Dimitri Bueno

*This post have spoils about the movie Inception.

If you are reading this you probably watched Inception (if not, I strongly recommend you to stop and watch). What I’ll write will not be to discuss the quality of the movie, instead it to discuss it’s plot.

As one have notice, the movie have huge interrogation at the end, and looking on the internet we can see that everyone has  a theory of what happened.  A large part of  those theory’s are well structured and could easily be applied on the movie’s idea.  But for me it’s useless trying to discovery  “the” right end for it.

What I understand is that it doesn’t matter the end, it will always be relative. I may be wrong, but I have the feeling that a straight final doesn’t exist even for the plot writer. To think whether is reality or dream is a trap that get us tied on a Limbo, it hardly can be said which is reality or dream. The purpose of the movie is to plant a seed, a seed of an idea (As Dom Cobb constantly say). That whole operation wasn’t for Fisher, Cobb, Saito, or any of the characters, It’s in fact an operation for us, each one of us. The whole idea of the film is to plant the idea that we don’t  -or better- we can’t know what is reality,  we can’t know what we are  living for sure – reality is relative. As I’ve read a comment from Steve Jensen on a blog: (See site) “…Maybe you live on a limbo. Do you remember coming to this world? No, you just woke up in the middle of it and you journey…”

The whole idea is to place an idea, and the almost 3 hours of the film were to dig the earth of our mind and plant it.

Some time ago a good friend of mine asked: “Hey Dimitri, where are the crazy models?”. This got on my mind and made me think that he’s right, I should do some independent “crazy models”. At first a humanoid or monster came into my mind, but these days I decide to do a simpler model but with fast results.

It`s not that crazy, but it came out of my mind and there was no purpose to do (just my will), besides, I have never seem a mushroom like that

Here is a short video with illumination:

Dark Mushroom

The texture i used on it:

Diffuse Texture

The initial idea was very different, it was a happy looking mushroom with a mini-castle on the top. But when the time goes on I decided to make some changes and put more reality on the model and make him more obscure, mysterious.

I have just arrived from a trip to Sao Paulo which I were participating on a game Workshop ministered by Matthew Costello and realized by the Cultura Inglesa.

The event was really organized and very rich, Matt Costello is really a good professional and person. He definitely knows how to pass on information.  I’ll post here my overall vision about the vent, and I’ll be writing more detailed posts exploring the event and topics that were explored by him.

The Workshop:

The Workshop itself was made on 4 + 1 day being them:

The first morning a lecture about “videogame: image, narrative and participation” and later on an approach about the Brazilian game industry. By the night we had a lecture about “history, gameplay and creative challenge” with Costello.

The next two days were the first cycle which I can’t say too much because I didn’t participated. But some topic were an overview of the components for creating a game and a group division to create a conception of game to presented as a pitch.

The last two days were the cycle two, which pre-made projects participated and were improved by Matt ideas also for presentation as a pitch. I joined this cycle with my project, Nightfall.

Matt Costello:

Matt Costello

Matt Costello is a writer and creator for groundbreaking TV, novels, nonfiction books and finally games. He worked on many games as The 7 Guest and Doom 3 (which I like too much).

He is very talent and his teaching methodology is excellent. He doesn’t speak a lot of things that we won’t remember later. A interactive and dynamic explanation as well as the applications is part of his method. It’s very easy to understand and learn from him because  we can easily assimilate something he did and what does it meant. On the workshop we could learn about story, gameplay, games, pitch, creativity, specific aspects on our projects and much more. If you someday  have a chance to participate on any event with him, don’t lose it.

If you want to know more about him, here’s is his website:

Matt Costello

And also the Cultura Inglesa Festival site:

Cultura Inglesa Festival

Versão em Português

Another model for my game.

It is a low-poly house with 228 + 110 polygons of a door and two windows.

The house is low-detailed because of the style of my game. This will not be a static house on the world; it will be a malleable object that can be changed. It will be possible to switch the texture in order to modify it, that way I can`t do a single high-detailed texture for each house on the game. I made it in a way that the texture could be simply changed.

For example:

Different Textures

The door and the windows will be different objects that will be placed on the house.

House Door and Window

Versão em Português

I`m working on the character of my game project (see previously post) and I`ve made some progress.

Character

I`ve made this character with Difuse, Normal and Specular texture. I still have some details to arrange, such as the chunking of textures and the mapping, but in general this is the personage I will use on my game (at least for now).

Feel free to criticize it; I really could use some new ideas on it.

Versão em Português

I already wrote about Normal and Specular map, but now I’ll compare them on a model that I made.

I`m creating a character for my main project (a mmorpg), I’ve already modelate it and  I’m texturing, until now I finished the face with  diffuse, normal and specular map, eventhought I pretend to re-texture, it can be used to compare the maps.  The model is the same that I have shown on the previously post.

I still have to work on some details, but here it is:

Face Parallel

Uvw and Textures

The Normal Map gives shape and detail for the model, we can see that it greatly improve it, giving the impression of deepness and a higher polygon model. Notice that neither the ear nor the neck was made with diffuse, on both I used Normal map.

The Specular Map let the model shinier, giving more detail, and simulating an illuminated face. As I done this map from the Normal map(it can be seen on the texture) it`s visible that the pattern of illumination follows the pattern of the normal, giving even more sensation of deepness, because this “illusion” is made by the lighting of the texture.

I`m making the body, but I only made the normal yet.

Character

Versão em Português

Specular Map, similar to normal map, is a texture used on 3d models to define the surface`s shininess.

A black and white texture is used; white on the texture will be bright on the model and black will be normal illuminated. A surface that doesn`t shiny too much (wood, stone, paper etc.) tend to have a dark specular map, and a shiny surface (metals, armor etc) tend to have a light specular map.

A model without this texture has the same specular value all over it, by adding it; some parts on the model can be set to be more or less shiny.

Here are one example of specular map on a model and the texture:

Specular map is highly used on games nowadays, especially on metal`s, armors, weapons and it can be used on everything, but normally it isn`t used on outshine objects, it`s preferred to simulate the illumination on the diffuse texture (saving the rendering of the texture).

You can see some example of Specular Map (I really like Elder Scrolls IV ):

SpecularExample

Versão em Portugês

Another drawing, this time from one of the most intriguing villain on the human history, my preferred.

The Joker

Versão em Português

Normal Map is a technique used on 3D models to simulate the deepness through a 2D texture, giving the impression of a more detailed model without adding polygons. This technology lets a low poly model looking very similar with his high poly version, giving more quality with less processing.

How does it work?

A program is used to create the normal map; it gets two version of a model, a high detailed and a low detailed, then he generate pixels that will form the texture (using the mapping of the low polygon version). For each pixel, the program “cast`s a ray” along the normal (a vector that is perpendicular to the surface) of the low poly model towards the high poly model. At the point the ray touch the high poly surface the program finds the high poly normal. It figures out which direction of the high poly surface is facing comparing with the low poly model.

Once this is calculated, the program writes down the pixel on a RGB texture and does the same for every pixel on the texture. After it’s done, you’ll have a blue-red texture alike, with each color representing the dimensions (x, y, and z).

This is an example of normal map that I’m working on and how does it look on the model.

This all part from the relation of the light that insides on the surface and it’s normal.  If the angle of the light compared with the angle of the normal is small, the surface will be well illuminated because it`s facing directly to the light. If the angle is big, it will be poorly illuminated because the surface isn`t headed to the light.

Nowadays almost every games use normal maps, I think Doom 3 clearly show how does the normal map works on a game.

This provides an amazing improvement on the game`s graphics.

If you are interested to learn how make a normal map here are two great tutorials:

Normal Map Workflow

Normal Mapping Tutorial

Versão em Português

When I was collecting images for the last post I’ve saw that Mario image and thought it would be interesting to draw, so here it is.

Unfortunately the digitalization process doesn`t capture every smooth on the paper, so the quality isn`t the best as possible.