Monday, June 18, 2012
Week7 Season B
This week I'm just going to write a quick entry unlike the last couple of weeks. This week we learned nothing new all we did was review for our final that is due next week or this week. I will try to post something about my 3Ds max class like our final trailer in a youtube link. For my AI class I will not be able to show anything interesting not until we start our midterm next semester which is in about 3 weeks. I will try to post any updates that I will have about the mid-term but there won't be that many since our group won't be until after the summer break which is two weeks long.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Week6 Season B
This week in Artificial Intelligence we just had review because we had a project due, but in my 3D's Max class we got into our groups to create the game trailer. We are going to be working on this game trailer for the next week.
In my 3D's Max class I learned how to add cel-shading to my models, although I'm not sure if it can be imported since it is something to do with 3D's Max's Material Editor. The Process is very simple and the result is great I will post a simple tutorial on how to add cel-shading at the end of this blog along with all the meshes I had to do this week. I also learned how to create alpha channels. Alpha channels is when you make a texture and are able to see through it. Most of people use alpha channels to make this like hair, tree leaves, etc. You also don't need to have it be completely transparent it can be slightly. For example, if you want to make glass you will just create a alpha layer channel that isn't to intense. There is only one slight problem that I have encountered, when you apply the texture, render it, and there is a pure black background you see a slight feather around the border. I believe this happens because the texture gets stretched out and so do the pixels. That was it for this week, other than working on a plan for my group we didn't do much for learning new this other than the two things I explained.
In my 3D's Max class I learned how to add cel-shading to my models, although I'm not sure if it can be imported since it is something to do with 3D's Max's Material Editor. The Process is very simple and the result is great I will post a simple tutorial on how to add cel-shading at the end of this blog along with all the meshes I had to do this week. I also learned how to create alpha channels. Alpha channels is when you make a texture and are able to see through it. Most of people use alpha channels to make this like hair, tree leaves, etc. You also don't need to have it be completely transparent it can be slightly. For example, if you want to make glass you will just create a alpha layer channel that isn't to intense. There is only one slight problem that I have encountered, when you apply the texture, render it, and there is a pure black background you see a slight feather around the border. I believe this happens because the texture gets stretched out and so do the pixels. That was it for this week, other than working on a plan for my group we didn't do much for learning new this other than the two things I explained.
(Cel-Shading Tutorial a basic understanding of how to apply texture should be know)
(On some of the Meshes you will notice that you can see the bottom of it, this is because they have some parts that it's transparent, other the lighting is strange and you can notice the difference in the background)
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Week 5 of Session Spring B
Last week I wasn't able to input a entry because it was memorial day weekend and I didn't have access to a computer. So this week in my Artificial Intelligence class we covered how to make agents receive and send messages to the world instead of checking every second if something happened and fuzzy logic. In my 3D's Max class I learned about a camera cinematic, lights in 3D's max, Bink video a type of in-game cut-scene, sounds and Kismet/Matinee.
For my Artificial Intelligence class I learned that you can improve performance in your simulation or game by making a Master AI that sends messages to all of the agents in the game world. The way that it works is that it checks what all the agents in the "world" are doing and gives them order according to what the Master AI is programmed. For example, if a agent touches fire the agent doesn't know it's on fire until the Master AI say "Hey your on fire, take damage." and if your agent would take enough damage the Master AI would say "Hey your dead, get to your dead animation." It would be the Master AI to tell the agent to move out of the fire but the Master AI won't do it for him. The agent should have all of these functions built already inside of it all that the Master AI does is make the agent do or call on these functions. In a way the agent is your body and the Master AI is your brain telling it what to do. Your body has all the capabilities to do the things but it's not just going to randomly start doing it.
Fuzzy logic is a way in which what we human use to do calculations. When we say things like something is 'about' or 'kinda' we are just giving a rough estimate then rounding depending on how we see this. The way computers make decisions is by having a cut off point like a border on a map. As soon as you cross that line you are in another county so if you were to apply fuzzy logic to this example you will no longer have a solid line that says "As soon as you cross this line you are in so and so county." Instead it would have a point in which the two counties blend together and you can say that your kinda in this county but not really. Another example is when your blending colors together and you say that the color in between the two is kinda one color but not really.
In my 3D's Max class I learned about cinematic cameras, Bink video, sounds Kismet/Matinee, and lighting in 3D's Max. The normal light in 3D's max is alright if you just want to view your model quickly, but if you want to set up a cinematic scene you are going to want to change the lights in 3D's Max and also some cameras so that you won't be animating in just one viewpoint. This method is good and bad in both ways the ready it's good is because you can use all the tools that 3D's Max has that UDK doesn't for example in 3D's Max you can get hair to be really fine and have individual strains of it like we have in real life, but in UDK you can't do that your hair will loop like it's a bunch of groups placed together. Just like I said this is good and bad the reason it is good is because you will get a nice cinematic scene the reason it will be bad is because it will use lots of your memory getting a nice video. Most games now use in game cut-scenes instead of pre-rendered ones. That brings me into what I learned next. We learned about the video converting program called Bink Video. What Bink Video does is it compresses a movie file that you already have so that it won't use a lot of your memory. You can also convert a movie into a texture and apply it to something. That would be the advantage of using Bink Video. You would chose to use this instead of doing all your animations during the game because you won't want to have someone shooting your or trying to hurt you while you are talking to a important person in the game.
Some interesting things that I learned to do with cameras is that there are four different camera movements. Even in movies there are just four types of movement. There is Pan, this is when the camera stay stationary and just rotates left or right, then there is Dollie up/down what this does is it moves the camera completely up and completely down but doesn't rotate, There also is Track or Trucking what this does just like Dollie up/down the camera moves left and right as if it were on a track, and finally there is zoom in/out this what it does simply is just like the name says zooms in and zooms out. Those are all the cameras that the movie industries uses and they are the movements that work the best.
Sounds was something that we briefly touched but it was so simple that you would be able to understand it. What we did was go to the internet and get some sounds of just random things. Then we used the program Audacity a sound editing program. The program is really simple to use all you do is highlight clips of the sound you have and add effects. The only hard part is getting the sound to sound like you want it. You can obscure the sounds to sound very strange and not even like the original. You can get a piece of paper and crumble it then add some bass also slow it down to get a nice explosion instead of actually exploding something and holding a microphone next to it.
Kismet and Matinee are two built in programs inside of the Unreal Development Kit. Kismet is a type of "coding" that UDK uses to do things in the game engine without having to write tons of line of code. Matinee is what is used when you want things to move around in your game. For example, if you want a camera to move with your character you would want to attach it using Kismet but if you want the camera to move in a specific way for example in a Dollie up motion you would use Matinee and add a trigger in Kismet that would get activated if you did something in the game. One thing that I really like about Kismet that you can't do in a lot of other programs is change something then run is right after without having to build it again. What I mean by build is that when you create a program you have to do two things one is build it then you can run it, when you build it your getting the program ready to run, and with Kismet you don't need to make it ready to run and you can just run saving you the time it takes to build the game. At first when you start a level it will take a couple of second to build your game but once you start adding lots of lights and tons of meshes that will eat up a lot of your power and will slow down your build time.
For my Artificial Intelligence class I learned that you can improve performance in your simulation or game by making a Master AI that sends messages to all of the agents in the game world. The way that it works is that it checks what all the agents in the "world" are doing and gives them order according to what the Master AI is programmed. For example, if a agent touches fire the agent doesn't know it's on fire until the Master AI say "Hey your on fire, take damage." and if your agent would take enough damage the Master AI would say "Hey your dead, get to your dead animation." It would be the Master AI to tell the agent to move out of the fire but the Master AI won't do it for him. The agent should have all of these functions built already inside of it all that the Master AI does is make the agent do or call on these functions. In a way the agent is your body and the Master AI is your brain telling it what to do. Your body has all the capabilities to do the things but it's not just going to randomly start doing it.
Fuzzy logic is a way in which what we human use to do calculations. When we say things like something is 'about' or 'kinda' we are just giving a rough estimate then rounding depending on how we see this. The way computers make decisions is by having a cut off point like a border on a map. As soon as you cross that line you are in another county so if you were to apply fuzzy logic to this example you will no longer have a solid line that says "As soon as you cross this line you are in so and so county." Instead it would have a point in which the two counties blend together and you can say that your kinda in this county but not really. Another example is when your blending colors together and you say that the color in between the two is kinda one color but not really.
In my 3D's Max class I learned about cinematic cameras, Bink video, sounds Kismet/Matinee, and lighting in 3D's Max. The normal light in 3D's max is alright if you just want to view your model quickly, but if you want to set up a cinematic scene you are going to want to change the lights in 3D's Max and also some cameras so that you won't be animating in just one viewpoint. This method is good and bad in both ways the ready it's good is because you can use all the tools that 3D's Max has that UDK doesn't for example in 3D's Max you can get hair to be really fine and have individual strains of it like we have in real life, but in UDK you can't do that your hair will loop like it's a bunch of groups placed together. Just like I said this is good and bad the reason it is good is because you will get a nice cinematic scene the reason it will be bad is because it will use lots of your memory getting a nice video. Most games now use in game cut-scenes instead of pre-rendered ones. That brings me into what I learned next. We learned about the video converting program called Bink Video. What Bink Video does is it compresses a movie file that you already have so that it won't use a lot of your memory. You can also convert a movie into a texture and apply it to something. That would be the advantage of using Bink Video. You would chose to use this instead of doing all your animations during the game because you won't want to have someone shooting your or trying to hurt you while you are talking to a important person in the game.
Some interesting things that I learned to do with cameras is that there are four different camera movements. Even in movies there are just four types of movement. There is Pan, this is when the camera stay stationary and just rotates left or right, then there is Dollie up/down what this does is it moves the camera completely up and completely down but doesn't rotate, There also is Track or Trucking what this does just like Dollie up/down the camera moves left and right as if it were on a track, and finally there is zoom in/out this what it does simply is just like the name says zooms in and zooms out. Those are all the cameras that the movie industries uses and they are the movements that work the best.
Sounds was something that we briefly touched but it was so simple that you would be able to understand it. What we did was go to the internet and get some sounds of just random things. Then we used the program Audacity a sound editing program. The program is really simple to use all you do is highlight clips of the sound you have and add effects. The only hard part is getting the sound to sound like you want it. You can obscure the sounds to sound very strange and not even like the original. You can get a piece of paper and crumble it then add some bass also slow it down to get a nice explosion instead of actually exploding something and holding a microphone next to it.
Kismet and Matinee are two built in programs inside of the Unreal Development Kit. Kismet is a type of "coding" that UDK uses to do things in the game engine without having to write tons of line of code. Matinee is what is used when you want things to move around in your game. For example, if you want a camera to move with your character you would want to attach it using Kismet but if you want the camera to move in a specific way for example in a Dollie up motion you would use Matinee and add a trigger in Kismet that would get activated if you did something in the game. One thing that I really like about Kismet that you can't do in a lot of other programs is change something then run is right after without having to build it again. What I mean by build is that when you create a program you have to do two things one is build it then you can run it, when you build it your getting the program ready to run, and with Kismet you don't need to make it ready to run and you can just run saving you the time it takes to build the game. At first when you start a level it will take a couple of second to build your game but once you start adding lots of lights and tons of meshes that will eat up a lot of your power and will slow down your build time.
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