Hey guys,

To continue on what I was referencing to on my tweets about my developments are as follows…

The gaming industry has been a bit of a rough spot when it comes to solutions making stuff, as why you hear so many articles about increasing costs for production. One reason so that I’ve been hammering my head open is basically in setup time.

IScreenshot 2016-01-28 11.12.01 come to it when I start on getting content to the game engine, in which is the animation pipeline I’m trying to restructure and streamline, but the basic tools for skinning/binding are pretty much 18 years old, and are hard to understand, and it costs money and time to accelerate such things (nope, not using mixamo for such, as I have over 20 characters to work on and that’s fucking expensive subscribe to).

Previously I used only 3ds max 2010 – 2012 for animation and rigging purposes. Also, rendering test results to see how I can use it in presentation beyond real-time applications. This of course hasn’t truly advanced at all since 1998, just that now we have motion capture devices that are at mass market cost, example; Kinect 1 and 2.

These devices are central for better translation in motion for production, with cheaper software to input them into already a messy system.

Since December 20th, I’ve been trying to reconfigure my animation pipeline to these following programs:

  • 3ds max 2012 (mainly to rig and skin)
  • iClone 6 (for motion capture and setup and save into animation database)
  • Unity 5 (game engine of choice)

Previously I was using experimental applications such as Akeytsu, in which tool is MARVELOUS, but my experience in exporting my model in fbx (before the beta update), resulted me to go back into the iClone motion capture solution.

I will, at a certain point, return to Akeytsu, for basic grounded animation results and simple solution to skinning/binding. I’m just waiting it to mature a bit more before I use it as a primary.

Screenshot 2016-01-27 17.27.17

imperfect skin deformation

But yeah, all the CG stuff I’ve been posting on twitter were all old school approaches from 1998, using physique modifier in 3ds max (pre-skin modifier days), and of course FBX has a thing about converting such skin data into standard skin map that all other programs can reference to it. This is why when I import my character into iClone or anything else, there are still some noticeable problems that has been driving me up the wall. These are also at fault with the model design as well, and the old school way isn’t cutting it anymore.

Since 1996, there hasn’t really been too much advancement in this department for such, and I understand why many give up trying. I did, many times and started over, and all of it I learned on my own. But now I’m determine to getting my animation pipeline going and getting over that setup time and into actual game developments soon.

I’m also at a really critical time now. I’m suffering of a crisis with myself, mostly financial. I just can’t give up, I tried, but I can’t, not even for a moment. I sound rather foolish when I mention this; But I can’t do anything else, but what I’m so highly concentrated in. I can’t multi-task as many do, and I’m way to slow to follow orders, as I really can’t process information like anyone else. I’m so hone into what I’m doing, that everything else simply falls apart awaiting my attention.

I wake up everyday to my computer, simply finding solutions, studying for myself, gaining knowledge, and simply applying it to build my project. I’ve been so invested into doing such, that I can’t find myself doing anything else. I wish I could find help, but this behavior only cost me to push folks away. Also I’m so injected into solving shit that should have been a one button process by now, that pretty much all time becomes nonexistent as I race to find it, everyday.

I’ve been consumed, for the past 15 years, doing the same things, over and over, and as technology gets better, it becomes apparent that things hasn’t really changed. Things have been added on top of each other, but the underlying state of conditions still remain the same. I gave up in October, thinking all of this was just a waste of time, but then I recently got a nice motivational event that changed my mind back into pursuing  and making this dream happen.

… I just wish to finally finish something I started. My Ego simply doesn’t want to let go, it wants to keep on working until it’s finished, and any other distractions only gets it at an unpleasant mood that pushes the limits of my being. It’s a brat, and it gets harder to control as I get older. And DARK ZETA game developments already has 4 years (Starting Nov 2011, with core story revamp ref from 1998 – 2005) and I wish to finally get it done this year. I just need help.

Who knows? I might get a stroke while mid development. Saying so because I have very well been crazy with my schedule trying to fix this animation problem. lol

– g –

Update: I recently created a GoFundMe crowdfunding initiate to help with the production of the project: https://www.gofundme.com/qb9vqdqk