Maverick's Workshop

Well today sanjay informed me that there is a jury on the 1rst or something and asked if i could reach there before, it was like tomorrow and i said no. Sadly we are still in the dilemma of choosing the engine and our pipeline, time is running really short and we haven't started anything to be shown soon. The artworks are there but they wont make up the game...

Well the blogs that will be coming in the upcoming days will be kind of empty as i will be not working because as i mentioned in my older posts i would love to spend some time with my mom, today we went out to get me some clothes as most of them got destroyed thanks to me not washing them. So packing them too and getting ready to go back to chennai, aw man its going to be arkward going back there and i feel a little bit sad too...

Well today is wonderful day, things were looking good as i went to church for the mass and i was literally shocked to see that the mass was in english and done by a priest from Europe. I am fairly sure that he was from Italy as his accent reminded me of Ezio. The mass was worth listening to as the other priests made me sleep. He explained of people having faith and how questions asked to them about their faith can be answered. I am not going into the details though... And today my mom made Appam and mutton curry in the morning and biriyani in the afternoon, enjoyment for me YAY!! Well the moment i have been waiting for the phone came yesterday and it was the most exciting moment i had all week... Sony Ericsson Xperia Play... The true fun factor of this phone is the hardware buttons and are and excellent addition to the gaming experience. It can run all the games with a minimum amount of lag. I really wish it was a dual core and had more RAM but that would cost ...

Finally i got the item i have been waiting for a long time, really happy to see the real thing rather than videos. Updating a lot of things because i wont be able to do much once i reach chennai. First time on an android phone so noob at work and learning along the way too...

Well today too i think i wont get it, i called them and they said that they have sent it so it is clearly in kollam now. Patience is running thin but undaunted too, i have four days remaining and my mom has promised that she will make me biriyani on sunday as it our Church's festival. I will try to get some pics too. Our church is located near a backwater lake and its really beautiful. Problems in house are escalating to points where physical contacts are now required to maintain order. Resistance is futile, my grandmother has dug her own hole my sister is really fed up with her. It sad this is happening, we never had anyone in our lives to give us love as a grandmother and grandfather and sadly the people we have hate us. I think i have said enough about my personal life...  My system has started to act wierd again, 4-5 times i got a blue screen error. I dont know why this is going on but i need to find out. It definitly seems to be a hard ware error but i cant pin-point th...

Well things sure have heated up in my home between us and grandmother. She clearly doesnt trust or love us. Its sad, my sister is in a position that she cant study due to all the problems she is creating. She is in 12th and getting ready for her final exams which are really crucial and my sister is the last years topper of the school and i dont want her to get any less than that. I know she has the potential and will never bend to anyone too.  She is weak in english but then too she will never ask me to teach her, she is darn proud but thats what i love about her too. She scores high marks in other subjects too. Now the environment in the house is really bad that she cant concentrate. Neither can I, i wasnt able to work because of all the fighting. This is why i never come to my home. Well enough of bad news, my friend Darshan has got placement in HCL, so TREAT... I think i will ask Jassif tomorrow to take me to a bit of locations where i can take some pics of kollam. A lot ...

Happy republic day to all, i mean to all Indians and to others too... Well i did mention a few days ago things were brewing to start a war in my home and finally it broke out. Truth be told when i saw things with my own eyes i got so angry with my grand mother. But i am suppressing it all, what can be done? nothing... Well if today wasn't a holiday i would have got my item but no... I think i must wait more...

Phew... the item i ordered was dispatched yesterday and i hope to recieve it in the coming days. They told it will take 2-3 days and i hope it comes ASAP, waiting for it has been killing me. Did no work today too just playing with my mom and spending time with her. Months before my mom would always complain that the time i spend with her is very less since i am always in front of the computer. I think that is how all the new generation is, i mean they have less time with their parents, due to this the parents are never known about the things that the children are doing and when a fight starts this will be the base problem. I think the problem is both with parents and children too, parents are too busy with TV and life that they cant see what their kids are upto and kids never feel like telling their parents what they are doing too because its useless. Common problem amongst us all and we must all find time in our lives for our parents... Because the next day you might find out t...

Well today i slept till i couldn't sleep anymore. We are really low on the amount of reference images we had so i asked sanjay to get some more. Well he informed that the police and military were doing their marches for the republic day parade so they were not letting him take any photos but he did send some to me.  So thinking of a modular way of making buildings so that the meshes can be reused thus saving the amount of draw calls.  It seems that things are brewing to start a war in my house, the calmness before the storm. Thats the situation in my house, something bad is going to happen.

Well things sure are getting heated up as time is flying by. I have less than a week in kollam and well sadly i havent got anytime to rest or do anything other than work. I had a lot of games and stuff with me yet i was never in a mood to work. So i decided to take a time out and spend a lot of time with my mom and sister as for the months to come i will not see them. I will surely miss my mother scratching my head and my sister fighting with me. No news on the product i ordered but it will soon reach i guess...

Well today was a day for internship work, we had to reconstruct some parts of the CTP game that we were doing. Sanjay asked me for a title screen, a thanks page and a profile creation page. I decided to do that and use less things in the page and give more emphasis on the things that needed focus and not bloating the screen with unwanted stuff. A more simplistic approach. Sanjay told he will send me a skyline of chennai.  After that they asked for a high scores screen and that was made too. It was later kept for discussion on how the points will be given and stuff. So i decided to keep top 4 or 5 in the high scores screen. I started to mark the buildings with their respective heights and widths in the top down view so that they can be modeled faster. I will be returning to chennai on 2nd of february. 

Well today got up early and started to move here and there. Went to get some groceries and then sat down to start modeling. In order to get the scaling correctly i had to do some digging in the cryengine forums and then finally things were in place and started. The first model i am doing is the santhome community centre. I decided that i will do the high poly mesh and give the high poly work to sanjay. So that i have things to work in the game and he can slowly make the high poly mesh. Santhome Community Service Centre - Santhome The measurements in terms of lengths were taken from the maps and the scale. So i will get roughly 90% of the scale right. I am seriously less in the amount of references i have so it was difficult to model some things that were inside. I first created the proxy mesh which is the size of the entire building. But i dont think a physics proxy is needed as there will be no collision with the building via the car. So most probably the proxy will be dele...

My mother is back from oman and well both happy and sad at the moment but what to do we all have to make sacrifices. Really tired from the journey to the airport. Will try to work tomorrow on the game.

Well today was a really bad day in comparison to the things that went down and lets start things off with the thing that i have been mentioning for the past couple of days. Well i called them only to know that the item was out of stock. Seriously they could have informed me a long time ago. Well i told them to cancel that order and after that they called again saying that they are bringing in new stocks and will send to me ASAP. My mom is coming tomorrow morning and my grandmother is showing all signs of wierdness. I mean she is literally sitting on the floor of the room and looking at me. Seriously freaking me out. I dont know why she does that, well that makes the second time she has done that. Last time was a chair this time its the floor. WIERD!! Well looking forward to pick my mom from airport, and sadly no cappucino like last time as well, i decided not to... Well started to do some basic concept sketches for the UI and HUD design. A lot of ideas in head and no papers too....

Well its been a few days since the order was given for the thing i was looking for but there is no response only thing it says everytime is that on process. Maybe i should wait its not like i am going anywhere soon. Started to work on the other models for the scene. Sadly things seem to be out of scale when i look at things when i import something from 3ds max to cryengine. Scaling will prove to be an issue in the future i guess... Applied the normal map on the road and it came out well. I think maybe i overdid it or something because sometimes it looks wierd. My mom will be coming on 20th, i told her to take time and come but... Still waiting for the thing, no news yet will update...

Well today brought things into cryengine and things were looking good but then problems started to come. The textures were put in as a sub material from 3ds max and was showing up properly in cryengine material editor and then when i saved and reopened the editor the materials would not be on the surface. So i had to create induvidual materials but whenever i clicked the browse button the engine crashed. So again went back to forums and found out that the problem was in font size. My system default was at 125% and cryengine seems to dislike that. So brought that down to 100% only to find out things are really tiny on my screen. But what the heck cryengine was working better. In the login screen it showed the save password tick box and the browsing was working too... Problem solved...

Spent all day searching up and down internet for some problems i had with 3ds max and Cryengine. In 3ds max the crytools was not showing up and so had to search the forums and finally found out that there was a syntax error in the script for 3ds max and a resolved version of it was available in the forums so i put it in and it was working perfectly.

Nothing great happened today that is worth mentioning. Still working on the roads and stuff for the level. Finally was able to piece together the roads but somehow everytime i close and open cryengine it crashes i dont know why. Some problems are also being shown with 3ds max too i will try to resolve things today...

Well today happened to be a long and sleepy day. Woke up a couple of times but finally got up from bed around 3 in the noon. My sister was laughing when i started to brush my teeth. I finished downloading Real Steel which is a movie. The movie was good kinda reminded me of Rocky. Well today i was able to see the most gamer based laptop cooling pad and it was just beautiful. It was based on the Asus G Series i guess because the design resembles it very much. http://www.cmstorm.com/en/products/accessories/sf19usb3/ Well today was a really good day with photoshop learned how to create actions in photoshop. Thing was when i needed to save anything to cryTiff i had to Save As then select CryTiff and save which was kinda time consuming so i automated it now if i press play it automatically does this yay!!

Oh yeah! finally gave the order for the thing i was mentioning about in the past blog entries. They said that it will take approximatley 10 days for the things i ordered to arrive. I am in no hurry. Yay!! Well yesterday night havent slept at all was sitting and making the reference planes for the game and it took me the entire night and finally the road from santhome to parry's was referenced. It was 26 images and they will serve as the blueprint in the engine for us to further build upon. My good friend sanjay was kind enough to tell me about this software called Dropbox. This is a sync software that helps keep files between multiple computers and a copy of the files are saved in their servers too. The good thing is that this is a folder in your computer and files can be pasted here and it will automatically sync. You dont need a browser open and wait endlessly. You can set the upload and download speed so that it doesnt affect your internet browsing. The free users get a sto...

Well as i mentioned yesterday there was a thing i wanted and my parents gave me the go to get it. But it seems that fate is telling me not to. On the internet the price seems to be low but you ask the same thing in market they tell a price that is 10k more... Sadly enough the Federal Bank ATM card lets us use only 15k per transaction and the item costs more. So i asked the bank if there was any way we could increase this. But there too they said no. But they did say one more thing and sadly that was not long lasting... They said that the VISA card lets the user take only 15k and the MASTER card lets take 20k. The item in ebay will cost 19.5k and trying to buy it in another place will cost me 22k. Sadly enough the ebay item i dont trust very well and trying to contact and no one picks the phone. It seems i will have to stop dreaming about that thing and concentrate on more pressing matters. The whole day i spent thinking about it and by afternoon it was sure that the chances of m...

For the past few days my head was focused on something that i put my eyes on for the past couple of days sadly enough every-time i get close to it, it just tends to slip away from my hands. I think i must put to an end of this waiting since it may seem that the thing i want will never come and maybe i hoped too much for it. In terms of work i was looking at something for the past days or so as an effective means of transferring files from Digital Content Creation Softwares to Game engines and i may have been wrong about somethings in the past. I need to clear everything before i can make a decision so i will take my time in this process. Sanjay has infromed me that the pre-production jury will be on the 24th of January. I just hope they accept all the things Sanjay shows them. For now Sanjay will be working on the artworks...

Still modelling things for the game. But things just seem to cause problems here and there. The file converters and stuff is causing a major head ache. We tried using .obj which is a standard conversion but then too when importing from 3ds max to maya seemed to cause problems and the scale of things was varying. Then we decided to go with .fbx which is the native format for autodesk applications but when i was converting my models it would always ask me for triangulation and that would lead up to a triangulated mesh which proved hard to unwrap. Then came .3ds we decided to use 3ds max on both ends so that things go smoothly but that too failed miserably... I think in the upcoming days there will be a breakthrough and lets see what happens...

I had some reference images that i took from Marina beach so i started to model things i saw that was important. Trying to make everything as low poly as possible and made a really good high poly mesh too... me and Sanjay worked yesterday till 3am in the morning and a bus stop we made looks so bad and we found that fbx is better that obj for maya to 3ds max to UDK. Still working on a lot of things and trying to make most out of my time here.

Today i decided to leave things like normal map to Sanjay and concentrate on modelling and texturing. I finished modeling some more things needed in the level like bus stops and garbage cans. I don't have enough references so i am kinda working blind but sanjay promised to bring images and lets see what happens..

Starting to model the rest of the things i am now just modelling, i am leaving the unwrapping to sanjay and normal mapping too beacuse its his department. I am making him do the artworks because thats important now and he is needed for that. He told that he will go tomorrow to get the images and then we can start. I started to work on a footpath, i modelled out the low poly mesh and high poly mesh but somehow when i try to make a normal map in 3ds max it comes out as a diffuse map i dont know why this is happening but i am following the tutorial and then too nothing. I made the texture into normal map using nvidia normal filter and well that came out good but i dont know it wasnt showing up well in UDK something happened when i created the material i guess. There was no detail i have to learn more in UDK...

Reached till Queen Mary's college and will stop for now as the level looks really barren. I have asked sanjay to get the refrence images of santhome and buildings around it so that we can start the reference artworks for our pre-production jury and also get some artworks in the process because we didnt have any art work for our last jury.

Still working on the roads i finished the roads at santhome and now working my way to parry's...

Started work on the roads, i wanted to make modular roads so that we can put it piece by piece. But sadly chennai is a place where a section of road greatly differs from the other. So i came up with the following idea. A single lane road = 11' = 11x16 = 176uu double lane = 2x11'x16 = 352uu So i made a plane in 3ds max with 352x352 and gave it 1 width segment so that it represents kind of a two lane road... Then i took an image at 100ft in google maps and placed it as a texture on a plane in 3ds max... Now with the help of UVW map i made sure that the aspect ratio was correct. I place the 352x352 plane on a double lane road and scaled the image to fit it. Finally i started to make the road based on the curves and an entire section of road for a single image... The texture map had to be done in 2k resoultion so that things arent that scaled on the preview. I imported the model into UDK and man that was big and felt right too... I think when we put the rest of...

After a lot of testing its been decided that for the units setup of the game we will be using feet as the main unit. And the confusion on which engine has finally rested its shade on UDK. Its sad to see that we wont be using cryengine its a really beautiful engine but a new one too. But UDK we are still trying to get a hang of it. I think in the upcoming days we will get a hang of things. This is the reference scale we are using... A character height in UDK = 96units = 6ft So 1 ft = 16units And 1 3ds max unit = 1 unreal unit = 1/16th of a foot so 163ds=16uu=1' This is the reference scale we are using...

Well the new year started with some wierd things happening around me. Sadly i cant tell you those things. In terms of my work i am in a dilemma state where i am confronted to choose between CryEngine 3 and UDK. CryEngine is a superb engine but the base of the engine is terrain. And for UDK its BSP. I will have to discuss this with my team mate and come into conclusion on what engine i should use.

Happy new year to all reading this... i will be out most of the time so i decided to write this in the morning. I wish everyone a prosperous and happy new year...