Stray Dog Strut

“The house caught on fire in the winter, the bosses lay slain…”

I’m listening to Ocean Colour Scene’s Moseley Shoals album at the mo. It’s old but a fantastic album. I can’t say i’m an OCS fan as this is their only stuff i’ve heard but I would definately recommend it – great guitar solos and wicked beats=)

Okay I’m fed up with myself! I like too many things. I have too many interests that I just dabble. I’m a dabbler. I don’t commit myself enough to actually specialise in any one thing – probably why i’m still working in an office. No screw that, DEFINATELY why i’m still working in an office!

Let’s see…I love 3D animation. So you wan’t to be a 3D animator? So you try *deep breath* Anim8or, Rhino, MilkShape 3D, GMax, Truespace, Maya PLE, Lightwave…the list is endless. My favourite has to be Lightwave. I’ve just found the interface the easiest to get around. Maya produces spectacular results but I’ve learned more with Lightwave.

Yes, I have learned something. I know alot more about 3D animation than I did when I started (well duh!) but I haven’t as yet produced anything. Well, okay then, let’s dig out the old pitful attempts…

Exhibit A. What’s wrong with it? Well, you can’t see it in this pic but the nice border round the top isn’t nice at all. It’s stretched and at the time I didn’t figure out why so i’ve left it as is.
Exhibit B. Okay this one isn’t actually too bad. It’s unfinished obviously and I need to make a texture map for it – that was a roadblock I hit at the time as 3DMapper wasn’t free for awhile – but it’s fairly close to my original idea. Yes, I actually drew a design before I started this one – probably why it turned out better than my other attempts!
Exhibit C. Again, i’m semi-happy with this one. I like that I managed to get a nice smooth shape and, given my limited exposure to rendering, I actually managed to make it look a bit like porcelain. It did seem to have lines on it though and i’m not sure why. I don’t know alot about rendering yet as I was focusing more on modelling techniques so i’ve probably done something wrong. A simple object for anyone else i’m sure, but I’m a slow learner.
Exhibit D. Ha! Another very simple object but it didn’t turn out too bad. I spent alot of time getting the shape of the links correct – I’d just learned about creating piping by following some tuts – and it turned out I wasn’t able to show it off because it’s so small. Trust me, it did look like shiny metal..honest. The texturing is a bit hit and miss. I grabbed a royalty free wood texture off the web and splashed it all over the thing. it looks okay but I know it’s not. Never mind.

I think that’s all the horror stories so far. Told you I hadn’t achieved much so far. I’ve attempted to make various human-like characters but all ended up as something else. Character modelling is a whole other area of 3D Animation in itself and something you really need to study hard in.

I will study – don’t take this as a “oh it’s too hard” winge. I’m content to plod away at my own pace, study what I want to study when I want to study it. But I am acutely aware that I could be alot further forward if only I was more focused.

3D Animation led onto dabblings in Flash and 2D, I’ve messed around with programming and game creation (Again fruitless, despite using the fantastic DarkBasic program, no joke!). I’ve also played with Photoshop, editing photos. I actually did study this at college, along with Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Poser, and Bryce.

Bryce is a great program for the price. Not as complex as a full 3D modelling program but it produces amazing results…um where are mine? Heh, I did do something at college, honest…If I can find the Toy Story scene I created for a backdrop in Flash i’ll post it, anyway, it’s a really easy to use, intuitive program. I urge you to check it out if you can get your hands on it (I’m not sure if it’s still being sold as it’s changed owners).

Alot of the time, when I wasn’t studying tutorials – and I did actually do tutorials (a cool mansion scene, a glass bowl, spaceships) – I spent alot of time browsing other people’s work and 3D websites. While this is good for showing you what all these programs are capable of and giving you some inspiration (Check out Peter Ratner’s human modelling work! I can’t find the link as it’s lost somewhere in all my favorites=S), it also kinda kills imagination.

I’ve always been proud of my imagination. I used to conjuer up all kinds of stories and pencil drawings as a child. I used to think my pencil drawings were pretty good (I can’t find any i’m afraid) and I preferred drawing over painting. But the move to digital has meant i’ve drawn less and less (I don’t draw at all now really), and drawing, aswell as all the traditional art skills, is a real benefit for 3D work. It doesn’t matter how fancy the program is, if you can’t express what you want to create, the program won’t do it for you – as i’ve found out the hard way!

Anyway, I’ve not abandoned 3D, or any of the above interests. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do. I’ll keep you posted. Anything that passes the maximum-security, shoot-to-kill policy of my critical mind will be posted here.

“…Well I used to think my freedom was a lot of things I’d give, demanding on my time but I had so much time to give, well I used to think that everything was a knee in what you are. But finding out the truth that hurts so I never went that far…”

Air guitars at the ready folks, the solo’s coming…

“…No I always get awayyy…….”

Dawn of War is going well=)

The story is really good! Gabriel (Commander of the Blood Ravens) has found evidence of Chaos on the planet Tartarus so we’ve been seeking them out, killing Orks and Eldar on the way.

His second in command Isador (the Librarian) has uncovered Chaos sacrifices and ‘the key’ they we’re digging for, but seems to be slipping to their evil ways so I’m expecting him to turn against us any day now. Also, Inquisitor Toth has pulled the Emperor’s troops from my side so the Blood Ravens have no backup – I think he’s on the side of Chaos too…

…As mouth-watering as it is, it’ll have to wait – I have to tidy this room up for Falling arriving tomorrow, and hide her as yet unwrapped presents somewhere;-)

No blogs for a couple of days so what have I been upto? Well I’ve been trying out Ragnarok Online as you can see from the screenie above. I’ve created a character called Sparrow Hawk after the main character in Ursula le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea book.

So what do I think so far? Hmmm……I don’t know whether I like this game yet. The controls are fine and dandy but the introduction was anything but helpful. For starters, half the NPC’s you speak to tell you about stats etc but not what you’re actually meant to do.

The last part of the tutorial is combat and your basically sent into a field with a shell helmet (the one i’m wearing above) and a knife. I tried killing small bugs, medium bugs and anything I could see and died every single time – this is no fun! I know i’m a novice but come on!

I finally found a doorway at the top of the map (the exit that they only mentioned in a round about way) and faced the personality questions. Then I decided to be an archer and was whisked away to Payon to become an archer – or so I thought.

I arrive in a room and a very unhelpful receptionist tells me I cant become an archer until you have the requirements: get 3 logs that you get from willows ‘walking’ around the forest, a job level of 10, and all the basic skills.

So I go for a wander and find myself in a sea of greenery – the map is so unclear that I don’t even realise Payon has a city. I look for it, walking through portal after portal, I even meet a guard who says welcome to Payon but when I enter I can’t see anything remotely like a city or these willows they keep talking about. I suppose it’s the overhead view, even with the tilting, rotating & zoomable camera, it’s easy to miss things – they really need a better map. Every fansite has the same one – a pattern of coloured squares.

Needless to say my first night playing iRO was not a pleasant one. I left feeling very frustrated. I didn’t even come across a real person to talk to or if I did they didn’t feel like helping the lost newbie – even in Eve where the questions are thick and furious newbs are almost guaranteed a response if they’re polite. So far iRO feels so lonely, you see lots of characters but they don’t talk or must all be whispering – where’s the thrill of the hunt, the teaming up?

Day 2 then- well I found the city (more like a village), I even found Payon Palace but I haven’t taken up the offer of a free look inside yet. I read up on some websites about the game and that helped me get a general idea of what I’m supposed to do and what monsters I can actually kill (I kept dying again in this area). I tried various portals until I found one that led to a forest and I starting exploring.

Turns out I can kill Porings. Squishy pink balls that eat up all the good items their fallen brethren drop if you’re not quick enough. I also found some willows, hurrah! They seem to congregate in some parts of this area more than others so I managed to rack up quite a few kills one after another.

I spent tonight (Third day) killing Porings and Willows and levelling up and I’ve collected lots of different quality logs (and other junk) that I figured out I can store with Kafra services (The storage/respawn and telportation company in the game). So I now have HP of 89 which means I can comfortably kill Willows without dropping below 70 HP if i’m taking a beating, and the Porings barely scratch me (They take about 5 HP if they manage to hit back). My basic level is 10 and my job level is 9.

So I need to get the job level upto 10 in order to meet the requirements but i’m not sure where the ‘basic skills’ requirement comes in. Is this my basic level which is at 10 or the basic icon in my skills folder which is currently at 7. How do I know if I have all the skills? I’m hoping I don’t need 10 as it seems to take ages to go up! I’ll find out tomorrow night when I have another go and I might read up on what action/item actually affects what skill.

I’ve also been playing Dawn of War and i’m on mission 8 I think. I’ve just obtained Terminator squads which kick ass! Anyways, I think i’m due a coffee about now so this is Rambo signing off…