Machinima

Evening all,

Your fearless leader Kamal here with another look at a day in my college life. As we speak I'm encoding a movie in Unreal, the process takes a while but it strikes me as being rather inefficient.
This evening we had an online class and went over Machinima, using in game engines to make movies, very cool stuff. A story about it is on www.web3dnews.com check it out!
As for this week, projects, essays, midterms, the works. Im going to be a very busy Bee. I just finished my unreal VTM's and Maya is my next objective, check out the nice file structure and a brief pic from this evenings class down below. Until next time take care.
A brief look at my video structure.














Sorry but I haven't got an on board video ripper, so I'm using fraps, which cuts the boarder off videos. To the left, a Maya VTM in action, to the right, a sample of my video made in Unreal.


Images all over the place, here you can see me basically multitasking like there is no tomorrow, bless dual core processors.
Also, to the right is a look at the Unreal demo playback and conversion screen.




With a look at the evenings final "score" I bid thee aduie until next time!

Friday Feb 23rd

Evening all,

I finished up the VTM 101 series today and I've gotta say, I picked up a lot more tricks of the trade, the midterms going well but for this week I have yet to log more than an hour working in the map. Tomorrow its off to Maya land, Ive studied the introduction and after work I hope I can start building my BSP's.

Web3d Story Dated Feb18th 2007

Digital Molecular Mass
A Story By
Kamal.O.Rowe

The thin line between the virtual world and that of our own has been blurred once again. In today’s gaming environment of specular shader models, dynamic real time light, and volumetric particle systems, game developers and users of 3D technology have obtained an almost photo realistic representation of the real world in 3D. However they still wonder if it is possible to extend this realism beyond visuals, beyond that bump mapped texture on the wall to natural life like interactions between gamers virtual avatars, and the gaming world.. This is the question a few engine developers have asked and answered. A few days ago LucasArts announced their newest game, Star Wars: Force Unleashed. Its developer proudly displayed the power of the games engine which features a new technology called Euphoria. This engine allows the gaming world to witness an unprecedented amount of realism as new technologies, such as DMM, or digital molecular mass, allow for material to be dynamically simulated in real time and Euphoria, which is LucasArts’ version of the Natural Motion Engine, also known as Endorphin.This engine allows characters that react realistically to their environment while creating AI thats more self aware than ever before, and almost eliminating the need for prefabbed animations. These technologies promise to change gaming as we know it and footage of these tools in action give evidence that they just might do that. Gamers and 3D designers alike should keep an eye on these tools, as their implementation will bring Virtual Reality one step closer to the real thing.
There are a few videos available which demonstrate the power of these engines mentioned above: Star wars Demo One, Star wars Demo Two, Natural Motion Demo

Unreal Ed, Reminds Me Of Technical Drawing Class.

Evening all,

Long post title I know, but it really does, if you've ever used auto cad, or any other kind of T.D app, even the good ole square rule, you'll know what I'm talking about. This post how ever sums up my work for this weeks unreal project, building a few rooms and a corridor. Sadly I didn't get to spend as much time examining the building as I would have liked to, on my next visit which should be Monday, Ill ask the Librarian for floor plans, or rather see if they've got any. So far so good how ever, heres a brief look at my work this far.
here you can see where I ended my hall, Id have to change the elevation of the brush to match up with Gassons true topography, and include stairs, Ill do that when I'm a bit more comfortable with that kind of stuff.
Right where I'm standing, would be the BSP if St.Micheal , as you can see though, the two halls turned out great, basic brush skills really helped, but the transform bush feature really saved the day.
here's a birds eye , looking from one hall right into another, they're still a few ascetic touches to be added, but thus far, never having done this kind of stuff before, I'm quite satisfied.

Thats it for now, tune in next time for more tales from the unreal.

6 am.

Morning guys,

This morning my two comforts are, the fact that I may not have work ~thank you snow storm~ and a cup of green tea. How ever the dim light being spewed from my monitor has managed to illuminate my path.
Now that I've gotten that brief moment of poetics out of the way, I present my progress so far, sadly I came in from work last night, crashed, and burned. I meant to take a nap for an hour, but didn't wake up until this morning, so I got started then.
"You are camping." With good reason mate, heres Irish hall 100, the maps a little out of scale, it scared me silly at first but I got used to it.
Inside room 100, building this thing, epically in the already complex view ports was a bit of a challenge, but it turned out all right, I had to master actor transformation, and also copying and pasting existing build lines, then editing my brush to match it, makes copying rooms and details allot easier, vs rebuilding/reediting your brush each time. I'll keep at it, and build the other room, and the corridor heading out the other end of Gasson, Ive got a maths lesson on Thursday which gives me another day to take more reference images.

Source Image Session.

Evening All,

Kamal here, with another breif update in the BC project, I took a few snapshots as reference for my rooms, heres a look.


They'r a little dark, but they get the job done, that and I had to rush, or risk being busted by campus security for parking in non S areas. Tickets are buggers. Alright until next time, peace.

Cyber Space Is The Biggest PlayGround

Evening,

The_Kman here with an overview of this evenings first, online class! It was alot more fun than i thought it would be, how ever...we need bigger guns...
With that out of the way, heres a mess of pictures, im not going to subtitle each one, but rather group them into categories, with that said, heres the first bunch, these are all pictures of me and the class, enjoy.











Now thats over, hers a look at some of the online content we viewed today, the technology contained for each one are pretty interesting, I get the feeling ill be spending some more time on these sites.


And that was our final image of the day, as you can seem we did quite a bit online this evening, im off now to watch an OVA of the hit anime Robotech, which is almost completely 3D designed and produced, its amazing how much multi media uses 3D imaging. Until next time, take care.

Always Two They Are.....

Evening guys,

Kamal here, reporting in for another edition of "So Real, It's Unreal." Cheesy labels aside tonights online frag fest confirmed our mic settings, and confirmed another fear of mines. USB mic+headphone combos, are iffy...Im using a creative audigy 4 and the voice chat works when the mic is plugged directly into that, but fails when I use my altec lansing usb head set. Im sure this problem is probaly due to my setup and should be taken with too much concern, now onto the gaming!
The following screen was taken inside the 3DVR test server, we worked out the bugs and did mic checks.
Ironically, it looks like gregs avatar is really tuning into a headset.
Heres what online looks like, amazingly for a game thats almost half a decade old, the online community is still huge, I cant even find that many counter strike source games.A true testimate to this games popularity in the online community.
Heres the in game score manager, I had a screen of when Greg and myself were both on the same team, sadly It got deleted.
and our final screen of the day, Greg with a huge flack cannon, in this round were on the same team. The evening was pretty good, if possible we'll try to arrange something again and perhaps this time the entire class can join. P:S Instant messenger helps, communication is instant so theres no hassle when meeting up in cyber space.

Until next time ladies and gentleman this is The_Kman signing off, Stay In School, Dont Do Drugs, And Drink Your Milk.

Brinner

Evening all,

Kamal here, and I just out of the blue, at 1 am decided to download and install Maya, I haven't launched it yet, I'll leave that for tomorrow. For now it feels good to just have it on there so i can start doing the training for it. I'll post later with an update on how maya fairs,

Ja ne.

And So It Begins.

Evening readers,

Tonights the night..., right now im opening up the BC Map in unreal and im going to start working out my bearings and carving out my first room on the main floor. I hope to exact dimensions during a visit to campus sometime this week, right now just working in the map and getting used to the huge undertaking ahead is the most important, for the most dangerous foe is the one you underestimate. Same goes for projects, so a look a day keeps being totally overwhelmed away.
Tonights project wont be long though, just got back from class and apart from being partly frozen, im a bit tired as well, between dinner, the project and catching up on my forum trolling, Its gonna be a busy evening.The image above gives you a brief look into the surfing habits of kmanus-studetus....
Found the main entrance as if you were coming from o'niel, this is nor my true north...so to speak.
And this...the main hall, or rather the intersection of the two main halls, is where I shall start. I will carve out the two rooms to either side of this, and perhaps as an elevator well, "technically a 3rd room i hope..." Like I said previously, I will try my best to get exact measurments and not make a total mess of it, wish me luck.....

Tutorial One

Greetings,

Thanks to work I was reduced to craming out a level in a 30 mins, apart from a few issues I think it turned out pretty well. However I managed to invert my staircase brush...I dunno how I did it but perhaps It can be resolved this afternoon. In the mean time heres pics of the level.