Hey everyone!
It seems every post I try to beat my previous time between posts haha XD. I don't know I just felt the urge to show some of the stuff I've been working on since no one outside my immediate family has even seen most of it, so yeah that's what I'll do I guess :). Yaya atenton! :DMusic Video/CollaboratingWorking with other people is weird, especially when their taste and style is almost the opposite of yours. But I got the chance to collaborate with a friend on their second music video and I figured why not - 5 months later and here it is! Plez watch it's good I swear :(Edit: Here's a Vimeo link as well, better quality and whatnot :)It probably took me about 2-3 months to film and edit it (you'd be surprised by how much hidden CG there is…like seriously the opening of the door shot starts off entirely CG, the stars are fake, we filmed most of it during the day, I've edited people's expressions…it's hilarious oh god why did I spend so much time on that door…), and the rest has been waiting for the song to be finished. It's not my cup of tea but I still enjoyed working on it all the same, and it taught me a lot of patience haha - I'm sure that applies to the collaboratee as well XD. I also still have a long way to go regarding directing and cinematography, but hopefully I'll be able to continue making these (I might be getting a gig from an actual band at some point, their guitarist knows about me anyway…and I'm cheap :( haha).
Simple geometry, lots of highly detailed textures constructed from random bits of footage
GameWorking on a game! I don't really want to say much about it since it's way too big for me to finish that is the third time I've almost typed vinish this blog and I'll probably give up by the end of the year, but ah well. I'm hoping to make a Lynchian detective game with meta commentary on fiction and consciousness, with a crap ton of 4th wall breaking and really cool ideas I can't wait to give up on!I've been developing my own game engine in C#, dubbed the "Flipper Engine". I've mostly been focusing on graphics capabilities (I've got a lot of experience there), but an interface is starting to form too :).Just a few features I've implemented so far (this is purely showing off)- Scene importing from Blender + parenting and all that
- Deferred rendering
- Realtime lighting from area, spot, directional and point lights + variance and exponential shadow mapping
- Temporal anti aliasing
- Raycasting and collision checking
- Distance Field Font Rendering
- Head Tracking
Just the shadows and rounded Lambert, looks pretty cool :D
Looks less cool in color, although they're supported there's no textures yet XDShader SandwichThe most boring of them all, Unity's a pain and so developing Shader Sandwich is a pain. However…a customer emailed me and notified me that Shader Sandwich just spews errors in the latest version of Unity - eek!So I've been busy working on that, and I've created a cool new system for layering different lighting modes, which allows for a crap ton more possibilities :D
It's not too interesting so I won't write much about it but I've also been developing a real time GI system alongside Shader Sandwich, it works XD. Also working on some songs that aren't just crappy guitar (one about collaborating, one about buttons, one that's a spiteful rip off, something else I forgot XD), and am planning on getting singing lessons so I don't sound like a dying horse :DSome or otherSo yeah that's some of the stuff I've been up to, not too exciting overall but ya know, slowly getting there XD. Where 'there' is is a fantastic question mind you, but out of all these different things one of them's got to turn out well, right?Well anyway thanks for reading, or even just looking at the pictures haha :)
Good to see you're still keeping busy. I was wondering what happened to your last project, and then it occurred to me—I cannot believe it's been almost three years since that halloween contest. You probably don't even remember it, it's so long ago, and yet it feels like yesterday to me (probably on account of how rarely I've been signing in on 64D). Time flies, I guess.
I only just now saw your last two blogs. I imagine life's changed a lot, since then, and I can only assume from the tone of this new blog that things are looking up. I have a sort of expectation that people post more blogs than I can ever read, but that's just not true, anymore.Your CG is looking pretty good (the color version of that image is not good; you are missing a lot of color information, the most visually obvious being diffuse light). But the shadows look realistic (if a little exaggerated), and the CG in that video was very, very good. I could tell the door was CG, but only from the unnatural camera movement and lack of focus problems. The rest was completely unnoticeable.Are you doing that professionally, now? Or are you thinking of going back to school?Hey Josh :). Gosh I wish I could do filming and VFX professionally - I'm not gonna see a cent from the video haha XD. I guess I'm doing the Unity Asset Store stuff though, but I don't think that really counts as professionally. I went back to school last year but it caused all my online stuff to take a dive so I've taken another break for this year…not sure if I'll go back yet :/
And yeah sorry about my more edgy previous blogs lol, definitely feeling better about this year :DThanks, it was a lot of fun trying to do more "hidden" CG than I normally do - much more challenging than things we know are fake (like werewolves or floating robots) lol XD. Ooh as a cool note on the camera movement of the door shot, I actually ended up recording the camera move in real life and then camera tracking it in, ah well XD. At least the other fully CG shot wasn't noticed (The singer never even brought up that we didn't film it haha) :D. And yeah textures are definitely needed in the game engine scene - it looks a little better further away but still quite flat. I'll hopefully post more blogs with updates on that scene in the future :)But wow time really does vanish…yeah if you're referring to Scary 4 Digits then that happened like 3 and a half years ago! I know I'm not allowed to feel old yet but…wow…That means I've been working on Shader Sandwich for…over 2 years, my god…So what's been going on with you? I mean, I'd love if everyone here posted blogs more often but since you're here it'd be cool if you would :P. I vaguely remember reading in one of your old posts that you worked at Google, assuming that's not just a delusion then how'd that go? :)Things are well with me. I still work at Google, which is why it's surprising to me that it's been so long since that halloween contest. Apparently, the contest was held very soon after I got the job.
And I don't mind an emo-leaning blog; we basically all have them. I'm glad you made it through all of that, unscathed.I've been meaning to blog more, but most of the stuff I would blog about, I just vent at people I work with, regularly. My last blog was about Sticker Star; I've been playing some Color Splash, so I'll probably write about it, soon. It wouldn't kill me to make a plain old blog about the shit that's happened in three years, though it doesn't amount to much. If my life were as busy as it used to be, I probably would have noticed three years go by. :POne way or another, I'll blog soon. It's amazing—of all the websites I've ever visited, 64Digits has beem the most stable through the years (in terms of still existing, and still working the way it did when I first used it). I'd like to extend my personal site a bit, and include my 64D blog on it. I might get around to that this year. :PThere's some irony when 64D is a source of stability in your life.