JOSEPH M - ELEMENTS FMP - SENSE OF SELF @jmelementsfmp - Tumblr Blog

12/05/03 Update

We’re now on the last couple of days of the FMP. I have done what I feel is the best that I could’ve within the timeframe when taking the Easter break (that I completely forgot about) into consideration. This project has been insightful and I’ve got more of a grasp of just how long game development could possibly take.

Poster #2

I’m going to be using a basic render with a green ground for this poster as I just want to highlight the character.

In Photoshop now, I have left a bit of space above the character’s head to put the logo on.

Same as the first poster, I will be using adjustment layers for basic colour correction.

I’m now moving onto camera raw to finish the colour correction.

It’s looking pretty good so far, I like how the cooler colours that I have applied to the poster look. The last step is to add some grain and glow to make my character stand out from the background even more through utilizing a filter called diffuse glow.

I came up with a name for my character. He’s called UWM1528 for now because I’ve struggled to think of anything better. It stands for Ultimate War Machine and the he’s the 1528th one to be made.

#creative

Poster #1

Today, I will be trying to make a poster. This is all to help make my work look as clean and professional as possible before the end of the project. If I’m feeling confident at the end of today, I might even try making some whole new models in Magicavoxel in the following days. I’m not thinking about anything massive and too ambitious because I know that I’m already cutting it short but all of this is really important to me. Update from the next day: I’m probably not going to be making any new models.

Getting dafont.com ready for when I need new sci-fi esc fonts.

For this first poster, I want an army of robots. To do this, I went into my character’s voxel project and copied the robot... a lot of times. I was doing this manually until Sam found that you could just ctrl+a to select all objects and then copy that.

I need to make one of these robots stand out from the rest so I have made all of them but one to stop emanating light. I have also been playing around with lots of render settings such as fog and bloom to give my render a little more mood and atmosphere. As I found out, when using bloom you need to use the little camera icon in the bottom left of the viewport to capture the image because rendering the normal way doesn’t work.

I just found a way to change the camera mode to isometric. This has made my piece look more automated but less cinematic as a trade off.

I’m now going to make final adjustments in Photoshop, starting with adjustment layers.

After I’m done with adjustment layers, I usually go into something called camera raw. This process is called colour correction and the phrase is used a lot in graphic design.

Next, I went onto the lighting to make the viewer focus more on the glowing robot. This can be done with large, low hardness and low opacity brushes in black and white.

‘Anomaly’ is an overused word to describe something that goes wrong or a thing that goes against it’s initial intentions. I looked up synonyms and found ‘outlier.’ This is going to be the name for this poster.

For final details, I’m using a font called “oxadium.”

#creative

Logo

For the logo, I’m just going to use the same symbol that appears on my character’s chest. This will be done in Photoshop on a 3x4 canvas. This was easy.

Finding a font that worked with the logo was kind of annoying but I eventually found one. It’s called “conthrax.”

#creative

29/04/2022 Update

I’ve been thinking of a name for my game/showcase and I came up with S.O.S but it doesn’t stand for save our souls, it sands for sense of self because the story was going to be about my robot/cyborg/whatever trying to break free from it’s code and developing a personality. I know a name might be pointless if I’m not going to have an actual game but I came up with it in a few minutes and didn’t want to forget about it so I wrote it here.

Opening Scenes / Introductions

I just thought of the possibility of making one or starting on one because it’ll give me a chance to model more (which is supposed to be the main focus of my project). Opening scenes can do a lot for a game or a movie. Some use them to give the player an idea as to what’s happening and what their goal is but others use them to confuse the player. They can be whatever you want them to be. But what they all have in common is their main purpose: to capture the player’s/audience’s attention. I’ll be writing about a few in this post and thinking about if I really want one or not, and if I do, what it’d be like. I’ll be focusing specifically on game openings but this video about opening scenes in film was interesting and informative: https://youtu.be/Jw_ysaoVlt4

Super Metroid

https://youtu.be/86Z4bwdxn_Y

It starts off with an ominous tune with short cuts of dead scientists (unusual for a Nintendo game) with the words ‘Nintendo’, ‘presents’ and ‘Metroid 3′ appearing in between these cuts. You can already tell that it’s very cinematic and movie inspired.

As this game is supposed to be a continuation of the story from the original game on the NES, the main character, Samus explains the end of the prequel and what happened soon after (what the player’s didn’t see). Her explanation is assisted by short clips from the previous game, artwork and impressive (for it’s time) animations to really engage the player.

I don’t think much of this is of any use to me apart from the very beginning and end of the opening but I wanted to write about it anyway as I find it interesting.

The Forest

https://youtu.be/c4rN_YS0zCs

(I think this intro was updated at some point)

This game’s opening scene doesn’t give you a lot of context (something that I would like to accomplish). It starts with a black fade into a seemingly regular plane journey. You see a child next to you sleeping or resting on your arm so the player probably assumes this is the main character’s kid.

After observing, I can’t tell if the child’s drawings or action figure are hinting at anything or if they are completely normal and have no relevance, but the book on top of the drawings is 100% foreshadowing as it is a guide book to surviving in the wild.

A lady soon says that the plane is entering an area of turbulence and warns everybody to prepare, however, you realise this is more than just turbulence because things start making a lot of noise and stuff is flying all over the place, including people. Seconds later, you’re knocked out and the screen goes black. Eventually, you wake up to seeing this very tall, blood-covered man who almost doesn’t look human, picking up your child. You blackout again and wake up to gameplay.

Now that the player has finished the intro, it’s clear that your objective is to find your child. And it’s also clear that you’re not alone.

Subnautica

https://youtu.be/pd1edHfTFHA

I’m using this game as an example again because it’s very similar to what I wanted my project to be like. This opening scene is very much comparable to The Forest’s with lots of sounds, destruction and usage of black screens. The very start is supposed to indicate that there’s some kind of emergency with all of the alerts, banging, running and heavy breathing sounds without any visuals, just a black screen. You only get to see what’s going on when you’re halfway down a ladder in some kind of escape pod, trying to get to a seat. After launching, you look up through a hatch that gives you a small view of the massive spaceship you just escaped from. The ship explodes and your pod starts shacking and falling apart, a panel comes off a wall and hits you on the head, black screen. I like the usage of black screens to confuse the player and build suspense. The sound design is also very immersive.

Opening scenes are cool and if I were to have one then I’d definitely use something similar to Subnautica and The Forest’s black screens to cause confusion within the player. I also like Metroid’s clip -> word -> clip -> word cinematic opening. However, I do also like the idea of throwing the player into the game completely blank. Or making the game seem like it has no real meaning when there’s some deep lore behind it all. Almost like Five Nights at Freddy’s. If I had more time on this project, I could think about this some more but I don’t so I might have to settle for some renders.

#research

28/04/2022 Update

We’re now back from the Easter break and I feel somewhat relieved because I wasn’t able to do anything at home apart from a little bit of blog work. Again, I do feel relieved but now I don’t have a lot of time to finish my project. I’ve got a lot of good work on my blog so far but I really wanted to get more than just a character and a bit of testing done. In all honesty, the Easter holidays was something that I completely forgot about and didn’t plan for so it’s 100% my fault that this is happening. Instead of making a massive map, I might just have to focus on a short opening scene and/or graphics including logos, posters and whatnot. This goes against most of what I’ve planned so far but I don’t know how interesting I could make a blank map in only a few days. I guess you could say that my project is going to be more of a showcase than a game. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the following days.

Another Character Attempt (2)

I’ve used Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous male proportion drawing to give me a clear example of how limbs move. I can tell that the T-pose would normally be better but definitely not for a voxel character. I’m only going to be using basic animations anyway so my character’s arms shouldn’t go too high.

As you can see, I have made some progress since my last screenshot. I’ve added more body parts, they’re just not detailed yet.

The arms were a little too thick so I slimmed them down. It looks weird when they’re just as large as the legs.

I’ve still got a small problem when loading my character into Mixamo but it can be overlooked. Not everything needs to be perfect and you wouldn’t notice it in game.

From now on, I’m going to be trying different colour schemes and helmet designs.

This is what I eventually came up with. It’s alright but I might remove the glowing parts as I don’t know how I’d replicate it in UE4. The helmet design is also mediocre, it’s probably because I overdesigned it.

#creative

31/03/2022 Update

I’m going to be continuing with my second voxel character attempt. I’ll be trying my best to make it work properly/as well as possible in Mixamo. I never planned to spend this much time on a character, it was going to be mostly buildings but if I want my game to be in third person, a good character matters.

Another Character Attempt (1)

After seeing how my previous character turned out in Mixamo, I decided just to make a larger voxel character. This should help stop the model from warping as much in flat areas. I’m starting off with blocky Lego-man like proportions so I can sculpt it into whatever shape I want.

I always find it easier to start with the legs. I’m not too sure why this. I’ll be using thin plates for joints such as knees and elbows because it’ll be another thing that’ll help combat the warping that occurs in Mixamo.

The body has been awkward to design. I don’t know if I want my character to be a robot or human so I’ve just gone with something that should work either way. Getting the upper body shape right has been difficult because I want a male character and I don’t know how to go about it since I’m still not used to 3D modelling.

The chest was hard but I think it looks good now. I also added a jetpack to my character’s back but it may look bad in Mixamo.

To see what my model looks like in Mixamo, I have made temporary arms and a little stump for the head.

After loading my model into Mixamo, I’ve already detected a couple problems. As expected, the jetpack looks really warped. I also found a problem with the area between the legs as the armour piece is very bendy.

The jetpack ended up just being a hassle so I removed it and redesigned the back.

Another thing I noticed in Mixamo is how the shoulders warp a lot when using the T-pose. It’d be fine if my character wasn’t made out of voxels. The A-pose might be more suitable. I’ve added the logo from my small character onto this character’s chest plate because I might be able to link it to lore in some way.

Continues in another post.

#creative

25/03/2022 Update

I forgot to post an update earlier. So, I’m going to explain what I’ve done already and why. Today, I have been focusing on character creation using Magicavoxel. I wanted to do this because constantly trying to get landscapes looking right felt tiring and I haven’t made any characters yet so why not? I’ve also been experimenting with Mixamo; a website ran by Adobe full of pre-made animations that you can load your characters into. It’s a nice tool but after a bit of testing, I had realized why it may not always be super reliable, especially for small-scale voxel characters. Mixamo mostly expects the models being used to have fairly accurate body proportions and not a lot of big blocky, flat areas. All animations have some kind of hip movement so that makes things awkward when your character doesn’t have hips... as I found out. I’ve also learnt more about objects and fbx files. Typically, you’ll want to be using FBX files because they’re able to store more information for your models (including things like textures (I think)). But you can only save models from Magicavoxel as objects so I may need to learn some Blender (or another good 3D software) to make adjustments and conversions in the future.

Adobe Colour

This is usually something that I’d find and not write about but if it’s going to potentially help me in my project, I should write about it. Adobe Colour may help me with my indecisiveness about colour palettes. What it does is automatically give you colours that do well with the main colour of your choosing. Of course, there are other websites and resources just like this but I found this just by clicking on a link and if it helps, it helps.

#research

Extension of my “Robots and AI” post.

#research

Robots and AI

This topic is fascinating to me because we’ve already got so far with this kind of technology in only a few decades. Robotics and artificial intelligence is almost undoubtedly - good or bad - going to be a huge part of our future.

Sophia

Sophia was made by Hong-Kong based company Hanson Robotics. She was first activated in 2016. Whilst Sophia is nowhere near as complicated or scary as the pubic seem to think, what Hanson Robotics achieved is still very impressive.

The robot has some set answers to certain questions so she doesn’t actually think about a lot of the things she’s asked in conferences, etc (a lot of it is just for show). It’s like asking google or Alexa a question. The programs that determine these kind of responses are called Timeline Editor and ChatBot. However, it’s not all as fake as I’m making it out to be. She can technically “learn” through something called OpenCog. With this, AI can sort of store information they’ve been told and use it later on; like a human memory but not quite. People believe this to be what will eventually lead to robots being able to think for themselves. She hasn’t got emotions like people think, just a few creepy facial expressions.

Boston Dynamics

Their robots are some of the most innovative out there to date. Atlas is a humanoid 6ft robot capable of moving in a very human like way. The robot has been tested on parkour courses and can now do a lot of things that most people can’t, including backflips. This is made possible with it’s 28 hydraulic joints and other custom-engineered components. It can run at speeds of 2.5m/s and weights less than you might’ve thought at 89kg. I also generally like how this robot looks, maybe it’ll help me design a character.

Spot is a dog inspired bot. It has similar balancing and movement capabilities to Atlas with plenty of joints that allow it to move in certain ways that most other robots can’t. The robot has many attachments that can be used for different things. In the picture below, Spot has it’s arm attachment which allows it to pick up items.

Asimo

This robot’s development sadly (officially) ended in 2018. It was probably discontinued because Honda saw no profit. However, there is still a lot to talk about.

After it’s official release in 2000, Asimo was probably one of the all-time most innovative inventions in robotics/AI. This is because of how versatile it was, Asimo could walk, talk, recognize moving objects and even human gestures such as handshakes. These things improved up until 2011, when it’s final version was shown.

#research

Armour / Clothing

In this post, I’m going to be looking at armour or clothing that has been use throughout history for some inspiration. I’ll also have to think about how I convert real armour/clothing into voxels for my character. If I was to use anything really old for my main inspiration, I’ll obviously need to figure out how to add a futuristic/sci-fi twist to things.

“The type of armor worn by high-ranking samurai cavalrymen from about the late Heian through the early Muromachi periods (mid-twelfth–fourteenth century) is referred to as yoroi.” - metmuseum.org I’ve always liked how large, over-the-top and powerful looking samurai armour was. If I were to come across somebody wearing this hundreds of years ago in battle, I’d find it very intimidating. The massive shoulder guards play a big part in this because it’d make the person wearing this look much broader. If I were to have any combat in my game, I’d use this as inspiration for bosses.

“During the Edo period (1615-1868), Japan was largely at peace, so armour was more for ceremonial occasions than for battle.” - britishmuseum.org Again, I like samurai armour for how crazy it can look sometimes. The horns on the head wouldn’t have much purpose in the real world other than to look fancy, but in a videogame, I could use the head spikes as some kind of laser beam cannon or detachable spare swords...

“This impressive armor was made for Henry VIII (reigned 1509–47) toward the end of his life, when he was overweight and crippled with gout. “ - metmuseum.org King Henry VIII wasn’t very good at controlling his weight. As you can see, this was the armour that he used towards the end of his life. It is said that he might’ve used it in his last battle. What I like most about this armour are the overlapping plates used to cover his whole body. This was probably the most comfortable and flexible armour for him at the time as he also liked to ride horses. I have no idea how I’d replicate the overlapping parts in voxels but I might give it a try.

#research

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