Weighting a cat, and also the project

So, I worked on weighting today. I can't say I'm looking forward to that step in the process of my future projects, but it's beyond my control, so in the meantime I'm at least trying to get my head around it like many perplexing semi-unfamiliar challenges in this class before it. I am worried somewhat about the Yokai project. I admit that I haven't thought quite as much as I should've so far about this. I have a few sketches of things I may or may not be able to figure out how to model, but as far as character design beyond the visual realm goes, I'm not so sure how I'll do. That character sheet scares me more than a little. Just looking down the list of character attributes, I even found it hard to come up with answers regarding my own characters I've had for years, let alone a character I just made up for this project, don't even have a name for, and don't even have the physical appearance fully decided yet. These things will come eventually, or I'm hoping at least, but for now I'm a little concerned about how I'll handle this project.

Droid walk cycle and texture wackiness

Well, I got the droid to animate just fine, but what I couldn't get past was trying to figure out how to apply a seperate texture to the eyes. You'd think that creating a walk cycle would've been the hardest part, but if it's anything I've learned about the nature of difficulty with this kind of work, it's that sometimes the hardest things are the things you think can be done fairly simply. Then you try it and realize you don't know exactly how to do something but thought you had a good idea of how to go about it. Still, I'm not too worried, it doesn't make that much of a difference at the moment.

Droid animation

So, building and rigging the droid was a challenge. I have to wonder if I'm the only one who has this many difficulties with the process, I feel like I should've figured this out more quickly than I did. I dunno, I'll get this eventually but right now it's a bit frustrating. At least the droid's ready to animate now.

Uncanny Valley

So, I listened to the uncanny valley podcast. It was pretty interesting. I'm certainly familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley, it comes up a lot when talking about modern video games. Most characters in realistically rendered games fall into this valley for one reason or another. It's usually something subtle. For example, I found many of the characters in Batman: Arkham Asylum a little off, mostly because of the eyes I think. Other characters, like the Joker, were alright because the Joker's facial features are exaggerated enough that the not-quite-real factor didn't really come into play. I want to say there was something slightly off about Batman in that game as well, but I won't because...well, because it's Batman.

Rendered and edited, basically

Most of my time was spent getting down the basics of rendering and adding sound in Final Cut, a program I've used sparcely, but wouldn't say I'm familiar with exactly. That's ok, it wasn't that hard. The exported video came out ok, so I'm not worried about my lack of Final Cut experience, at least not yet.

Animated a cylinder, now what?

At least my second attempt at making things simple was a success. I managed to animate a cylinder jumping through a hoop. Now I just have to render it before next class. Might be a little difficult because I'm going home this weekend and won't have access to these computers for most of the weekend, but getting here and rendering before next tuesday shouldn't be too hard.

Cylinder trouble

Well, this figures. One of the few times I try to keep things simple and I end up running into all sorts of complications. Apparently, curling up end-to-end is a difficult task for a cylinder with only four joints, so I tried to make more but it still wouldn't work. So I tried making a slightly incomplete torus and using a skeleton to straighten it out. It looked kind of awkward unraveled as a long semi-straight tube, so I tried using a shorter and thicker torus instead. Then one end was weighted to the other and I had to go to the weight tool to separate the two ends, but it still doesn't solve the problem of not really being able to hop. I'm thinking of cutting the hopping part out, or just doing something different. If I end up doing something with the regular hopping cylinder instead, I could just make it jump through a hoop or something. I already know how to make the hoop. I spent all class familiarizing myself with that shape.

"My Son is Killing Me" response

I listened to “My Son is Killing Me,” and I have to say that it was interesting to listen to. As a gamer who's been playing games since the mid 90s, my perspective on gaming as a whole is vastly different than that of Nicholson Baker, who has only started playing videogames recently. I find it a little hard to relate to his experience playing games like Call of Duty, since violence has never really been an issue for me in the past with that game. In a way it becomes more like drawing something from observation, in that it requires that you break down what you're looking at to an arrangement of lines, shapes, and how they relate to each other on the page. Likewise, playing a game like Call of Duty is simply a matter of speed, timing, and location, along with precision and mastering the tools and weapons necessary to advance. The violence itself doesn't generally reflect gamers' opinions on actual violence in any way. This has been doubted and defended countless times over gaming's lifespan, but in the end, violence in videogames is used to create challenge and to adequately suit the mood and setting the developer was going for.

And when they discussed writing in video games, I was mostly thinking of how different the job of video game writing must be from anything else. Videogames are an interactive media, which means the story unfolds in a different way, one which can't simply be described to the player like a book, or have every scene planned out to play out in a specific way like a movie, since the player is actively involved in the scene in many cases. Many games try to be movies in terms of their narrative, but miss the point because the games with the best writing involve direct player involvement in the storyline, as opposed to watching cutscenes, with the gameplay only being the action that follows. There's a lot to think about in video game writing, and this has definitely gotten me to think about it a bit more.

Cylinder planning

Well, I think I can assume that since this is the first animation of the class we're not expected to get too intricate with our first animation, which suits me fine because my fear of being the only one unfamiliar with the software has not yet subsided. My roughly sketched plan involves the cylinder jumping forward a few times, curling up, and rolling off a ramp. I haven't gotten into figuring out which action is going to be longer than the other, since without the software, I can't really get a sense for what it would look like until I'm there. I can adjust the frames easily enough anyway, so all I have to do is figure out how to animate it.

First 3D class

So, I start this class and one thing I'm reminded of rather frequently is that I'm the only one unfamiliar with this software. That's interesting. I have done some work with similar 3D applications, but it's been a long time since I've done this kind of work. I did manage to get the cylinder animation working, even if I did get it figured out way after everyone else did. I'm nervous about officially being the least experienced person here, but what else is new? I think I'll figure it out though. Eventually.