Soldier Texture Maps

Thought I would include some shots of the texture maps to give an idea of what they look like. They’re not the best in the world, though in my opinion, they’re not that bad. Included in this galler are the specular, diffuse and normal maps for the head.

Game Character Update

Been doing some more work with Blender GLSL materials. This is the same mesh, believe it or not, though the vertices have been moved around to better fit the reference image. I also redid the normal map and added more details, I decided to change the face from a younger man into a more grizzled looking veteran. However I forgot to add any eyebrows! Though that can always be changed later on. I also create a much better spec map this time around. Complete with the ears the model has shot up to 292 faces. I also had to create some extra edge loops in order to fix some problems with the shading of the mesh. This was mainly because Blender in unable to smoothly shade sharp angles in meshes, something to remember. Now all that remains is modelling the body.

Low-Poly Game Character

The mesh...

Been playing around with normal maps in Blender, this model is a meager 160 quads, normal map baked from a high poly sculpture using Blender sculpt mode. Have been taking a look at Sculptris from Pixelogic, looks pretty cool, though I haven’t worked out how to generate normal maps from it yet. Diffuse texture was painted in Blender, probably why it doesn’t look that great. Mesh isn’t too bad, topology on the mouth is terrible because it wasn’t originally going to have an opening, but then I changed my mind and couldn’t be bothered to move the verts around. Didn’t model the ears, couldn’t really be bothered.  Spec map was created in GIMP, first time using one so there were a few technical hitches. Anyway it doesn’t look that bad, enjoy.

The low poly mesh

Applied normal and specular map.

Blender and Luxrender

Have been taking a look at the unbiased rendering engine Luxrender. For those of you that don’t know unbiased refers to the fact that the scene will just continue to render for ever, and you stop it when you are happy with the results. Below is a basic scene I created using the default materials in Luxrender, the odd square reflection on the surface of the glass ball is actually the reflction of a light emmiting plane which is illuminating the scene. This particular raytracer is especially good at rendering interiors, and so should be a useful tool. This particular scene was stopped after about one and a half hours.

New art and ZBox tweaks

Just finsihed compiling Sauerbraten source code after changing a few things, mainly the speed and endurance of the creature the zombie replaced. Luckily that part of the code was relatively easy to change which is more than can be said for the ai, which also theoretically needs to be changed. Just looking at all that code makes my head hurt. Anyway amidst the horror of preparing for an art exhibition at college I managed to get some practice in with my tablet. The piece below is very much a work in progress so don’t judge it too harshly 🙂 As with everything I do I have really gone off the last portrait I did, the proportions are all wrong amongst other things. I am quite pleased with this one for the time being. Though I always find a reason not to be pleased with my work. I guess I must be too much of a perfectionist… ha ha.

ZBox is Finished

After hours and hours of work, and after staring over the precipice of madness I am pleased to say that ZOMBIEBOX is finally finished. HOORAY!! Hopefully it will be up to scratch and I’ll get a good mark, fingers crossed. Now all that’s left is a ton of written assignments that probably won’t get done by the end of the year. Oh well, I guess thats just the way it goes… anyway here are the final set of ZBox screenshots.

Insomnia Sucks

It’s coming up to 5am and I have yet to go to sleep… so I thought I might as well get on with my work. It’s June now so crunch time has officially begun, ZBox is in its final stages of development and I have a ton of written work to do in the space of about three weeks which may seem like a long time, but is in fact impossibly short. Anyhow here are some new Zbox screenshots from the work I did yestersday.

GPS and GIMP-for-painters patch

Just installed these two great paiting patches for GIMP 2.6, I also installed David Revoy’s custom brush set which is pretty awesome. I haven’t had time to try them out on anything substatial yet, only the spheres as pictured below. It definately looks promising though some of the brush sizes are massive, great for high resolution painting. It also allows pressure from a tablet to affect factors like brush size as well as opacity. Coupled with a number of new brushes and tools including the “mix brush” and a levels editor within the toolsbox, this makes for a great addition to the software.

ZBox Has working Doors!

After struggling to comprehend just how exactly the doors in Sauerbraten work I have finally managed to get them to work. Admittedly this is not the most exciting thing in the world, though took rather a large amount of work to achieve. I ended up having to create my own custom doors as the models already in sauer did not fit the arches in my building, this invloved animating them in Blender and then changing the config file to play that animation when a nearby trigger was activated.  Simple as always… anyway its coming up to crunch time at college so I have more than enough work to keep me occupied.

Don't go through that door...

MyPaint Speed painting: Tempus Fugit

Just another practice, I think I’m getting a little better though, I still wish I could have a go at painting with Photoshop. I may buy the student edition of CS3 at some point though I have no doubt it will cost the earth. Until that time comes I will cling fondly to my freeware and get as good as I can. I am supposed to be using 3ds Max next year… I am not particularly fond of it, and years of using Blender has allowed me to get used to its bizzare interface. Using anything else is going to be a bit tricky thats for sure. Anyway I hope you like the painting.