One Last Determination

Alright, listen up~ It is Trident here.

Hello guys! This time, this post, this moment, this topic, I will be talking about a summary of this semester.

Okay, this is my 2nd semester of Year 2. So only one word can describe this semester: Busy. If you want more words: No time. If you want three words to describe: I am dying. If you want four....Alright, okay, so basically for me this semester is like I am riding a roller-coaster that never stop.

First of, I have my first ever animated 30 seconds video, which is not the thing that I proud of. It is fine, but not great, not even considering good. I need to start studying hard on animation for the sake of my future. Because I want to be a game developer.

Second, I filmed a 10 minutes video about integrity, which is for me another assignment. Lecturer actually likes the idea of us. The video is about a person from small town, who loves to play games and extremely good at it. But due to the parents issue, he stopped for a long time until he travels to city to have his further education. He met a lot of friends and he met himself a best friend who is also good at the game he loved. They decided how about participating in some competition to gain experience and also prizes for their extra expenses. Unfortunately he lost, but he didn't give up. In the end, he shined bright in the stage of worldwide. He fulfilled his dream and yet to proceed to the next level of mastery. So that's the synopsis of story.

Third, I developed my first ever mobile game for my assignment. It is cool and tiring experience but it is worth it anyway. I made a tank shooting game similar to agar.io. Thanks to the examples on Phaser.io I manage to reverse engineer the game and understand how the mechanics work. So here comes my games.

Lastly, like what I mentioned in last post. I participated in two big events this semester. It is a great experience and a chance to improve myself. Although it is tiring, it is still worth the sacrifice. Live and learn. So once again, Gracie and Adios~

Titanium Rage

Ho ho ho, it is Trident here.

Okay, now I would like to talk about two major events that I have organised this semester.

First, I joined an event, called Talent Battleground 2016 as program assistant. I was in charge of planning program  flow of the event. To be more specified, I am the person who in charge of Semi-Final. I won't talk about how did I set up and plan the event, Instead, I will be focusing the experience of joining this event. Same goes to the second event I will talk about.

This is a very enjoyable experience. I have been a program planner before, but being a talent show planner. No, this is the first time. But I have knowledge of joining previous outside event before, like Astro Battleground as stage crew, somehow it is linked with program planning.

I felt motivated after joining this event, because it is fun to make show that close to Britain Got Talent. It is challenging and marvelous idea to think of and execute it. Although there is a lot of talent event in our university before, but never they are humongous or grand royal. But there is only one issue I can't overtake, the time is running out. I don't have much time to fully execute the things that I have planned. So that's why I am regretting and asked to be better. I must improve.

It is so great that I met some friends from the other universities, especially there are hot chicks. Just joking,  I did really exchange Facebook with some pretty girls, which is considered as a successful task for me.

Second event is League of Legends Battle of the Clubs (LoL BOTC). It is a inter universities LoL competition sponsored by Garena and organised by my club. Basically this event is held to pick out who is the strongest team among the Universities. Well, being a overseer of an event is not my first time. But being an overseer of a E-sport event is kinda fresh for me. Because I was used to be a professional gamer in Call Of Duty league, joined a team named Fame, not Faze, it is Fame, but in the end due to family and school issue, I was forced to quite the career. 

Although being a participant in previous E-sports events, but that doesn't help you understand how the system works. The program flow, the rules and regulations, the prize, the audience and so on. Many kinds of aspects that I need to cover. I and Vice-chairperson worked very hard to achieve a certain of knowledge so that we can make our event system stable and flexible.

In the end, it is kinda messy, but still I am very satisfied with the result. There are hundreds of people came to my event. The sponsors have good feedback and comments on us. Just some minor issues happened, but we manage to fix it. It is a great experience for me to lead my precious team. It is considered quite messy for the job scope arrangement, so that's a reminder for me not to make it happen again. Overall, I love this team a lot. They do help me a lot by giving me suggestion. Thank you, fellas. Anyway, hey it is our first ever event, E-sport club!

Once again, Gracie and Adios~

Indigenous

What's up everyone, it is Trident here.

So this will be my last post about 3D animation homework, because I will be showing the result of my assignment.

I have combined the torso and obstacles together along with animations in it. It is a time-spending process, because you wanted to get the angle and movement looks smooth and right at the same time. I have tried my best to tune until it looks fine, definitely not good.

I faced some problems while making this project. Before I went to my university to borrow PC to render my stuff. I was rendering at home few days before the submission. I render overnight using my gaming laptop. Well, you know what, in the middle of rendering, the software crashed and I need to restart again, which have taken me 4 hours of precious time. Bad things always happen all at once. The things got worse, my file corrupted, oh well, that's a good news. So the next day I rushed to university and rushed everything quickly, hope I can finish it on time. A friendly reminder, always back up your file, no matter you what. Somehow it is a common sense. Such a dumb mistake.

So in the end, I manage to finish the project early but guess what. I was using 3D Max 2016 to do my project. Well, my university is using 2014 and 2012. So there are a lot of features in 2016 version didn't include inside the old versions one. I felt doomed, so I quickly borrowed my senior's laptop to convert the projects to 2014 version, so at least I can render. And you know what, only one PC's 2014 3D Max can be operated. That is a very frustrating moment.

I still haven't give up. Of course, I can't give up, it has marks and even it worth quite amount of score. In the end, I borrowed my senior's laptop, a school PC and my gaming laptop to render. Total used hour render is 15. It is very "roller-coaster-ish" kind of experience. Yeah, I totally deserve that. I should have checked and render even earlier, so I won't be having this problem. Anyway, lesson learnt.

Below is the few pictures of my assignment. Once again, Gracie and Adios~

Re:Fractured

Yo guys, it is Trident.

I would like to talk about a game that I picked up these few days, which is called Turing Test.

It is puzzle game that needs player to solve it using different energy light orbs. Different orbs represent different ability and functionality. So far, if not miscount, the game has blue, green, purple and brown orbs. Blue represents eternal energy, while green and purple represents alternative energy but with different tempo and lastly brown means energy that can only be used once.

Anyway, you won't get the idea of the orbs if you didn't watch any gameplay videos or play it. So for the story, it is very interesting, it is about a person that signed up for space program to harvest and research the material of the newly discover planet. There is an Artificial Intelligence built along with the space station where the crews carry out their program. Unfortunately, the crews discover something that will annihilate the Eco system of Earth. So, the AI named Tom, wanted to stop from leaving this planet. Well, the main protagonist, Ava needs to find her way to escape from this planet.

I love the story because there is a plot twist in the end of the game. I am not gonna say it, because of spoilers, obvious reason. Anyway I enjoyed the game a lot. But now I would like to talk about the real Turing test, not the game. Turing test is actually a test developed by Alan Turing in 1950.

It is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. This is actually a thing. Well, there is a test held in Norway before, where there are six participants and two scientists. Every scientists and participants are locked inside in their own respective rooms. They communicate using computers to chat with each other. None of them were told that one of the participant is an artificial intelligence. The result is none of them even discover there is "machine" chatting in the conversation. The machine that used in the test has the IQ of 16 years old teenager.

There is one famous movie about Alan Turing, which you might have seen before, "The Imitation Game". I won't talk about that, because again spoilers. Just go ahead and take some time to watch it, it is a great movie, to be honest.

Anyway, this is what I wanted to share for this time. Once again, Gracie and Adios~

Grizzle Dawn

Hello, Trident is here.

Okey, now I am back to 3D Animation topic.

Now, I would like to talk about "Animation", which is the most important part of the assignment.

For the past few weeks, I watched a lot of Wipeout, American Ninja Warrior and some parkour videos. Because I want to understand how human body moves when they perform certain actions. 

For example, a person is jumping from first floor to ground floor. Normally there are two types of people, one is people without parkour training and vice versa. For those who got training ,they normally will bend their legs lower while landing and place their hands back. Those who didn't, they normally will flap hands and shake legs before landing.

I also noticed there is a delay while we are jumping. Especially when we jump high enough to stay in the air, which the staying is kind of delay. For animation, we can't actually just set two points to make your character jump, because that will absolutely look very strange. So we can add the "delay" that should happen during jumping, just to make it looks realistic. 

Same goes to punching and running, there is always a delay after you reaching the extreme point of the movement and revert back to its coming path. Therefore, I also looked on some books about anatomy, the study of human body, to understand how body muscle looks like. More importantly is what's the limitation of a human muscle can do. Like biceps and triceps, how far can they stretched. For legs and hands, how well they can bend and perform a curve actions. 

It is fun to research on this kind of stuff, because the more you know, the more you will be surprised by our human body. The variety of stuff that human can do is way far beyond to discover till its end. Meaning, there is endless possibilities and ways for a human body to perform different kinds of actions. For example, in China, there are a lot of circus performers, who can bend their body very well, resulting to look like a ball. No joke, I was very impressed and disgusted at the same time. Won't you think our human body is absolutely marvelous and mysterious? Anyway, it is still cool to see how far human body develop to.

So that's all for this time. Once again, Gracie and Adios~

Tilting Freedom

Hi guys, it is Trident here.

Well, now, I would like to talk about Pokemon Go.

It has been out for months. People are still crazy about it. It obviously affected the lifestyle of people.

For people that used to stay at home, who have their Netflix on and doesn't care about the "outside" world. For people that used to be playing games at home, sit at their chairs for several hours without stepping out of their room a single step. For people that don't play games ever before.

Pokemon Go changed it. Pokemon revokes this kind of phenomenon. Well, not all but at least it affected most of population of Earth and that's a fact. Furthermore, it brings people closer. Like 10 years ago, someone said games won't unite people. Because mostly gamers are retards. They are selfish because they only care about winning. Well, who like losing?

AND THAT IS AN ABSOLUTELY FREAKING WRONG STATEMENT YOU HAVE MADE THERE! I mean not you, is those people who made this kind of dumb statement.

There are two Pokestops at my university. Around 12pm of each day, the street will be as quite and as empty as what you may have seen in Silent Hill movies. Well, guess what, because of Pokemon Go, the community gained themselves free security guards. Even until 4pm, there are still people wandering around at the stops. How good is that? It might lower crime rate within my university area, as you know a place full of students are always targeted by thieves. Well, in my country, Yes.

Other than draining my phone battery and constantly crashed, I don't see Pokemon Go as a bad thing at all. It is a evolution and innovation of new era of gaming, which is Augmented Reality Gaming (ARG). It is a cool way to play games, because you can interact with the games closer. Who knows for the next 10 years, we can play games in our sleep or play games within a projection of hologram.

People who judges Pokemon Go or any AR games are bad, Please reconsider. It is people who make it bad while it is originally meant to be great. Why you even want to play phones while crossing roads? Didn't that is a common sense, not to play phones while walking. It is proven that we can't really concentrate walking and driving while playing phones. Well, thanks to the stereotypes who made this game looks as bad as it could. Anyway, I want to say, AR is good. It is time for us to move on to level of living style. At least this is a step to the future. No complain.

Below is my doodling of few Pokemons. So once again, Gracie and Adios~

The War Cry of the Exodian

Alright, Here come Trident.

Welcome guys, today I will be back to talk about my Animation homework. Last time, I talked about a torso model that have been done by me. Now, I wanted to talk about an obstacle course model that is done by me for the final assignment of 3D animation subject.

Well, the course is truly inspired by two obstacle challenges TV shows, which are Wipeout and American Ninja Warrior. I watched lot of videos related to the shows, just to get a feeling of how they design the courses to make it looks terrifying and challenging.

One of the most difficult part is modelling the curvey obstacle, which is called Wall Walk. In the end, I used a very simple way, which is adjusting the coordinate of the vertex, just to make it looks curvy, but that's absolutely not the best way to create a curvy edges for an object.

Other than that, everything seems fine to me. No big deals. Everything is quite easy to model. Because I can just model it parts by parts and group them together when finished, if I can't model it in one way.

One last difficult task is setting up the lighting that looks like in the TV shows. That is a pain in the ass. Because the lights in the software are artificial light, so I can only make it to almost look like TV shows. So in the end, I narrowed the amount of lights, because if I followed the lights settings from TV show, everything will be extremely bright. In the end, it looks a bit blue-ish, with a bit of white light, to create a contrast of the environment.

Below is the models. I did my best, since TV shows' obstacles rarely have textures. So I just directly used the color material inside the software, which is fairly enough to mimic the obstacles from TV shows.

It is fun to play around with the modelling features of 3ds Max. Anyway, this is what it made for right. So once again, Gracie and Adios~

Exile: Ignition

Hey, what's up guys. It is Trident here. Today I would like to talk about something off topic. 

I have planned to write a story script for my game. It is called Exile, with a prologue title for it called Ignition.

This story is about a world with only three races of people, who are Exilian, Exodian and Paradian. There is only a mainland only exist in this world. The land is split into two regions, which are Exodus and Paradine, Exodus is a land of wildlife and covered, dominated by primary organims, plants. Paradine is land of technology and the prove of advancement of people living in an exotic life. 

Well, Exodian comes from Exodus, Paradian comes from Paradine. Exilian is combination of both Exodian and Paradian, they are the exiled ones. They are not welcomed and being praised in both sides of fractions. So they can only live by their own. Thus, they hold the knowledge and truth to everything. They can reignite the spark of memories that ancestors and mother Earth left us, but that will require sacrifice. That is fast aging. They age faster than a normal person does.

Therefore, due to their existence of superiority, they are hunted down by the GenoForces, which is a special mutated troops formed by the Federation of Paxera, a united council with representatives from both Exodus and Paradine. 

It is not the proudest thing of being a Exilian although they hold the key to understand everything. They seems to be weaken by forces and annihilation of both fractions. Now, all they can do is only survive. The inheritance of their tribe, the hero shall born and rise, the Ignition will once begin.

This is just a briefly described parts of my story settings. I hope I can develop the whole story as soon as possible, because I can't wait to write them into a novel. At the same time, I also need to enhance my vocabulary bank. There are still a lot of cool words I still haven't discover. They could be helpful in any way to my story developing and novel writing.

So once again, Gracie and Adios~  

The Exilion, Exodian and Paradian

Hey guys, it is Trident here

Today I would like to update and talk about what I have for my 3D Animation for this semester.
It is very sorry to have a huge gap between previous update, but anyway several updates are coming right up.

First, I would like to talk about torso. By the way, what is torso? Well, it is a trunk for a human body. It is the shape of a person. So that's one of the thing I learn to do.

My lecturer gave me a set of helpful tutorials, which really speed me up in modelling a torso. Well, I have model a Gundam model before and that's a pain in the ass. Although Gundam looks solid and square to us, but still it has a lot of parts and detail to be taken care of.

Anyway, I still manage to model it out. Well, I did face some problem during the modelling. One of them is lacking of steps inside the tutorial. Some of the steps are missing, because it is really doesn't affect your modelling process. It only takes you more time to figure out how to get this step to another step. Well, it is not a big deal.

Therefore, there is one major issue. There is 360 degree spinning complete sample for me to inspect. But I wish the tutorial includes other view of torso in few steps, to let people check out if there is any out of scale parts.

It is quite interesting process. Especially when you model the hands, because one of the most difficult steps because you need to keep tracking back the proportion of your torso to decide how thin or thick will your fingers and your hands will be.

Here are some photos of my torso. Have a look. (PS: It looks real bad.)

 So, this is what I can show in this post. Stay tune for the next one. Anyway, Gracie and Adios~

Land of Exodus, the peace will come, the fight will go on

Hey guys, it is me, Trident.

Today, I am going to share the things that happened to myself this semester of my university life. This week is Week 6th of my study. I am currently studying Year 2 Semester, which is things goes wild and hot during this semester.

Year 1 is a testing year for me, well it is a year where you got your basics and proceed to the Year 2 with the skill you acquired before. Unfortunately, things doesn't go like what I planned. Year 2 is just like a leap for me, the skills that I acquired before it is definitely not enough for me to survive and perform during Year 2. In other words, I need more what I need now. To improve, I need to study, practice and research more. But time doesn't allow it. The heavy work that crushed upon by the assignments. 

On the other hand, I was elected as Chairperson of UTAR E-sports and Video Game Club. So the responsibilities that lies upon is even bigger and larger than it could ever be. No doubt, I love Games. They are everything to me. I am not complaining and I am even enjoying doing them. But apart from games, I don't like drawing, because I have a worst hands in the world. I just can't do it. This is the only thing that I spent hours everyday just to practice and not master it but to get familiar with it. In the end, it is still fail. I can't draw well, that's the fact. End of story. 

Back to the things as a chairperson of a club. Well, I have been a chairperson before in secondary school, but the amount  of members is nowhere near the club that I am having right now, 180 members. Oh WOW! My club just form this semester and all of the members are fresh-recruit. Oh My God, I am impressed and surprised that people at here do really enjoy or love games. I am so happy to have this result but yet on the other hand, my job is going to be tough because I have never handle this amount of members and they are all active in the club. Oh my gosh, it is like controlling a traffic in a New York. In other words, You CAN'T, you can't fully control the situation. So by far I just do what I can, go with the flow, and adjust from time to time. My target is build a stable basis for my future committee. 

I admitted this current team can't fulfill all my visions in a year. even Sports club takes three years to have their system in stable. For me, it is going to be the same.So I just guide my team to the right path and aid them as much as possible. 

Yes, I know I might looked blur and dumb to some people. But yet a person that calls other people blur are yet to be see the truth behind those people. Never underestimate a person. When I am not good  at this genre, doesn't make me an awful guy in any kind of field. Well, this things is just ain't my thing,  you know?

Anyway, the topic is kinda off track. This semester is going to be fun and tough, the responsibility and the amount of work, all together makes me fueled up. Bring it on! So once again, Gracie! and Adios~

Image Sources:

1. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pqlpUTMPBO0/maxresdefault.jpg

2. http://www.mmogames.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/eSports-Image.jpg

3. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/31AAgOny2Ro/maxresdefault.jpg

Journey to the land of Exodus

What's up peeps? It is me, Trident here.

Today I am going to bring up a topic of introducing a creative thinking technique that I recommended by one of my lecturer in university.

It is called SCAMPER. I am not gonna go into deep details about this technique. Well, you can look it up online. Before, here it basically what the technique stands for "Substitute", "Combine", "Adapt", "Modify, maximize or modify", "Put to other uses, "Eliminate" and "Reverse or Re-arrange". Anyway, you can get the ideas of how it works by understanding the words. If not, just look it up online.

I am gonna share on my thoughts on this technique. Well, to be frank, this technique seems useless to me. Not saying it is bad, because I already have my own way to develop new ideas, not going to let other things to flood my brain. But if you speaking of a person that just barely steps into creative genre, this might seems a good start for them.

To me, this technique is way too complex but yet it is cool way to branch your ideas out to many possible results. That's a nice thing to know. You can witness your own ideas to have many capabilities in many kind of genres and categories, in other words to make your ideas have higher chance to be accepted and succeed. Well, we can inspect like this. What if you are already out of ideas and facing the wall for nothing, This might seems like a nice technique to make you jump out of the trapped circle. But in the end, it is still not my choice of generating ideas. It is just too time-consuming and inefficient.

My technique is absolutely simple, it is quite similar to the "Combine and "Adapt" part of SCAMPER technique. Just like this, you take anything that happened very long time ago, such as incident, objects or whatever and you take anything that haven't or might happened, which is mostly your imagination. Combine them together and analysis it, you will get a random cool idea. This is how I get my ideas from.

For example, something happened long time ago, like the Medieval Warfare and something that haven't happened, like the futuristic feel Space Age. Combine them together to get an awesome idea. No doubt, it is part of past assignments and I got the highest score in the class with a comment of "Rare ideas that still yet to be discovered. Good Job." But by far, there is only one game that is very close to my theme of ideas, which is Final Fantasy 15. However, they are more focus on Medieval Fantasy, which is magic, alchemist that kind of stuff. While mine is focus more on the presentation of future technology but with a settings of medieval settings and twisted backstory.

Anyway, this is how I generate my ideas. It is very very dumb and simple technique. I love to make things least simple but with most effectiveness, such as my technique. So guys, I am going to end the session here. Once again,  Gracie! and Adios~

Image resources;
1. http://www.biggerplate.com/mapImages/xl/8e32ec10-ff33-4ab3-a734-af4f29dc945f.png
2. http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Who-Were-You-In-Medieval-Times.jpg
3. https://newevolutiondesigns.com/images/freebies/futuristic-city-wallpaper-20.jpg

It is going to be a long journey...and tough...

Yo guys~ It is me again, Trident. How's your day? Mine is been fine but it is kinda busy with stuff pending to be done.

It is cool to be filled with "stuff-ish" as long as they are interestin, then I am OK with it.

This week, back to my journey of learning 3D Animation basic skills. Well, it is cool to get touch on some of the real animating stuff and features included in the application. It is really difficult for me to start with because I haven't acquired such knowledge before and I am trying to get over it.

It is really run when you surf through tons of YouTube channels to look for your own proper tutorials. When you follow those tutorials, the results will always be very funny as they are all kind of professionals, but somehow they looks easy. At least I try my best. Derp~

Well this is a short video animation that I have done this week. Please enjoy~ It is my first animation video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tsbkfdxba2m1baf/3D%20Walk%20Cycle.avi?dl=0

It is kinda terrible, but I will try to make it not to look absolute horrible. I will improve myself from time to time. But I can't promise this will be a quick achievement, due to the overload amount of work that I am having right now. At least I will still try and stand on whatever happen. Once again, Gracie! and Adios~

The Mysterious Unravel Journey

Hello guys, it is Trident here!

Today I am sharing my thought on the second assignments of 3D Animation (II). This time, I need to choose three walk cycle videos from the Internet as a reference for my further working. Below are the videos links that I chose.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCM-ST08Ev4
First video is quite a good tutorial that I found. The tutor teaches how to do a stylized walk cycle instead of an ordinary boring one. Walk cycle can be interesting by adjusting the movement of hands and legs. By exaggerating the movement could be the first step of making the walk cycle lively and attractive. Basically this is what the video teaches me.

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTFysAIM6Ug
Second video is a very classic walk cycle. It is frankly boring, but the explanation is what makes this video special. The details of teaching walk cycle is quite clear. Well, I won't get confused from it.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxKg0zoIvEc
A very quick tutorial on how to "kinda" cheat walk cycle. This is quite helpful when I want  to get things done quick or experiment things faster to check the results. I can know the basics of what software features should I use faster than any other tutorial.

In the end, all of videos are really helpful. They aided me in animating the walk cycle, especially I am not good at this subject. Well, anyway thanks for the tutorial. Once again, Gracie! and Adios~

A long lost journey~

Hey peeps, it is me, Trident here!

Haha, it is been really a long time since I updated my blog. It happened like one year ago. Well, time sure passed like a water flows. I am still pursuing my lovely university course, Game Development. It is still my dream since I have swore to myself to make a change to this world.

Anyway, that would be a long story to tell. Ok, today I am going to talk about a subject that I am currently taking in my Year 2 Semester 2 of study, which is 3D Animation (II). My first impression to this subject is like 'Oh well, this subject is going to be real tough and I am gonna suffer from it.' Why? The answer is obvious, I am really bad at drawing. All I can do is draw cartoon-ish stuff and I swear that kind of thing is my limit. But I am still gonna try my best to make it looks good or great provided if  I can do it marvelously.

This time, my assignment is draw 6 portraits of myself with different expression for each. This really looks fun to me in an awkward way. Honestly, I hate my own face, not because I don't love myself. Well, it is because that's really a thing in me. (Word can't describe it) So I still manage to hold it and successfully draw six portraits without punching myself.

And these are the six expression-ish portraits. It includes annoyed, boredom, worried, shocked, angry and exhausted. Below are the potraits.

And I have a worst phone camera and I know that, well guess I am gonna stick to it until I have money to change one.

This is the best I can do by far. I am still trying to improve my drawing skill because drawing is really one of weakness of all time. Well, I may unable to draw like those greatest artist, but at least I try to be a decent one. Once again, Gracie! and Adios~