Our recent work with UVW texturing has gotten me thinking about its benefits and its limitations. While hyper-realistic UVW textures, especially ones made from photos, are nice, they have their limitations. I modeled and skinned a soda can recently, and the metal parts don't look exactly metallic. I had to use shading so they wouldn't just be solid gray, but even then, the lighting wouldn't reflect properly in a real scene. On the shipping box I textured, the staples were not 3D. Obviously, playing with shaders and bump maps is very useful, but my issue with the can specifically is that some parts need to be shinier than others, which is typically done with multiple materials. However, this is not how the object was textured; it used a single material with a UVW unwrap. The objects we've been using have also been basic primitives, with harsher edges than are usually seen in real life–this can lead to the edges looking a little odd, especially when things don't like up completely. The boxes have this problem especially. More rounded edges, and at least using a bump map to give the staples a more 3D-look, would be nice. Then again, this is meant to be a basic game asset, which the player will not look at too much. Using a simple cylinder for a soda can (which in real life has rounded edges) is little too far, though, but my skills aren't quite at that level yet–it was meant to be a simple exercise. So, to summarize:
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I'm mostly out of video games to review for the moment, but simpler tabletop games can teach just as much about game theory as can video games. I've always liked Go Fish. While often considered somewhat childish, it's a good game for when you simply want to pass time without the stress of some other card games. Part of what makes it work so well is its simplicity. It's at heart a memory game; one of the most important aspects is keeping track of who has asked for which cards (meaning the asker has at least one of said card) and who does not have them. Interestingly, while drawing a card is a penalty (common in many card-based games), it can end up working to the player's advantage, either by providing a needed card or simply giving the opportunity to lay down more sets of cards. This, plus the inherent comedy and triviality in a phrase like "go fish," can help make the game less stressful than more "serious" card games. What can be gleaned from this is that comedic aspects can be useful for cutting tension in any game and preventing the player from growing too anxious or frustrated. Allowing disadvantages to be taken into stride and even used to the player's benefit is another interesting idea to keep the player motivated. While these aspects are not ideal for every game, it's helpful to consider what makes such a simple yet well-known game work. So, to summarize:
I made a model of a fire hydrant today out of a bunch of primitives; I had considered lofting, but it likely would have taken too long. That's got me thinking. While attaching or booleaning a bunch of primitives might be quick, it can also look clunky. My original idea for making a fire hydrant had been to loft the main body, then loft the bits that stuck out to the sides and attach them. I ended up just using attached primitives, which worked fairly well considering that fire hydrants do have some angular features, but I feel it might have looked smoother as a loft. I did, however, use the extrude tool on some of the primitives to add detail (I remember a time when I would have made terrible use of the boolean tool for the same purpose). What are the benefits and drawbacks of these different techniques? Lofting creates smooth transitions between cross sections–mostly–and eliminates the seams that are common with using multiple primitives or even extruding. Transitioning from cross sections of a different shape, such as a circle and square, can get messy. In addition, because of the smoother curves, lofting generates a lot of polygons, which is generally something to be avoided to keep load times low. Lofting also takes a lot of time, as one needs to have the cross sections laid out beforehand, and it can take a lot of fiddling around to get things right. Overall, it looks nice but can be difficult. The extrude tool is useful for creating details quickly–I used this to add rings around parts of the fire hydrant, some of which were sunken in, others of which stuck out. It does tend to result in a lot of sharp edges, but has a lower poly count and is fairly quick. Sticking a bunch of primitives together is also quick, but tends to end up in a lot of polygons if they are simply attached rather than booleaned (due to the overlap). It doesn't require a lot of forethought like lofting, but is often angular and rough. So, to summarize:
The techniques I've been using to make simple house models in 3ds Max have given me a few thoughts. In order to save time, I've been using the extended primitives for house features such as doors and windows. I'm starting to wonder if I would have been better off making my own. In the Wild West Ravine project before this, I made my own simple four and six pane windows using little more than box primitives and boolean techniques, possibly in less time than it's taking me to fix these pre-made windows. There are a huge number of parameters, and editing is difficult because it often requires repeated small changes to each one for the desired result rather than inputing each value once. Making windows myself requires, surprisingly, less fiddling around. In addition, the pre-made windows are clunky even with reduced depth values, with the frame sticking out beyond the thin walls of the houses we're modeling, and unfortunately most of the detail is lost when the depth is reduced. This is not to mention that many of the options look the same, and certainly don't look like most windows I've seen in real life. They also consist of a huge and often unnecessary amount of polygons, something that's better off avoided. The pre-made doors have a similar problem of being clunky and having too many parameters, for a result that, in this case, could be easily recreated with a couple of box primitives and simple boolean. Overall, these extended primitives are decent at best and don't really suit the project. The Attach function, however, is incredibly useful because it allows for selecting each element separately, making texturing much easier and allowing for more detailed editing even after the objects are combined. This combined with some of the other tools can be incredibly powerful. For example, I duplicated the model I had for a house, deleted the windows, patched up the holes, shrunk it with the scale tool, and voila: two of the little structures that pop out from the roof (my lack of knowledge about architectural terminology is showing itself here). All things considered, this has been an interesting project so far. So, to summarize:
Considering its recent surge in popularity, I think it's time to finally take a look at one of the video games that dominated my middle school years. One of the interesting things about Minecraft is that it doesn't exactly have an ending. Sure, there's a progression that ultimately leads up to a couple big boss fights, but considering that it is an open-ended sandbox survival game with huge potential for world customization, structure building, player designed-challenges, server games, mods, and more, it's hard to pin down replay value. The many possibilities outside the classic survival playthrough should certainly keep players busy until they're ready to try another survival run with the new updates. Random world generation also lends itself nicely to multiple plays.
The gameplay is paradoxically both very simple and very complex. It's very simple and intuitive to fight, break and place blocks, create items, grow crops, and breed animals. This forms the basis of the game. However, the variety of landscapes and enemies one encounters throughout the game, and the various strategies used for dealing with them, is where gameplay grows complicated. There's certainly a good amount of variety, and the optionality of the main narrative (preparing to defeat the main boss) gives players the opportunity to explore as much as they want. In this aspect I'd say Minecraft has an edge over several other sandbox survival games; the extensiveness of the open-endedness can sometimes grow exhausting or overwhelming. I've never really felt like I was "missing out" the way I have with some games. The difficulty is customizable, as is common for survival games. Surviving the first night is easy if you know what to do, and in general it's not overly challenging if you know how to prioritize, but going in blind you're likely to die several times, especially since not all the enemies appear particularly like enemies at first. With boxy models and 8x8 pixel graphics, the is visually very simplistic. When I first looked into the game several years ago it did put me off at first glance, but I soon got used to it. If you like very high-resolution games this isn't for you, but if you can stand the simple textures you'll soon grow used to them. Despite the simplicity, the textures are still, for the most part, aesthetically pleasing, and the landscapes generated by the game can be truly stunning. It is at least easy to tell what everything is. Shaders alter the graphics significantly; they are visually quite pleasant, though they make water hard to see and the glare can be, in my opinion, pretty obnoxious. The animation would look extremely awkward on more realistic models, but it fits the blocky style of the game. Some of the render settings are customizable, such as render distance/fog, cloud appearance (including removing them altogether), and whether or not leaves are see-through. This can be very useful if your computer is not powerful, but low render distance fog can be annoying. Overall, it's simplistic but effective. The soundtrack is simply fantastic. It sets the mood very well, and is enjoyable to listen to outside of the game–that's a good value, in my opinion. However, it can get a bit loud sometimes; volume is customizable, but it can be annoying when the song starts out quiet and builds up. There's also long gaps of silence between one song and the next, which can get a little awkward; the music also stops if the player goes underwater and does not pick up (or even start a new song) upon surfacing, which has gotten on my nerves in the past. The sound effects are well done and make sense. There is, however, the issue of the "cave sounds." These are essentially spooky sound effects that might play when a player is close to an enclosed dark area; their purpose is a mystery, as they have no impact on gameplay. They're pretty chilling even if you know what they are, and genuinely terrifying for a new player. There's also not an easy way to disable them, as it will disable other sound effects as well. It might be a petty complaint, but sometimes I just don't want to be jumpscared by a demonic train whistle. Closed captions with directional markers are available for deaf and hard of hearing players, which is an important consideration since sound effects are often key to alert the player of nearby hazards (nobody wants a surprise lava flow to the face). The controls are well-designed and mostly customizable, although a few of the more niche options are not, which can be troublesome when the assigned keys have other functions on the computer; I've had this minimize my window and mess up my graphics settings before. The interface is well-designed and has been improved fairly recently. The hint system mostly helps with item recipes, which is useful for players who don't want to constantly look them up, and also streamlines the process of crafting items. The game does not often crash, but despite the simplistic graphics, lag can be severe on less beefy machines. Overall, I rate it 5/5 stars. For just under 27 dollars, considering the amount of playtime and overall enjoyment I've gotten out of it, I'd say it's certainly worth the value. Today I was reminded of the fact that upon first seeing the word "metaballs," I will always think it says "meatballs," and that got me thinking: what, exactly, is the use? The ability to create soft, uneven surfaces sounds useful, but the more I think about it, the more bizarre the idea of a blobmesh seems. I've used it so far to make cushiony chairs and glazed donuts, and I'm not sure how useful those are in most video games. I've read that blobmeshes are useful for "thick liquids," but when, exactly, does one encounter those? Lava comes to mind. So does honey. This might sound odd at first, but I've noticed that the sci-fi and fantasy genres (not just of video games) seem to be a little too infatuated with the idea of giant bug nests, especially beehives and spider lairs. Giant beehives tend not to be structured like beehives, and instead the honey is just spilling all over the floor. Spider lairs are typically just caves full of webs. I think a series of lofted splines covered in blobmeshes might make for an especially disgusting mass of cobweb for the player to get stuck in; in fact, I'd like to try this. A pit of honey in an inexplicably disorganized beehive also seems within the realm of possibility. Designers of giant bug nests also tend to neglect the fact that real nests tend to have dedicated areas for the babies, and instead decide it's more fun (or horrifying) to strew eggs and larvae all over the floor and walls. Why not use a blobmesh to create a disgusting little baby worm–or multitudes of them? Another thing fantasy and sci-fi love is the slime monster. Take fifteen seconds and think of all the games you've played that had some kind of slime creature, typically as an early enemy. I like making 2D slime monsters because they're easy to create, but 3D has so far proved difficult to conceptualize. I've got a plan for a flying blob monster in the works. In addition to these fantastical ideas, there is, of course, there's snow. While there are situations in which a sad smattering of frost does make sense, knee-high snow just looks better. The player character ought to sink into it a little. There's also the possibility of furniture–pillows, cushions, etc–as stated before; a plush armchair or couch in an office, perhaps. There's also food. Funnily enough, my misreading "meatballs" might be somewhat fortuitous: I want to see if I can make meatballs out of spheres covered in metaballs. So, to summarize:
Recent projects have proved the usefulness of sticking two things together–or taking one thing from something else–but what, really, is the big deal? There are three types of booleans: unions, subtractions, and intersections. Subtractions are, in my humble opinion, probably the most useful type. It's easy to add detailing to an object by subtracting other objects from it–personally, I've used it to make decorative grooves and even carved-in writing. It also makes it easier to make larger changes that might be harder to design by just manipulating an edit poly, especially if the subtracted section is curved. I've used this to hollow out containers of all sorts, including some clumsily-made coffee cups from the days when I didn't know what a lathe was. It's also helpful for designing models of mechanisms and such, such as making the groove for a switch. I used it recently to level off the bottom of a sphere at an angle when doing it by manipulating the polygons resulted in a jagged, choppy mess. Intersections keep the area of overlap between two objects. I haven't actually done much with this yet, but it has produced some interesting shapes, including a cube with rounded corners and edges that didn't quite look like a chamfer box. As with subtraction, it looks like it's useful for situations where editing the polygons might get messy or inconvenient. I think it's definitely worth experimenting more. Unions are interesting because they are, in my opinion, the least outright necessary. There aren't a lot of situations where a union is outright vital to the model. You can group things together other ways, such as with actual groups. Sure, combining objects makes things like modifiers and textures easier, but there are workarounds for that. So what's a union good for? It reduces polygons, and reducing polygons is always something to keep in mind when designing for a video game. A large amount of polygons means a large amount of loading time, and therefore horrible lag if you don't have a beefy computer; limiting your player base to the people that do is an unwise choice and will probably make the community mad. Also, as I said before, unions make texturing, using modifiers, and generally just moving the model around easier. They might not be strictly necessary in every case, but they're very useful. So, to summarize:
We got back into 3D modeling pretty recently, and one of the key things that's stuck with me is how to work with splines. Where has this been all my life? Splines are basically 2D lines and shapes in a 3D program. As far as 3ds Max goes, they're incredibly easy to create–easier, ironically, than working with a pen tool in most 2D programs I've used–and can be converted into 3D objects using modifiers like lathe and extrude. This has given me so much more freedom to create unique shapes; I honestly really wish I had worked more with splines earlier. Lathe, especially, has been incredibly useful. It's essentially spinning a 2D shape and around an axis to make a 3D shape. This means I can make any kind of rounded object with ease. So far that's included bowls, candlesticks, plates, wineglasses, cups, and even a table. I've currently got a model of a flan (or a gelatin mold, depending on your point of view) in the works, and I'm working out in my head how I'm going to make a character I dreamed up when I was younger–the clothes and hat are essentially completely rounded, which will make it easy to draw a cross section and lathe it. A few modifications to the newly created 3D meshes should take care of whatever the splines can't. Unfortunately the normals on lathes tend to freak out, and I've ended up with huge dark patches on some of my models where the shading didn't work. The extrude modifier has also been helpful, though it does have its downsides. The sides of an extrusion are always flat, and as I haven't yet discovered how to get more vertices on the inside of a spline shape, I ended up with some awkward looking spoons and forks, as well as an unfortunately blocky coffee cup handle that looked like it would be uncomfortable to hold. The flat sides should be pretty easy to fix with a simple chamfer modifier. As for the internal spline vertices, I'll have to experiment and see if I can find a way. I'm still dissatisfied with that spoon; it looked like a bent spatula, because the only way I could get the middle to sink in was to lower points on the sides of the spoon as well, creating a tool that might help you dig through dirt–or maybe beans–but couldn't hold soup without spilling it. In addition to these two modifiers, I seem to remember something else I used a year or two ago, something similar to extrude but where you have to pick a spline shape that will determine the circumference of the extrusion. I've been digging through the modify panel, so far with no luck, but I'm sure I'll find it. So, to summarize:
Assuming I become a programmer, my future career will be full of it. Crunch is the (often unpaid) overtime work most common during the stages just before a game's release. Some members of the "Red Read Redemption 2" team from Rockstar Games worked hundred hour weeks to get it finished on time. French game studio Kalisto, which went bankrupt in 2002, had such an intense crunch culture that each team had a psychologist assigned to it to keep all members working productively. In general, shifts can often last 12 hours or more, and work weeks can last all seven days, which leaves workers with little time to sleep or spend with family, and can lead to health problems both mental and physical. The practice has become so normalized that despite these detriments, many in the industry are afraid to speak up for fear of damaging their careers or endangering their livelihoods. Frankly, I hesitated to write this post in case it hurt my chances of getting into the game industry. It's become so expected that refusing to crunch can end in many losing theirs jobs, and the game industry has always been defined by changeability. Stability isn't guaranteed, especially for contractors. Smaller studios have tried a variety of strategies to avoid crunch and other unhealthy standards. Motion Twin, which came from some of the former employees of the fallen Kalisto, pays all staff members an equal salary–all eight staff members, I should add. This also makes hiring more difficult due to the cost. Croatian game studio Croteam released "The Talos Principle" with only a couple hours of crunch a week. For massive AAA studios, however, many of the strategies of smaller teams simply don't work because of how these companies are designed. Some have suggested unionization as a solution, but again, this comes at a risk of losing one's job. Whatever comes of the debate, I hope (but don't expect) the problem will be fixed by the time I have a job. So, to summarize:
Citations:
Arguello, Diego, and Diego Arguello. “How Crunch Affects the Lives of Game Developers.” Digital Trends, Digital Trends, 21 Oct. 2018, www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/how-crunch-affects-game-developers/. Wright, Steven T., and Steven T. Wright. “Despite Resistance, Crunch Continues to Define the Video Game Industry.” Variety, Variety, 22 Oct. 2018, variety.com/2018/gaming/features/video-game-union-crunch-industry-practice-1202985642/. I've improved since I was younger, but time management still isn't my strong suit, and recently that's come back to bite me. It's time to start fixing that. One of the most important keys to effectively managing time is to eliminate distractions. I've recently taken this into account by banning myself from watching any videos YouTube or using any social media (I don't have a lot, but the one chat program I do use eats up substantial chunks of time). It's important to take breaks in order to not become too stressed, but I keep them short and avoid anything that might become a time sink–that means staying away from the TV or starting any lengthy conversations about, say, whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. One strategy has been to find long playlists of music to listen to instead of constantly scrolling through YouTube looking for another song–this is typically where my problem of getting distracted by non-music videos comes from. I've had also issues with distractions working on a game in class recently, namely because I get caught up with constantly fixing the racetrack or fiddling with minor features. I've tried to rein in this urge to perfect things that are better left alone. When I notice something that can be left as it is without too much consequence starting to take up most of class, I move on. Another key practice is to not waste time waiting for things. I've begun working on homework during free time in class (especially when I arrive early), before school, and during lunch. It's typically something easy like a reading log so I don't get entirely burned out, but it saves time so I can worry about items like this portfolio when I'm at home. I even manage my breaks, such as using the rides to and from school to listen to music or work on personal writing so I don't end up feeling like I've done nothing enjoyable all day. Short deadlines also help productivity. Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted for it–the more time you have, the more you procrastinate. I've started setting hard deadlines for myself that are as early as absolutely possible–for example, I've committed to creating/digging up at least two pieces of artwork for my portfolio by the end of tonight, no excuses. So, to summarize:
Citations:
“8 Time Management Strategies for More Productive Work.” Teamdeck.io, Teamdeck, 7 Mar. 2019, teamdeck.io/project-management/time-management-strategies/. Rampton, John. “Manipulate Time With These Powerful 20 Time Management Tips.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 1 May 2018, www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2018/05/01/manipulate-time-with-these-powerful-20-time-management-tips/#4935474e57ab. |
AuthorI'm moving on to my 4th (and final) year as a Game Art & Design student at Durham School of the Arts. I'd like to call myself an artist, but I'm a programmer at heart. Archives
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