Messages

yes...it is difficult to make the jungle look full, especially without making render time horrendous (the cartoon animations are much more time consuming).

Gryph,

can you just summarrize the plot in 300 words or something so we can read it over and let you know what we think overall?

Remco,

I do not mean that you did not read or understand the comments.  Everyone seemed to comment on blurring etc and you didn't chose to do that, hence the comment about you choosing not to listen to their advice (which is, of course, your perogative).

Anyway, this is how I made the fire:

1) found a picture of a real fire
2) drew with pure white the very brightest parts
3) made a new layer underneath and drew the next brightest in yellow
4) made another layer underneath with some dark reds
5) used the smudge tool to blur the flames together as realistically as i could
6) made a new layer, and using mask mode I drew blobs of smoke and then filled them in with maroon
7) adjusted opacity of smoke layer
8) made billows of hot fire the same way
9) made a very small barely noticeable gaussian blur to remove the sharpness

do you guys think i should use an effect like this?

Hey, I'm working on this jungle scene.  I am not looking for any C&C, but rather, suggestions on what I should do to make it more like a cartoonish alien jungle.  In this jungle the flora IS ALSO the fauna...most of the plants can move around, etc.  Sort of like the jungle from Dark Crystal.

I'm not sure if I should use a lot of hand-drawn textures rather than just colors because I don't want to take away from the cartoon feel but I things aren't right so, any ideas how to achieve that cartoonish feel?

remco, it doesn't look like you have listened to anyone's suggestions...

here instead of trying to edit yours i started over to give an example of what i suggest:

matzyboy,  I had thought of that, but wasn't expecting it to work as well.  but it does

i think your best bet is to look at some photographs of campfires.  i just modified yours from my head but i think i could have (or you could also) improve it a lot by looking at real fire because i dont think real fire has quite so many tongues like this.  anyway here's my edit



i just used smudge

I know this place is flooded with suggestions...but it can't hurt.  I think this one would be relatively easy to implement, and be useful in a lot of games making it worthwhile.

CreateLightOverlay(x,y,sprite,factor);

It doesn't actually use the sprite as an overlay...what it does is gets each pixel that is underneath the sprite, and increase the brightness by a linear factor of the opacity of the chosen sprite.

For instance, the sprite you use could be a white cone which dissolves into transparency.  The program would then calculate the increased brightness of all the pixels under this sprite, and then create a graphic overlay of these pixels...which could then easily be removed to revert back to the original state.

This would be useful for programming lights that turn on and off in the game.  In my game I would want this for a large room that has numerous lights which come on and off in different orders and can overlap so I can't exactly use different rooms or overlay a different image because there are too many combinations.  But i think this would be a cleaner way of doing it for simple instances as well.

i have an avi file for a character animation and im not sure how to break it up into frames that i can load in as sprites to make a view for animation

why not just feature some real unexplored underground punk rock talent? a punk rock midi isn't even going to sound like punk rock

Yak,

Your "serial" port/mouse has nothing to do with a series connection.  The serial port is called that because of the way that information bits are sequentially sent across a wire, whereas we are talking about the way that electrical components are arranged on a circuit board.

However, I admit that you're right..."serial connection" does grammatically work, I just hadn't heard it stated that way before.  But I do think there is some merit in having an educational program use common terminology.

But onto the 2nd review:

1) Some of it is in English, some of it is not in English....shouldn't it be one way or the other?  I don't know what "stroom" means.

2)The ship is difficult to control because usually you would have some kind of steering device that would let you choose the direction and it would automatically adjust the throttle to both engines.  Also, you have wrote "left engine" and "right engine" and when you think "i want to go right" you automatically click on the right engine and then realize you have to click on the opposite, which is a little confusing too.  Not hard to understand, but it makes it difficult to control the ship well.  I guess for this screen it doesn't matter, but if you plan on having the user navigate this ship a lot...I would change that.

3) On the first puzzle:

I believe that the first puzzle is confusing because I do not really understand how the ship operates.  Most people know that space shuttles move about with jet thrusters.  I've never really thought about it, but my guess is that to ignite these thrusters, they use a spark plug similar to that in an automobile.  So they probably need a coil/inductor to generate the high voltage to make this igniting spark.  Once the thrusters are ignited, you have two throttle valves which control the gas flow to the thrusters.  This makes sense.  But then you have "motor stroom" written below.  "stroom" is not an English word so I don't know what it means, but you have described these as current meters.  What are we measuring the current of?  What do you need motors for?  We can see that the ship is NOT being controlled by motors...so this is confusing.

Then the ship crashes, and I guess it is not damaged...the only damage is that there are 2 wires broken to each motor.  I still don't know what the motors are for.  I am also confused because there are no switches or variable resistors or anything that could be used to reduce or turn off the signal to the motors, which doesn't make sense because that would mean that the motors would be on all the time even when the ship isn't moving.

You can see from the broken wire that in the existing connection, there was a direct connection from the battery to the motor.  In your first version, I made a connection with wires that would bypass this break and supply the same current from the battery to the motor.  However, this did nothing.  You have explained that you wanted to show that resistors in parallel conduct a higher current than resistors in series, so I am guessing that in order to complete this circuit "puzzle", I am supposed to connect the motor and battery with a certain number of resistors in either series or parallel.

However, the game crashes whenever I click on a resistor now.  But still, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever...because if the ship was working with NO resistors, then we shouldn't have to put in resistors that were never there to fix it.  And EVEN IF we knew that we needed to reduce the current to safely operate the motor (we still don't know what the motor does), we STILL woulnd't know how MUCH to reduce the current by.  And even if we knew how MUCH to reduce it by, we wouldn't have any way of knowing what combination of resistors to use, because they aren't labelled!  And even if they WERE labelled, there would be numerous ways that they could be configured to produce the same current.  So, I think you need to label the resistors, and then tell the player how much voltage the battery provides, and what the current limit on the motor is, and label the resistors, and then program in Kirchev's voltage law as well as the equivalent resistance equations for parallel and series connections, and then have the line "glow" brighter when there is more or less voltage...and if there is too much voltage, have smoke coming off of the motor to show that they need to reduce it.



On the third puzzle, there is a funny shaped device and I have no idea what it is.  You need to let us know what this device is somehow.  I have no idea what the purpose of this circuit is, but I very quickly discovered that by connecting the unknown element and then putting wires to connect it, the wires glowed red.  I don't know if that means I completed the puzzle or not because you didn't say what the point was.

On this puzzle, it also crashes when I click certain places, a coffee mug gets created when I click sometimes, and also it is difficult to find out where to click to place/remove a wire sometimes.

The goal of this puzzle is that the players learns that resitors in parallel conduct a higher current that in a serial configuration.

There is no such thing as a serial connection, you mean series.

This is parallel (ignore ....):

..........---R1---
____/.............\___
........\__R2__/

R total = R1*R2/(R1+R2)

This is series:

----R1---R2----

R total = R1+R2

What age group is this intended for?

here's an update.  i tried to work on putting detail into the fingers.  i know that the finger joints and nails still look unnatural despite my efforts to detail them...but it's better than before.  i have a REAL texture on there now, hand drawn in photoshop.  it's still got a ways to go, though.

Ok, I start out with a spaceship that is EXTREMELY difficult to control with the left/right thrusters...it seems like the only thing I can do is crash it into one of the walls or one of the big black things.  I think I have somehow messed up, and a bunch of german appears half off the screen (I don't speak German).  Instead of asking me if I want to reload the game, I'm on a new screen with some wierd gadgets...I have no idea what I am supposed to do here.  I guess something broke, and I have to fix it?  But I don't know what's broken.  The only tools I have is a wire and a bunch of unlabelled resistors.  It takes me a while to figure out how to put the resistors/wires on the board in the right place or take them off, but since I have no idea what I'm supposed to do that's where it ends.  Eventually I get a fatal excepion that crashes the game after I click on something.

Ok well...that is from the players perspective.  You have obviously spent a lot of time programming this, but it's all to waste since there are no instructions.  

I am an electrical engineering student myself, so I was hoping to get some enjoyment out of the circuit puzzle...but I don't see what can be done with nothing but resistors and wire...especially when the resistors are unmarked.  And why are there so many?  Sorry, just way too confusing.  

if someoen else does it, it won't fit into the animation.  your problem is that you are drawing from the same angle even though its not...you made the hat and pant legs and shoes rotate as you rotated the camera...try drawing them from a diff angle!

ah yes...I didn't think of that easy method for creating the fingernails.  I'll do that.  I find it hilarious that you like the lighting so much better this time around...guess what I did?  turned off 3 point lighting and let the default render light do the work, haha.  i guess I did have the intensity turned up a bit high before.  I'll post an update in a bit when i get around to the fingers.

by the way colossal, what method do you use to model the hair?  the best thing i've got going for me right now that I can think of is to model it as a solid object, try to add some creases, and slap a hair-ish texture on it...but i have not done that because i know it will turn out aweful.  And I only found 1 free hair plugin for 3ds max 6...and it looks pretty crappy...and I definitely cant spend $500 to buy Shag: Hair.  

Well, I gotta be honest...it's a bit depressing to sink close to 100 hours into this and then get a B- grade on it.  I was kinda fishing for some encouragement to keep me going, but that's ok...criticisms are good too.

A lot of you are sayin I need more detail in the hand and fingers...I think this comes from a misunderstanding of the modelling process.  I don't plan on adding another 500 polygons just to add cuticles and wrinkles in the fingers and toes...I would add small details like that with the texture map.

Also, some of you commented that the breasts were too small and looked like man breasts.  Please, could I have the phone number of this guy, because I would like to take him out for a date.  Ok ok I'm kidding.  I thank you for your comment but I have to disagree.  The breasts are the exact same dimension as the girl I was modelling...I think maybe it was the lighting that made them look small.  I have changed the lighting around, and put on a texture map...do they look bigger now?  They're the same size.

In regards to the terminator hands: this is definitely a misunderstanding of the procedure.  After modellign the girl, after texturing her, I need to build a bone structure underneath and each bone needs to be assigned which vertexes it will be in charge of moving when the bone moves.  By making the hand in this shape it is easier to put the bones in and assign which parts of the skin they get control of....and once I have bones in, I can animate her and put her hands in any position I want.

Anyway....I KNOW this texture is not perfect.  I know there are a lot of seams which appeared and I need to smooth those out...and it's symmetrical and it could use more detail...but I think it shows how with a good texture it might not look so cartoony after all?  I think the hair greatly contributed to the cartoonish look...but the thing is, to get the hair to look good, I need to buy a $500 plugin

Ah well....I think I am going to go back to modelling rooms for my game

Oh, and OSC: way to not stoop to my level  

Err...this one doesn't seem to be on the same level as the other's you've shown.

If you want problem areas identified I'll give it a go:

* girl looks 2d
* skin fold shadows look exaggerated on her body
* we seem to be looking out of the forest, where the night sky/moon are illuminated from the back, whereas there is a direct light from behind us illuminating the girl which doesn't affect the rest of the scene.  with this much direct light from the front, the back lighting from the forest would all look black by contrast
* blood does not seem to be realisticly applied to head/mouth/hands..too much spatter, not enough run
* not getting any emotion by looking at the girls face...need more emotion somehow to make her come alive
* wing's do not appear to realistically attach to her back
* wing joint looks more like an insect leg joint than a wing joint, a wing joint there are two bones that join causing a bubble rather than a squeeze in the flesh
* wing's appear to be vertical planes
* wing's lack detail such as membranes and not sure why they look like tattered rags
* girl looks like she should be falling forward on her face
* the overall design of the scene looks too much like it was designed to be disturbing to actually be disturbing...subtleness, simplicity, and emotion are the key...not throwing every possible icon of evil into a collage...

i know i was harsh, but i think you can take it...your first pictures were awesome, you've set the bar now i'm going to judge all your work from that level (unless you post something better, in which case i will raise the bar)

happy drawing

I'm gonna be totally honest with you...the first tune is pretty good.  I didn't notice a difference between the first two versions but I also didn't listen to the whole thing.  In the third version I think you totally destroyed it.  I do not like the second tune at all...I feel like you are trying to push the limits of what kind of music you can make with this software and it really shows...anyway keep up the hard work.