SPY STORY : Progress Update

Hi all,

This is just a short, progress update on the development of the 'Spy Story' demo.

I have now implemented ambient-occlusion-shadows on all the buldings and props in the scene, in addition to parallax normal maps (i.e. bump maps).

The ocean shader is finished. It uses two bump maps that are animated independently to create the illusion of a sinusoidal interference pattern made by rippling water. It is not the best ocean effect that I've done, but it doesn't require advanced graphics options like dynamic-cube-mapping, render-to-texture, or a GLSL fragment algorithm, which would've severely limited platform compatibility. It is still a definite improvement on the standard Unity ocean shader.

For the next week, or so, I will be coding some gameplay-logic.

Stay tuned.

How to Export from Gile[s] to Unity

Hi all,

For the last week, I've been wrestling with the problem of creating realistic shadows in Unity 2.6 Free Edition - due largely to the lack of support for Globally Illuminated Lightmaps.

I finally figured-out a good work-flow using Gile[s] and Blender as an intermediate stage and I've written it all down in a '.pdf' file, which you can download here:
Exporting From Gile[s] to Unity Tutorial

Cheers,

Patrick

Current Development Project: SPY STORY (working title)

Hi all,

Here are a few images of my current project.

I'm making a video game about the shadowy world of international espionage. Set in the near future - it is a James Bond \ Jason Bourne world of rogue agents, secret plans and intelligence gathering operations.
With the main emphasis on realism - not just in terms of the graphics, but also the mission objectives that the hero (or heroin) must complete - the player invokes skills like stealth, problem solving, exploration and various surveillance techniques.
The software tool-set for this project includes: Blender, GIMP, Vue and Unity (Free Edition).
In my next post, I hope to have a walk-about demo that can be downloaded, or played on-line through most browsers.

Stay tuned!

Video: How to Add a Water Effect to a Landscape

Hi all,
This is a 45 minute video tutorial, which demonstrates my technique for adding and blending a real-time water effect on to a landscape model in Blender 3D. Like the other techniques I've shown you, it utilizes Blender's Node Editor.

You will learn:

- How to append an existing Blender file,

- How to paint a shore-line,

- How to paint transparency on to the 3D model.

This is an advanced method, which requires some prior knowledge of Blender's User Interface.

Hope it's useful to someone out there.

Patrick

How to Add Water to a Landscape from Patrick Mount on Vimeo.

Also available (with annotations) at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Wormwood1968

Video: How to paint with Blender's Node Editor

Hi again,
This video tutorial demonstrates a method of painting multiple textures on to a 3D Mesh, using Blender's Node Editor. It is an advanced technique and requires some prior knowledge of Blender's User Interface.

Sorry about the length of this video. It wouldn't really work if I'd split it into smaller segments - you might miss some critical stage in the work-flow.

Don't get discouraged if it seems baffling at first. It took me a long time to figure this method out. Just play the video through a couple of times and try to follow it.

I am using the stable version of Blender 2.49.

How to paint with Blender's Node Editor from Patrick Mount on Vimeo.

Also available (with annotations) at: http://www.youtube.com/user/Wormwood1968

You can download the finished landscape here:
PaintedLandscape.zip

System Requirements

• Blender 2.49b
• Python 2.6.2 or higher
• Graphics Card support for OpenGL + GLSL Shader Model

Video: How to Sculpt a Terrain

Hi all,
I thought I'd do a series of relatively short video tutorials about sculpting and texture-painting using Blender. This is the first and probably the easiest to follow.
It assumes a prior working knowledge of the Blender interface.
Hope you enjoy it.
Cheers.