who did the planning for this week so I had to lead by an example. I get most of the 3D assets done asap because theses are the prioties that is needed for the game world. Johnson, the other artist ,was really hit hard with sickness and again I had to cover the load up to get things done till he recovers. Even when he's isn't fully recovering he still make an effort to get most of the stuff needed so that it could be used for the team.

Sprite Arrow/material

More Billboard designs

Working on the sprite

making it work

Reflection of the day: With all the tension going earlier, It actually make us stronger as a team. We are helping one another and crossing over each other path to get things done efficiently. Ryan returning to the team works wonders as well!

18th-19th May 2015

Working on more textures. Things that have been added in relation to Laz critique last week:-

• Added trees
• Game Object textures
• Overall color outlook (This was done by the level designer and the other artist, I was tweaking things to make the world more standardize in term of colors)
• Billboard

Tree test

One of the few textures for the billboard

This is where things get a little heat up. The team keep pointing out my mistake regarding the issues that was done for the character, while I admit I make those mistake it was more due to an unforeseen mistake. It get a little tiring to explain that the error was not due to the skeleton INSTEAD it was due to the cluster and vertices changes in the FBX files that literally cause this issues.

Ways to fixed it? I know how to do it. How?

1. Unskinned the character model
2. Fix the hole 
3. Reattached the skin and skeleton
4. Rebake all the animation to the character

This i believed will fix the issues we are having now BUT NOBODY is listening to me and thus it kind of irritated me badly.

Reflection Segment: I could not fix it now due to the time and the desk critique is tomorrow While I was actually telling my other members off, there was no malice or personal attack to it. It's just that no one seems to listen. People use the word "LAZY" or "I DONT CARE" really tick me off as here I am trying to understand both programmers and artist pipeline, getting those comments from the team members is infruating..
Again it fall down to communication and i will talk to them tomorrow to clear things up.

16th-17th May 2015

This feel eternity. I always realised that the character model had issues that requires fixing but I keep delaying it and actually create more animation with the model. WHAT A BIG MISTAKE!

Issues with character hole

I did not realized what a mess i created for myself and the team until I tried to fixed one of the character and pass to the programmer. I am certainly angry at myself for not listening to my gut feeling earlier and fixed this issues.

This also creates a little tension with the programmer as they have to refix all the character animation over again. While no one like to fix and redo stuff, what other choices we had?

I didn't realised the technical issue with Unreal till now; apparently Koh (the programmer) insist he need the skeleton to fix the issue, problem is i did not change any variable or naming to my skeleton!
Nothing was changed apart of adding the hole to the feet (which i deleted ages ago in trying to safe polygon faces) and the hole in the hair due to vertex breaking apart.

I did my own research and apparently found out what actually cause this issues to keep coming back which resulting the new animation (model) to be combined to the existing model.

Reflection Segment:  Yes mistake was make, while I am a little angry at my stupidity and delaying fixing this 1 issues, I knew it could be worse if this issues was seen in other 3 character that is waiting to be model and animate. 

15th May 2015

I FINALLY MANAGED TO SOLVE THE ALPHA ISSUES. It took me literally the whole night yesterday to figured how this work. It turns out it was easier than I initially thought!
The trick is not to fixed it in Unreal but in photoshop itself!

With the alpha mapping issues solved, I could pass the fences and arrows to the level designer to place it in the game world. This will then act as a blockade and arrow map area for the player.

The fences for the game that will act as blockade

Game Arrow for player track

Getting the transparency up in Unreal.

Still this won't be the end as we actually intending to make those sprite animated for player. That will be done and research during the holiday.

13th May 2015

The desk critique doesn't go well today.We were bashed pretty hard due to the fact that our game, in Laz on words, there isn't any game out of it. What we have is just a mechanics and a character that running around the world aimlessly.
Other criticism includes:-

• World is boring
• Aimless track
• Too many empty spaces (lacking of level design)

In my defence, I really did my part in terms of fixing stuff to the character model, texturing and helping John (the other artist) in setting color to those models. The only mistake I make was thinking that alpha mapping work similarly in both Maya and Unreal. Thus we were unable to show the arrow direction of the race track. 

Laz remind me to sort it out by next week.

Reflection segment: I realised a little peculiar habit my group had. While we are suppose to be in a constant progress, strangely we only get to work after we get our butt kick from Laz. It seems we are likely to get a praise on single week and then get screwed at the next. I bring this issues to the group and all of us agreed that we need to fix this for next critique.

14th May 2015

Start researching with alpha mapping for Unreal. The goal is to have the the image showing only the desired 2D object with a transparent background. While Maya could take 2 different mapping this is not the case for Unreal. 

Reflection Segment: I feel this is really the most crucial part, the highlight of hurdles that I need to overcome for this semester. The game need the arrow on the track for this semester showcase but I just couldn't get to grasp and understand how I get it to work. I knew if i managed to solve this problem it would open a new ways to manipulate the game assets without actually modelling stuff in 3D.

12th May 2015 

Preparing for tomorrow desk critique again. Just like last week there isn't much things to update in terms of arts or stuff that have been done. Seems like the hard part of testing and feelings on what is right for the game is over and now is the repetitive steps.

Still that does not mean I am slacking. Had to do check on others models (most of the time I found myself fixing it) and unwrapping UVs that was unwrapped wrongly. All this have to be done so that we could keep texturing the world that we planned out.

Example of the assets in the game

While it isn't as hard as modelling an organic character, still texturing hard edges model have its challenges.

Things that also have been refined for tomorrow desk critique includes:-

• Refine Run animation (Blading)
• New Jump animation
• Grapple actions
• Refine taunting animation 
• Lamp post  (Assets)
• Traffic lights (Assets)
• Building
• Side slope
• 4 way slope

All these animations and assets will be presented tomorrow

On the sideline I did a mini comic for the game but was rejected by the group as they find it to complicated to understand. I am also working on a mock UI look.

.

The idea here is to have a "comic" like cutscene in the game before the player starts to play. .

Reflection segment: Seems to get the benefits of all the trial and error i did earlier while I wouldn't say I know all of the stuff (such as maya  fbx transferring to unreal etc), I have a good understanding what would work or would not. The art seems to evolve as well and i find things easier to draw all the characters for the game compare when we first planned things out

29th April 2015

I didn't blogged in any way for previous week not because I am doing nothing but it is pretty much a reiteration, re framing of animation and building texture. All of that were to prepare for Wednesday presentation. Finally get the "right" feel for the game world that we had intended and that make thing easier for me to control the group artstyle.

During the presentation while we were a little screwed up due to "breaking" the game (not sure why to be honest), we were using video as alternative for our mock showcase. I find it a little confusing as the jury were actually shooting us due to the breaking of the build issues but at the same time commending our efforts to our game.

What make things more peculiar was Laz going "we were one of the "go ahead and ready" group; I just don't feel that way. In fact i feel i could done better without some hiccup that is currently ongoing with some of the team members.

Seen some of the other groups game progress, which some of it is really good...

Reflection segment: While I am not really complaining about some of the team members incompatibilities or issues they faced outside of school that affected them, in a strange way, it make me technically better and increase my speed in doing stuff and getting things done without relying them that much.

27th-28th May 2015

Most of the time spent during this 2 days was to get the basic animation for the game out. I started with making a "test" animation just to make sure nothing is broken or any skin weight going crazy for future animation. I used the dance reference from PSY gangnam style and some pictures to did this test.

I also tried to tidy up some other stuff from other team members like checking on their object models, texturing just to make sure it fits to my initial concept design. This seems to be harder than I anticipated.

Since the programmers were busy as well and I could not wait for them anymore I manually set my own mock environment in order to test if these animation actually work in Unreal upon baking.

Have a quick meeting with the programmers as well on how they want me to design my animation and presented it to them for easy coding.

This week target animation are as followed:

• IDLE
• BLADING
• JUMPING

Managed to squeezed a WALL GRIND animation as well which as shown below.

During these time I was actually looking and playing with lighting in Unreal as I really wanted the AO effect to appear in the game (as mentioned in previous post without knowing, Unreal actually support this, I actually bake my AO light to my character). Have not really go in depth to it but I will surely do to understand it better this week.

Reflection Segment: Working in a team with diverse background experience is pretty hard and refreshing at the same time. Personally if things go well, i really think this could be a good game..but that a big IF...as we have a few issue within the group itself...

26th May 2015

With all the previous mistake made, I am pretty careful in setting my joints LRA in the correct manner.
Following Laz target that I have to meet before next desk critique:-

1. Get the character in the game
2.Character movement and actions animations

While getting the character rigged and skinned properly another issue that I am still wary off those rigged and animation will work fine in Unreal.

Took me the whole day to finish up both the rigging, controls and skinning. It might not be perfect but it seems to work fine.

Control and rigged

Did a short  animation such as waving the character hands, exporting it out and reimporting it back Maya...it turns out fine. Still waiting for the mock enviroment from the programmers so I could test it in Unreal


Reflection Segment: Feel pretty good after making all those mistake at the early stages.

22nd May 2015

Things did not go as planned for today desk critique and we were bashed really hard. Firstly we have not really prepared as a group on what to present, yes, as individual each of us had did a certain part but as Laz mentioned we were falling way behind. In due honesty I have never thought we were the few "good" group as  Laz pointed out; it is easy to fix a bad group compare to fixing a good group.
I am unsure about the others but it is the wake up call I needed.

Reflection segment: Laz and Alex was pointing out how i did my workflow wrong in terms of exporting and importing of those animation to the game. Surprisingly I am really annoyed at myself for wasting too much time in fixing those controls and orientation but at the same time I had pretty much  understood what is the limitation in Unreal.

23rd-25th May 2015

Had the same issue involving  some joints orientation that peeves me off and decided to re-rig everything from the ground. While researching I came across the ART rigging embed in Unreal for Maya.
The good thing: Instant Rigging and controls.
The Bad: Shit ass buggy and no way in hell i could even get a rigged done to it (cause i am using maya 2015)

Took me awhile to get things up and also I was waiting for the programmer to set up a "mock" world in Unreal so that I could test if my fbx file actually work in Unreal.

Finished and cleaning up a simple script that will allowed me to set up control easier for future character.

Reflection segment: It was a frustrating process especially while using the ART add in Maya. Things keep crashing in weird manner without any backup which resulting in time lost and repetitive actions and workload. Realizing this will not work and to avoid more time lost I decide to work back the joints traditionally.

20th-21st April 2015

With the UVs out of the way I still had the baking of light issues I had to take care off. Again most of the research had been done way earlier and countless of hours was spend in trying to get the settings right.

AO map

This what has been bugging me while I managed to get those AO map out rendered there seems to be a hole plunging out around the area of the faces which giving me a nasty result when i slapped it in to photoshop.

The process here is pretty much tweaking and returning to photoshop to make it right.

Initial Concept color

This is what i get when slapping both the AO and paint textures together, the blending of the "fake shadows" make life a little easier for me.

Work and more work

At times it does feel as if I am going around in circle throughout the whole process. The repetitve actions of going back and forth to PSD , Maya and 3d COAT is kind of vexing. Still, as hours and days goes by i found myself pretty accustomed to this which at certain point of time i was actually coloring the OBJ model in PSD itself!

Pretty much done

 At the end of the process i added few more textures and colored to the character face. Did a minor tweak as well  to have his jaw and mouth look more defined!.

Minor tweaking make alot of different

Reflection Segment: Moving along these process constantly make me wonder would there be any "correct" method in getting things done more systematically. Which pretty much none, while there a few pipeline that artist have to go through the order of moving along that pipeline is up for an individual. While this is really an audacious and time consuming I am pretty sure my next character model for the game would't take me this long at all.

18th-19th May

During these 3 days it feel the longest and tedious throughout the unwrapping and texturing process. Why? I know i had to get the AO light bake to my character but Maya doesn't really support that. Given there is a "default" AO materials to be slap to the model but upon trying to bake it gave out a really ugly process.

Enter 3D max! With skylight light reference all those settings that I suppose to set in Maya could be thrown out the window. Still it took me at least three quarter of the day to find this method and get it right !

I was actually doing both UVs and researching the baking of lights to the model simultaneously throughout these 3 days.

working on it 1 by 1

After hours....of non dota days...it is DONE!

Those crazy Uvs

Feel pretty good once the tedious part is done and to have a little fun i started to add a little color to the character head.

Show it to the other team,,,well they pretty much hate it...why those ungrateful !@#!#$@#%$#...lol joking

17th April 2015

While some of the dates were not recorded it does not mean I am doing nothing. Most of the time I had been doing research for the model in terms of getting an ambient occlusion method to the character and environment.  I was also worried regarding the smooth section in Maya as it will increase my faces to double the figures that i currently had right now!

Reflection corner: Upon doing some of this research (as Laz suggested) I began to realize that i should had approach the modelling method in a total different way rather than going by the animation modelling pipeline. While these method are pretty similar (especially in terms of smoothing the character) it could save me a lot of time which sadly as if now; pretty much I had to retopology the character in some of the "smooth" area.

The next stuff that was needed to be done was the unwrapping of our protagonist. Frankly this is my least favorite segment as I am not really fond of unwrapping UVs; still that doesn't mean I am unable to do it!

YIKES....rubbish ahead..this is why i hate unwrapping UVs

headache

Patience ....patience

I first started unwrapping in both Maya and Max which i find really time consuming so I switch to another software called 3D Coat. While it is not officially used for unwrapping model (it is pretty similar to Zbrush)It makes unwrapping a breeze compare to Maya or Max.

16th April 2015

I make a few mixed up to the date on the blog regarding the date entries of my journal and had to be fixed.

Yesterday desk critique  turn out better than I had expected. We as a team manged to deliver in respect to the question that has been posted to us from Laz and Alex.

This includes those question regarding level to game design, the look and feel of the game and individual contribution.

Sadly we are still missng Ryan whom had gone missing. MIA.

Laz was asking me a question on why I had actually modeled the character earlier than expected well this is because I always have the hunch that this wouldn't be an easy ride for me in terms of 3D and I am pretty sure I will meet some "wall" that requires time to be able to tackle that issue.

Once the desk critique was over we have a short team meeting in the next targeted task for next week.

7th April 2015

Work on the concept that was needed for tomorrow presentation. Since i do not want to do the similar concept i did previously i soar the internet for some ambience occlusion look. The point here is to convince Laz and Alex the style we are intending to do.

Once i found the right image to work with I re-concept the background and add our character, blending it in to the enviroment.

Not for any commercial used.

With this combination I hope the team able get the green light as well erased any doubt to the other team members on how the game should look.

4th-6th April 2015

This get a little tricky. Spend the past 3 days trying to build model by model. It goes from the body to the hand and i had forgotten how much i hate doing fingers in modelling.

I even had this thought of making just the hand a big pile of cube and texture it accordingly later on but then that will not help me in the future if there's ever a need  where the fingers had to be animate individually.

The character starting to take shape.

I decide to go for the "cut a hole" method where the model did not actually have a constant edge flow to it to save those polygons usage.

The roller blades was designed next. Hit a few bummer while doing the mirroring of  the object where the x-y axis does not really work correctly. Managed to fix it due to the mesh history going crazy.

Adding the leg and footwear

Took a break and found a new kickstarter game that has been released to steam HOVER: Revolt of games which have similar kind of concept to our game. YIKES. Looking at some of the gameplay that was uploaded it feel really similar except that we had the grapple mechanics. Informed this to the other members and they were shocked as well.

Luckily we did not go ahead with the initial concept of making the game style in neon and futuristic kind of look. Still it's quite unbelievable to have an idea and someone beat you to it!

Completed the model! Technically not,as i still have to do some optimization to it as the polygon reach to 2.2k and i want it to stay in the range of 1-1.8k area.

3rd April 2015

Had an extra time before my freelance work and dished out a quick colored to the concept. Have to say the first style was horrendously done by me. Decided to go to a different approach and really focused to get this 2nd concept art better. Still in the holiday mood thus i feel my standard dropping for a moment.

Overground 2nd concept

Still this doesn't really tell the team nor the lecturer what i had in mind. I could sense the team still do not understand by the term ambient occlusion style. Just need to find the time to get it done and showcase it to them.

While working on the concept I was working slowly on the model as well. Didn't get much on it today tho.Fixed a few tapology here and there but that pretty much what i get today.

Working on the body