MDDN 353, Project 3, Layout

As I said in the previous post it is quite hard to get the layout to be exactly how we want it to look like. This is how it looked like when I was making the images relevant to one another.

As you can see there is quite abit of overlapping with the images which is really annoying. I tried doing it all in several different ways but it sill wasn't working. I had even asked the networking students how they think that it could work. What it turns out is that Joss exported the images in quite a large size. Once we figured that out we were able to put them in properly in a better way

also what I did with this so that the image are always in line is that I have 2 horizontal linear layouts within the relative layout. This means that the images will always be inline with each other as long as they are all the same size.

MDDN 352, Project 3, Development

So far Eclipse hasn't really been that difficult to try and learn. I actually think that this would be a lot easier to make an app than flash builder would be. The only downside to it is that I dont think that it exports onto IOS devices so we are going to stick with Android devices for this project but we might try and expand if people like this app.

At the moment I am just trying to get the layout of our app sorted. 

Joss has made 4 icons which represent the 4 page of our app. He has also has laid them out how we want them to look like so that I can make it look like it in eclipse.

We thought that we would go for the plain white and green colour style because we are focusing mainly on recycling. We also want to make everything to be able to be excessed with using only 2 clicks to get to any page. 

Implementing these into eclipse though was actually a little of a challenge. I am using a relative layout which means you set every image to be relative to something, ie. scan barcode icon is always set to the left of the statistics button. Something which eclipse doesn't like though is circular dependancies. by that I mean I cant say that the scan barcode icon is the the left of the stats button, and also say that the stats button is also only to the right of the scan barcode button.  This doesn't sound like that it is much of a big deal but its only a problem when there are other images in them like the bar which is at the top of the screen.

We have also just been told that our beta presentation of our app is now on the 7th of June. Unfortunately that is the day after the Advanced Game Beta so I have a lot of work to do to get all of these working by then

MDDN 343, Project 3, High Character

Francis has finished the Mudbox high polly version of UDDU and it looks really good. At the moment it doesnt look like he has any eyes but the higher level does and once we put on the normal map onto it then it will look even better than it does now

Now that I have this model I can fully work on animations, I think that I have figured out the reason why the animations were screwing up before, and if it is the way why I think it is then it will be really stupid and would of meant a real waste of a weekend where I was working on those animations.

Our team have also had another meeting the other week but unfortunately I could not attend because of other commitments. From what I have heard of is that we have had some contact with Katie and that she said that she has uploaded the model as well as animations for the guard onto dropbox but we still cant find it up there. This is kind of annoying because I started working on a guard which will be in my next blog post but also that she has done the animating but then this means I can work on other stuff swell.

MDDN 352, Project 3, moving to Eclipse

So after a very long weekend trying to get that barcode scanner working it still hasn't been able to work. We downloaded everything which we needed for it to work but it still hasn't which was really frustrating.

I had a chat with Ryan and he came to have a look at the code to see what was the problem. He also said that it should work, BUT when he couldn't figure it out he read a line of code which made us realize that this wasn't code for a barcode scanner but a barcode generator. We extremely shocked when we saw that and it did feel like a complete waste of a weekend.

So since that we weren't able to get the barcode scanner working in eclipse we have decided to move to eclipse.

So once again I am going to be learning another new language in this paper. Over the next couple of days I plan on just watching some tutorials and getting to know how to use java.

Ryan told me of a great tutorial channel which focus's completely on android development.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2F07DBCDCC01493A

So while Joss continues to work on the art of our project I plan on getting to know this program. 

MDDN 352, Project 3, Barcode Scanner

So one of the main things which we want to do for our app is to have a barcode scanner working. In flash builder we have already managed to get a QR reader working but thats all it does.

Here is where I got the code and tutorial on how to get a QR reader working.

http://www.remotesynthesis.com/post.cfm/adding-a-qr-code-reader-in-flex-on-android

This works perfectly fine and Matt said that he can hook it up so that once you scan something successfully it will go onto another page instead of launching what it does at the moment.

Finding a barcode scanner though is actually a lot harder. Between me and Joss we have decided that he is going to focus on getting the art working and I am going to work on the flash builder side of our app.

We have found a tutorial which we think should work.

http://code.google.com/p/flexbars/source/browse/#svn/trunk/examples%253Fstate%253Dclosed

After having a chat with Richard and Ryan they both said that this should work.
All of the Network Engineering students said that we should move to eclipse because they know to use it and they already have a barcode scanner working in that.

I have decided that I am doing to try and get this barcode scanner in flash builder working but if I cant get it working by monday (27th May) then we are going to move onto eclipse. Eclipse uses Java which is something that I havent used before but I think I would be able to pick it up withen a couple of days

MDDN 352, Project 3, Group Discussion

We have had a good group meeting after our initial presentation.

In the meeting we found out that a lot of our network engineering students have done similar stuff which we need for our app in previous assignments. Unfortunately in those assignments they used a program called 'Eclipse' which is a program which we have never used before. What we have Decided to do is that we are going to try and work with flash builder and see if we can get what we need. But if we cant we plan on moving to Eclipse and trying to work with that.

Regarding roles what we have at the moment is that the network engineering students are going to make the server working and make it that when a button is pressed some information is going to the server and sends something back.

On the design side Joss and I have already been working on icon ideas.

Here are 3 icons which I have made that I thought could look nice in our app.

I have tried to get an image which represents the icon so that the user definitely knows what they are.

From now though I am moving slightly away from the look of the app but more on how it feels and the user interface. At the moment I am trying to get a barcode reader working for our app. I have found a couple tutorials which I going to try and follow that should hopefully give me a barcode reader.

This is something which is really important in our app because it is pretty much the main feature and it is something which we want to get in the app asap.

MDDN 343, Project 3, More asset design

Because I got really frustrated with the animating of our character I have decided to leave it until I get the low level from Francis

Some more assets for what we need are boxes which are double the original box.
We dont want it to be different than the other boxes so I am keeping the same design. What we are planning on doing is changing the texture of the double boxes.

I really like my box design because it is really different from other boxes which I have seen made in the past.

In one of our scenes we have our character UDDU jump onto a pipe which falls down and crushes some guards which is bellow it. The pipe is a real simple model but will looks a lot better once we add the texture to it. I modelled it off the air vent pipes which we have in the 4th floor media lab at te are.

The middle part of the pipe is separate from the ends so that the center can fall off and leave the 2 ends attached to the wall

In the beginning of our game UDDU starts off in a jail cell. In one world the cell has glass and in the other it doesn't. I didn't want to make a typical jail cell that we have in prisons but something which looks like it could hold a alien. I took inspiration from the jail cell from the Avengers movie where they hold Loki.

When creating this I made it into 3 different parts.

The Frame, the jail cell itself and then the glass. 

The glass will be transparent so that you can see through it. I think that once this has been texture that it will look really nice and.

There are afew other assets which I need to make like lights and doors but at this moment animations are more of a priority.

Also we still havent heard much of Katie and I really hope we hear from her soon because we are getting to the stage where we really need to have all 3 designers working a lot on this project. We had a chat with Kah and Stu during our last play testing session and they said that for now to leave the stuff which we have given to Katie and if we haven't heard from her by our beta presentation then it would be best to do her parts and think of it as if she isn't finishing the course.

MDDN 343, Project 3, importing animations into Unity

with the walk animation which I just finished I tired to put into Unity.

I really dont like Unity at the moment because it really doesn't like me with trying to import fbx's.

When I import the FBX into unity the character box comes out with a black character. When I click onto it I cant even see the character and when I play the animation nothing happens. I bought it into the default unity game and what comes up doesn't even look like my character.

The object which is in unity is just a random object rather than my character.

I exported the walk animation 12 different times with having the exact same problem. Each time I re rigged and animated the character. This got me so frustrated because it took about 4-5 hours to re rig and animate the character.

Once I thought that I had fixed it and the character was imported into unity properly and the character looked how he was meant to another problem came up.
This time what was happening what that for some reason the camera was being animated instead of the character. So the character was in the right position when in Unity but still wasnt animating.

After this happened I started to get really frustrated with what was going on so I decided to move to more asset creation to give me a break from animating.

MDDN 343, Walk animation 2

I have redone the walk animation for our character to see if the other group members think that this is better.

Unfortunately I couldn't Loop it in maya but this is actually looking a lot better than the original one I did. From what Stephen in my group told me I am going to have to create all of my animations from halfway through the animation. He said that in Unity you can cross fade animations so that they will do that for our animations in unity.

MDDN 343, Project 3, animation Issues

From our play testing we got a lot of feedback which has really told us that we are quite far behind what we want it to be.

In our group meeting we discussed a timeline for what we want done and when we want it. There is  a lot which we need to have done and we dont have much time to do it.

Something which has made this quite a struggle is that Katie has been absent for the last few weeks and have havent heard anything from her. We have given her the role of modeling a guard which we are hoping to have in our game asap as at the moment it is just a cylinder which is in its place.

Something which I am specifically having a problem with is the animations of our character. When I animate our character some of his joints dont animate properly and end up twisting on itself. Francis told me that the reason for this is that I used duplicate special on the character when I wanted to mirror the model. I forgot to delete the history of the model before I rigged it and so when I was moving one side of the object the other side would slightly be effected even if the weight painting said that it wasnt meant to be effected. Another thing which I am having a problem with is that the animations don't look continuous. When the walk animation is played it seems to stop for a split second at the end of the animation. Stephen told me that I should try doing the walk cycle from starting at the middle of the walk and see if that looks better when I loop it.

MDDN 352, Project 3, First Presentation

We just had our first presentation for our app. In this presentation we just confirmed what we want in our app and how it would work.

We have also been given a 3rd network engineering student in our group named Fraser Foon. 

The tutors seemed quite interested in our app and I am quite sure that we can get it working and looking really well.

Here is the Presentation slides which we used for our presentation.

We are planning on having a proper sit down meeting sometime next week and have a talk about what each of us are going to do in the development of our app.

MDDN 352, Project 3

For this assignment we are forming groups with students from the network engineering side of victoria university. This assignment involves us forming groups of 4 and create a app which is loosely aimed for  the department of conservation. The app has to help the users think about how to help our planet like to encourage them to recycle, which is what my groups app is aimed to do.

I unfortunately didn't have an idea for this assignment but I have decided to go in a group with Joss Doggett. His idea is to help encourage users to recycle by having the user scan the bar code of recyclable products just before they are put into a recycling bin and to collect points on how many things they recycle. At the moment the name of the app is going to be called 'Check it'. The app will also give you information about the product after you scan. This information should also make the users want to recycle that product more in the future.

Joss (http://jddubdesign.tumblr.com/tagged/MDDN_352)  and I are the design side of the group and the engineering side of our group is made up of Martin Chan and Matthew Bisley.

Just like game design I havent worked with any of these people before and it will be another interesting experience.

For this project we need a group blog for all of us to contribute to.
Here is the URL to the group blog for 'Check it'
http://checkitapp.blogspot.co.nz/

MDDN 343, Project 3, animations

I have done a quick animations which I plan on giving to the computer science students so that they can use it for animation testing.

I havent done this to high detail because I plan on creating simple animations on this low polly character and then get to know the rig and weight painting and when the high polly character is ready form mudbox I plan on redoing the animations onto the lower level of the high polly character and then add the normal map onto that character.

Walk

Idle

Pick up

Jump

Carry

MDDN 352, Project 2, Reflection

After the initial shock of actionscript 3 and learning another entire new language of coding, I started to really enjoy this project. I learnt a lot of good skills with this project which will actually be able to help me when I leave university.

I am happy with how my turned in app came out but I do wish that I could of done a lot more stuff to it, especially fix up a lot of the sound and actually put in the backing track like it is in the video.

I am quite keen to actually tweak and finish the book sometime and make it into a fully functioning app like how I imagined it would be. This is something which I am thinking of doing in the break between the first and second trimester.

Overall I had a great time on this assignment, there were high points and a lot of low points, but those low points I know will make me better as a designer.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Before animating

The other day we had a chat about animating in class. Ben Richards told us several things which we should do to help with our animating.

The first thing was to have a look at a book called 'The animators survival kit' by Richard Williams. 

This is actually a really good book and I highly advise anyone who plans on having a career in animations should have a look at this. There was a lot of stuff about walk cycles which come in handy.

What else he told us to do is to record us doing the animations which we want to do.

So that is what I did.

Sorry for the bad quality but there wasnt much places I could do this at my house.

MDDN 343, Testing for animations from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

MDDN 352, FInal Videos

For our final hand in Kah wants us to make a video of our app in actions. So well here it is.
It is pretty much made as how I would of wanted my app to be for the final hand in. The backing track in this video is the one which I wanted in the app but for some reason it just wouldn't play when I told it to (the backing track is actually in the handed in api file). Also the sounds would stop and start at the beginning of each scene instead of it looping over to the next if there is still some of the loops left which I defined. These are things I would want to work on more if I get some time.
After Filming this I realized that I probably filmed it at a bad place because when its on the snoring scene you can see the reflection of me and the camera stand on the Ipad. This is something else I would want to improve on if I were to make another video.
But here it is

Mr Whistler Video from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

MDDN 343, Project 3, Rigging

Francis has completed a simple box modeled character for what we want to use in our game. He plans on taking this character into mudbox and doing some high sculpting in that. Here is how the box model version of the character looks like.

There are a few things which I have changed from this original model which francis gave me. I have made him less wider as this model makes him look quite fat. I have also shorted his arms because they seem quite long at the moment. In this model he also doesnt have a tail which is what I am adding. His feet is also very plane at the moment so I am adding more of a hoof to his feet which also matches his hands.

This character looks a lot more balanced in the proportions of his body. What we plan on doing is to animate this model and then after Francis has put this model into mudbox and done some sculpting on it to add a normal map to make it look more detailed.

I am now focusing on animations for the character. The Rig is made for a simple Humanoid character as he walks pretty much like a human. 

The main animations which our character will have is
-Walk
-Idle
-Jump
-Pick up
-Idle while pick up

MDDN 352, Project 2, ScreenShots

Here are some Screenshots from most of the pages from my app. As well as the initial layout of Mr Whistler and his clothes from the page where he is getting dressed

MDDN 343, P3, Importing Character into unity

The computer science students want me to give them a real simple character without animations which they can put into our game so they can test a lot of the simple mechanics for it. I was using the model which I was given the other day and was just going to export it as an fbx and give it to them. Unfortunately something wasnt right. when I exported as a fbx it decided that there is a massive area of empty space between the 0 points and the character.

This was a real annoying problem which I could figure out how to fix. I exported it about 6 different times before I managed to fix it. Im not even sure how I did it. I just ended up selecting the character and coping him into another maya scene and it managed to work with that

This was such a frustrating thing to try and get sorted but hopefully something like this doesnt happen again now.

MDDN 352, Project 2, Shake

WE HAVE FOUND A WAY TO SHAKE THE SCREEN.

With the help of a couple of the other class mates we have managed to figure out a code that uses shake. This has been something I know a lot of us have been trying to do and I am so glad that we have finally been able to sort it. It isn't using the Z axis like how I wanted it to originally but shake it side to side still works the same.
In the code I have it that once you shake the screen that you go onto the next page which is exactly what I wanted it to happen.




Since hand in is only a day away I dont think I will be keeping in masking into my app but it is something I wouldn't mind having in now but I just dont know how to contextualize it for my app. If I were to expand on the 4 pages which I am doing then maybe I could  find some place to put it. But that is something which I can think about later on.

MDDN 352, Project 2, animations

For my app I dont plan on having many animations at this point. I only what to have what in intractable to be animated so that it stands out for the user. Because I am doing a book which already has a lot of its art already done I cant really make and walk cycles or anything for my characters unless I end up changing the art style completely. At this stage I am just planning on having the objects glow red on loop so that you can see that something is meant to happen when they are interacted with. I plan on animating them in flash and exporting them as a SWF and use the SWFLoader in flash builder to add them into my app.


Here is a animation of how I am expecting an item to look














Once seeing that in the app I dont think that it looks right. Because my book is all about a character who whistles a lot I have come up with the idea of the items that are intractable to be 'whistling'. They wont actually be whistling but they will have musical notes coming out of them like this

I like this one a lot better than the original animations i thought about because I think this looks a lot more in context for my app. Something which I may do if I have more time is have them also move slightly. I would really want to do this but I am running out of time and I want to have the main interactions sorted in the app before I do any more small tweaking on assets. Something really small which took us ages to figure out was how to make an animation only play once in flash builder. What I found was that in flash at the last frame you have to go into actions and add stop(); which will stop the animation. This works fine all up until you want to standard package your app which then for some reason it decides to ignore that stop and loop the animations anyway. At this stage fast packaging is working fine so I will probably stick with that for now

Here are other animations which I am planning on putting into my app for now

MDDN 352, Project 2, Masking

After working on my App for a while I think that it is going well. Shake is still a problem which I cant seem to figure out. If need be I am thinking of changing the scene of shaking Mr Whistler to wake him up to that he is having a dream and to take him up you have to wipe the dream away using your fingers. That will be using the mapping idea which I have figured out how to do.

To test it I have just got a black screen with the background image going over it.

mask testing from Richard Hpa on Vimeo.

It works fine and im glad I have got this working. But what I really want to do is have the shake motion because that is something which the tutors seemed to like when I told them my idea. I really hope I can get it sorted before Sunday or it may be a late night for me.

MDDN 352, Project 2, Sound and timer

Because my book is about a man who whistles I need to have sound in my app. An idea which I have had is to have several musical notes on the screen and when you press them a different whistle would play. This is on the wish list of things I want.

I have found several free to use sounds, mainly from

http://incompetech.com/music/
http://soundbible.com/

I am also thinking of maybe recording myself whistling to have in my app but im not sure how good quality would come out of that.

I want a backing track to play over the entire app and I think I may have found one called 'Enigma' by Kevin MacLoud which was taken from the incompetech site which I listed above. If I could get this working it would be great.
At the moment I am using the Embed sound effect code for my sound but I dont think that it would work for all my sounds but I will try it out.

I have also managed to get a delay working on my app. For my delay I want my text to appear about a couple of seconds after the scene has been created. This was actually quite easy as there was already a Timer built into Flash builder. But what I am saying is for that after a specific amount of time to turn autoLoad of an animation to true which will start the animations

MDDN 352, Project 2, Development

At this moment I have most of of the harder parts of my app sort of sussed. The only things which I have in it besides the codes which I have talked about at the previously is buttons which take you onto other pages. I am hoping to have at least 4 pages for my app, and also have a title page.

What I am working on now is just putting my pages together and laying them out to how I want them to be.
After that I am going to start working on animations as well as sorting out which dialog I want in my app. So far things are going well but I expect that the closer it gets to monday the more I will realize that I need to do