ipoding...

A couple people have been asking me for an update on the Labyrinth Kit, so here it is....

Unfortunately I need to put it on hold for a week or two in order to get some other work done. I have some character work I am doing for a client that is eating up a lot more of my time than expected, and I also am involved in an ipod game collaboration (see concept art screenshot). It is still in VERY early alpha. Right now it's looking like kind of a pin ball game with the twist that you will use physics to direct your ball/game piece to score points instead of the traditional paddles. This is to be accomplished by the player placing "bumpers" on the playing field which repel the game piece. The computer randomly places black holes and suns that attract or suck in the game piece if it gets too close. The speed of the piece and objects available for placement increases in scale to the points scored.

I'll be diving back into the Labyrinth kit as soon as I can wrap up these two smaller projects.

Thanks for the interest!

Right now I am in the process of relighting about 50 models and adding textures sets 2 & 3.

The lighting is fairly labor intensive. With the old kind of crappy lighting, I could slap in a light or three, render, and in a matter of minutes be done with it. The new better lighting takes a lot of fussing and trial and error. The benefits being that it looks better and takes up less disk space, using just 1 light map texture file as opposed to the often numerous light map files the old light mapper would create. (80+ for a large detailed model).

I have had to go back to removing the light sources (IE Lamps and braisers) due to a glitch where I could not get them to light properly. Having a dark flame looks more unnatural than having no flame at all, so they got yanked. I will still include the light source models with the kit though. If folks wish to use them, they can place them near light blooms and maybe even add in a nice particle effect to make it look really good.

Lighting Redux

Some friends referred me to a new lighting application, which is a bit buggy and temperamental. But after hammering at it for a few days, I finally managed to get some improved lighting into my model. (click to zoom)




It's still not exactly what I wanted. To get the deep shadows I had to disable certain rendering options. This created other issues like muted colors and my candle flame turned black at some angles. I'm working on that.

This version also represents a major design change - I'm now including light sources. Originally I tried to keep the light sources ambiguous, with the intention of providing the maximum amount of flexibility to the developer. But the lighting tends to look surreal with out an identifiable source. So, I caved on the issue and created a series of lamps that I will use throughout the Labyrinth Construction Set as light sources.