Parks Environment Lighting Update

 Martin · 11 years

I've made quite a few geometric changes to my "Parks" Blender scene since the last update, but unfortunately, most of those are not visible in the render camera that I've been using to post project updates. I've made other changes that are very noticeable however, as you can see here.

In this version of the scene, I've replaced the old single-source sun lamp with an HDR environment lighting setup. The result is a much softer look to the light, but also a more realistic color. I've greatly reduced the saturation of the background color here as well.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to say this is how the lighting will look from this point forward, as I kind of liked the garish look of the bright blue, and the hard sunlight from before. Still, I think this was an interesting experiment, and may lead to a better lighting setup for this project in the future.

The image data I used to create the HDR lighting can be found at the HDRLabs HDRI archive. I used the one called "Bryant Park". They've got a wonderful collection of HDRI images there, all graciously provided for free. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend it.

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Footballers Final

 Martin · 11 years

Here's the final of the poster I made for one of my ex-coworkers, who is at the 49ers/Seahawks game on Thanksgiving. Maybe they'll get it on TV!

Either way, you can enjoy it here now.

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More Footballer Portraits

 Martin · 11 years

After a little more work, here's the final set of portraits to be used for the football sign I mentioned in the previous post. For any 49ers fans out there, do these guys look recognizable to you?

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Footballer Portraits

 Martin · 11 years

One of my former coworkers at CytoSport commissioned me (with beer) to create an illustrated sign for her for an upcoming 49ers game. Here's a work-in-progress image of some of the player portraits for the image.

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HDTGM Monkey Shines shirt idea

 Martin · 11 years

This is another graphic I created for a podcast I frequently listen to, this time for How Did This Get Made? You'd have to listen to the Monkey Shines episode to get the full context for this graphic, but I recommend it - it's a great podcast all around.

This image was created as an idea for a t-shirt graphic and was unsolicited.

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Parks render test

 Martin · 11 years

This is a quick render of a Blend file I've been playing around with in my spare time recently. I was feeling inspired after seeing a simple landscape painting at one of my wife's relative's houses.

The idea I'm pursuing with this project is to organically add things to the scene as I see fit. I'm keeping everything to a relative scale, but not worrying much about keeping things on the grid or being precise about placement.

I'll post more later as I continue!

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New Theme Screenshot

 Martin · 11 years

When I create WordPress themes for my website, I usually add a silly screenshot, so when I view all the installed themes in the back end of the site, I can tell which is which easily. This is the image I created for the current theme (2014). Enjoy!

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Feeling nostalgic

 Martin · 11 years

I'm not sure if many people (or anyone!) noticed, but I recently updated this website to have a more modern look, and to better represent the work I've done over the last few years.

So far, so good, I think. I like the way everything looks and functions, and in terms of updating old content, I'm about 95% there. As of this writing, all that's really left to do is update my "techniques" page, and maybe update some of my old GameMaker examples/tutorials to GameMaker: Studio.

Speaking of GameMaker, part of the site changeover had me going back and reviewing a lot of the old art and games I've produced, and that got me feeling nostalgic- particularly the part where I went through all of my old GameMaker Community forum avatars. That really took me back and got me thinking about all the fun I had at the GMC back then. The personalities of that place! The goofy games everyone made! The strict rules of the forum! Ah, man.

I created my first big game, Hover Tank 3D, and released it on the GameMaker Community in January 2006. I had spent the better part of 2005 working on that game in my spare time. I even briefly gave up on it at one point when the online system I was using, which depended on another user's web service, suddenly stopped working, and I was faced with taking the entire multiplayer portion of the game back to the drawing board.

During the time I created Hover Tank 3D, I had a really crummy job. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but the pay was terrible. One of the perks of the job was that my boss would let us skip lunch and then go home early, so I got quite used to going home early and having an extended afternoon of game dev. And even though things are a lot better now than they were then, I do still look back on the amount of time I had to devote to my game development efforts with a little bit of envy.

I have gotten to load up some of my old projects in GameMaker: Studio lately, and after finagling with them to make them work in the newer version of the program, it's been fun seeing them come to life again. I have an idea about merging the new physics engine with a game like Hover Tank 3D to make something a little more accurate than the old game... but we'll see if I can find the time to put it together. In the meantime, it's been fun remembering all the fun of the past.

Anyway, if you do happen to read my blog occasionally, and you've come back to check out the new design, I hope you like it, and thanks for reading. And if you have any fun stories about the old days of the GMC, feel free to post them in the comments. I'd love to hear them!

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