June ‘23

June 1:

Started work on another character. It may not look like I've done much, but the head takes just as much time as the rest of the body when you're trying to make it look like a specific person you know in real life. He's already come a long way, though.

June 2-4:

Lots of writing and erasing code this week. The script that was controlling character location and animation up until this point was always pretty wonky, so I'm glad I finally rewrote it. I should be able to string animations together now in a way that looks much more realistic.

June 5:

The stairs are finally starting to come together! I think the decorative swirly thingies are to thank for that, but it honestly took me a while to figure out the best way to implement them.

The swirly bits are flat planes displaying a 2D image. I really like capturing the little details of the building, but modeling and rendering every single little thing in 3D adds up quickly. Mixing methods like this is a tried-and-true tactic that game developers use to improve performance without sacrificing quality.

June 6:

In order for the stairs to be done, I needed (still need) to make edits to the landings on each floor. I started with the first floor, but got quickly carried away doing some other work on the first floor that I had been putting off for a while. As you can see, I didn't quite finish that either, since I was determined to get some motion capture done today. And I did!

June 7:

Most of today was spent on this post, since I had no idea how to format it...I dearly hope future posts are easier to write as a result. This coming week, I intend to play around with those mocap animations. If all goes well, next week we'll have some footage of characters walking around the halls! Stay tuned :)

-Tim