Hello internets!

My life has been changing quite a lot recently. Firstly I just got slammed with comments about wasting time and not improving all that much. It's the truth and if they used up their time to write that I believe that's because they care about me. Among those were a lot of positive messages and resourceful web links. The one that helped me the most was "Do It Now" by Steve Pavlina. There were things I already knew but the way he put them made me look at them differently and actually apply a few. I changed several things about the way I work, including the area in my house where I do so. I'll probably write about those changes too, if they prove to be really positive.

There were also comments about the flash gallery I used in my website. Luckily Rui Martins, known in the internet as rmsm was already helping me to create a new one. He did most of the technical part and I truly owe him one.

Some people suggested I get in touch with a team so that I have direct feedback and, most importantly, deadlines. I started looking for a mod and right now I am waiting for a team to tell me if they're interested in what I can do. I am also working on my submission for the G-Switch art competition at Gamedev-PT and just finished getting references for my next model.

There are some new projects in the works but I'll only write about those when they're ready to be announced.

Lowpoly Littlebigplanet

After all this, I forgot to post it here.

This is my mockup of how LittleBigPlanet could look like if it was on a portable console like the PSP. That would make me buy one.


Total triangle count for the scene is 3172 and I used 4 point lights.

The only thing I added to the Maya screengrabs is the gradient frame in each picture.

What do you get when you pay for a game?

This is something that's been bugging me for a while.

I had recently bought Counter-Strike Collection and when I started installing it a pop-up showed up prompting me to register in "Steam", something I had read about some time ago. The purpose of this was to make me log in everytime I wanted to play so they could make sure I was using a legal copy of their software.

Fair enough, I paid for it and it was an online game so it wasn't that big an issue.

Sometime later I bought Valve's Half-Life Anthology. The main game I wanted to play using it was the original Half-Life. I started installing it on my computer, which wasn't connected to the internet and at that time simply couldn't be. Suddenly a pop-up showed up. "Register your copy on Steam or you won't be able to play the game". I couldn't.

It was a singleplayer game, I had paid for it and it was there in my hand but they wouldn't let me play it. What had I just bought?

Apparently I had just bought permission to play the game but only if they were watching.


(I'll probably write more about this in the near future.)

Dice

I have started rolling the dice about two weeks ago.

I sent out CVs and portfolios to some companies I was interested in, mostly for the jobs of Junior Artist and QA Tester. I know I still lack a LOT of practice but I feel that I need to start sending all of this stuff right now. I might get a positive answer.

So far I have recieved some negative answers and one that sounded positive but some time later was denied. Right now there is another one that I feel optimistic about but will not detail further on this post.

Time to work on my texture painting skills.

Portable programs

I found something cool today and I'd like to share it with you guys. It's free.

I don't know if you know portable programs but the name is pretty self-explanatory. These are programs you can use without an installation process. This means you can carry them around in any data storage medium and use when needed.

I've had issues opening exotic format files in other prople's computers, or trying to open videos encoded with strange codecs and this makes these things a lot more interesting.

This website developed a system wich allows users to integrate those programs in an easy to use interface, which helps if you want to teach a computer newbie to use it. The basic platform lets you build your own little system and add or remove programs at your will, making it as heavy as you want it to be.

Honestly, after trying it for a while I thought I don't really need all that and just kept the executables I thought were useful. Bye platform but hellooo programs.

The programs I found are web browsers, internet messengers, image editing software, games (of course!), openoffice, media players with several codecs, file compressors, pdf readers and editors. There's also a portable version of Blender if you're interested. Here's some more.

It's pretty nice, I feel like I have a digital swiss army knife now!

London Game Career Fair: Day Two Report

This was a quiet day compared to the previous one. We had already talked to all the companies so we spend a bit more time at the games' part and some more swag-collecting action (Lionhead "Fable 2" mugs and yo-yos and Relentless "Buzz!" t-shirt!). They had some games that weren't there on the previous day and sometimes they changed their places, refreshing the layout of the place a bit.


I only noticed that one of the zones was a "+18" area now because it really wasn't obvious. We had already played some of their games (Fallout 3!) and we saw nothing shocking except the usual videogame violence and the occasional swear word.
I think marking the area and not really caring about the people who go in makes the whole thing a bit useless. And about those swear words...the players themselves curse way more than those games whenever they see something really good or really bad, it doesn't matter.



I met two of my Escape friends there and it was fun seeing them again. After picking up a couple of free energy drinks (one was orange-flavoured and the other one was supposed to help with hangovers!). Their sense of humor is still the same and we all talked during the whole time they were there. After lunch they left as well as Nuno who had a plane to catch.

Me and CG got back to the event to play some more games.


After we left the event we got back to Piccadilly Circus to see if Tokyo Toys was open and it was. After checking some other places out we walked to Hamley's. That place still impresses me because of its huge size. Didn't find was that I was looking for and got back. CG went back home and I went back to Zavvi and HMV to look for a couple of things which I did find.



Swag!
Because a game fair without it isn't really a game fair! Here's the best of it.

-2 mugs, a "Banjo-Kazooie" one from Rare and a "Fable 2" one from Lionhead
-"Buzz!" T-shirt from Relentless
-yo-yo from Lionhead!
-pens from Microsoft, Other Ocean, Streamline and Starbreeze
-badges from Relentless and Streamline
-"Banjo-Kazooie" mousepad, from Rare
-awesome "Fallout 3" postcards, from Bethesda
-the smallest pack of matches I have ever seen, from Streamline



All this, the contacts and the advice I got made it a really worthwile trip once again.
I missed London.

(London, 29-10-2008)

London Game Career Fair: Day One Report

I got there fast because I thought it opened earlier so I got to wait in line for a while, looking around trying to find the portuguese people that I knew would come. Outside they had a big Ubisoft place, a Warhammer 40.000 Space Marine Tank, a big Motorstorm 2 car and this place that was giving out free energy drinks.

Nuno Ramiro got there early too so we had time to talk about all the weird things that happen in London all the time. CG was the last one to get there and as such she had to wait longer to get in.



As the doors opened we got our blue bracelets (which probably mean "noob" or something) and saw the littlebigplanet tryout booth. Let me tell you the game is exactly what I expected. It is beautiful, polished and most of all: fun. I don't have a PS3 and this game is the only one that makes me desire it. After about an hour of really awesome co-op play and some creation demonstrations, we remembered why we were in the fair for and started looking for the company booths.

There were none in sight, just tryout booths for some of the most expected games of this season. To list a few there were Fallout 3, Mirror's Edge, Prince of Persia Prodigy, Resident Evil 5 (actually most of the copies called it by its japanese name, Biohazard 5), Endwar, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2 and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts.


After searching for a bit we found out the fair was even bigger than last year and it had two floors. This first one was full of gaming kiosks and the upper one was the one where the companies were hiring, so we headed there.

What a relief, it was bigger than last year! So much people and so much swag we didn't know where to start. As you probably guessed we only talked to game companies and pretty much ignored all the booths that were announcing game-related courses.


The "Most Arrogant Booth" Award goes to Sega for the second year in a row! Showing up at a fair like this, not accepting CDs of portfolios and telling us to apply at their website is even more ridiculous than not showing up. Enjoy your prize guys, you deserved it.

The "Coolest People To Talk To" Award goes to Streamline Studios, with only two people but really nice ones. They asked everyone if they had heard of their company before and apparently we were the only people that said "Yes". The conversation simply flowed from there. They know a friend of mine that works there and once they realised that they got really informal about the whole deal. We went back to talk to them several times because they were that cool. The runner-ups were Rare, Lionhead and Longtail Studios.

The "Sorely Missed" Award goes to Team 17. After some really good advice from them a year ago I wanted to show them what I had done in the meantime. Well, I'll send them an e-mail or something.

We weren't at the lectures because they were almost the same as last year's.

I recognized a few faces. Some fellow Escapees and Paul Wilkes, some people from the company booths and even the "Be my first animation/modeling job" girl from last year! I guess the cherry t-shirt wasn't enough.



The most curious thing about the fair was probably the Live Action Pong. Yep, two guys dressed as the paddles and a girl dressed as the ball were trying to re-enact that famous game.

After everything started to quiet down we left for a pizza at Leicester Square. We were served by a kind italian guy who absolutely loathes Dr. Pepper and when we left we were surprised the whole city wasn't really expecting. Snow. The kind that melts right when it hits the ground. We still had to walk a bit to get to Piccadilly Circus so it wasn't the most pleasant experience ever but it was fun.

(London, 28-10-2008)

Bad PR stunt is Best PR stunt?

A few days ago most gaming journalism websites were quick at reporting the news that LittleBigPlanet was going to be delayed because of the lyrics in one of the game's songs. Apparently it includes two quotes from the Qu'ran and doing so is offensive to those of Islamic faith.

This has lead Sony to retrieve all of the game's copies in order to replace them with "fixed" copies which don't feature said song. Not only that, it enraged most people who have preordered it, except muslim people, though.

While the corniest gaming websites were busy writing articles with titles like "Is LittleBigPlanet doomed?" gaming forums all over were flooded with threads where users started discussing religious matters. News websites and broadcasts have been mentioning this all around the globe.

Now, guys like Phil Harrison agree with Sony and say replacing the game was the best decision they could have made.

I have followed a few of those discussions and some of those were actually good. Though we might have been lead to believe it, not every gaming website is filled with hate-consumed tenage trolls.

What do I think about this? First of all I don't think recalling all of the game's copies is a good idea for several reasons. A patch that cut access to the song should suffice.

There are people who defend this is not enough and say that the people who don't have their consoles connected to the internet wouldn't "benefit from this correction to the game". Why would someone buy this game if they don't have their consoles connected to the internet? It is a major part of the game.

Well, even though I wish MediaMolecule the best of luck and believe their intentions are good, this sounds like too much luck to be just an innocent mistake. Because of this the game had a gigantic amount of free exposure and loads of people who didn't know this game was coming got to see bits of gameplay during primetime.


It seems like a trend like this could show up anytime:

1. Include something offensive in your game
2. Remove it due to pressure from the media
3. ????
4. Profit!

inérciaDemoparty2005 in 2008 report

Well well here we are again! InérciaDemoparty was a blast and hopefully this post will prove it.


I left my house at about 13:00 or so in order to meet zeroshift in Lisbon so we could do some finishing touches on the demo we were doing for Inércia. The sideways head-bobbing animation was born here to much enthusiasm.

The trip lasted longer than I expected. We left later than we had planned (21:00?) and made a detour to pick up another scener and some pizzas, plus another stop for caffeine. We had plenty to talk about for the whole tour.

We got lost inside Porto while looking for two things at the same time: inércia and a bathroom.

At about 4:00 we got to the partyplace. Khozmic, Filami and Kazuya started finishing their demo and just wouldn't stop for anything so that got me curious. It looked great.


Didn't sleep in that first night because I would regret it later.

The next day came rather quickly, along with a lot of extra sceners. We had lunch at a Pizza Hut (I see a pattern here) followed by the afternoon activities.

The first one was the GameDev-PT Show & Tell, a really interesting idea that worked well. Several members from GameDev-PT organized themselves and showed work they had done and thought it was interesting to everyone. It really was.


Afterwards it was time for a Blender introduction workshop by zeroshift. It's a really interesting program and I was there to see its features. It's free so check it out.

After a McDonald's fueled dinner (I hate it but the idea of eating pizza for the third time in a row was bothering me more than those things) we got back to the partyplace and after a -traditional- delay the compos started.


The first one was the combined graphics compo, where my image was so confusing it crashed ps' Mac. Next, the music compo. I did an all-nighter the night before and the low lights and soothing songs made me regret it a bit.

Demo compo time, the moment we were all waiting for.

There were five productions. First up was vs* with a Processing demo that was nice though a little too procedural-looking for my taste. Next it was Jae's turn with a GP2X demo, one of the shortest I have ever seen but it was enjoyable. After that was Khozmic, Filami and Kazuya's time to shine with their demo. It looked really great but for some reason it ran rather slowly on EviL's laptop.

...and this was it. After following the demoscene for a while this was the time to see the first demo I ever worked on grace the bigscreen. The crowd was surprised by the name (and I was surprised they didn't know it yet) and a bit later they were laughing really loud, which lasted through the demo as new scenes were being shown.

I was really proud of it.


Then, a really stylish animation by Kamikaze_Tutor (dude, sometimes I don't know wich nickname to use) was shown. I like it a lot.

A while later it was time to sleep.


5 hours later I woke up. Once again sleeping on the ground didn't make my back hurt at all. I think sleeping at demoparties regenerates me a lot more than sleeping under "normal" conditions.


Healthy conversations, breakfasts and some demos later, the results were announced. Zeroshift won the combined graphics compo, there were no awards given on the music compo and on the demo compo our demo won first place! Here it is!

Packed, took a picture and got back. It was quicker this time.



I slept from 24:00 to 12:00 today. I'm ready for the next one!

...and don't forget to come to inérciaDemoparty 2008!

I am pleased to announce that inérciaDemoparty is back and its recent edition starts today! And it will be the first time I have something up my sleeve. I'll be entering in at least two compos, one being the demo one (finally!). More info here.

I'll tell you all when I get back.

lowpoly sackboy

After a while without posting models, here is the last one. It's my version of Sackboy, the main character in MediaMolecule's first game, "LittleBigPlanet". The way it's made makes it easy to just drop a texture underneath the stitches and AO and it works with just some minor tweaks.




Edit: As a fellow polycounter suggested, here are some screenshots with lights and some poses.

Spore: Is piracy justified?

As many I have been eagerly awaiting Will Wright's new game, "Spore". Since its unveiling at GDC 2005 the media has been buzzing all over each new bit of information about it. Curious, because the "unveiling" itself was 30 minutes long and it only seemed to scratch the ear of the beast.

It was, without a doubt, the most ambicious videogame I have ever heard of.

(I am considering those games I believe will be finished, not some newbie Wow-killers or anything ridiculous as that. Those don't usually leave a sheet of paper or a couple of text documents.)

Then, the Creator Creator demo came out and amazed a huge amount of people due to the weirdness of some characters, the likeness to other well-known ones or even the insane amout of Spore-made penis monsters. The term "Sporn" was coined around these few days. Maxis must be having a blast trying to stop those from populating the other players' galaxies.

Then I had the luck of being in the portuguese lauch of the game but I don't usually pay more than 30€ for a game so I didn't buy it. I'll save my speech on game prices for some other time. Anyway, I have been talking to some people who bought it and reading online reviews and checking Amazon and this was what I found:



I tried to understand why this was happening. While some people were raving about it, a whopping lot of people were giving it negative reviews.

Well, it seems the copy protection sistem included with the game is really, really agressive. You have to connect to the internet during instalation and you only have the permission to install it 3 times. 3. You paid full price for a game that will evaporate rather quickly.

Some people are defending that you should buy the game if you really want it and then download a copy without those protections and play it as you wish. Other people are saying they should simply boycott it and leave it in the shelves. The most otpimistic say you should buy the game, don't open it and then return it saying the reason is the horrible copy-protection system.

These measures are making me think twice about buying the game, even when it gets to the 30€ price tag which is a pity, I wanted this game to have the success I believe it deserves. Why couldn't this happen with the next WWII shooter?

These are sad times.

The people who atually buy the products still have the "YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR" ad thrown in their faces when they try to play their movies or go to the movies and gamers have measures that stop them from playing the games they bought or even slowly destroy theyr machines. Remember Starforce? Excuse me while I throw up, I shouldn't have thought of it after eating.

[edit:] These polls say a bit more about DRM than I did. If you want to know more about this subject, check this out.

London Game Career Fair '08

Hey dudes and dudettes.

It's that time of the year again! Last year I got to be at the London Game Career Fair, talking to several people from some awesome companies, i gave them business cards and portfolio CDs. First time I left the country alone and first time in London. This time I have better things to show. If you want to know more about the event, here's the official link.

How did I get the money to go there?

Well, let me show you what I was doing one year ago:

Which one am I?

That's right, you just know it from the bottom of the heart.

We have lift-off!

After some weird experiments involving html, xml and a weird ftp method, I bring you my website! It is basically an online portfolio that will be constantly updated.

I will try to improve it so it's a bit more functional, but right now it's enough. It only needs better art and that's what I am doing right now. I'll show it when I can.

Simple website, simple viewer

After researching I found the best solution for a simple website is to use something like Simpleviewer, a lightweight (17kb) flash gallery. It has its limits but there are ways to get over most of them. There's a free version and it works just fine.

Pros:
-Simple to use and customizable
-Good-looking transitions and loading animations
-Free

Cons:
-Doesn't take up more than 50 pictures per gallery
-You have to create the thumbnails manually

One of these days I'll have a gallery website made using it. So, for people who are looking for a quick way to have a gallery website online there you go. Hosts are an issue for another post, I still have to deal with that.

Now I have to keep on texturing. See ya!

Achievements

I was writing a post on how Achievements are just sand thrown in the eyes of the "hardcore gamers" but this image captures it in a way I wasn't being able to put it. Thanks internet!

ZApplink for lowpoly

I recently finished another model for my portfolio and while trying out some things I came up with something that helped me a lot and some of you guys might not know yet. It's not groundbreaking but it helped me to speed along the texturing part smoothly.

As some of you may know Zbrush has a plugin that allows you to project textures directly on your model (as long as you have layed out the UVs beforehand) and that is done using ZAppLink, which connects Zbrush to your image editing program of choice. Mine is Photoshop.

I was trying to use it to texture a fairly lowpoly model of a head (250 tris) but it was giving me some awful results that looked like a shattered mirror instead of a projected picture. It can give you a faint hint at some things but overall it is not that useful. That is because of the model's polygon density. What can you do when you get to this point? Logically you can subdivide your model until it has enough density, but what about ZBrush's pet hate of triangles and vertices with more than one edge connected to it?

Turn this...

Apparently the problem only rises if you want to change your geometry afterwards. In some cases it wrecks your model and that's why if you want to use Zbrush to actually sculpt it's mandatory that it's all in quads. This means you can bend one of Zbrush's main rules: "No triangles, just quads!" to your advantage.

...into this!

So subdivide your model until you have enough density (35.000 tris was more than enough on this case). Some of your model's definition will be lost because smoothing causes it to be a lot more rounded.You don't even have to save your subdivided, unaltered model. After all, the model you're texturing is the one you already had in the first place.

Of course there's a lot of work to do in Photoshop after this is done but hopefully it helps those who find it hard to start texturing. I used about six main projections and a couple of small ones for the whole head.

Good texturing!

(The reference pictures come from 3d.sk)

"Where does the newborn go from here?"

Alright, I'll come clean: I'm not sure what path to take with this blog right now.

It started it with a goal that changed when I went to London. Then I used it to write about the course's progress so that everyone interested could simply come here and read about it. At the same time I wrote some of my thoughts about videogames and their future. I usually upload a picture with the post so that it's not that dry and devoid of interest for those who read it and don't really care about videogames.

Right now I'm back to Portugal, making portfolio pieces and improving a lot of models I had started but not finished. Getting ready for the next steps. Most of the people who came here to see if I was alright have already talked to me in person and are in a more constant contact now so I believe they stopped reading this.

So the question is for the rest of you:

What do you want to read about when you visit this blog?

Blizzard's Diablo 3

This was going to be a big rant but it was stripped to its bare essentials because I think it's not something to waste that much of your time reading. Simply put...


...whoever blindly supports the Diablo 3 petition probably likes this HL (something) 3 preview image.

OH GOD THE BLOOM

Chapter 3 ends

After not having an internet connection for a while, I'm back. Not only that, I'm back home again!

Now it's time to refine the work I started during the course to the point where I feel totally confident with it. I restarted a few things and I focused more on some other ones but now I have to get it all done and show it to the world. That's why I need to look into making a simple gallery website with my contacts on it.
In fact it's what I'll do now. Brook Green Hotel is getting some overlays.

In other news, Diablo III was confirmed and it looks absolutely stunning.