Forward Progress

Progress is being made despite the lack of updates on this blog. 
Creative: I've got my creaive juices flowing again and have come up with several creative projects ranging from stand alone, one-off character/creatures I'm currently in the middle of creating, to short stories, to game design concepts

Indie: The Indie group I'm working with is chugging along at a nice clip.  3D assets, concept art, code, animation; it's all moving along rather smoothly

Business: I have successfully finalized the interface/experience flow and hardware strategy plan regarding the render farm.  I've decided that I will stick to a purely CPU based farm until I can figure out a charge scheme on the GPU processing the GPU cards would give me.

From Bad to worse...

The trojan/virus/bot/whatever seems to have been taken care of.  However, I may now be dealing with what it did to my computer. 

Any time I now launch a memory or graphics intensive applications, I get a blue screen of death.  I'll try reseating my hardware components tonight in hopes that it was simply knocked loose when my cat knocked my entire tower off the side of my desk (it is now residing safely on the ground).

Disaster Strikes..

I came home to lunch today only to find my computer with a Trend Micro window sitting in the bottom right corner of my right-most monitor.  Since I had turned the machine on that morning, there had been 1400+ blocked URL attempts and 84 blocked security alerts.  This is what I get for leaving my machine on with Remote Access enabled. 

Bad Doug!

HydraHouse - Masbot Beginnings

I did several quick silhouette thumbnails in attempt to come up with a mascot for HydraHouse.  Since I've never really been good at organic modeling, I figured I would revive and revamp my mascot from my original website so many years ago (he looked a lot like Claptrap from Borderlands).  I will be attempting to build a mascot based on the company's name but keep it mechanical to tie back to the original Masbot (and I'm also thinking of some cool ways this can tie into the render farm).  My two primary inspiration pieces/sources are the mechanical arms from Dr. Octopus and the mythic creatures, Hydra (dragons, wyverns, and the like as well).

As a rigging challenge, I will be adding the ability to switch mechanical pieces on the fly via variables.  I'm hoping to have three separate themes: standard industrial, techno, and steampunk.  I look forward the the modeling and texturing challenges as well.

Milestone Updates

I added and updated milestone documentation: checked off some milestones that I've previously hit but forgot to update in the documentation, and added a few UI milestones I need to hit before I'm satisfied with functionality and useability.

I've successfully created the base meshes for the Mouse entity and created a Tower Shrub.  This weekend is hectic with my girlfriend's Masters Graduation ceremony at UTD, but I'm hoping to get one or the other textured and into Unity by the end of the weekend.

Moving Along - Slow Poke Style

I finally replaced my Wacom pen and have gotten back into sketching.  I'm sketching different creatures/characters about every other day or so.  My creatures tend to look more cartoony than I intend in my sketches, but I manage to make them look realistic in ZBrush... not sure where the disconnect is happening.

I'm working on a company logo design and am hoping to have it in it's final form shortly.

Now that the animation test is done for Armature Studios, I'm moving back into Kitten Ambush.  I've sketched out a rough mouse critter, and once I retopo I will texture and export it to Maya for rigging. I'm wondering if I can scale it up, change some proportions and the texture and get away with calling it a rat too. We'll see.

Animation Test Submitted.

Finished my animation test. Due to the fact that I didn't get the reference video until Friday evening and being at Edgefest all day on Sunday, I don't think my submission was as good as it would have been. That being said, it's all in Armature's hands now.

Animation Test - Update

Finished the "Sprint Cycle" portion of the animation test. I'll take a final look at it tomorrow afternoon after I have some of the blocking and breakdowns in place for the major part of the test: Knock Out. Ive placed my two fighters in the scene (and color coded them). I've studied the footage and am confident I can get the blocking and breakdowns done tonight... and I might even have time to go to the club!

Animation Test

Armature Studios has invited me to take their Animation Test. The test seems simple enough; although I haven't done a two character sequence in quite some time. I am looking forward to the challenge if nothing else.

It feels good to get out of the code and design trenches and make puppets move again :)

Kitten Ambush - Scripting Milestone: AI Pathing and Spawning

Last Tuesday, I hit the first scripting milestone: spawning entities and making them follow a path and then destroy them. Doesn't sound too complicated, but since I knew next to nothing about how to go about doing that, there was lots of research and chatting with more experience coders on the best methods to do it.

Next on my list is to tackle the Inventory system on the shrubs and then to create additional entities to spawn. The plan after that is to design the tiling system. If one already exists and is easily modifiable, I might just implement it instead of taking the time to research squares.

Hopefully next update will be soon.

Kitten Ambush - Milestone Update

I finally finished the Milestone lists. A few of the code milestones are a little abstract mainly due to not knowing the exact details of what will be involved. If this were a slightly more professional gig, I would have included projected dates of completion for each. Seeing as how this is a learning project, I decided to omit them.

The Kitten is done being modeled and textured. I have one variation, and I will add additional variations over the course of the project. I have begun the skeleton layout for the kitten which I will be duplicating for each feline to share animations.

Kitten Ambush - Update

So I'm a little behind on my personal milestones for this project. I ended up not liking the silhouette of the first kitten so I reworked it... then reworked the eyes... and now I'm deciding it needs whiskers and am debating the best way to implement them: pure geometry or use a texture with transparency?

I believe the geometry method would be best approach; but seeing as how this is a learning process, or relearning process, I think I'll use the transparency method regardless of the performance hit. After the whiskers I can finish the eyes and finally be done with the first kitten variation.

I've also started putting together a milestone sheet. I've got the design milestones detailed out. I'll finish the milestones for art and code tonight so I have a game plan in place and get continue making progress on this medium sized project.

Kitten Ambush - Kitten update

Finally finished laying out the UVs on the first creature model I've done in over three years. Going to take it into ZBrush to do the texturing. Hope to be done with it and have an image update by the end of the weekend.

Projects Update - Current list

I have stopped working on the Blackout project by Divinity Studios due to a lack of communication, direction, work ethic and drive on the part of the team. I'm sure there are times when they work on tasks, but every time I am on Skype to talk about the project, they're talking about music, YouTube or talking about how they are pwning noobs in the latest Modern Warfare. I'm thinking the time difference is probably a major factor in this. I'm ready to work and most of them are playing.

I tried joining a few other projects, but to no avail. The project leads seemed interested but I never heard back, which bodes ill for future communications on the projects.

I've started asset creation and Concept Doc for a small Tower Defense game. I hope to have my first unit done by the end of this week, and variations done by the end of the weekend.

I've also begun looking for a new full time job (hopefully back in the industry). My current job is fulfilling at best, and just plain boring at worst. I've also approached my brother about creating assets for the Unity Asset store and selling them and splitting the money. I hope to have an answer from him by the end of the week.