Modular Level Constructed

Just a snap shot from Maya of the level layout. This is fully textured with each segment being over lapping UV'ing in an appropriate way. There's still a lot more work to do but the next step is to get this into unreal, and get the near walls rigged up. By that I mean if a character goes behind a wall that occludes him the wall will disappear visually but of course still collide.

Clouds Tutorial

OMG A new post! Wow, yeah I figured it was about time to make a new tutorial. Clouds, something an FX artist gets asked to do many many times over the course of his/her career. While I have a bag of tricks for whatever the shot needs, this is by far my most trusted, in that it gets results fast and looks decent. Its got limitations but overall I find I can get most of the shots done with a combination of these techniques. The secret, I use maya presets! LOL just watch it.

And as a bonus, I did even an extra trick video. This ones a great technique that I'm still excited about even tho I've known and used it for a while now.

another written update

what no pictures?!?! WTF? I know, well I've been doing things that are not picture or video worthy yet.

This weekend I got exploding objects. Object that can be destroyed, switch mesh, emit particles. Showed me that my gun is working which is good.

I've been working on my level kit so I can make a real level. I think the objects are almost all made. I'm now UV'ing and texturing them so I can get them into engine and see my game looking right. I also noticed I lost some tail movement based on direction so I have to hunt that down. Anyway things are moving forward. I can't wait to show a nice big update with video.

Small Update

A lots happened since my last game play video. Finally found how to offset the Characters collision box on the mobilePlaceablePawn, he was floating 20 units off the ground before. It was simply in Pawn > Mesh > Skeletal Mesh Component > Primitive Component >Translation! Got touch doors working.  Got "use triggers" working in first person default view with a use button on iOS but not working in 3rd person I'm guessing since 3rd person is currently not the player but a mobilePlaceablePawn. I've tried almost everything I can on the trigger kismet side, I think now I need to make the pawn the player. Doing tests today.
So trying to solve that.
Got a level that does have any textures in game, got gun working with generic fx. Still needs lots of tweaking. I want to get the use triggers working and get some textures and re-UV the objects so I can have a decent looking level to run around in and make another example vid. So more to come. I'm working on it.

Edit: Talking to a friend I think the problem is I need to possess the pawn Kismet > Action > Actor > Pawn > Possess Pawn. Target = Player, Pawn Target = MobilePlaceablePawn

Double Edit: Got "use triggers" working in a test map at work. You have to Posses Pawn and not toggle off the actor controls, then make the rotation connect to the actor instead of the pawn.

UDK Remote WORKING!!!

I screamed (in my head) when I got it working. Un-be-lievable! Wow. Just wow. freaking port forwarding on a mac router on my wifes computer, while I'm on windows 7, and not sure what what where and more abbreviations than anything else in computing... its finally working. I've spend I'd guess, 8 hours or so here and there over a few weeks trying to get that damn thing working. Argh!
Now moving on to game dev!!!

Going to IndieCade

Just got a ticket to IndieCade. First time going, planning on checking out some panels and workshops. Learn a thing or two, and meet some other devs feel out how they're doing it and how its going. Hear their experience, and try out some of their games. Should be fun. I'm planning the schedule of things to see now.

Test Level Started

I'm getting things together for a test map to test out the character movement, game play mechanics like doors, switches 'n such. Its crazy how much I assumed would just click into place and didn't. Like how much I had to break the geo apart to get the right collision shapes. This image may look nice in editor, but in iOS it doesn't have any textures. That will probably take re-UV'ing since I did a quick auto UV and the scales will be way off if I try to use any sort of texture, so there's a lot of work to get even this test level working. Everything was built in Maya imported as static meshes. Gravity is kinda broken since it doesn't take effect while the player is moving. So before even doors, I need to get a lot more of the basics working right. Also still after hours of trying can't get the UDK remote to work! ARGH!!!! Thats annoying the crap out of me.