Saturday 29 May 2010

New tools

I came across two new tools which are great and free. So the first one is sculptris. It's a good alternative for sculpting if you can't afford mudbox or zbrush, but it still in alpha version. The second one is Alchemy
http://al.chemy.org/download/

Really good one for concept artist.

This is an extract of the new blender foundation tutorial.

Wednesday 26 May 2010

Scaleform supports on UDK

I haven't use the ui that much on udk so I really don't know if it was that bad, but from the post on udk form I would say that a lot of people were complaining. Anyway now scaleform is integrated with udk which is a great new.

The May release just came out with scaleform and steam support.


Monday 24 May 2010

starting a demo game

So I've spent a the last week following tutorial on how to create game using unity and now that I feel a little bit more confortale with I'll start to create a really simple game demo. So the basic concept behind it is to create a shooter game like gigawing in a week. It's really a concept than a game but I need something challenging but still abordable for a beginner to understand better the api of an engine.

Sunday 23 May 2010

few days away and now I'm back to business.

I was a litte bit annoyed by all those problem with my new mac. I mean most of software don't work at all. Maya is so terrible with the new leopard I'm considering of learning blender to do small task when I'm not at my place and I need to use my laptop.
But what was really bothering me was the fact visual studio was only on pc. But I found something really interesting. Using mono develop you can sort of plug unity into the IDE and use the intellisense.

can find some information here

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=219018

Wednesday 19 May 2010

This is really good

So I just found out about a game contest which you can win 100 k $.  It's the independent developer game contest.

This is a lot more than the Dreambuild on and even if the contestant will be though using unity can make the job really easier for me. I was planning on participating on Level up Game conest and try to get the trip off to tokyo, so it's cool to see more than one contest to participate. With unity I can really focus on the content and not the programming. I'm planning to get into each with kakurembo which is the hide and seek game. There is a lot more going but I'd rather keep for the last moment.

I hope I'll get some art done very soon. At the moment I'm focusing on the networking and the api of Unity.

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Lazy me

So by lack of time and also because it was more funnier to just look for fancy effect in unity indie I started to look for an animated shadow. So the main option that come to mind were either stencil shadow without using a buffer (unity indie cannot access it ) or animated decal texture. I though the animated texture would be the easy way but then I discover the shadow volume on the wiki which is greta but just can't work with what I had in mind. I try stuff work around and modifying the code but nothing worked properly so I switch back to animated projector. I found a fairly good example of it in the invader demo. Even though the technique they use is limited (the code actually set manually every texture one by one), it gave me a fairly good understanding of what I need to create my own code.

So I didn't gave up on getting some kind shadow using unity. I was looking on doing realistic shadow but maybe I'll stick to more stylish and less accurate one.

So I didn't really made any progress on understanding unity api or so but I still I know what it's possible r not.

Switching from udk where the shadow just got the updated to unity is really annoying because I kind miss all the awesome features but because of one (Networking and web deployment) I might stay with unity for kakurembo which is multiplayer oriented.

Monday 17 May 2010

Day 2 Unity

After just one day working with unity indie I have to admit that the application is really good. I really choose it because of the networking option and it fits quite well to my need but the ease of use is really awesome. I mean creating small game and prototyping really fast is a blessing. There is not such a thing using udk. Creating a menu is an hassle even with the incoming scaleform I still think unity will have the advantage over epic's product. The other engine I'm waiting for is the cryengine 3 sort of indie version. They are going to release the application and you'll be able to create game with it. I really love Sandbox cryengine for the powerful toolset and graphics. But UDK so much progress in the last month I don't really know which one will be suited to create Skullz. I'll wait and see meanwhile working on Kakurembo.

I'm really thinking the concept through and I believe people will enjoy playing it.

I still have a project in mind called Armance, which is a great scale game and of course the cryengine 3 will be my favorite choice for that one.

the indie market has really change the last four year, and I think it's a really good thing.

Working on a new project using Unity Kakurembo

I haven't done much lately. Why ? Too busy with film school, moving back to london and a lot of stuff who have been happening in my life. But then it was already mid may.

So I realize it was almost june and I was far from finish Skullz. I was working on the props and I didn't work that much on the character and the script so I just figured out I should start a small for the incoming competition I'm entering by the end of june.

So basically the game itself is called Kakurembo and it's a multiplayer hide and seek.

Unity has a great networking solution so I figure out that maybe I should just take advantage of it.

I don't have much picture at the moment but I'll start sketching in the next day. Right now I'm leaning unity and I have to admit even if the tool set is not comparable to what udk can offer the ease of use and the scripting are far easier. I start programming in c± so it's quite easy to just understand and also javascript is quite close to .net language.

Anyway I hope you'll like my new project