Heart of Fire (Ret p9)

IskatuMesk

Canada969 Posts

January 06 2014 22:47 GMT

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

The days etch on and wearily the clock hands strike a new hour. A year has passed, a new cycle begins. It has now been over a year since I began this journey, and though it has worn me thin, I must endure much more yet.

The last few months have been hell. I was poised for a dynamic entry into ~~another man's anus~~ the UDK portion of the project. I had begun work on the second UDK scene and I was at the cusp of a large workload for the Sins portion.

Recently, with the introduction of the FumeFX particles and a major Revision 10 critical pass phase, I was able to push Anahn particles into beta stages. I have exceeded what was thought possible with this game limits, but with the limits imposed, there is little further I can take things beyond polish.

Truly, the major hurdles left for sins are the Fourth-Generation Anahn and the Myrookk Undead. The latter has never been considered a serious roadblock, but as I slowly gnaw the balls off everything else, they are coming sooner than later.

My projections all changed in early November when I caught Pneumonia from my grandmother. I had already suffered from numerous ear and eye infections for nearly a month prior. A month later and hers cleared up. I have had no such luck. Now I am on my third month of being marginally sick of the shit. Breathing is painful and difficult, and the coughing has left me sore and exhausted for a very long time. Also, the mucus. It's gross.

After I started getting well enough to sit upright, I began trying to recover the immense amount of time lost this year. Between video casting and Retribution, a backlog of material had worked up over the months. Shown here is the 6th dated Leviathan revision in progress. This hunk of shit has gone through more undated revisions than that, and to this day still bothered me in how ugly it looked.

Hopefully, this is the last time I ever need to waste time on this piece of trash.

Winter came upon a desperate time. As I lean closer and closer to closing up the Sins aspect of the project, I longed for getting my foot in the door of the UDK. Every single thing I have invested my work into to this point hinges on my ability to master this toolset and do many things I have long dreamed of doing since I began modding in 1999-2000. Getting sick just as I was getting started... was not much help.

Today, I'm still trying to get things back on track. My second scene is nearing completion mesh-wise and will serve as the entrypoint into UDK particles, more complex animated cameras, and other such things I've only yet had a taste of. I have never shown this scene to the public, and while I don't plan to show the entire thing, I've give you a very small preview.

The scene is over 400k polies and will probably be over 500k once I begin to finish it. This is by far the single most complex individual thing I have created in my life. The thing is, it wasn't really that hard. Only the control room is giving me troubles. I'm hoping that, in time, I will be able to conquer the many dozens of scenes I must model for the project.

Character models, however, remain an unknown wild card. I am gambling on someone I know being able to make them, but his experience is limited to Skyrim/Oblivion kitbashing and a few custom meshes. He has a few months of college under his belt, though, so his experience definitely far exceeds my own (aka none). It remains to be seen if this project has any hope of survival or not.

In a bid to one day be able to provide individuals such as he with concept art, seeing as I can't find any on the internet that suits my world, I ended up buying a tablet. I haven't used a pen or pencil in over 15 years except for signing the odd document. I wasn't exactly known for drawing in my past. Alas, desperate times call for desperate measures. I am as desperate as desperate can be.

I have a long, long ways to go before I can draw anything resembling characters. But if I can block out storyboards for scenes that help me visualize meshes to model, or draw bits of props or specific bits to help my comrades see what's in my head, then it will be worth the immense cost.

These are troubled times, but I swore I would tame these lands. I will do so, or die trying.

In 2014 I hope to conquer the learning aspect of the UDK. That is all I can ask for. If I can figure out how to make sins-level particles, which should be easy, animate ships, and figure out some basic textures and materials, then the year will be well spent. Any further is too much to ask of someone like me. But I will try.

If you're interested, here's some audio work. Do read the descriptions of the individual bits, though, they explain some important things.

https://soundcloud.com/iskatumesk