Sound Effects

I went through the some of the sound effects in our game and edited a lot of them. I also updated our google doc with the information of our sounds.

 With our short time, I've been getting most of our sounds from freesound.org and mixing a lot of them together to create new sounds that would work better with our game.

We also have outsourced some of our sound to a friend and fellow student of mine, Christian Merrill.  He's pretty good with editing and creating sounds, and I'm glad to have some help with our game as I focus on both art and sound.  I've been in contact with him to help get our game the sounds we want and need.  However, some of the sounds he has given to the team do need some work and I have been working on editing what he's given us to get the sound I and the team want.  It's a work in progress.

It's been kind of hard doing sounds, mostly for the fact that I can't get our Unity server at home and it's hard for me to listen to the sounds actually in game.  It's one to edit the music and listen to it, it's another actually listening to it with visuals.  Sadly, I'll have to make do and do my stuff quickly.  We present our games tomorrow and Thursday is our open house.  My team isn't too worried about sound effects at this time.  It isn't our top priority.  I...secretly make it my priority, though.  It's too important to me.  Next semester I hope to dedicate a lot of my time to it.  I want people to enjoy our game, both visually and audio-wise. 

I've been in contact with the sound designer, Nick LaMartina,  at BioWare Mythic for a possible sound position there.  I researched what they use and what the sound designer uses.  I found on his LinkedIn page all sorts of programs he uses and have been downloaded a lot of them (at least the free ones or trials).  I also saw that Mythic and a lot of other video game companies use Fmod or Wwise.  I really want to implement Wwise into our game.  So, I hope to read up and learn a bit about it for next semester.  It'd be really great if I could put that under my skill set as well as see what it could do for our game!

Winning Music

We needed an ending music for when the player actually reaches the end of the level.  Not very exciting if they beat the level and nothing really happens, right?  It's been shown that sound enhances emotional reaction to visuals by 30%!  So, we need something!  So, I sat down at my desktop and opened my music program, Fruity Loops.  I sat there for what seemed like FOREVER just staring at my screen and messing with sounds.  My brain was not thinking of anything.  I already needed a break; a research break.  I started listening to other victory themes from games and asked questions to myself about them.  How long are they?  Do they portray their game well and fit in with the game's theme?  What instruments are being used?



Then I started thinking about my game theme.  Chinese.  I am using Chinese sounds, what could I do with that?  I then looked up music from Kung Fu Panda.  John Powell and Hans Zimmer really bring out the Chinese and western instruments in the Kung Fu Panda series. They also do a wonderful job of bringing out the "epicness", so to speak, about the Panda being a hero and the awe-inspiring ways of martial arts.
At 44 seconds within the video below is an excellent example of this "epicness" I speak of.






After the research I went back into Fruity Loops and listened to what Chinese-like instrument samples I had and just started composing. It was hard. I'm usually pretty good at sitting down and getting a fairly good piece of music out, but this time I struggled. I did end up with a song that mixes in elements of both John Powell and Hans Zimmer not just from Kung Fu Panda, bust also from the movie Madagascar.

Overall, this isn't my best work. I did write it to loop, but I feel like there's too much going on in it. It needs a lot of touch ups or what I might to is completely compose a new piece. It works for now. It's at least something for the end. I'm not saying it's horrible, but I know I can work on it more.

Finishing Up

We're going to present our games to our cohorts and professors on the 5th, and on the 6th we will display them to the public including industry professionals.  So, I am gearing to get everything I need done by the 5th.  I have finished the goat animation to a good standpoint to present.

Don't know why Blogger doesn't like my updloads, but you can kind of see what I was doing.  He's running more like a deer/dog than a horse.  I made him stay in the air a bit longer as well.

Now, I am working on music for our end of the game when you reach the Jade Palace.  It would be boring if nothing happened when you got there!  So, I want something up-lifting and exciting to help the player feel accomplished that they finished the level.  So, I am messing with ideas on how to exactly do that.

More Goat References

I was able to get some input from a professional animator about where my goat animation is at.  It's at a good standard run cycle, now I just need to brighten it up and make it interesting: especially the back side of the animal.  The player will always see the back side of the animal as our game is 3rd person and the camera is fixed back there.  So, I need to make the goat (and the other animals) as interesting as possible as I can.  I looked at more references, and was able to get some actual goat animations.

http://sillydragon.com/muybridge/Plate_0676.html
http://sillydragon.com/muybridge/Plate_0678.html
http://sillydragon.com/muybridge/Plate_0679.html

I've noticed that goats are very constricted and stiff, but that's not very fun to look at.  So, I'm trying my best to make the goat interesting.  I've even deleted the head frames and started over on that.  However, I was able to get a good head animation in half the time from when I did it the first time!  Now that I can sorta see where I am going I can get this done faster...hopefully.  Just gotta make him fun!

Updated Goat Animation

I have updated the goat animation!  Woot!  I got some help from this guy to help me understand a run cycle of a horse, and then I applied it to my goat.

Prettying Up Animations

Now, I am prettying up our animations and putting them all in one Maya file instead of multiple separate animation files.  That way the engineer only has to call up one object.  My peers critiqued my animations and I am tweaking up the goat to what has been said.  For example, I forgot to animate the hips! Totally passed my mind, but thankfully that's what other people are for: to see things I don't.  So, I am fixing that up along with the goat's legs so they are more differentiated.  Right now the back legs leave and hit the ground at the same time.  I've been looking at other animations and found one of a horse.  I can see they leave separately.  So, I am tweaking my animation so it has more variation.

 

Animations

I've been doing animations of our 3 animals basically non-stop this weekend.  Our game is due on the 31st, so we need our stuff.  I still have some work to do with the tiger, but basically for now I'm all done animation wise.

We were told that it would be nice to see more of the animals so the player feels more connected to them.  So, I thought maybe that maybe when the tiger and rabbit hit something, they could do some sort of somersault and flip around.  Albeit, the player would only see the flip happen in a short amount of time (like a second or less), they'd still at least see something.  It also is good feedback that the player hit something.

These animations aren't perfect.  Animals don't do straight somersaults.  I figure when the other artist remakes the rigs I can go in and be able to make the animals move more naturally.  However, I don't want them to move exactly like they would in real nature.  They are still made out of paper.  So, I have to wonder what a could way to animate it would be.  Do I make it as natural as I can?  The player will sees a tiger, so do they think it will move exactly like a tiger or will they see that's it's paper too and won't expect it to move naturally?  I'll have to test it out.

I've also been researching on how animals flail when they trip.  I haven't been able to find a tiger flailing, nor a rabbit.  I did find a documentary about the Out of Africa Park in Arizona.  It shows the caretakers playing with a lot of the animals including tigers and panthers.  I haven't seen any tripping or too much flailing, but it's giving me an idea on how these felines move.



I also found a live stream of cats! So, I've been watching what they do and how they move. Not to mention they're super cute :)
http://new.livestream.com/FosterKittenCam/TheSpiceKittens

So, the other artist had sent me a rigged goat for me to animate.  Over the weekend I did a run cycle and realized a lot of the rig was broken or weird.  At school, I showed it to the other artist and it turns out her version was correct, so something happened when she saved it out and sent it to me.  She did it on Maya 2012 and that version of the software has been very buggy, so it's possible and most likely that the rig broke while she saved it out.  She re-saved it out and gave it to me and it worked.  So, I am re-doing the animations.  I have a run cycle and am now trying to work on a walk cycle, a jump, and ramming for the goat.

Other than that, I finished the caves and sent it off to our level designer to populate and put it around our track.  The bamboo texture isn't there on the entrance because the other artist is creating a texture for them.

So, we've decided that there will be different "biomes", if you will, in our game that will benefit a specific animal that the player can transform into.  These include: highlands where the goat will travel faster, jungle where the tiger will travel faster (grass on track), and the cave where the rabbit will travel faster. I've already started on the cave and some environmental stuff for the jungle and highlands. Now I just need to do a cave that's turning and a cave that's splitting along with other plants and environments for the different areas.

I received our goat with a makeshift rig so I could animate it for our presentation on Wednesday (today).  I animated this run cycle in about an hour.  It's alright.  I had my art III professor who is an animator look at it and critique it. He gave excellent pointers, like the neck should go down when the body is bending and inward.  This is no way final. once we get a better rig on the goat, I will put a final animation on him.


... I have no idea why the video is slanted ._.  I'll fix it when I figure it out.

We have a presentation coming soon and we needed art assets and quick.  So, instead of making new assets I decided to take some of our old ones and touch them up.  I took the cave and added stalactites and stalagmites for the player to dodge.  I also talked with the engineers to see how long it would take the player to go through the cave.  I didn't want so many obstacles going by too quickly and frustrate the player.  It turns out, each of our tiles, which are 40 x 40 squares in Maya, take the player 2 seconds to cross. Not a whole lot of time, so I placed the obstacles farther a part.

After a while though, it turned out best to take out the stalactites and stalagmites out of the cave mesh and make them their own separate object.  That way it will be easier to test them in the game and see where they can go.

As for textures, so far I've been using tiled/seamless textures, so my UV maps are kind of all over the place.  The other artist is going to re-texture our assets later.

Waterfalls

I've been sick for a couple of days, but that doesn't stop me from making me some waterfalls! WOO!  Before I hand it over to the programmers I will put it in Unity to see if it fits.  I am curious if I made it too big, and if so is it something the programmers could just re-size or if I have to do something.


A lot of this was inspired from The Paper Fox.  Their stuff is amazing.

Learning More About Time Management

I've made three tracks so far for our game that we can recycle throughout the game.  Yay for modular design!  However, I want to mention what happened with the first two tracks and what I learned.  It took me about 30 minutes to get the basic design for the ground and modeled out.  Then it took me hours, HOURS, trying to figure out texturing.  When it came for my stuff to be due, I had the geometry, but texturing was just so-so and not final.  I finally realized I shouldn't have put so much effort into the textures, as I can do that a bit later.  The programmers need the geometry as soon as possible so they can test it out.  With those hours spent on textures, I could have made more tracks and other things to populate our world.  With every game I've made I learned that it's all about timing and getting things out fast (yet efficient) to meet the deadlines.  So, I will henceforth create our geometry and put my basic textures on it and send it to the engineers ASAP.  I can worry about final textures later.


Then, we realized something.  It would be easier to create the geometry around the tracks in Unity, then place a paper texture on it.  It makes it easier for us artists and the engineers.

On a side note, I've started another blog for my Art III class!  Check it out! :D  www.sketchz.blogspot.com

Researching

Since I am now the environmental artist, I've been researching what I should do with my world and not just physically, but mentally as well.  What feeling am I trying to get across?  What colors should I use?  Our game is for that casual gaming family, so I don't want super harsh and dark colors.  I want bright and light and something inviting.  Now, should I make my dominant colors be reds and yellows since that color scheme is something you'd see in China?  This game IS based off a Chinese legend. Should there always bee an environmental landmark somewhere?  For example, maybe the player can constantly see the Jade Palace off in front of them so they know what they're running to. *sigh*  So many things to consider.  At least I know we are making our environment out of 3D tiles that the programmers will procedurally generate.  I have already gotten with one programmer to help me sort out measurements of the world I will create so we know we're on the same page when they program.

I googled 'paper worlds' and 'worlds made of paper' and got some interesting results. I found out Media Molecule is creating a paper-craft game for the PlayStation Vita.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK6_QvdxyXQ  It looks really cool and it gives me hope, actually.  If they can pull off a paper-look with simple blocks and textures, well why can't we?  I just need to keep on trying!

Among that I found some other pictures to help me think about my paper world.

This is the last day for us artist to figure our art out, at least so we can finally get started.  The other artist and I switched jobs.  I have decided I want to focus on environmental art, so I will be modeling the level.  Still, one of the hardest things right now is figuring out our direct art style.  We know we want paper, but what about realism or cartoon?  I think we're leaning more towards a cartoon style because our game appeals to kids.  So, now it comes down to how to make our game look like it's made of paper. Art can be so frustrating some time to figure out :(

Here are some renders I made in Octane Render.  The models I made in Maya as concepts for the video game I am helping create for the Kinect.  I'm finding it hard to portray these animals as paper craft.  I'm hoping once they are actually textured they will look better...assuming these concepts will be used.  Nonetheless, no matter what I make for this game I will try my best to help it look like paper.  I did talk to the creator of the Paper Fox, Jeremy Kool to get some insight on how he created his paper animals.  He said he made low-poly models and the rest was texturing.   Those were really the only tips he gave, so I can only hope the team and I can create something great like Jeremy has been.

Staring Off A New Semester

So, a new semester has arrived and it's time to fully dive myself back into the video game I am helping create.  However, our team decided to take a different approach to our game and change it.  It it now a game that will procedurally generate the level with different 'tiles' of the map us artist create.  There is also no longer an end to our game.  You keep running through it until you die.  The team also decided that the player is no longer playing with the Rat, Cat, and Ox within the Zodiac, but rather the Tiger, Goat, and Monkey with a power up you can get to play as the Dragon.

I personally don't quite like this change.  It seems too boring to me.  Sure, this will make the game easier to make (according to the programmers), but I think by doing this we've lost some of our edge somehow.  It also means more work for us artists since we're starting over. However, we will try to make the base of all the animals basically the same so it will require less modeling time to create another animal.  We can also use the same skeleton rig for all of them, which would be nice.

Our game is due October 31st for IGF and I personally don't think our game has enough spunk for it with the change.  However, with experience and with talking with others I have noticed games have constantly changed for better or for worse.  Maybe this change is for the better?  I guess we'll see.  We'll present our new idea on Monday to our professors and fellow students and see if it flies.

In the mean time, I quickly modeled a tiger concept and slapped on a texture.  Very blocky at the moment, but maybe with good texture and further modeling/touch ups it'd look OK.  It is a concept after all!

Other Summer Stuff

Here are some other things I did over the summer so I wouldn't lose touch with Maya.  I also found out about a render software called Octane Render!  The following 3D models I made in Maya were rendered with Octane: My HTC Sensation Cellular Phone, Gimli's Axe, and Mission Concepcion.

Gimli's Axe

Here's my project for today~  Gimli's Axe!  Took me about 2 and 1/2 hours or so to complete.  I'd reduce the tri-count of my model, but Maya crashes on me every time I use the split polygon tool.

More Music~

I made another musical piece for our game within Fruity Loops. It uses more of a western tone, but I think it works.

I tried gathering inspiration from, yet again, Kung Fu Panda. Hans Zimmer and John Powell really do a great job using oriental and western scales.


Mine was more simple and less orchestrated than Kung Fu Panda pieces.

 

Music~

So, in my waiting to figure out rigging, I have created a musical piece that may be used in our game. :)  I create all my music in Fruity Loops and use many VSTs including East West Orchestra and Kong Audio.

I've never really have made musical pieces in an oriental style before.  So, I've been listening to Kung Fu Panda and demo songs from Kong Audio.

I'm stuck at rigging!

I'm rigging my rat at the moment, more specifically adding controls and attributes.  However, I'm stuck.  I am following a tutorial on DigitalTutors, but he's doing a horse and I'm doing a rat.  Not to mention he's doing more bones than I am.  So, I get confused at some parts.  I did add some attributes to my controls, but they aren't doing what I want them to :(  Blargh!~  I'll figure it out eventually...I hope.  I have asked others in my team if they know how to rig and if they can help me.  We'll see.  Until I figure things out I've asked if there are any other art assets that need to get done so I can work on other things for the game and not just sit here.

Rigging and Weight Painting

Well, someone has to do all this rigging right?  I took up the initiative to learn how to do it.  Now I'm at the painting weights part.  It's not my favorite thing in the world, but I'll do it.  I've done it before in earlier versions of Maya and 2012 Maya is a bit better and nicer when it comes to weighting.  Hopefully I'll get through this without killing my mouse due to poor weights :(

I'm actually following a tutorial on Digitaltutors.com  so hopefully my rat will turn out OK.  I've also been asking help from my 3D modeling teacher. Now, the only problem I'm having while doing this is thinking "Well, my rat is paper, so how will it actually move?"  HOW DOES A PAPER RAT MOVE? I guess I'll look at real rats for now and figure something out.

Speed Sculpt

Here's a speed sculpt I did for my Art II class.  Did this in about an hour :)  Not bad for my first one, eh?

Rigging the Rat

I've started rigging the Rat model.  I'm not too familiar with rigging, so I'm following some videos on Digital Tutorials.   I also need to research the pipeline on how to get this stuff into Unity efficiently.  Well, hopefully this all works out :)

Cat UVing

I'm not a master at UVing, but I gotta do it.  So, here's what I have done thus far for our cat UVs.

Quick Cat Change

After looking at my cat, and getting opinions from a few others, I quickly touched up the cat. I made it skinnier, made the head smaller, fixed up the belly, deleted and re-made the tail so it comes out of the back, and also fixed the joints in the legs to be more cat like.

The Cat

So, I modeled our cat!  I tried making the legs like I did the rat, but it just was not working out.  So, I modeled them as is if they were coming from the inside.  Now, I will UV map the cat and give it off to the other artist to texture then I will start rigging the rat :)

UV mapping and frustration with Maya 2012

Maya 2012, how I love and hate you.  You lag and crash when I UV map -sigh-.  I had to export my Maya 2012 mb file to a ma file and open it in Maya 2011.  Worked SO much better when I UV mapped my rat! I extracted the ear and the legs and mapped them then mapped the body. Then I duplicated the legs and ear over then combined them back to the body.

Rat

I have modeled the paper rat. HUZAH!  I've found that trying to model things and make them look like paper-craft is hard :(  Hopefully with textures we can emphasize it's paper-ness more.

References

If there's anything that I've learned about 3D modeling is that references are your best friend.  So, as I take on my task of modeling a paper-craft rat, I have been researching/finding references.  I happened to find a cut-out thing that I decided to print out and put together.  It's helping a bit actually.

Aint he cute?! :)

Concept Art

Here are a few concept art/doodles for the game I am currently working on.

Thesis Games Chosen and GDC

The games were finally chosen including Flyboy! Alas, I was switched from Flyboy to be on the thesis game called, Zodiac Racing (the title will be changed). I'm happy though, I really like my team and I know we'll all work well together. The leader of our group has designed me as lead sound designer. We know that we'll be needing a lot of great sounds for our game, so I'll gladly take the role of sound designer. I of course will also be doing 3D and 2D art for the game.

I also recently went to G.D.C. this past week in San Francisco. I learned a lot of new things especially with narrative, and even more important I learned that this industry is hard especially if you are an artist. So, I've realized I need to step up my game and work extra hard.  Also, on a side note, I need a new phone.  I'm still using my brick-of-a-phone that I had from Jr. high.  So, I need to get a new one so I can start downloading some of these applications and games.  A lot of businesses are creating social games and mobile games, so I need to know what's out there.

Prototype is Over. Now for the Wait!

We finished our prototype. We finally agreed to focus our prototype on arcade/ring mode in a city. I found that some of the buildings I was getting off of the Internet had a lot of faces intertwined within each other, making them flash when playing the game. So, I made a couple buildings myself to put in. I also made some concept art using DAZ 3D Studio and some music and sounds for the game.

Now that the prototype is finished and we've presented it to our professors and some pros of the industry (EA, Disney, and Smart Bomb), we students wait to see what games will be chosen for us to work on for the rest of the EAE Master's program.

Changes to the Game Again

So, the team and I have been having a hard time figuring a theme. We have the mechanic of our game, but not so much a solid theme. We've come up with one, but it seems to change on a daily basis. Nonetheless, I'm still trying to pull out some art for the game. So far, the art assets have just been for the prototype. I've made road tiles for the programmer to use to create streets (I do need to fix one of the textures and will ASAP). I've also decided that we're running out of time and will find assets online so we can quickly get them into the game and then us artists can focus on concept art of what we really want our game to look like (and possibly get one or two into the game).

So, here's what I've done so far. The rest of the assets I've picked from the internet(and therefore will not post them on my blog).

Starting our Assets for the Prototype

I've started with our art assets for our prototype "Fly Boy" (title soon to be changed to something that will fit our game). I've created two tiles for roads (I need to texture them). With these two tiles, we can create our roads for our city by recycling them! How wonderful, no? I've also created an old-school TV for the first part of our game. It's simple enough to model, but it's a prototype after all! I'll be getting more into detail with the art later, especially when it comes to the concept art.