Tag Archives: computer

Unity 3D – Textures Don’t Double in List

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Just installed Unity3D Pro. Yes, I paid for it. Check out Studica if you’re a student, they make it a little more affordable to get the Pro commercial version of Unity. Grossly overpriced for what you get now-a-days compared to the free version, but what little you do get is valuable. Especially the “Profiler,” a great debugging tool that shows you what resources your game is using.

After a quick test, I think I found that an array of the same Material, no matter how big, will take roughly the same amount of RAM, CPU, GPU, etc. Sounds irrelevant, but it means I can probably redo my animation system, simply to list out animations in order, and if the animation happens to use the same frame in the cycle, I can list it twice without taking extra memory (if this is a huge error on the profiler’s part, feel free to say so below, but I’m just quoting what I saw myself testing it).

Also found out that to finish about 8% of animation for one character takes me roughly 12 hours. Dear God that’s a long time… but this also means I could theoretically finish animating a character in two weeks, if I really worked hard at it. Otherwise, at least a month. Better keep at it!

 

 

 

 

 

Pencil2D – Pencil Test Animation Software

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I love animation.

I love traditional animation.

But how would you make such animation on the computer? Programs like Blender3D offer 3D animation, Flash and similar programs offer modern 2D animation. But I want traditional, draw-every-frame-by-hand animation. I’ve been using Photoshop for a long time, which is slow and cumbersome. But what should you use?

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Favorite Quotes (April 25, 2014)

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“Can computers think?

Why is time moving so quickly?

Is there life beyond death?

What is the meaning of life?

How much of compassion is just posturing?

Has your greatest fear ever come true?”

 

– Communications of the ACM, 12/2012, Vol. 55, No. 12 (cover)

 (Oddly enough, each sentence can relate to each of my game/research ideas. I like this stanza a lot…)

 

 

 

 

 

An Important Decision…

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(A open letter of personal conflictions.)

If you religiously scan everything about me on the Internet, you would be a little creepy. And, while there isn’t too much out there to go on, you’ll know I am a university student. I am finishing soon, expecting to graduate within months with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. As my classes come to a close, I have some important decisions to make.

Most people are asked throughout their student lives the same question: “What will you do when you graduate?”

How do we answer? Often, we don’t know yet. Some people, even after college or university, don’t know exactly what they want to do.

At least, that’s what they say. I think, deep down, everyone knows exactly what they would like to do. The problem is that it may or may not be viable or realistic, or are just too strange for people to be willing to admit. If you have a passion for becoming a Fortune Cookie Writer or Professional Whistler, then great, but that might be a difficult job to obtain, let alone the fear of what your family or friends would think.

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Improving RAM For Hand-Drawn Pseudo-3D Graphics

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I keep thinking about better ways to improve my method for pseudo-3D hand-drawn graphics in games. It isn’t a very advanced method, and yet expands older methods that have been abandoned decades ago, creating traditional animation in 3D games in ways that computer animation has still be unable to mimic.

The problem with it? Never mind how it looks (I am not a professional animator in any sense, that it looks as good as it does with my ability alone is enough to convince me of its potential). It takes a lot of work to animate (still less than the typical animated film, which is hardly a comparison). More importantly, it takes a lot of RAM and hard drive space. Unlike CGI models, where the animation takes less data than the model itself (and thus animations can be added to a model with less concern), my method multiplies RAM used with every frame of animation. Every frame is its own, hand-drawn texture.

Add that there are different perspectives of one character (currently 24 in my latest version). If I have one animation with five frames, that’s 24*5 = 120 frames. If I have several animations, or add more frames for smoother animation, you can see how one character can have thousands of hand-drawn frames.

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