Project Bug hunt

[andrew]

Hi, i have decided to start a small personal project.
over the years i have created a lot of assets and stuff, and now the time has come to make use of them.

i currently don´t have any story yet, but i have some cool ideas. Ever since i saw starship troopers and aliens, i have always wanted to create something similar. so the basic idea is having some soldiers protecting a settlement, and pretty much killing hundreds of insect like aliens.
Another idea was to have some soldiers being ambushed by the same creatures inside a dark cave.

current status is that i am almost done modeling the alien creature, i have also just finished rigging it too. now i just need to finish up some details before i can UV it and texture it. perhaps i will get it finished within this week, and then i can finally begin working on some miarmy stuff.

i am also adding some pictures of my creature




if you have any suggestions or feedbag please don´t hesitate to write me
i will keep this thread going until i have finished this project

kind regards
Andrew

[Yeah YANG]

Thank you for your first posting Andrew
And also thank you for testing our tool~~
If you need license for render more than 100 agents, we can generate for your an temp license key

But I'm sorry, I cannot see your three images?

Best,
--Yeah

[andrew]

Hi yeah
thank you for offering the temp license key , how much are you gonna charge me for the license ?

hm i think you will need to either save the images to disk or open image in a new tab?
do you know a good image upload website? i am not very used to upload things

and thank you for your interest:)

[andrew]

HI guys
here´s a small update.

just finished uv mapping and skinning on the bug creature, i might begin today with creating the original agent.
I have also done some more work on the storyline.
the storytelling will be set from a soldier´s camera view. The plot so far is, that some colonists on a far away planet has sent a distress call. A battalion of marines are sent to investigate, very soon they discover what happened to the colonists. the story is not very original but the interesting thing, is that it will be told as a sort of documentary. The idea is that we are watching the video recordings from the soldier´s helmet and surveillance cameras. and other interesting camera angles.

hope you guys are still interested in this project

regards
Andrew

[Yeah YANG]

Sure we'are all interested in
Please continue posting~~

Have a nice weekend
--Yeah

[andrew]

Hi
a small update.
i discovered a big mistake when i had created the original agent. i had forgotten to create properly hip joints at the back legs. The rig was easily adjusted and new joints were added. I was smart enough to export the skinning map before adjusting the rig, but unfortunately after fixing the rig my skin maps don´t work anymore.
this is a minor bud tedious setback, hopefully i can get it fixed quickly tomorrow.

have a nice weekend too Yeah

[andrew]

Hey guys

sorry i haven´t posted anything lately but, i have been very busy.

i have recently finished rigging and skinning my character, and created the original agent. i have also begun the long process of creating all the animations for the agents, walk cycles, run cycles etc. I have finished the walk cycle, although it took me most of the day to finish. it´s been quite a while since i have animated, therefore the first few animations might get a little rough and unpolished.
i have run the first few tests, getting the agents to avoid each other and follow a spot, while using the walk action to get them moving. everything seems to work well, one thing i am considering is to use the IK lock. it might get useful to lock the feet on the terrain automatically, and makes it more natural.

i am sorry i haven´t gotten any pictures or videos, but when i get more free time i will find something to show

hope you guys are still interested

[Yeah YANG]

Thank you for your posting Andrew
And Please take your time, we'll continue following it !

Cheers!
--Yeah

[andrew]

Hi guys here´s a quickie

things has been really slow lately. i currently have a lot of things to attend to right now, but when i have time and energy i will continue on this project.
The current status of the project is, that i have been doing some render tests. i ran into some render issues and needed to get this solved, which took me a few weeks. luckily i got it resolved and i can move on to other things on this project.
Lately i have been doing R&D on a bullet system, which should work after the Agents has been cached out. it has proven to be more difficult than i anticipated. the theory behind, is that when an agent perform an specific action it will emit an particle, which will eventually hit another object(Geometry) and trigger an event which will spawn new particles.
Now, the first problem is that if i cache out the agents first, then the particle emitter won´t work. but if i cache out the particles first, then the agents will be out of sync with the particles. i am starting to wonder if it would be better to make a tool that writes out information about the agents, and use that to trigger the emitting of particles, or a lot of other things.

a different approach which i am considering, is to simply do all these effects in post. the only hassle about it, is that it will be more tricky to create effect layers between the agents. i am open to suggestions guys
hope you guys are still interested

kind regards
Andrew

[andrew]

Hi everyone. it has been quite some time since i gave you guys an update.
things has been slow but recently i made some big technical breakthroughs and i´m on track again

the current state of this project is, that it´s still ongoing but on a slower pace than i had hoped. i´m pretty much done with my R&D on the Miarmy crowds and sort of have an pipeline. this means that i will move on to building the assets and do some more character modeling. and also try to get some storyboard done and do concepts of the scenes.
Another interesting idea i have been playing around with, is a way to easily capture all the motion data for my characters. since it would probably take me quite some time to do all the animations by hand. the idea is to use the kinect in combination with an web camera and some newly developed software which seems pretty affordable. when the time is right i will get back to the motion capture idea.

for now i can show you some new pictures of one of the characters. it´s basically the same character but with some minor modifications.
i´m also sharing a small previs video of what to expect regarding the crowd simulations.
please enjoy






Miarmy crowd preview

[Yeah YANG]

Thank you andrew for your update
Your video is really cool and let me repost it here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yS21nujXxU

Looking forward to watch the final rendered scene

It's Spring Festival here and happy new year from China!!

Cheers!
--Yeah