Tuesday, January 4, 2011

blogPost.title

     So here's a sketch of an idea i had for something i've been wanting to try in maya for quite some time but never knew if it was something i'd be able to do (without spending an eternity forum/tut hopping in hopes of finding the answers) and i think after i do a bit more research i'll be able to do something like it. The idea is to call for particles to either be emitted from the sphere center or at any random location within the sphere and have a mild velocity going outward. Place a cube somewhere in the sphere and record the location of its 8 vertices. Then, use the "position" of each particle to write an If/THEN expression that basically states: IF a particle's location is within these vecotrs (x,y,z locations) then it's color will change to a random value between white (what all the particles are by default) and blue.

I've learned a bit about writing expression in the past few days, but i haven't learned about conditional statements/test/whatnot yet...so i'll see if i can't figure out an expression for this and give it a go. If anything, i might just be able to use dynamics and state that whenever a particle comes in contact with the cube (which obviously wouldn't be rendered) it'll change to a random color within a given range...so either way i'm sure i'll come up with a technique to make this idea happen.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

What's on Draft?

     Here's a rough 3D mock of how i imagined 2 parts of the city being - the Merchant & Guild Quarters (though 'quarters' might be switched out by something else depending on the kind of vocabulary i choose to use in the world). Merchant Quarters are where most shops and bazaars and such are, where as the Guild Quarters are where guilds and things of that sort are located (a lot of quests originate here).




     This is just another angle of the work thus far...closer up just so you can get a feel for the size of the dividing inner-city walls and the larger outer wall. Its all just quick concepts and such right now...so a bit of this might change (or just get greater detail).







     Here's a quick mock i made of archives before working on the town layout - just setting out basic shapes to get a general feel for what may or may not work in the long run. Size/details will definitely change as i realized some of what's in the picture won't really work in the end...but the overall 'feel' will kind of be the same.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Finally!!!1|1|11

    So it's been a long time since i've made a substantial posting, and it probably be longer still ttill there's anything really worth it on here - but i figure since i've got the shit to put on here...why not do it anyway?

     So this is the concept i came up with for the wall that goes around the main/initial town in my story (it would be the equivalent to Traverse or Twilight Town from Kingdom Hearts I/II). I was heavily influenced by the Great Walls of Ba Sing Se (from Avatar: The Last Airbender), but there were a few times where the wall just seemed...funny and whimsicle because of how it rose/fell and weaved along the mountain crest.




     I can understand why a wall built like this would have an ever-changing 'levelness', but since there's elemental manipulation in my story, i don't want to be limited to "real world" mechanics...which is kind of why i find some of these pictures i captured so funny.








     This is a pretty good kind of "middle ground" between the rise/fall of the terrain and the levelness of the wall. Again, i wanted mine to be a constant height, so this would only partially represent my idea.









     This is the kind of...aesthetic i'm going for in my wall design - grand, towering, impenetrable, almost as if it weren't man-made. I mean, the ground at the base of the wall isn't 100% level, but they maintain a constant height all around the inner-city. There's far less terrain near the city of Ba Sing Se than in my story, but the constant height thing is almost a must for me.







    This was a concept sketch i came up with for for my main town (after the post below this one, but before my design for the wall) and it might not make much sense to the viewer without any insight into my story/worl, but i'll eventually have some 3D mock-ups going on to illustrate the train routes and underlying terrain (i was kind of aiming for a small mountain/hill range encircling one larger mountain/hill that would have the Archives library sitting atop it)

More sketches and designs to come soon now that i've dusted off my Wacom tablet and found it far easier to sketch "layered" ideas in photoshop than on paper and then transfer.