Development Info Wasteland 3 Fig Update #9: Creating Talking Heads

[I ASK INANE QUESTIONS]

You shouldn't ask questions that go against your nature.

If it results in more inane discussion, Allakhu forgives it. The ends justify the means.

 

[Darkzone]

Mustawd perhaps he has simply misspoken and meant AoD, or that the figures have been made in 3d and then rendered in blender.

Well, he's an Underrail dev, so I'm guessing he meant the latter

This was a kind of rhetorical mean in the post that was interrupted by my urge to piss and my laughter as i have seen after both acts, that i had misspelld you a.name as Mustard. And yes i thought the second one would be obvious and would answer your questions.
With static assets this is quite clear how you make it (3d Model with texture and then simply render under the desired light conditons). It gets more interesting and tedious (taking picture at every frame of the rendered object in the animation) with animated objects, but this kind of saves you much much work time in opposite to drawing it over and over again.
But working with 2d is not my kind of metier despite my love of drawings and paintings, because the lack of perspective is killing me and therefore i dislike also the orthographic camera.

 

[Mustawd]

I always knew he meant making 2D sprites using Blender. I guess I just worded my post strangley.

 

[Darkzone]

I always knew he meant making 2D sprites using Blender. I guess I just worded my post strangley.

You can also make 2d mesh and rig them and you can also develop a game in the blender game engine. So there were 3 possible answers to your question and i assumed the most basic one.

Spoiler

Example:

Tutorial:

 

[Semper]

Blender. Dont get me wrong i love blender, but inXile seem to lack the money for Autodesk products.

that's a really short-sighted conclusion neglecting the fact that to land an artist job at inxile there's the requirement to create models in maya/3dsmax/zbrush. there are artists around the world working at game developers and using blender. it's even used in hollywood productions. as long as it supports the file format fitting into the studio's pipeline there's nothing wrong with that, especially if the artist feels comfortable using it.
it's true that it's not an industry standard, but that's because it's...
a) relatively new. studios use proven pipelines based on proprietary tools created for maya/3dsmax years ago.
b) it's open source without professional support. plus you can't easily develop commercial addons because of blender's gpl license.
c) there's no place for it at artist schools because it's no industry standard (doom loop).

while its viewport ain't not that powerful (like modo's), it's on par with the big players with regard to digital content creation.

 

[Darkzone]

Blender. Dont get me wrong i love blender, but inXile seem to lack the money for Autodesk products.

that's a really short-sighted conclusion neglecting the fact that to land an artist job at inxile there's the requirement to create models in maya/3dsmax/zbrush. there are artists around the world working at game developers and using blender. it's even used in hollywood productions. as long as it supports the file format fitting into the studio's pipeline there's nothing wrong with that, especially if the artist feels comfortable using it.
it's true that it's not an industry standard, but that's because it's...
a) relatively new. studios use proven pipelines based on proprietary tools created for maya/3dsmax years ago.
b) it's open source without professional support. plus you can't easily develop commercial addons because of blender's gpl license.
c) there's no place for it at artist schools because it's no industry standard (doom loop).

while its viewport ain't not that powerful (like modo's), it's on par with the big players with regard to digital content creation.

That was not meant so serious as it sounds, but it sparked a discussion.
I play around with blender and i love it, like everyone who came to blender through me. Blender has many positive attributes, but in some rare cases it has its own problems. I will not go into depths of this things, but one example is the lacking built in functions for UV mapping and i'm not convinced by the auto rigging system and the automatic bone weight painting / assigning. I know that many lacking functions can be found already made by someone as a python script that can be imported, and perhaps i will write some scripts myself for the exemplary problems. On the other hand i love the cloth simulation and fluids simulation physics, but this are not the attributes that a normal artist would use that creates his own animations and meshes.
Towards:
a) Blender exists since 1994.
b) It has a very large supporting community and you can easily develop free add ons and many addons are on par with commercial solutions.
c) The artist can easily adapt blender to his needs and even the poorest artist or student can use it, because it is free.

I don't know if it is on par with the big players according to the numbers of produced content. But since it is free, then definitely the people from eastern europe will use it for their projects. Free of charge does not automatically mean that it is shit and neither is an expensive product always good for any use.
Zbrush costs around $760 per artist and its workflow seem convincing and Maya or 3ds Max cost around 1,9k per anno. So one could state that blender brings their profits quite down, if your assessment of the created amount of content is correct.

 

[Cadmus]

Wasteland 3 wish list:
- player managed party order
- formations
- your team isn't fucking retarded and doesn't step on already discovered landmines and traps (your companions masterfully avoid any traps you've already discovered in Divinity: Original Sin, for example)

 

[Semper]

I will not go into depths of this things, but one example is the lacking built in functions for UV mapping

besides udim support what are you missing other dcc packages got? you can sculpt, edit, pin, tear apart and stitch uvs. there's a decent unwrap algorithm and marking/unmarking seams is easy and fast. there's also live unwrapping. it lacks a serious automatic uv packer, but that's something every dcc package suffers from.

which brings me back to commercial plugins. there are none because licensing under gpl is a big issue for plugin developers. here i am not talking about single person developers selling their addons for around 30$. i aslo didn't talk about the supporting community, but professional support from the developer. you license autodesk's portfolio and you'll get support if anything goes wrong. time is money, and developing games already cost a tremendous amount. you can't expect to conquer professional business in a large scale if there's no professional support.

Blender exists since 1994.

that's not the blender of today, not even close. blender was a propietary animation package before going open source in 2002. save for some geeks it stayed niche till the big ui revamp with 2.5 around 2011. it was not before the integration of bmesh (ngons) with version 2.63 in 2012 that blender took off. since then its development sky rocketed and it was widely used by independent developers.

The artist can easily adapt blender to his needs and even the poorest artist or student can use it, because it is free.

autodesk offers free licenses for students - as long as you're rolled in you don't pay for 3dsmax/maya. universities teach what is demanded by the big studios - products by autodesk. there's simply no place for blender.

I don't know if it is on par with the big players according to the numbers of produced content.

not produced content, but power of the application to produce such content. besides the viewport, which will be tackled with 2.8, blender is a serious contender.

 

[Darkzone]

I will not go into depths of this things, but one example is the lacking built in functions for UV mapping

besides udim support what are you missing other dcc packages got? you can sculpt, edit, pin, tear apart and stitch uvs. there's a decent unwrap algorithm and marking/unmarking seams is easy and fast. there's also live unwrapping. it lacks a serious automatic uv packer, but that's something every dcc package suffers from.

Turn over, fold, invert UV map parts and etc. Some of this functions have been made as plugins.

which brings me back to commercial plugins. there are none because licensing under gpl is a big issue for plugin developers. here i am not talking about single person developers selling there addons for around 30$. i aslo didn't talk about the supporting community, but professional support from the developer. you license autodesk's portfolio and you'll get support if anything goes wrong. time is money, and developing games already cost a tremendous amount. you can't expect to conquer professional business in a large scale if there's no professional support.

Blender exists since 1994.

that's not the blender of today, not even close. blender was a propietary animation package before going open source in 2002. save for some geeks it stayed niche till the big ui revamp with 2.5 around 2011. it was not before the integration of bmesh (ngons) with version 2.63 in 2012 that blender took off. since then its development sky rocketed and it was widely used by independent developers.

Yes that is true that with bmesh blender took off, never the less the statement that blender exists since 1994 is still true.

The artist can easily adapt blender to his needs and even the poorest artist or student can use it, because it is free.

autodesk offers free licenses for students - as long as you're rolled in you don't pay for 3dsmax/maya. universities teach what is demanded by the big studios - products by autodesk. there's simply no place for blender.

Depends on the University and taught subject. I have studied computer science with blender and POVRay, but i assume from your statement and with common sense that in the design departments / universities autodesk products are used. As a student you should not be capable of producing commercially with this products, because a students license is just a studying license. Blender on the other hand gives you this possibility and from my perspective once you learn one tool, then you theoretically know what the other tool should be capable of.

I don't know if it is on par with the big players according to the numbers of produced content.

not produced content, but power of the application to produce such content. besides the viewport, which will be tackled with 2.8, blender is a serious contender.

That was not clear from my perspective. I dont't know if blender has the same capabilities like autodesk products, because i haven' looked into this products for years (certainly not since 2013), so i will take your word for it.

 

[Fenix]

Guess he just likes em like that

Spoiler

Is it a person I think it is?