Webpage update

So I just found out when I clicked on the about me, it went to my blog and when I clicked on blog it went to a blank page called blog. I still don’t know how it did this or why it did it, but it’s all fixed for now.

Even the page that was about me had all the about me stuff, but when viewed or previewed it would come up with my blog posts…. pretty damn odd. Anyways I have also shuffled and removed some of the clutter/options that were on the left and right  side of my page. Might play around with it a bit more or add more in the future but for now, pretty happy with it now.

New look in progress

Just a very very short update but I’ve decided to change the theme (yet again) and now that has whacked all my other pages out of whack, so now I gotta fix it all up but I’m not sure when that will happen. I may even change the theme yet again I do like parts of this new layout but still a bit unsure for what I need it for.

New projects

Alright so we finished up the swamp project, got everything done in time and presented to all the 2nd year artist students at AIE.

Now we have to redesign the GUI for Assassins creed for a mini assignment for a better design and then present that next week and explain and talk about our design (for 5 mins).

Today we also got told our character assessment which is a pretty cool idea, and also different! Each class (2 rooms full of 3D artists) get split in half (least I think) with their own people in their classrooms, and all got a chess piece and get split into black and white. So the idea is to make a character out of these pieces with a total of 5 animations (Idle, walk, attack, defending and another one I have forgotten) and join them with the other colour side and have it as one piece (at least that’s what I think, don’t have the PDF telling us what we need to do).

So for now its pretty early and the side I was on (white) the whole team wasn’t there to discus where the black side had most of their members compared to our a little 5 group of white side. But our theme for the moment (as it may change by Monday) is Holy where the black side/team have stated they were going to do dark/evil themed characters, which I think will work out very very well. So I got a pawn, but have no ideas for now but I’m really wanting to get this other mini assignment out of the way first as it is due in the next 5 days (Monday).

Also I’ve recently uploaded On The Run installer onto my dropbox and added it to the Games/Level Scenes section, even though It’s not a web build but you can download it and install it and check it out. There isn’t really any credit (the groups or my name) in the game itself, but there is a hidden poster of the people who did work on it and also I included who did what (from memory) in the readme that is included that has some information about the game (such as if you want to run it in DirectX11 mode, though I don’t think its going to do anything different then running it under DirectX9). UDK (Unreal Development Kit) was the engine used to make this unlike the other two web builds which were built in Unity.

Oops……Oh well, New Steam Workshop Item

So I had thought that with the Fantasy swamp level, that the texture used wasn’t mine. So I finally had a good proper look and it turned out when my partner was snapping the level together while I was away (when it was due in the next day) so I wasn’t there to make sure it was my texture. So today was the very final day to get all our stuff in so I quickly fixed up the little error and re-exported a game exe and web build of the game, I have also updated the web build on this site.

So last night I got in the mood to do some 3D work, making another item for Worms Clan Wars. This time it was a tall object that they pull out randomly every now and then, and it had been a while since I had done anything for Worms Clan Wars so there was a few mistakes here and there.

First I started with Army Hat of some type with a hand painted texture…didn’t turn out so well texture wise, but then I remembered I had an unused texture for another project I did very early on my first year at AIE which I thought looked heaps better. It did look a lot better, and I knew why. The first time I hand painted an Army camouflage, I used a reference to get down the shapes and stuff and in the end came off really nice. The time I attempted (last night) I just got the colours and did random patterns and stuff…didn’t work out how I wanted to in the end.

So I threw them into the editor, it didn’t work and at the time I had no idea why when I went back and forth to see if anything was to change..it didn’t, so I went oh well I wont delete it just encase. So I went into my bedroom and saw a Cyanide & Happiness plush and thought hm, that is a pretty simple design I will give that a go as I had never made a tall object/asset for Worms Clan Wars.

So everything went well, smashed it out pretty quick its only a sphere and a few cylinders to make it up and textured it pretty fast due to it being a total of 2 colours in total. So the template you use to make sure you are doing it right made no sense to me at all so it took me a little bit to it finally worked (turns out if I just had it in the middle/center and deleting the template all together worked best) but finally I had it, after a few tweaks here and there.

It can be viewed/downloaded/rated here

 

 

Updating and more updating!

Well today I think I will be updating the page, with a game I made back in 2012 at AIE titled “Super Breakout Man”.

I put it up last night and gave it a test just to see if it would work (why wouldn’t it?) turns out If I exported a web build of a game with an older version of Unity the Unity web player wont play it due to it being old.

So I learned today, I’m going to have to update the web builds each time there’s a new version of the Unity web player (or least I assume).

As for today I have to write up some documentation for the Swamp Project and then I can hand it in all done and then I may even work on my little side project I had to finish making a lamp and still a bunch of other assets I have to build to complete the scene.

So be sure to check out the Games/Level Scenes section for Super Breakout Man, a solo project I worked on at AIE while doing my certificate III.

Website Update

Alright so there’s been a few changes since day one, Ive had menus for a few days now I’m unsure if I’m happy with the layout and colours but for now I’ll be sticking with them I think.

So I just had a really “FUN” time getting a Unity web version running on this website, doesn’t allow you to upload the files I needed to and after stressing, cursing the computer and website and other websites for not doing what I was hoping or not having a big enough upload size limit. So after asking on a group on facebook that has 2nd years from the same uni it turns out I needed to use dropbox, make it have a public folder and thencreate a link from here to the public link file hosted on my dropbox account!

So now I’m pretty happy and you can check it out right here, or hover your mouse over the work menu and select games/level scenes.

I may add a download’s section where you can play the non web version but for now it may be just web versions of the games/level scenes I’ve worked on.

 

First Post

Welcome, this is my first blog post. I’m not really sure on what I’m going to write but I’ll give it a shot.

I’m Kyle Bacon and I am currently 23 years old. I’m currently studying Advanced Diploma of Professional Game Development Specialising in Game Art & Animation at AIE in Melbourne Australia. And I would like be a texture artist and I hope to improve and get to a decent level of hand painted textures.

The first time I ever attempted anything with games (besides playing them) was making a new player skin (texture) for Grand Theft Auto 3 when I was about 11 but only had MS paint to work with so I ended up finding other skins people had made using Photoshop and use to crop bits and pieces from different skins to make one myself.

Then 2 years later GTA: Vice City came out with the same feature of being able to make a skin for the player model. I think I may of used MS paint again until later in the years I came back to the game and played around with the skins in Photoshop.

So I played around with Photoshop for a few years and just looked up tutorials and such if I was wanting to do something specific such as how to touch up photos or make facial hair.
Over the years I got fairly decent and confident with Photoshop and started using a 3D program called Poser in 2007. I had no idea about modeling or anything and I liked texturing (I had no idea what it was called either at the time). The program came with lots of human and other models with alot of different clothes and items to dress them with, so I started making my own T-shirts and pants editing the texture files. I then used another feature it had to use a front and side photograph to make a face texture and even though It wasn’t fully perfect I had a 3D model with my face on it.

I then went onto modding games such as Manhunt and Max Payne 2 around 2009-2013. The manhunt was a small little mod where I changed the player model texture. For Max Payne 2 I changed the way guns did damage and other little tweaks, as well as editing to the textures to most textures for the character models.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then in 2012 I started my very first own piece of 3D work at AIE doing certificate II & III and now find myself in the advanced diploma.