UniHuman picks up the pace

I didn't make a big deal about my 50th post, how very un-me...

Anyway I have just finished a test during which I baked a texture from one mesh to the other. not a big deal one would assume until, you of little faith, hear what it was. You see I loaded up a background image of my face and matched UH's face to fit it. I then projected my face onto the UH mesh. If I do this for a front and profile and then bake the two pictures onto the UH with the original UV mapping then the photograph gets reverse mapped to the UV map. In other words if functions in a similar way to the way facegen works and gives results that are just as good if not better!!

Now if I write a tutorial using this method and have it done for the launch of the site people will seriously believe that UH is a viable source of models! I am very excited with the results I have obtained using this method and know that when I finally release it will be a success.

Also here are some interesting statistics

Body Fat % 6.1%
Muscle Mass % 49.1%
BMI 20.1
BMR 1540

You would think according to the first two I would be a muscular powerhouse... not so :'(

Flawless... Ensemble

So I was on kotaku today, as you do and I found this. It is brilliant. I want Epic Fail as my text alert. I want to be told I am well dressed this way every time I leave my house. Wow,It would make my life so much better!




As far as the website is going. I secretly let slip on the blender forums when I helped a guy out with character modeling by giving him a UH mesh. He loved it and not only that but I even got emails from other people asking how it was going (and of course expecting me to give it to them straight away!) I laughed...

Still though, I got some work on the website done. Most of the pages are up (albeit devoid of content) and I have a few models ready for upload. I need to get my starting models up to my own standards (UV mapped at least!) and I have to rig UH and then it's all good!

I didn't nearly meet my target for models at launch but I'm sure that once it's up on the interweb I will be more inclined to get the jobs done. I hope I will also start getting submissions to the site. Then it will really take off!

I have decided I will have ads on the site but they will be non invasive and located at the bottom of each page. As I previously said a percentage of the earnings will go towards expanding the site. Things like additional downloads, web-space expansion and competitions will be funded by this money. I also thought of a few t-shirts that would be quite cool to have for sale. Still I'm jumping ahead of myself.

I want the site launched ASAP, I might not make my due date but by gum I'll be close.


...Also I finished tomb raider underworld, it was alright...

Blogging takes effort and time.

I have been killing myself with college and taking care of Max and in my free time I barely had the energy to read. I have a few things that I'm going to do though. I'm going to launch the website next Sunday. I just decided that now but without a deadline I will never get it done.

I am also about to start a new exercise routine. It's a full body workout from www.iwantsixpackabs.com. It's free and looks to be very comprehensive and realistic. Daily workouts (for the first week at least) appear to be ~half an hour! that is great as I haven't much time on my hands.

I will try to keep a training log here so I can track my progress. I wish our scales measured body fat% but it doesn't. I might buy a new one

Busy time, Kitty time

Well I have been up to a lot lately. Thanks to the death of my computer and a million and one college projects that I been undertaking I haven't had all the time in the world to blog.

I have fixed my computer and finaly made it a linux only PC. It was a great decision, it is fast pretty and has all the software I need absolutely free. I currently run Ubuntu 8.10p.

not only that I have a new cat who is running around the new office I have set up. In my new office I have a windows xp PC and this ubuntu pc. I will Post a photo when I get the chance.

I have been putting a lot of thought into the BGECentral and I am currently concidering putting the site into beta. What I mean by this is I will have a basic version of it up and running with the catagories etc online. I will begin taking suggestions and submissions. I feel it will be a lot easier to convince people to donate models to the site.

I have a lot of work left to do in the house after the trauma caused by clearing out the box room to create my office so I doubt I will launch the beta this weekend but it will launch soon.


And by the way, My new kitten Max is the tinyest biggest legend ever, He is adorable and idiotic. I love cats and Max is one of the best. A perfect addition to the family

What's new pussycat?

Ever since my cat died (*RIP Fluff*) our house has been quite empty. Sure we still have the dog trundling around like a miniature bull but we miss having a kitty cat.

Cue crazy cat lady... well not crazy but she is selling us a new kitten! A little cute guy with a white face and tabby back. He is adorable (only seen a photo so far) and we are getting him this weekend! It is going to be great!

I made 3 buildings in blender. a church, a house and the petrol station. they are alright (I don't like the petrol station) and they are not unwraped yet. I have to get around to that and to making textures for them.

ah tomorrow tomorrow...

All and all a good blending

So a bit of progress on the UniHuman front. I have been watching tutorials and tutorials and tu... you get the idea... on rigging and rigging well. I am still a little torn on weather or not I should rig the model myself or ask an experienced rigger to do it. I think I will rig myself and just hope someone decides to provide a better rig in the future.

I did a bit of a test on the head and I managed to get a nice smooth jawbone deformation going on. If I get the mouth with working well then I don't think I will be using shapekeys for lip-synching as I originally thought.

I didn't add any keys to UH today. I couldn't think of any good body morphs and wasn't in the mood to begin working on the features deformations. I think it will be basic "eye size", "eye position", "nose size", "nose bridge", "ear size", "elf ears" (they are just fun!) and a few chin deformations.

Release early and iterate!!

I don't want to open the site until I have a few models up and running but unfortunately I haven't gotten around to making that many... well any. I'm going to make a few packs each with 6 objects in them. I have just decided. 8 packs. 8*6=48 models. That is the number of models the site will start with, 50 if you count the barrel and crate... which I do.

Ok, time to make up the packs:

1. Vehicles

• Old Car
• Sports Car
• Truck
• Van
• Moter-bike
• Truck

2. Guns

• Pistol
• Shotgun
• Sub-Machine gun
• Automatic Rifle
• Sniper Rifle
• Rocket Launcher

3. Buildings

• House
• School
• Church
• Shop
• House 2
  
• Petrol Station

4. Street

• Post Box/Mail Box
• Trash Can
• Lamp Post
• Traffic Light
• Parking Metre
• Phone Booth/Public Phone
  

5. Fun Physics objects

• Palate
• Chair
• Table
• Shopping Trolley
  
• Tire
• Mattress

6. Electronics

• Lamp
• PC
• TV
• Stereo
• Standing Light
• Photocopier/Printer

7. Furniture

• Table
• Chair
• Couch
• Desk
• Coffee Table
• Wardrobe

8. Farm

• Tractor
• Farm House
• Hay Bale
• Fence
• Gate
• Barn
  

BGE Central

http://bgecentral.synthasite.com/

There it is, The Blender Game Engine Central site. I decided not to waste money on a domain as there is no real point. I have finished making the final topology adjustments to UH and have created the male-female morph. I even rendered it in a nice little video for you:



I Have been thinking about certain objects like barrels and Crates. Since there are so many possibilities for barrels and crates and it would not be of use to many people to download all of them in the one file there will be a standard barrell and crate mesh that are UV mapped and then the textures can be downloaded individually. This will make accessibility easier for those who want to use them. People can then build up their own directory of crates used in a game quickly and easily by duplicating the mesh along in a line and loading the textures/materials into the file. Then by naming the crates (wooden crate, rusty crate etc) they can link directly from this custom directory into the level file.

Say hello to UniHuman 1.0

So I searched for a while and eventually found a mesh with great body topology but a terrible face. Not to be discouraged I continued my search and found a mesh with very good edge looping on the face however the body apeared to be an after thought. Proportions were off and the feet looked like flippers. Being the genious I am I grafted the head to the body and above is a render of the result, UniHuman 1.0.

In the render there is a 2x mesh smooth modifier applied to UH but the topology is brilliant and the model is very low poly. I will begin work on some shapekeys tomorrow.

I have even come up with a concept for showing the potential of UH. I will make an animation of the model striking various poses and then morph it into a different person at each pose. It should be quite cool! I have some concerns as to how the rig will be effected by the height modifiers but hopefully it will be fine (or there will be an easy solution...)

I am very happy the models responds so well to meshsmooth. Because it does it means that it can be used in pre-rendered FMVs aswell as in game. I will have to update the topology a bit to enable certain morphs (There are not enough polys for believable breasts on the current model) but what is shown above is a reasonable representation of what the final UH will look like

I killed my computer... again...

So I killed the family's main computer, again. extra dead this time though... I have oficially given up on installing linux. It just doesn't want to be installed on that computer.

Fortunately I hadn't gotten very far into the bge repository so even if I do wind up loosing what I have made I will survive. I will try to make at least a model a day until I have enough to start the site off. I have also begun posting about the site on various forums (well just one so far) so I will be able to build up a reputation for the site. I think I will also make a forum so people can discuss the game engine and other things. Unfortunately I have failed to find a forum provider that doesn't advertise on the forum. (the site provider doesn't but the forum will have adds that don't support the website)

I just realised that a sound repository would also be of use. I will probably just provide a link to soundsnap though, It is such a great site already it doesn't need a replacement.

I also tried my hand at modeling a human head today. I am still quite bad at making humans so I have decided that the model (which I have pre-christened UniHuman) will have to be made by someone else. I will try and find one and if I can't I will ask someone to make it for me. I will however try to be the one who makes the first set of shapekey morphs and the first rig.

I would like to get started on UniHuman ASAP so I will look for a model I can use soon. Origional morphs will be limited to

-Male
-Female
-Muscular
-Fat
-Skinny
-Height


I will go on to in the second round of morphs added put in

-Arm Length (things like this could be done by having the slider start in the middle)
-Leg Length
-Cartoon
-Eye Size
-Head Size
-Mouth open
-Eyes Closed

I will make more as I think of them. I like the idea of having the slider start at .5 in some of the morphs (such as Male/Female), It is more organic than having them separate options. It will also reduce the number of keys without reducing function. One key concept is to have maximum flexibility with as few keys as possible.