Blog

Find out a little about me and my stuff - updates will be sporadic.

Monthly Update Feb to March (with Game Jam Images)

Hey hey! it's that time again.

What I've done:

Global Game Jam 2016 & Friends:

Went to the global game jam in Brighton.

It. Was. Awesome.

The group I was with, 123Squid (Jules, Joel and Michael) created a game called Dances with the Elder Gods. Lots and lots of fun, you should download it, grab 3 other friends and play it. It's free!. The word was ritual and you have to figure out what the ritual/pattern is before everyone else. Or face the wrath of the Elder God.

I also helped out with Brituals (even got a hot chocolate and brownies as thanks) and Notify.

Take a look at what everyone made here: http://globalgamejam.org/2016/jam-sites/global-game-jam-16-brighton-uk/games

Lunch crunches and Fan Art

I've been working during my lunch time at Plugin on some more fan art for Critical Role. I really want the episodes to come out faster to Youtube because the internet is full of spoilers. This is my progress so far. I had put the 3D printing on hold at the moment because of the contract I've had but now I have time to play catch up.

Here's the current stage of Trinket and Vex. Still aiming for the Disney Infinity Style so there won't be too much detail to anything really. Lots of smooth shapes and vague detail.

TEFL Course

The TEFL course is under way. Nothing much to talk about there.

Taj Packs

Not really worked on this just a bit here and there, nothing much to show at the moment. But now I have time. Sort of

Plugin Media

Plugin Media has taken up most of the time this month. It's been an amazing time and I have amazing friends. I got to join a few of them in the game making GGJ challenge. Lots of fun and they really are lovely.

Keep an eye out for the game I helped create!

D&D Campaign

Oh man being a DM is hard and there are so many holes in my plot (haha). We're having fun though and no-one has complained so far. The troupe has met the Ambassador and made a few 'friends' and a bunch of enemies... that they killed or maimed.

What I'm going to do

Hospital Trips

I have a trip to the hospital soon and we'll see how my week goes. All in all I think I'm fine. So as long as the tests go well I'll have time to visit family and then it's heads down, tails up for the rest of the week.

Pom

I'm not talking about people in the UK. I'm talking about the Pomodoro Technique.

Decide on the task to be done
Set the pomodoro timer to n minutes (traditionally n = 25)
Work on the task until the timer rings. If a distraction pops into your head, write it down, but immediately get back on task.
After the timer rings, put a checkmark on a piece of paper
If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 1
Else (i.e. after four pomodoros) take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1

So yea, we'll see how it goes. I should get more work done if I keep changing what I'm thinking on.

Taj Packs

Taj Packs will probably be on the backburner this month but I might have something to show as I chip at it for like an hour a day.

Invisibit

I've not done anything on this last month but now I have a new contract to help out and I have a list of animations to be done by me and my group.

Studio Blimp

A friend of mine from Studio Blimp is trying to get a game out there and so I've offered my rigging expertise. I've done one character so we'll see how many more they need. It looks like an awesome game and it's something I'll definitely talk about when we have screenshots

Freelance Stuff

I have that contract to fulfill. I'll be working on it throughout the month.

Difficulties

Nothing to speak of at the moment

Yay! I suppose I should play some games at some point.

So yea, next time. :)

Monthly Update & Yearly Update - Dec2015 to Jan2016

Recap - 2015 december to jan and Feb 2016

Monthly Update - November to December

Hey Hey! Start of the month recap time! Again, it is a monthly thing so there's a lot of words.

What I've done:

Not related to Taj Packs:

Work on D&D game campaign:

I've been going through the campaign, I think I'm getting somewhere but really I've only got the skeleton of the story. I have a document though with the ideas. I've been listening to D&D is for Nerds (great podcast and it reminds me of home) and I've watched the Critical Role Campaign Tips. I'm getting there.

Work on Forgotten Futures campaign:

Like I said previously, my campaign is being played with my Aunty and my Husband. I have two things to complete with this campaign before I feel I can run this campaign. The Main Bad Guy's stats and what happens if the Main Bad Guy actually catches up with the duo. I'm really hoping I don't accidentally TPK the group :/

TEFL Course and other things:

TEFL is coming along. I feel like I'm walking slowly through treacle but I am moving. To me, Grammar really makes very little sense. Being a native English speaker I think is making it harder for me to break this stuff down. But other than that, I've only got to understand Adjectives, Adverbs, Past, Present and Future; Passive, Conditional and other words. So yea, grammar is hard but it's something I'm working through. GO ME!

Related to Taj Packs:

Human character mesh:

Done! Here's the pretties.

Here's the Dwarf, Human, Tiefling and Elf (all complete). And the Orc character.

Second Candles Pack for Dungeon Magic Pack 2:

Ok so I didn't so this... at all. But I am going to say I replaced this with Orc Textures. Which are almost done. Just need to finish the hair details. I've found that you can have base colour as a Mix layer and the another diffuse map as a soft lights layer to add details like shadows and highlights.

So yea, that's cool. I just need to remember to add the layers together before I place it in game.

Dungeon Magic Pack 2:

Yup... this didn't happen either.

However, I've changed my Gumroad Shop and talked to Jimmy from Handpaintedtextures.com (who is on Gumroad and Unity <- Check them out!) about his shop and he is a very big inspiration for my work (along with Bitgem) And I noticed his Gumroad had a specific sized front image. So I took that idea and used it for my own stuff.

Ohhh pretty :)

Dungeon Magic Pack 2:

And I've made some stands for the characters to ... stand on. It's so that they look like little miniatures for a boardgame.

What I'm going to do this month:

This month I'm going to push myself to get the following done:

Barely anything!

I'm going to relax and enjoy my Christmas holidays. I don't even think I'll touch my laptop all holidays. Try and get out and about, explore Munich and Burnley just that little bit more.

I might even draw a bit more over this holiday season. We'll see :)

What I'm having issues with:

Keeping on track:

I've been combating this by making to do lists on my little whiteboard. And checking off the grand to-do list. I've also changed my calendar which involves the Freelance work, Invisibit work and TEFL work as well. I'm going to try to go heads down tails up kind of deal and get as much done as I can before the holidays.

So see you guys next year, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Ḥănukkāh, Enjoy Kwanzaa, Happy Hogswatch, or have a good Yule Time... time. Oh and Happy New year because I won't be posting until January.

Later guys!

Taj Pack Progress update

Just quickly, today’s progress.

I lose myself when I’m modelling environment props. 2 hours goes by so quickly. I still need to make a chandelier and the three or so candles for them. On the plus side this will be the second last item for my Taj Packs Dungeon Magic Pack.

I know I planned to have this done by the end of the month but I’ve been busy working on animations for a job application and figuring out freelance quotes. But I’m back to it, same schedule as I previously had give or take a few catch up sessions. At least until I get to hear back about the freelance and animation job.

Note to self: get into the habit of posting from the website blog. Everything is connected. -.-

Time to show you Monday’s Progress!

Admittedly, it’s not much but that’s cause I’m still trying to master wax like lighting/textures. It’s interesting and yet irritating. I’ve managed to go over these textures twice figuring out how to lay down the colours. Just as I typed that sentence I realised there was another way I could have gone about it -.-

Next time I shall start with the bottom up and use ‘layers’ like I do on my Warhammer paintings. *facepalm* it’s so obvious!

Also side note, today's stream was nice but very quite. I did however manage to snag me another follower so that's pretty awesome. I also have a potential offer coming up that could see me getting paid (I hope it all works out!)

Since Thursday (not including Saturday) I've been working on my schedule, cleaned up my digital work-space and applied all my to do things to Asana. I've now given myself times for working on certain things and times for just doing whatever the heck I want. This will stay this way until I get a job offer (I job search on Saturdays and Sundays now) or until we can no longer afford to stay in the UK (I've got until about April next year - the rate things are going (and that means a lot of ramen noodles).

You can probably see that by the image the red portion is called Bumbabee! Games. It's something that my husband and I are trying to get off the ground. We're hoping to get a small game out as soon as we can. We can only work on it one day a week so far but hopefully as the teaching term progresses and Mouse catches up on the work needed to be done, we'll have more time in the week to work on the games 'studio' together.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm going to work on my motivation. Well I've had a thought on that over the weekend and I've realised I don't need motivation, I need dedication. So I'm going to work on my projects, motivation or not. I'm going to get these done and they are going to be done well.

With that said, I'm off.

I'll post more later.

Monthly Update Time!

Warning this post is long, with many images. Enjoy the shineys.

What I've done:

Ok. So what have I done this past month (or so)? I've had a few really productive days where I've finished up all zombie-like (it's the best feeling in the world for me). I've signed up with a TEFL course and am getting my Teach English as a Foreign Language qualification - which as far as I know is nearly lifetime qualification, so all in all a good investment. I had that job interview like I previously talked about and sadly didn't get the job :( but I'm still looking for more jobs and have steadily been applying to as many temp and part time jobs I can find. I've been working on my unpaid internship with Invisibit Studios. I've also somehow created skeleton of a company Bumbabee! Games with my husband and am making a game in his spare time (cause I seem to have a bunch of 'spare' time) - I even got to design most of it. AND I've managed to complete the following things:

Donate here:

Donations:

I've organised donations for myself. I finally have a way for people to pay me for stuff they like! So there's two options: Gumroad donations and Paypal donations. Every penny helps!

Scrolls:

Here's the scrolls showsheet. It comes with 3 scroll bases and 3 scroll ends to give multiple options of scroll types. I've placed it up on Gumroad. Take a look here, only $8 USD for the entire pack.

Potions:

The potions you've seen before but here's the showsheet and WIP shots anyway. Take a look here, $8 USD for the entire pack.

More Potions:

These potions you haven't seen before. They were lots of fun to create. It's difficult to make a skull without a nose - but I think I pulled it off. You can purchase them here for now. I will be placing them up in the Unity Store along with the other packs as soon as this major pack is completed.

and a Closed Magic Book:

Originally I was going to make an open magic book and a closed magic book but the pack because quite large and I needed to collapse it down a bit. So here's the finished closed book. The writing is translateable but you don't need to actually know whar's in there. You can purchase them here. Happy shopping!

AND a scale:

I have realised all too late that I require a scale. Not an eyeballed scale - which is what I already have. A scale for Unity that is ideally something represented in Unity i.e 1m = 1 unit in game. So I've taken all of the current assets and I've re-scaled them to translate better into Unity. This is going on my checklist.

So yea, I think I've been rather productive this month. I've managed to get back into working and I'm loving it.

What I'm going to do this month:

uhhhhm.....
1. Make Models
2. ???
3. PROFIT!

This month I'm going to be:

Finishing work on Dungeon Magic Pack:

I'll be completing the Candles (Single) the Candles Chandelier and Candelabra, and the Skull (magical things always require skulls)

Sketching out creatures and objects from other Packs

I've been thinking about how the other creatures and characters look in my artistic vision. I have a few sketches already but when the other guys in my D&D group take charge (they have very strong character personalities and good ideas) I generally take a backseat and start sketching while I'm listening to the story - don't worry I'm absolutely listening and I definitely speak up when they do something my character wouldn't appreciate.

Making a Macro for folder creation with standardised naming conventions

I'm going to look up ways of making Macros in Windows - I used to have a program but I might look into macro recorders and see if they're a thing that Windows does. That would make my folder structure faster and definitely all the same. I'm also going to make sure my Asana page (which the company updated and I'm going to have a look at the new features) is up to date. I am working off schedule and it's becoming a small problem.

Finishing work on Human Character for Character Base Pack:

I'll be getting myself together and complete working on my human character model and 3D sculpt. Assuming I keep my motivation and my standardisation day (or days) don't take too long I will have at least started work on my Halfling character before Halloween.

Reviewing my work

There have been many things that I just didn't foresee being an issue with my process. Now I have to review them and find a better way. I'll be setting aside a day or two to really get this down so I don't have to do it again. Or if I do have to (to futureproof myself) I'm make sure it's much easier next time.
I'll be reviewing my meshes to make sure they are to scale (the characters are exempt from this due to the character rig I'll be making. They will all the same sizes and this will only happen when all characters are completed.) I will also be checking my colour palettes are solid and not to distracting. While I'm reviewing my art work I'll probably have to make a wiki to keep colours, techniques and ideas consistent. At the very least I'll be writing it down in my book.

Making another recap

I really feel that making recaps are important, and even though I don't work with anyone (at the moment) I should still write down in a slightly SCRUM style format. This should give me direction, motivation and a sort of checklist on what I need to do.

What I'm having issues with:

Motivation:

I'll definitely say I'm having issues with motivation to complete the character pack. I've got due dates for all of that pack and I'm procrastinating with working on other packs. I have a good reason for doing those packs but if I keep going the way I'm going, I won't be finished in time for my holidays. I am giving myself a working schedule and it's important to me that I maintain it. Starting work at 9:30 and finishing at 5:30 is important to continue. There are days that just don't turn out like that, but I do try to make the most of those days by updating social media, hanging out with contacts and friends or even just making sure I have food in the fridge/freezer for dinner and lunch.

Standardisation and Future Proofing:

I have to sit down and figure out a check list. Something I actually check every time I make something, not something I make and then discard =,= (I'm looking at you Past Kylie.) I have the skeleton of a system down. But I really need to take the time to make sure I create folders correctly, fill them with the appropriate files and make sure I back them up online. My main downfall is remembering to rename objects within the program i'm working on. Instead of Cylinder 01 and Cylinder 02 I should have Scroll_Base_1 and Scroll_Ends_A that sort of thing.

Ok, that's it. Time to rest up and then work as hard as I can tomorrow.

Kylie

Tiefling Textures and Dwarfish Diffusing

Hey guys,

I've got the main body left to detail and that's about it (YAY!). Then on to detailing the Dwarf more.

Next week I'll be taking a step back and thinking about my process further, relecting on the process I've used and pulling together research on processes other people have used. I'm not entirely happy with the current outcome and I want to do it right.

I'll be practicing more with Normal maps and get a solid process down so I'll be doing some tileable textures during the week - at least one.

Livestreaming the Tiefling sculpt

Hey guys,

I'm streaming my work on my Tiefling https://www.picarto.tv/live/channel.php?watch=Shadowtajun

Here's yesterday's progress :)

Source: https://kylie-halley.squarespace.com/confi...

A long journey though Normal Map Jungle

After a long, long journey of trying to get the body of all the characters 'working' I can finally say that I'm through to the other side. Pretend that this is a sort of Post Mortem of a project just finished. Please note that this will be a long post. And I will sum up my feelings using gifs of American TV Hosts/Comedians and The Muppets. You have been warned.

Now that I'm looking for jobs in the UK I didn't want to mention the difficulty I was facing with my normal maps before today. However I feel like I've learnt from the whole experience and I should talk through what happened, what I did, what I didn't do and how much I cried or possibly didn't cry (>.>).
I never wanted to admit it before, but this is the first time I've followed this process. Generally I'm very diffuse map driven. I will model a character that I have model sheets for (either drawn by me, or someone else) and then unwrap, texture by hand the details, shading and colours; rig, apply weights and then animate. Voilà! A complete model with absolutely no normal maps.

This is the model sheet of the mesh I'll be talking about.

This time around I used unfamiliar programs as well. As you'll know by reading through my blog, I've used Zbrush only a few times before and I've never used Blender or Xnormal before this project. I might be comfortable with Zbrush (I feel my knowledge is beyond beginners) but as for blender, while fairly simple to pick up and work with so far - I've not completed the rigging or animation; I am willing to say that I am still very much a beginner. There are very primitive processes in Blender that would have taken me minutes to work out in 3dsmax compared to hours in Blender (unwrapping is a big example of that). I feel like there isn't much to learning Xnormal, I understand what I'm doing to get what I need but I don't understand how. It was a fast but tough learning curve and I'm still very much a beginner (but a competent beginner).

As for this journey, the process I followed this time around was to create normal maps, which I've never tried before. The only reason I'm creating these normal maps is so that the buyer of my characters has everything they need, I don't want them missing out on anything. Also with normal maps, it's easy enough to make AO maps, Specular maps (although not entirely reliable) and displacement maps.

It started when I first created my character's body in zbrush - some of these images you've seen before.

"The character had little folds in his legs and arms, a cross in his bellybutton, swirls on every elbow, knee and knuckle. I thought he looked quite good"

This took a while but after I figured out what hands and the legs should actually look like, I was good to go (I'm not focusing on the orc features - they took longer to zbrush but were finished sooner with my normal maps). The character had little folds in his legs and arms, a cross in his bellybutton, swirls on every elbow, knee and knuckle. I thought he looked quite good. I decimated him and placed him into Blender to work on retopology.

I researched low topology specs for games in iOS, and Android. I wanted to make sure these characters were low enough to have many of them on an Over The Top Tower Defense game like OTTTD or a small RPG like the old final fantasy games. Mostly, I wanted to make them into little sprites for Roll 20 (which is what I was going to use them for). I wanted to make sure that the topology was clean, crisp and essential.

So I found a few Polycount forum posts:
- Low Poly Hardware Specs
- Triangle counts for assets from various videogames
- Polycounts in next gen games thread! (Not very useful to me for this project)
and beyond3D forum post which has the same name RSART's 'yes but how many polygons' and 'how many polygons in a piece of string' articles.

Here's what really caught my eye:

“Hawken said:
iPhone 3G:
suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 7000
texture memory: 24MB
max texture size: 1024px x 1024px
screen colour depth: 16-bit (65,536 colours)
alpha blending: free! (use PNG)
suggested texture size: under 512 x 512
—
Nintendo DS:
suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 2000
texture memory (per screen): 512kb
max texture size: 1024px x 1024px
screen colour depth: 18-bit (260,000 colours)
alpha blending: 5-bit (32 colours)
suggested texture size: under 128 x 128
——
Add3r said:
Windows Phone (Information gathered via Tech demos/Bench Marks):
- Tris on Screen (comfortably): 30k, these were static meshes, using 256*256 textures
- Max Texture Size: 2056, might be higher, I know this number is shared with the xbox 360, as they share many caps when it comes to game development. Obviously the phones cant handle the same loads (this should obviously be common knowledge... I hope)
- Can support up to 72 bones per character
- No Normal map support, just diffuse (not sure about specular, didn’t make it into our benches)”

— Low Poly Hardware Specs - Polycount

Now I had a starting point. I knew that iPhone 3G was quite old (3 and a bit generations) so I could have a little leeway with these specs and tailor them more towards the window phone specs. I was happy with this information and got to work.

And I worked faster than I thought I would. Blender has a very interesting snap to feature and it made everything fairly simple.

I worked on the topology polycount (triangles) to make sure if I had to add extra loops in for deformation I could do so with ease and without disrupting the polycount too much. I ended up with 688 tris for the main body and 894 tris for the Orc Features a total of 1582 tris for a main character. For me, this was in the right ballpark (throughout this process I've had BitGem as someone I really want to aim to be like - and his/her main characters have a polycount of 2000+).

I was quite happy with my work. This reminds me, I still need to watch Muppets Most Wanted... — I was quite happy with my work. This reminds me, I still need to watch *Muppets Most Wanted*...

I then Unwrapped the model, the unwrapping feature in blender is primitive and I would like some more options like 3dsmax has but I was able to make it work, even though I was extremely frustrated with this part of the process. I learnt the hard way that saving, and saving the images you're painting are two different shortcuts. Cue the Normal maps part of this journey.

I started with exporting out the high poly version of my character from Zbrush as an obj. I then exported the lowpoly version from Blender, as an obj. After this I opened Xnormal, imported the highpoly mesh and imported lowpoly mesh. I pressed "Generate Maps" and such a mess came out - there were holes in my map and I didn't understand.

"Nothing was working."

I tried with a cage and without a cage. I was told that the 'ray distance calculator' would help a bit with my map generating. Nothing was working. Then I noticed that with all the noise showing up on the maps, I should definitely separate the orc features from the main body. There was less of an issue, but I still had holes in the normal maps and I couldn't understand why there were large streaks of colour that seemed out of place.

So I took a break, I worked on a normal map alternative because I couldn't figure out any way to fix these normals. This alternative I was hoping to place in a program like CrazyBump or Ndo and get the normal map from the 'height map' I had created. I took reference from the normal maps I had generated and hoped that this normal map was what I wanted.

"If you've ever been told to test before you finish, you should do that... Seriously..."

If you've ever been told to test before you finish, you should do that... Seriously... Of course, I was in my own little struggling world but as I finished texturing in the under garments for my orc and started on the little swirls of his knuckles, I decided I should test if this theoretical height map to normal map idea would actually work. To my delight, It sort of did. But not the way I wanted it to. I made a flat normal map from this height map, which would be useful for a ground texture but not any other kind for mesh. *sigh*

So I stopped. I did a little more research and worked on the orc features. Turns out, when I had created the retopology for my character (body and features) I had moved the decimated obj (semi highpoly) down to touch the floor when in Blender *face palm*.

This meant that my normal maps weren't getting projected correctly because the two objects were in totally the wrong position *double face palm*. But I knew the problem now and I can work on that.

Ughh I felt so stupid when I found that out. I mean seriously "why didn't I see it when I viewed the normal maps as a diffuse"

So I went back into Blender. I had an idea "I wonder if I can get normal maps from Blender" - turns out you can. So I did a bit of research and grabbed the normal maps from the decimated model that was already in Blender. Which worked quite well. I just had fiddly bits to fix. The fingers had seams showing, there were a few seams on the head showing up and some very strong red and green elements around the hands and feet. But this was all in a diffuse view.

I started by trying to play with the head, just smooth those seams a little - it worked a charm then I went down to the finger. This would be harder, so I got colour samples and tried to smooth out the colours by painting a combination of red and green. on the diffuse it seemed to work. but unfortunately as a normal map it wasn't really getting me anywhere. I also realised that I didn't want my fingernails to have as much detail as they did, it wasn't necessary. So tried to blur the finger nails details - this wasn't too bad. but then I noticed that the finger nails weren't in the exact position I wanted them. This would be an issue. At this point I did a test of this texture in the texture slot it was designed for - the normals texture slot.

The normal maps didn't match the diffuse map *triple facepalm*. So back to the drawing board. Should I draw the normal maps and use my diffuse "height" map as a base? Should I go back to the drawing board? Should I check if these seams are fixable?

I had seen a video a while back on hand drawing normal maps and off the top of my head it was just making sure my RGB channels had colours of 128, 128, 255 respectively so neutral grey (X), neutral grey (Y) and then white (Z). So I started playing with the maps. I knew that blue would be the easiest, it's just what is indented so I use the 'working' blender normal maps and tried to adjust their channels. It took some time but I figured out that how to make some of the lines straight and clean on the model. Things were looking up.

The shirt looked much better from behind do I thought that I would place the normal maps into unity with the export for my character.

"I felt happy [...] I had learnt a process by trying, failing, trying, failing, trying and then finally succeeding."

I should have done that long ago. Turns out that my Normals looked inside out *double sigh*. But only in certain directions. I went back do Blender and found that it wasn't just in Unity. There were major seam issues happening under the character too. As much as this would likely never be viewed by anyone, I needed to fix this seam. Research turned up some interesting information about normal maps, sometimes the Y axis needs to be flipped - some programs require that to happen. So I flipped the Y normal in the map and saved it out again.

At first glance it made one hell of a difference. The normals looked great. But then I focused in on some problems areas and the issue was still there as a whole.

Sadly, even with the Y axis flipped the seams were still visible. Just not as much.

The thing is, I knew not to have overlapping faces on normal maps. I knew it and I did it anyway...

While I was doing research I came across a post saying that you should never have overlaying unwraps. *quadruple face palm*. I had done that to make sure I could have more detail on my height map. No wonder things were going wrong. I had to fix this.

I re-unwrapped the whole model and made sure that there were no overlapping faces. I checked that the mesh's face normals were the correct way around and I made sure that there was enough space between the islands.

Once this was done, made sure that when I exported the character base, I exported it as the same height as original mesh was. I checked that I hadn't made a mistake like the previous times, and then did the normal maps via Xnormal.

It worked! or at least initially it worked. On closer inspection the under side of the head, and the shoulders were still mangled. I checked the high poly mesh and found the reason. These two areas were intersecting *headdesk*

Urgh! How had I not seen that before!

I was disappointed that I hadn't figured it out sooner. By this time I knew what had to be done and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Surprisingly accurate feeling at the time. I may have curled up into a ball at that point and then had a break for my birthday.

Back to the drawing board. Well the scuplting table at least.

On the plus side, it only took me a day to import my character, divide it, sculpt the details I really wanted (no swirls, no finger nail details) export it, import it into Xnormal, get a normal map, and test everything in Unity. One day of work... It took me weeks to get to this point.

I was done and I felt happy. Not really because I had finished the problematic part, but more that I had learnt a process by trying, failing, trying, failing, trying and then finally succeeding.

I had redone several weeks of work in a day. I was happy.

I have a few niggling things to play with in the orc features and most things really just show up in the ambient occlusion, which I'll leave out of the diffuse map and keep it as a separate option. Enjoy the rest of the images. These are the screenshots of the orc in Unity and Blender. The red arrows are showing where there are small seam issues.

Sadly, I will have to postpone the selling of the Orc character for the moment. I wish to at least rig the character before I export him and sell him as a complete item. This will take some time.

However, with the orc model complete, I've got a Dwarf and a Tiefling to work on next.

So here I am, exiting stage left until tomorrow. When I will be working on the sculpting of both characters. Enjoy my streams and I hope to see you there.

Kylie Out.

Diffuse maps and timetable adjustments

Hey guys, It's been a slow kind of day but I've eaten lunch, done a tiny shop and am now back to more texturing the tones for my Orc. The face is almost done (YAY!). Just the hair and one eyebrow left with the features. Then I have to go back to playing with the normal maps for the main body.

It's coming together nicely - but texturing had taken a huge chunk out of my timetable. I'll be adjusting my next time table before I start on the next character.

Animations will have to wait for another week. I'm going to go ahead with my previously made starting dates. The next character starts next week.

Normal Maps fixed and Eurovision

The normal maps are working (YAY!) - they need some refinements but it should be alright. Turns out I moved the height of the scuplted Orc in Blender so that the feet touched the ground and then I did my retoplogy. I exported the decimated mesh and placed it into Xnormal to fix that Normals issue.

Needs refining but it's only the main body so I might just need to re-export the main lowpoly body and put it through Xnormal like I did the orc features.

Now to play with AO maps and Diffuse maps more. Sadly I’m behind in my 3D scheldule, I’m going to have to go into ‘crunch’ this week. Maybe even work a bit on my birthday - we’ll see.

I could do all the ‘3D work’ by Tuesday as I predicted but there would be no rig or animations. Which I suppose I could add to the pack later. Not to mention I have to think over my Animation list. It's something I'm going to have to think about this weekend and solidify on Monday.

But now, Eurovision! Cause I’ve been working on a different project all day and I deserve a little brake time. Looking forward to Austraila's competing song (not a huge Guy Sebastian fan though) and UK's Electric Velvet - they're a great band.

Orc Work and the normal map issue.

Not sure what's going on. The ear was modelled over the sculpted ear. Same with the eyebrows and eyes.

Despite my best efforts, the Normal Map just isn’t working out - I’ve tried several ways and exported several meshes. I’ve also lost patience with the viewport paint tool in Blender. Today has been a struggle but I feel I’m getting close to completion.

Manually creating a height map from the broken normal map data.

Once the height map is done I can use the levels for an AO base as well. Then I’ll just use the height map in Xnormal to create a solid normal map (could probably do the same with the AO map). The height map should also help as a base for the diffuse map.

Live stream should be good to go for tomorrow. If nothing else I’ll be working on the Diffuse Map for the guy.

But now, I prepare for EUROVISION!

Source: about:blank

Finished Sculpt and retopology.

As of last night, the Zbrush part of my character is complete! I am a happy girl.

And so the hard and grueling task of retopology in a program I’ve not used before begins. I can feel I’m getting the hang of it, I just need patience.

I’ve run into the problem of the head. I’m thinking I’ll make the orc features separate so that I have a base body to work from. That should make my life a bit faster or easier. Hopefully both.

I'm working on the mid level of detail. Something that says Main Character in a small game. The 'Background Character' LOD will need to be broken up further. At the moment it's at 548 Triangles. I'll definitely keep it under 1000 tris for the base model - there isn't much more detail to grab from him. I can't wait to bring the polygon count down further, I'm looking forward to the challenge.

LiveStream 7 and Other News

Hey guys, sorry for being incognito the past week. I've been at the library which does not have internet fast enough to stream. I did a day of recording but found that difficult and then yesterday I stayed home to stream my work on this guy.

He's 90% done. I just need to place some underwear on him. I'm happy to say that I'm at a part of the process I need to heavily research so there won't be anymore steaming events for the rest of the week.

The videos I worked on at the start of this week need to be 'edited' and then placed up on Youtube. I'll be getting to that by the end of the week :) I'll post a link up when it's complete and setup.

Please subscribe to my channel though to get updates on when I do more live streams. [Link]

Source: chrome-extension://llaficoajjainaijghjlofd...

Livestream 6

Hey guys,

Looks like I can't livestream today. The library internet won't let me. So I'm going to be recording my work and then post it up on Youtube later.

Source: chrome-extension://llaficoajjainaijghjlofd...

Livestream 5

Just waiting for the videos to all render out. Here's a screenshot of today's work.

Last stream of the week, it turns out I forgot about sculpting objects in Zbrush so that's what I'm doing today.

Livestream in picarto.tv

Also I'm behind on placing yesterday's video up, that'll accompany today's video at the end of the day.

Live Stream 4 and Gumroad

Hey guys,

I just need to wash up after breakfast and then I can start my stream so about 30mins. I’m learning blender as I go with this program so it might be a bit painful. However, if you would like to give me a few tips and hints please, please do.

LiveStream on Picarto.tv

Also, I've started placing items up on Gumroad. I've placed the Human Model sheet up on Gumroad. If you would like to pay for the model sheet please do, but you can have it for free. The button below will send you to the website.

Gumroad website

Live Stream 3

Edit: Live stream was good. I think I'll be putting the comments section on the laptop with me, doing it via the tablet is taking too long. I'll give it another go for the week but if it irritates me much more, I'm going to just place the comments section up on the laptop screen.

Here's today's work.

I accidentally started working on the other packs I've been thinking of. (I made a Drow from the Elf - oops)

LiveStream 3 on Youtube

It's raining and windy here in Hove.

A late start today. Starting at half past the hour (I’m getting inspiration at the moment). Come look and listen. I’m still doing model sheets but it’s the last one for the pack.

LiveStream on Picarto.tv

Yesterday's Tiefling is complete:

Live Stream 2

Edit: The stream was great, I got another few things done. I'm over a day ahead of myself which is great. It'll add time for the modelling buffer I need.

Live Stream 2 on youtube

Here's a what I completed today:

Going live in half an hour. Working on some more modelsheets. I'm half a day ahead which is great. Come and chat, listen to music and give me tips or hints if you'd like. I'm all for the knowledge.

Live Stream on Picarto.tv

Yesterday's stream's finished work: