Tuesday, October 14, 2008

New Blog Coming SOOON!

IrL Team blog, comprised of Chris Galea, Jonno Chong and myself.

All work will be posted here from now on.
www.irl-studios.blogspot.com

install milkshape

for conversions (reminder for myself)

Sunday, October 12, 2008

MAN DOWN!

So my laptop crashed, with all my uni work.. and everything.
Called Dell and got the hard drive replaced and am working on getting all the data recovered now.

Had lots of fun working with Kismet and i cant wait to work as a team to create something nice.

Given the time, it would be cool to populate the rest of the map (around the building) with other *less detailed* buildings, that can be explored. But that will only happen if time permits.
Updates soon.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Assignment 3 week 1 progress

Today, I used my laptop to broadcast the tutorials to several people, and thusly, couldnt really follow along properly, however, I did manage to be able to help out the people I was working with, and gained the knowledge from the tutorials anyway. I also got a copy of UT3, which was not on my laptop previous to today.

I also spent 6 hours in a room with Jeremy over the course of the day.

Monday, September 22, 2008

3ds Max Model and Commentry

exp2scene.max

From my initial observation of the way that explosions can be caused by a simple event, which can grow and grow into something far more devastating and catastrophic (see blog post here for reference material), my solidworks explosions seek to express this notion by utilising various camera techniques.

To begin with, I chose my rotation video to be just the envelope of 363 George Street. This was in order to give an idea of what the entire external surface of the building looks like, before "alteration". I used a helix shaped path for my camera, in order to give a good general overview of the building. Each animation had a scene setup of a large geosphere, textured with a 2sided grey material, and a gray ground plane, in order to give a solid background, and then lighting was added, to suit the model.

My 40% subtraction from the model created several interesting spaces, the 2 most interesting spaces for me was the explosion going from one corner, expanding upwards to the top surface of the building, leaving streaky cuts through the edge of the construction. I felt this strongly represented my idea, of explosions expanding from something small, but it felt 2 dimensional, so i got to work cutting another hole, through the interior of the building. This worked very well in my opinion, and I used it as the main feature in both my pan and my zoom. The section of the explosion allowed the viewer to see an explosion, radiating upwards from a small, organised point.

For my 65% subtraction, I fully explored this concept, with the camera starting on the small point, and then expanding, zooming out, to show the full destruction it caused. I believe this exactly expresses my hypothesis. The building is further destroyed by secondary explosions, caused by the first one, further reinforcing the idea that explosions, though they may start small, can expand into a devestating and destructive force.

363 George St. Minus 65%

Solidworks Model: http://dodownload.filefront.com/11866498//2598271a14e95955e40ad5ca5153e3bd8343173b2864d4d24fa86cf8f91065beb8152ba00130b01c

Youtube:

363 George St. Minus 40%

Solidworks Model: http://dodownload.filefront.com/11866497//2598271a14e95955e40ad5ca5153e3bd8343173b2864d4d24fa86cf8f91065beb8152ba00130b01c

Youtube Video

Full Volume Cactus Model

cactusmodel.SLDPRT
Solidworks Model

Youtube Video

long time no post

Base Cactus Model Volume
100%-40% volume
100%-65% volume

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

References

“Crysis Physic - 5000 Car Explosion - Crysis video.” http://www.wegame.com/watch/Crysis_Physic_5000_Car_Explosion/ (Accessed August 19, 2008).

“explosion - Crysis video.” http://www.wegame.com/watch/explosion_5/ (Accessed August 19, 2008).

“nice big explosion - Crysis video.” http://www.wegame.com/watch/nice_big_explosion/ (Accessed August 19, 2008).

“Nuclear explosion scene - CoD4 video.” http://www.wegame.com/watch/Nuclear_explosion_scene/ (Accessed August 19, 2008).

“Project Reality (v0.75): Challenger 2 vs. Civilian - BF2 video.” http://www.wegame.com/watch/Project_Reality_v0_75_Challenger_2_vs_Civilians/ (Accessed August 19, 2008).

Monday, August 18, 2008

Custom Machinima

Found Machinima

Hypothesis

Based on the experiments I have conducted, and the machinima I have found, my arguement is that explosions can be triggered by a simple event, which can grow, aided by a catalyst, into something much larger and much more destructive. The relationship between solid mass and empty space plays a vital role in this reaction, as empty space will allow the reaction to occur unhindered, while mass will be effected by the explosion, however, is will also effect the explosion itself, slowing it down.

Energy can never be created or destroyed.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Garry's Mod - A Guide

Updated again: Added links to the tools I mentioned.
Update: Join the Steam Group! Its now a public group so you do not need to be invited by me!
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ArchComp

The Basics
To get started, open Garry's Mod, and click on Single Player game, select a map and click Start game. Wait for the game to load.

Saving and Loading - Press escape and click save or load game if you want to save, or load a game. Please note, these games are saved locally, so if you save a game at Uni, you will not be able to access it at home, unless you find the copy the save game file to a USB (or alternative)

Movement - Use the W, A, S, and D keys to move fowards, left, right and backwards respectively. Jumping and Crouching are done with the space bar and control key. To change your speed from a walk to a run, press and hold shift.


Camera - Move the mouse to rotate the camera, and change where you are looking.

The Not-so-Basics
Making things (Spawning Objects) - The flexibility of Garry's Mod comes from the ability to play with the physics of the source engine, using various tools, interacting with various 'props' in order to achieve anything you want. To get started with this, hold down the 'Q' key. From this menu, the vast majority of your interaction will come. On the left hand side of the "Q" menu, you have the ability to "spawn" or create many different props (a generic name for any object that can be manipulated in the game), vehicles, NPC's (computer controlled characters), and more advanced things such as Scripted Entities and Scripted Weapons. In order to spawn an object, click on its button in the Q menu, and then the object will be spawned where your mouse was pointing. The objects are arranged into categories, however if you are still unable to find what you want, then there is a search box (located on the right hand side of the left panel, above the prop boxes). From what I have discovered, there are 2 options for explosions - the explosive barrel and a red fuel canister.

Interacting with objects - Now comes the fun part. In Garry's mod (as with most games on the source engine), your weapons can be accessed by pressing the number keys from 1 to 6. Each number has a general category of weapon associated with it, however the ones that you will be using the most are the "1" category and the "6" category. To get started, press the 1 key, until you get to the "Gravity Gun". This gun can be used for simple interactions with props. Right click to pull something towards you and left click to fire it away from you. Simple. Press "1" again, until you get to the "Physics Gun". This gun allows for more complex interactions with props. Using the gun, press and hold left click in order to be able to drag around what you are looking at. Hold down "E" (while holding left click) in order to rotate objects, and to snap these objects to 45 degree angles, hold shift while rotating. When you have the prop in a position you like, press right click to freeze it (please note that this is not always a good idea, as if an object is frozen, it will not be moved by other objects, whcih is an essential component of this assignment. To unfreeze an object, look at it and press "R" (reload), or left click with the Physics Gun.

More interacting with objects - Press Q to open the menu again. On the right hand side, you have all of your tools, for even more relationships between objects. This list is pretty vast, so I will leave you to explore them. Most importantly (in my opinion) is the "Weld - Easy" tool. What this does is connect two of your props using an invisible join, automatically aligning them. The other tabs on the right hand side of this menu allow for some interesting effects to be applied, just explore the tools and settings until you find things that you think work well.

Dynamite - This tool can also be accessed in the right panel of the Q menu. It will create a damaging explosion, which also has a force related to it. After clicking on the Dynamite tool, you are given options on the right hand side of the screen, with the ability to change the damage, delay, etc. of the Dynamite. Click somewhere in the world to spawn the dynamite. Now, if you hold down "C" while still having the "Tool Gun" in your hand, you are presented with the Context Menu for the tool (the same menu you saw before, except without any of the extra stuff, unrelated to the tool) You are given numpad options for how to set the dynamite off. I think the default is the "." key, so press that, and your dynamite will go off.

Extra's - There are a couple of extra tools I can suggest that you get your hands on (Links added)
Installation Instructions: Unzip the Files into your garrysmod/addons folder. (Usually this will be C://Program files/Steam/Steamapps/*username*/garrysmod/garrysmod/addons
The tools will then appear in your Q menu, alongside the rest of the tools.

Useful Links -

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Welcome to BENV2423

It all looks very exciting and I cant wait to get underway.
For thursdays tutorial I have located this video:



The Infamous "Leeroy Jenkins" from World of Warcraft. I believe this reflects an important idea about the nature of explosions, in that one explosion can trigger another, which can trigger another and so forth, until the problem can grow out of hand. This concept is very closely related to the idea behind Radioactive generators, in that one reaction triggers another, and without control, the reaction would turn itself into a bomb. Furthermore, the verbal/emotional explosion of the team-mates working with Leeroy reflects the importance of team work - with only one member not working properly, the whole team is demolished.




At least I got chicken.