Ramblings from a Noob +1

[Calena]

Well, still working, studying, working. My age has two sections and the first section is built, though there is still mountains of work to be done to finish it. I've got footstep regions, sitting mods, working buttons for animations. The tutorials are very detailed and have walked me through everything. I've been working at least 2 - 4 hours a day on this and my biggest complaint is not having more time to spend on it. It's fascinating. By it's nature, the first section in my age is a bit simplistic compared to what I have in mind for the second section. That's worked for me because I can use what I've learned so far to prepare me to move into the more difficult modeling, texturing and lighting techniques I'll need as I go forward. Geez, I've already got textures layered 4 deep to get the right 'look'. I find it best not to think about what it's going to take to build the whole age, but rather focus on this one thing I'm trying to get right.

I've spent days getting a single object right. A good example would be rusty tin cans. My son suggested that putting these in one scene would help and he was right. That sounded pretty easy to me. DAYS later, I was reminded of my life-long tendency to open mouth and insert both feet. Modeling the first can was easy, texturing and lighting this little object, not so easy. Then there was the crushing and opening the lids, which changed everything and required re-texturing and re-lighting. I'm still not 100% satisfied, but for the moment I'm leaving them alone. They definitely add the finishing touch. He also suggested flies buzzing around. I'm thinking little tiny black spheres with a couple of little planes for wings on a continuous loop. Sounds easy enough. After the cans, I'm afraid to even start . I haven't even done any serious studying on adding sound emitters. It'll be really cool when it's done. Just keep saying that over and over and I'll get there eventually.

On a good note, I found the website for the Guild of Linguistics (sp?). It's packed with information on the D'ni language structure and how to translate, so I'm once again hopeful that I can get a good age name.

That's it for today's rambling. I hope all the other noobs are enjoying building their ages as much as I am.

[ametist]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts here Calena, I find myself giggle sometimes and shake my head some other times, recognizing it all . I'm impressed by your progress!
Just a little something about 'flies in a continous loop' - such animations tend to slow down the performance so a tip could be containing them in a region and trigger the anim with a script. It's a cool idea! Something similar is to be found in the ERCage - there are an insect buzzing around a plant.

Oh, and btw - how's the bear?

[Calena]

Just a little something about 'flies in a continous loop' - such animations tend to slow down the performance so a tip could be containing them in a region and trigger the anim with a script. It's a cool idea! Something similar is to be found in the ERCage - there are an insect buzzing around a plant.

Oh, and btw - how's the bear?

Great idea about triggering the flies, thanks . I know how to make a triggering loop. My son said "a couple" of flies, so I'm hoping to make two. He didn't get his artistic talents from me, so I'm lucky I have him around for pointers.

How's the bear you ask? Now it's my turn to giggle. You knew. I couldn't get that little face asking for the bear out of my head, so yes - there's now a bear in the cave . Okay, it doesn't move or talk or anything. But there are such things as cave paintings! So now there is a bear, three wolves, an eagle and a mountain lion decorating the cave walls. I didn't mention it, but he wanted three wolves too. And being that I'm grandma and at least a billion gazillion years old, I've had plenty of time to learn everything there is to know in the universe. It gets better. He slept over and in the morning his first question was "Grandma, did you make the bear?" Um, no. I was sleeping. "But, papa told me you work at night sometimes." I love my grandson, he's the best!

[Calena]

I like the work I got done in the last week. The latest bit came out much better than I anticipated. It's great when it works like that. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm rather anal about textures. I go to extreme lengths till I get it where I'm satisfied. It's nothing for me to put 8 or 10 hours into getting one texture that I'm happy with. This isn't just a problem with the software, this is me knowing what looks good but not having the 'artists eye' to get it right the first time. I know several professional artists and designers. They get the picture in their mind and can go right to it. Me, I have to try this, that and the other thing before I find it. My strength has always been my tech skills, so I'm getting the tech part of building really fast. It's the art part that I spend days and days on. The good news is, because of the challenge of getting the art part looking good, I'm getting to know about every button Blender and Gimp have. I've also gotten pretty darn good at direct editing the texture data files in Blender and URUCC. I can erase about anything (yikes! make it go away!). I'm new to Gimp, too. I've been using CorelDraw/PhotoPaint for the past ten years, but my old version won't run in Windows 7. I've got it in a VM running XP and when I'm desperate I go back into Corel. I'm learning to like Gimp, but even my old Corel puts Gimp to shame.

My tech skills are going to get a challenge soon, because I'm almost to the point where I have to incorporate a subworld. I wonder how that will go? I made my first ladder and the first attempt at getting on it caused my avatar to do a flip in mid-air and crawl down it upside down. Getting that Y axis correct is REALLY important. The good news is, that took about 10 minutes to fix, unlike the textures and lighting.

The other important thing is I found D'ni words for the name. So, it will either be "Rahsoo B'ahrotan" (vanquished to otherworlders) or "The Farm Place", which is what my grandson calls it. I don't plan on asking him to name it and there really isn't a farm, but if he insists that it should be named "The Farm Place", he wins. Grandson beats out everyone else. That's just the way it goes with grandparents.

[Calena]

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I've been following the forums to keep up with what's happening with the OS code. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I was relieved to learn that it isn't something a noob like me has to be concerned with yet. Whew! I don't need anything else to learn right now.

Age building is going well. I'm finding more functions in Gimp which makes it easier and faster than having to toggle back and forth into my VM to work in Corel. And with the practice, I'm getting better and better at getting textures where I want them. Learning the tricks to lighting has been interesting. There are some bugs in this and they aren't all mine (for a change ). So I'm working around it. Part of me keeps having a pity party that my artistic skills aren't better, but they won't improve if I don't work at it.

I built my first spiral staircase. They're a lot harder to make than it looks. Getting the colliders attached was harder than making the staircase. Now I realize why so many of them are big. Mine isn't. And it has a handrail going around it. This was initially going to be a straight stairway entered through a door in the floor. Then I had the brilliant idea that a spiral staircase fit the scene and would be more interesting. Then I had to fit the round spiral staircase into the square hole . Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy. In any case, it's done and everything works as it should and it keeps it interesting.

So now I'm building the contraption which requires the sub-world. This will carry the explorer from the 'otherworld' to the door to D'ni (if I get it to work). My first idea was to build an inverted turtle, which makes sense if you knew more about the age. I made the turtle contraption and was very pleased. Unfortunately, while admiring my handiwork, I realized it bore a striking resemblance to those little plastic swimming pools we buy for kids. I deleted it. I did come up with another idea and this one I'm happy with so far. It's different and interesting. I'll save the turtle idea for the children's age I hope to build for my grandson.

I've read that the journal forum will be re-activated at some point. When it is, I'll have to take the time to get 'official' and post screen shots so I can get more input from the experienced community. In the meantime, still building and still fascinated. This is my idea of immersive game play .

[Calena]

The subworld is working . The bad news is I've built it and re-built it I don't know how many times. The good news is, I'm now quite proficient at building subworlds. Repetition has that effect. The only thing yet to do is to get the footsteps working in it. I think I know what I need to do, but I won't know till I try it.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peak of Rahsoo B'ahrotan (aka The Farm Place):



I think I'm about 2/3 done building it if you don't count the 10,000 details that will need fixed to finish it. I'm starting the section that needs to resemble D'ni. Now it becomes a question of whether I can capture the style of D'ni without copying it.

As a precaution against making the age too complex for older computers, I've been using my small computer to build this. Along the way, I've been transferring it to my big computer. The initial test sent me into a panic. The lighting which I had finally set exactly where I wanted it was a failure on the second system. I now have a much better understanding of why Cyan starts their game with instructions on setting the gamma. Oh yes, I'm still learning this stuff.

If you don't hear from me for a while, well, I'm still working.

PS - I belong to another forum on a completely different topic. That forum is huge and gets hundreds and thousands of posts every day. I can't keep up with it. Then I come here; one extreme to the next. My theory is that we're all so busy working on this stuff, we don't take time to talk much. We're are also few in numbers. This is one of the first times I ever remember feeling like the group chatterbox. bnewton1 still has me beat .

[Luna]

Don't worry about being a chatterbox, Calena, I think I am not alone when I say that I really like reading your posts. They always make me smile and make a nice contrast with all the drama in the community.

And your age is coming out really beautiful I have to say, I would love to visit it .

[ametist]

What Luna said

[kaelisebonrai]

What Luna and ametist said, its great to see someone enjoying Age Building. =)

I also love the stories you tell, so don't worry about being a chatterbox. =D

EDIT: I took a closer look at your screenies, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing a release when it eventually happens, its looking amazingly good, especially for your first Age. =)

[bnewton81]

Welcome to the GoW. I just love the analytical, ordered thought processes i find when dealing with Myst fans. So few ppl in my life think this way (as i do). I love the journey to figure out how an age is created. There are really many parallels between this journey and the ones in the Myst story. Just makes it all the more fun, like a level 10 super advanced puzzle.

Lolcat says: " i can haz loopiable, triggerable animations."