The long-awaited Page 5 of Scene 5: Final Showdown! I kinda like how it looks right now, even though the boxes still don't flow. Today's lesson is looks. If you're getting into the comic book making business, I have some very important ideas for you today. While a comic's plot is extremely important, aesthetics can make or break your plan. So if you are the drawer rather than writer, I encourage you to think about what look you are trying to achieve. With Javantea's Fate, I want a vibrant use of colors and 3d. I want people to look at it in it's digital format and be amazed at how beautiful it is. I want people to look like they act. I don't want any ugly people, places, or actions. It's important that lighting be maintained perfectly throughout so that no person's face is shaded out. But I don't want it to be washed out. Much of Javantea's Fate up to now is both. Trust me when I say that I'm going to redo all of JF up to now and even after. This is just a trial run and right now my lighting looks like arse. I'm working on fixing it -- big time. But when is it good to use poorly-lit scenes? Scary alleys, ugly places, and when characters are sleeping. When do you want washout (no shading)? For super-simplified scenes, very pretty people, and often background scenery. But one problem with very-low poly scenes is that the shading doesn't look very good. You see, the shading has to do with number of verticies in your model. If you have 400 verts rather than 800, you're going to have a poorly shaded model no matter what you do. So washout is acceptable for the majority of the model. But you should get shaded parts on the sides. That gives you a good 3d idea. Textures can give away 3d shading techniques, yet I don't want them in JF.
Well, you didn't expect it to take me another week to do the next Making Of JF page, did you? I even promised a page of JF by today. Well, it didn't happen that way. Not for lack of trying, no... Wait, yes it is for lack of trying. I did not try to do anything on JF. It's really odd, I actually forgot about it for a while. I played AO, played GTA, and worked on very little. I was going to make a new version of Half-Life Movie Producer, but it seems that the new version of Half-Life makes BMPs instead of RMRF files. I didn't get it to work, but I assume that it either does not work or works really well. Either way, I don't need to make a new version of HLMP. I feel kinda sad. I made a perfect system that could do it so beautifully with all the bells and whistles. So I did a few side projects and stuff. Nothing too cool, nothing too deep. I made a major fix in my Particle Works program so now it doesn't crash. So I decided to fix my Manga Director program (the one written in C++). I decided to go afresh to fix bugs one at a time. I found a bunch of bugs and got rid of them. The only bug left is one connected to a divide by zero that I cannot prevent. The bug only appears when a person tries to make a path that is impossible. It happens fairly easy, so it's not ready for consumption, but it's really not a part of the Manga Director System (it's a part of the Anime Director system which is important in the long run). So I took this picture of Dojo Ambush Guy #9 standing on the Seattle terrain with the LA Dome at night with fog and lighting from the left side. Not bad, right? That's how far the Manga Director system is. I can manually enter in the animation number and the position and he shows up where he's supposed to doing what he's supposed to. One of the large bugs has been fixed allowing many skinned characters. That means that it's pretty good. Also, the pathing system is controllable in run-time with the mouse, so it's pretty easy to move stuff around. Also, with the press of a button, you can put the person where the camera is. I'm working on pathing the camera, so that it's automated. Other things are 2d map for editing larger paths, run-time light editing (currently it's done manually during design time), run-time path extending (currently one sets the number and placement of cues on a path and then just editing the path during run-time), object transparency (haven't gotten it yet, but shouldn't be hard), saving (currenlty partially implemented but disabled due to errors), rotation (should be easy), and run-time animation switching (should be no problem). So you see there's a long way to go for AltSci3d Manga Director v3.
Good evening fans of Javantea's Fate. As you can see, JF is back in full force. I didn't want to work on Scene 5, Page 5 tonight for reasons beyond my knowledge. But I didn't want to slack off, so I present to you a preview of Scene 6. This is a part that was written in, but not scripted. I decided that it'd be good to get an understanding of it. The problem is that grass doesn't work too well. The GeForce 3 video card tries to do it and does a decent job. However, I have a GeForce 2. So I want a low-end solution. I assume that there is one. I've actually seen it in video games. I just can't think of it. Here is my first attempt. You can see the blades of grass, right? As it moves out, it becomes more like ordered randomness. That'd be correct if it didn't look ugly. The lesson is to try things. If it doesn't work, you can use your learned information to make a better thing to try. When you have a problem that you do not know how fix, just try something. If it's something important, you should expect to fail. Thus you must make damage prevention measures. If it's repeatable, expect to win by endurance. Thus you must prepare for long boring drudgery.
Hello, I skipped last night, but from now on I'm going to try to do regular Making Of JF --- AND pages of the actual comic! Since I'm out of school, I only have a job to pay rent, loans, and next year's tuition, so I can focus on Javantea's Fate. If you like Javantea's Fate, give me money, and I can blow off my employer and work on JF for many, many hours and give you lots and lots of JF. Hahaha, an anarchist asking for cash, that's new, huh? Naw, if you don't want to give me money, I'll just slave away to pay debts and not do JF, leaving you in the dark about stuff you should be learning about. Tonight's lesson is to encourage those around you to do well. You can't always fix everything, but you can use what skills and talents you have to help others. Like me... Errm, I'm helping people by teaching them how I am doing Javantea's Fate. Yeah! I'm a philanthropist, really. The picture has nothing to do with the lesson, but it's important to know that this picture is closer to the Scene 5, Page 4 that I promised. I'm going to finish it in one week, promise!
