Multimedia Blog

My character is as good as finished and I have a week left to concentrate on the enviroment. I have a couple of ideas but I can't decide which is best. I'm concidering how well I can execute each idea and which one would be most affective in capturing my 'identity'.

I've set myself the task of making a final decision tonight and uploading my sketches to my blog by tommorow evening.

Labels: Identities

Here's the AVI

Labels: Identities

Finally got the hoody and trainers finished, got most of the mouth and nose done as well. I'm starting to get a little bored of the modeling now I've spent forever on it. I'm going to make the maps now and get him colored so that I can attach the biped and get him moving.

Labels: Identities

I just had to move the pivot point to 0 on the X,Y and Z axis and then line the centre cube up in the exact same place. To animate it you have to select all cubes ever time you make a key frame and for it to look realistic it needs a second identical key frame 2 frames along for each rotation.

I'll post the video as soon as I convert it to avi

Labels: Identities

After getting nowhere for a long time modeling my character for my avatar I asked Andy how I should go about it. I was trying to create a whole load of separate shapes and attach them together. Once I started with a box and extruded and beveled the main shape I found it a lot easier. However I had some pretty time consuming problems that I could have easily avoided if I knew what I was doing.


PROBLEMS



1. I altered the shape in a way that caused my edges to be overlapping or too close together. This meant when I rendered the image it appeared to be creased (I should of known this as it's the way Andy showed me to create the impression of clothing).
The only way to fix this was to get in really close and carefully pick out the edges that was causing the problem.

2. When I moved and scaled the edges and vertex to achieve the shape I wanted, I made no effort to keep everything square (I didn't know I needed to). I later found out that when I applied the turbo smooth modifier it caused weird patterned shadowy areas.
To fix this I had to cut out the affected polygons, then cap the hole and insert edges in the right places.

Next

In the next few days I want to get the hair and the trainers modeled and put the detail into the face. I'm also planning on attaching a biped so that I can animate and position my avatar how I want. I've found a really good tutorial for it so I'm going to give it a go.

Labels: Identities

Wish I had found this before I spent 25 quid on a book and 4 days reading it. It's for complete beginners but teachers you all the basics in 40 minutes. He also has a list of like two dozen of the best online resources and aids.

Labels: Personal Study

I think I'm finally getting used to the views and controls on 3ds Max now. I've been modeling some basic objects and characters and I'm ready to make start modeling my actual avatar. I'll be posting my initial and developed ideas withing the next few days when they are looking presentable.

For now I've made a start modeling and animating my rubik's cube (this will be part of my avatar). It was more difficult than I anticipated as it required me to adjust the rotation type within the 'motion' tab and the pivot point in the 'hierarchy' tab. So far I have a fully functional rubik's cube that can be rotated in all directions.

THE PROBLEM:

As soon as hit 'auto key' and start to animate the motion of the cube it stops rotating properly and goes seriously weird. I'm fully out of ideas....

Labels: Identities

So far I've found 3ds max pretty difficult. I seem to be sticking around for a good hour or two after each seminar just to get a good understanding of the worksheet tasks. Although I've been concentrating more on my ideas for my actual avatar, I noticed a lot of people had dived straight in and have already spent a lot of time getting used to the software. with this in mind I decided I'd develop the task from our seminar today. It's not overly impressive but it gave me an excuse to mess around on 3ds max for a couple of hours. I think I'm going to follow some additional tutorials this week and try and get hold of a decent text book. My idea for my avatar is well out of my modeling ability at the moment so I need to get some practice in.

Labels: Identities

While I was thinking about the idents project today I decided my blog looked far too generic. I changed the style of my blog to something that was more interesting to me. I think it's important to have a layout that differentiates it from all the other thousands of blogger pages. I had a quick look around for some blog templates and made a couple of changes. I've got this fixation with black on white with red and blue. A lot of my favorite sites use this scheme, it looks good and it makes the site very easy to view.

1)I made the main part of the page wider to put more space between my posts and the right hand column.
2)I changed the header to an image I like by BANKSY (one of my favourite graffiti artists.
3)Changed the navigation bar to links to the websites I often use when working.
4) There was a problem with the title overlaying the image at the head of the page so I reduced the padding.

I plan to fully customize my own blog layout shortly just to practice some HTML/CSS.

Labels: Personal Study

I spoke to a really helpful bloke called 'Aktyron Thor' who was standing about in a group of people on the street. They told me some places to go and how to get around using the search and teleport function.

So I teleported to a jazz club called 'Franks Place' and then onto a night club where they played trance music and I danced around for a bit. It streams decent music and there were these weird round objects that you could click on to pick your own dance moves. I've put some screen shots below.

I was really impressed with the environment and some of the avatars were pretty impressive as well. There are obviously a lot of people who pride themselves in looking different and the atmosphere and mentality of the people in the club was very similar to that of heavy dance clubs in real life. Many of the avatars had their own custom dance moves that they have obviously animated in some sort of plug-in or add-on.

I also noticed that a there is a lot of enterprising within Second Life. Everything is for sale and many people appear to create items or textures and even events and buildings as a means of earnign 'linden'. I didn't realise how much of the environment was created and owned by individuals rather than the the game. It basically has a functional economy of it's own.

Labels: Identities - Second Life

Firstly, I just want to say I really struggle with the whole concept of Second Life. I think it's an achievement that it can be done and I love how extensive the landscape and tools are but I find it pretty strange how people can buy into it.

So basically the task I am setting myself is to find out why it is so popular, explore the online enviroment and tools and get an idea of what an avatar actually is to different people.

So far it took me god knows how long to get out of the help island and begin but I have my own avatar who is no longer naked or looking like some sort of gothic serial killer so I'm ready to start exploring.

Labels: Identities - Second Life

I was messing around with flash while I was bored and made this Cadburys advert style drums with some basic actionscript. You can play your own drum beat to Phil Collins. It's not great looking but it works pretty good and when I get a chance I'll give it some proper graphics. I did have a custom drum stick cursor as well but there was an annoying delay dragging the mouse about so I had to get rid of it.

Labels: Personal Study