Too early to make the level's boss... figured I'd at least practice. MOAR KISMET.

Here's a video demonstrating how to combat the yet-to-be-named miniboss in my platformer game. Below are some screenshots on how the kismet is put together-- as is my norm, it's bursting at the seems with matinees, but I applied a few new principals that I've never used before, and learned a heck of a lot from this guy.

Showin' off some kismet!

Alright folks, this will be a rather lengthy post (factoring in video duration), but it'll definitely give the most bang for its buck. The first item of interest is the main mechanic for my platform game, "volume". The general idea is that the better you're doing in the game, i.e. the longer you go without getting hit/more enemies you kill, the faster you run and the higher you jump. Here's a demonstration on a test barrel and some robots.

Just under it, you'll see the actual kismet for this process; the first image is all of the math involved, and the second image is a series of nodes that set different run speeds and jump heights depending on what level the player's volume is at.

-continued below

Showin' off some kismet! pt. 2

Next, I've got the kismet and a video demonstration pertaining to the robots you saw in the first video. It's mostly just a matinee and some hard attached triggers, but it gets the job done.

-continued below.

Showin' off some kismet! pt. 3

Finally, we've got a simple, reoccurring challenge that the player will encounter: "blowback amps". These amps block the path forward, and most are unable to be maneuvered around unless the player's volume level is near maximum. You know the drill; video, then kismet pictures below.

Hope you enjoyed!
-Will

Catchin' some Z's.

DONE. With the model, anyway.

So it looks fantastic in 3Dcoat, but terribad in UDK. Lessons learned, mistakes won't be made next time. Here you go!

So close... so close.

Finally working on the non-suck version of texturing the character. My only real concern is getting the emissive layer to work for the glowing tattoos, but we'll cross that bridge when it comes.

And on the 9th week, Will made man. And man looked gooooood...

Quick post updating my work in progress on my character... normals seem to have baked A-okay, so now it's on to painting!

Goals by the end of this weekend: the impossible task.

Alright, I'm amped this particular weekend because my eyes have been opened to the world of particles and materials; and by that I mean I've recently discovered that they're not as difficult to get into as I thought. Hopefully I can get all of my 3D for Games work done on Saturday (not likely, but possible), so that I can devote Sunday almost entirely to learning how to make, pardon my french, fancy-ass particles and swag-ass materials.

Just seeing all of the options, check boxes, and variety of nodes in materials made me never want to learn anything other than the basics when it came to them, but since making materials for my exploding barrels, I see it's not all that bad. Similarly with particles, after breaking it down with Jati and seeing that they're just a few 2D images and animations stacked on top of each other, I've been offered an opportunity to go over the fundamentals of particle making with Jati, and fully intend to take that opportunity. HOPEFULLY this can all go down on Sunday, otherwise I'll have to wait until the workload gets back down to a free-time-having level... which might not happen for a couple of years.

Fingers crossed!

Darksiders Project Progress.

So it occurs to me that, with classes back in action, I probably won't have time to finish this project, which is a shame, but it'll definitely be good summer work, in any case. In the first image below, I basically fused all of the qualities of the three previous weapons together that people said they liked the most, since no one could give me a definite "that one is the best" response. I really liked the way it turned out, until I received various critiques on the proportions of the weapon and distribution of color. The second image below is the 3rd and probably final iteration of the hammer before I'll take it into Maya and Zbrush to bring it to life. The only tweaks I might make would be very minor, like adding more girth to the top of the handle or elongating a beak or two.

So... enjoy that!

Darksiders contest... should be fun!

I've got a thread on polycount under Contests and Challenges (search for Jiece), but in case you're not down for that... here's some concept art EXCLUSIVELY on this blog! And by exclusively, I me only here AND on polycount.