Post production looks to be the next exciting project and I've started mudboxing Hugh's island model, so effectively he worked from his design and then I took the base mesh into Mudbox to add cracks, stalactite type details and general rockiness. Amazingly Maya loves working with Mudbox's displacement maps, it exports them in 32bit Open Exr by working out the difference between the base mesh and the sculpting I added through a process of either "raycasting", or "subdivision". Don't ask how either of those work, because I only understand the principles of both.
Floating Island Mk.I
There are some minor issues with the UV's which, while they work, they are the default cube UV's and there are some lines appearing in the displacement where the seams are. I've re-unwrapped it with RoadKill (the wonderful UV unwrapping tool, it uses Blender's open source UV algorithms so its free!) and luckily Mudbox allows you to import new UV's onto the base mesh whilst hopefully maintaining all the sculpting I've already done.
Floating Island Mk.II, fixed UV's
Those hard working animators making the The Last Trophy have been slightly preoccupied with dissertation work recently but I managed to fix the problem with the sky and finally make a decent night lighting set-up in my Monday/Friday sessions. After endless tweaking to make sure the matte backgrounds that I plucked from Google weren't overexposing due to being included in final gather or receiving light from anywhere else I managed to get a simple sky which really completes the image.
Background now shows through but no image yet for night lighting.
The physical sky makes a nice caramel effect for some reason when no image is provided.
This one has the correct colouring, shadows, and background matte.
The shadows no longer fall across the trophies on the wall which I might have to tweak but otherwise this feels close to completion.
On top of all this we had Double Negative give a talk to us about their role in the visual effects industry (which is pretty integral seeing as they have worked on all these films and are in talks with the various software vendors to get their tools to better meet their needs). Some of the stuff they showed I'd seen on the Inception bonus features but other bits were totally new and it was fascinating hearing it explained by their head of 3D Alex Wuttke, I got to ask why they use Renderman, and whether they've overcome UV's yet and both questions yielded informative and entertaining answers. We even got to chat to him in the studio briefly along with their recruitment manager, it was surreal and humbling.
Me: pointing a gun at something...
Nelson my beast PC has opened new doors into the gaming world and I've finally managed to complete Half Life 2, Episode II. For a four year old game, damn is it pretty, makes me realise what a big deal resolution is when it comes to showcasing a game's art, everything sparkles at 1080p. Also in terms of storytelling I just continue to fall more deeply in love with Half Life's style of unrestricted player movement during key plot sequences. It goes some way to diffusing the conflict between authorial intent and player expression. For example the player can interact with the environment in fairly limited ways in any game, most of all first person shooters, so when the player is constantly pointing a weapon at what's in front of him its hard to create emotional experiences when the protagonist is a mute who points his gun at everything, psychopathic right?
Me: pointing my gun at something else...
Valve attempt to address this by having Gordon Freeman lower his gun every time the cross hair passes in front of a friend or ally. But this doesn't really solve anything because the player can still fire it right through them with no consequence, effectively breaking the illusion of agency the game has worked to build during gameplay. So I found myself switching the to crowbar during the more dialogue heavy parts of the game in order to avoid firing a shot that should blow the characters head off, why is the player not equipped to express himself in non-violent ways besides puzzle solving? This renders all the emotive aspects of the story slightly redundant as they can only flow one way. While Half Life has the decency to be self aware of these things: "you don't talk much do you?" -Alyx Vance, I feel its the one thing missing from an otherwise exceptional interactive experience. Why make a character silent if you're not going to encourage the process of the player using the character's actions as a cypher for their own? Why not create a character as a developer if you're deny the player the right to do so.
My one find recently has been series of blog posts by the founders of Naughty Dog on the making of Crash Bandicoot. It's a great insight into the process of squishing a hugely ambitious game into restrictive hardware, and then knowing when to battle with the corporate machine, and when to submit to it.
Another week goes by and production seems to slow rather than quicken, its as if time creates a membrane through which my animation has to pass, each frame becoming harder to key.
Recently Dan posted a video that caught my attention (not least because of my recent Half Life experience of admiration, mild obsession, and ultimately disappointment). This epic animation was done by James Benson who has some interesting tutorials demonstrating his approach to animating, which is more akin to stop motion than CGI. I found these pretty helpful, they're worth your time.
Here's my work in progress for this week, its developed quite a bit since last week but not necesarily in the ways I intended, for example less animating and more:
Camera Shake
Lighting
Fixed Eyes
Set Decorations
Click to enlarge:
Shiny Shot No. 2:
I'm just starting to hit my stride so with more hard work I'll have a finished block through for next week so I can start lip syncing! Thrilling stuff.
This animation is supposed to show a change of emotion using only body language and poses, instead of relying on blatant facial expression. I'll let you watch before I explain and taint your perception of whats going on the characters mind.
I imagined a scenario where the character is anticipating the bliss of cold ice cream on a sunny day, and seems eager, almost impatient. Then as he fumbles for some cash to pay the ice cream man he doesn't pay attention to the angle at which he's holding his ice cream and the scoops tumble from the cone onto the floor. Devastated at the waste of ice cream he forlornly pokes with his foot, then as loss turns to rage he raises his foot and stomps on it violently. I'm reasonably pleased with the final animation though it looks a little broken due to me playing with the focal something in the camera settings. Motion blur is back! (along with its good friend lens flare) and my god have I missed it ;)
In other news I'm still continuing my half life 2 play through, I have just started Episode II and for some reason it barely runs, visually it looks about the same as episode one, and I used to play on nigh on mazimum settings, now I have to play it looking like sh*t just so it'll run smoothly. I don't get it.
When I read Extra Lives by Tom Bissell, there was a quote on the back of the book from a guy called Michael Abbot. Michael Abbot teaches a course at a university that studies readings of importance, be it cultural aesthetic of otherwise. The term readings is very broad and students on the course will read novels, plays, watch films and, for the first time, play a game. When pitching this addition to the course the game chosen was Portal. This game was chosen because of its antagonist; whose role in guiding, fooling, and delighting the player has great relevance to other texts on the course, and is also a leading example of the sophistication that is possible, but painfully absent, in contemporary games. Everyone go play it.
Michael Abbot runs a blog and podcast called The Brainy Gamer which functions to provide analysis and critique on gaming and the industry as a whole, its well worth following. Another aspect of the Brainy Gamer blog in the Vintage Games Club, a club that anyone can join that serves to bring people together for communal play throughs of "vintage" games that many gamers from this generation may have missed or never even heard of, its a great way to discover some of the best games from yesteryear and then have a whole bunch of people there to discover it with you, and discuss each others experiences. Currently they're playing Planescape: Torment, and for the first time I've joined them.
Its nice playing an old game, where conventions like cut scenes don't disrupt the game play, and heavy handed tutorials don't treat the player like a cretin. Planescape is a game where the themes are tightly woven into the gameplay, its about discovery and death/life, so when you "respawn" there's a plausible context for that occurance that reinforces the game mechanice of dying and resurrecting, you literally start in a mortuary every time you die.
Due to the protagonist's amnesia, you know nothing about yourself, so the player is free to explore, uncover memories, have conversations with NPCs that reflect who you want the character to be, and support the core gameplay of exploration. The conversations are all text based excpet for a few key lines from the supporting characters, but because of this text, the developer was able to create a world where nearly everyone has something to say and a branching conversation for you to take part in, this makes the Planes feel like a rich and alive place, though it does make for a lot of reading. God forbid we should have to read text in a modern console game.
While I wait for my rendered face turn around to finish exporting from After Effects I thought I'd write a bit about a game I've been playing recently.
Better late than never I purchased the Orange Box off steam a few days ago. While I had already experienced the sublime genius of Portal for free I had been meaning to play the Half Life games for a while now.
There's something about them that games today seem to strive towards whilst still falling short of what Half Life achieved 6 years ago. The first person perspective is fairly unique to gaming, and Half Life makes such excellent use of it to immerse the player in the most authentic sci fi worlds and surround them with detail and life, When the game presents the player with a moment of narrative importance, it doesn't steal the camera control away from the player, it allows them to explore the environment, interact, go right up close the other characters, do whatever while the scene unfolds. This may break the cinematic aspect of the presentation, but if the player isnt interested in the story anyway they are free to explore, but if the player is invested in the characters, plot, etc they feel more present in the scene and therefore more immersed in the story and the experience overall feels better for it. Its like the anti-thesis for the quicktime event.
Another things which helps sell the world is the fact that the puzzles are all environmental and physics based, using the game's Source engine. No longer are you pulling a lever and, like a switch, there are fantastically instantaneous and predictable results, the objects in the world interact in physically accurate ways that you cant always predict which makes for particularly interesting gameplay with things like the gravity gun. The level design is also excellent with what is essentially a linear game feeling open expansive and full of choice and variety.
Plus for a game this old its very pretty.
But its not perfect and while I am admittedly only 1/2 way through Half Life 2, not to mention the two episodes, it feels like I have few motivations as a character other than survival, I want more exposition and history to back up this amazing world, I suppose in time all will be revealed but I could do with more of that unauthored type of narrative. I dont care about any of it yet, but we'll see. I want to care.
