#thatspaceproject

I can't believe it's not Blender's Animation Engine!

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 05:12:38 +0000

In the "So that's how that works" vein, I discovered Blender Paths. And thus I made a trial project.

Only problem was that Blender's animation engine...well, it's not the simplest thing to get to put out a .avi. So...I ended up rendering all the images, then porting them into Monkey Jam, then fiddling with the sounds, since Monkey Jam was only allowing me a single track, then waiting for the thing to upload...

But, yeah...

We Have a Spinny

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 20:29:00 +0000

Well, it's not exactly the most visually exciting of videos. But, thanks to the awesome work Stopsecret did in his Rocket Script, Crash's helpful answering of questions, and a little search-fu, I successfully imported the Galactic Peacekeeper into Unity - apparently it doesn't have too many polygons - and can spin it around using keyboard controls!

(Apologies for video quality, I'm still mastering FRAPS...)

If you imagine there's a dark starry sky racing past in this first one, it gets a lot more engaging.

This one has a lot more spin - and reveals a lot more issues with ~~missing~~ overlapping* faces. (Don't worry, it can do more than turn in a barrel roll. I had FRAPS issues, and the only video I got of it from a different angle was awkward enough that I didn't upload it.)

Well, it's definitely got issues that need fixing. But as far as it goes, it also works - in its own way - which is a heck of a lot more than what I had when I started a few days ago.

Not sure what the best next step would be - try to get flying a bit better, model a good test map, etc...

*Thanks go to le for pointing that out.

Step One Complete

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 07:41:00 +0000

Well, that's one Light spaceship built and a lot of polygons deleted. Currently, it's at about 14k, down from 22 or so. Which...is still probably way too high for a multiplayer game. But it's low enough I can say "Close enough for the moment," and move on to the next step - modeling the first playing map.

You can't see it in either of these photos, but the cockpit computer is lit.

A "night" version, showing engines/running lights(and a tiny bit of glow from the cockpit computer screen). I'll probably need to add some glow to the guns, but I'll leave worrying about that until I'm actually programming the shooting function.

EDIT: ...And I've just know realized the silliness of thinking I could use a 14k model for testing functions. :facepalm: I guess I'll just make #885 Space Scooter and use that. I imagine that'll be...still probably a good two or three hundred polygons more than desirable, even if I shave off all visible studs, but it should work at least a little better...

Baby Steps First. You might even say "Light" steps.

Thu, 07 Jan 2016 07:09:00 +0000

I was planning on waiting on posting anything related to this until I had something a little more solid to show you. But Google Docs isn't hyperlinking the Peeron links for some reason, and I'm debating which would make the ideal Light starship for modeling with. So...the contenders. There were others, but these are the ones that were the size I was envisioning, had a full cockpit, had the least immediately foreseeable problems with them, and I liked the general look of and felt like I could stand slowly adapting them for a game environment.

Personally, I'm thinking the #6850 Auxiliary Patroller or the #6886 Galactic Peacekeeper are the best choices for a test model, just based on how much few "wing greebles" they have, thanks to those housings/cockpits. (The model from #6957 Solar Snooper was purposely left off of the list because I realized as I was making the Gallery that it made a better Ship Destroyer than it did a Light (starfighter).)