What the heck do you do when the script you have written looks exactly like the assets received with the purchase of the book yet you still get errors. Frustrating, yes but I will work through it. (EDIT: Quick edit to this post. I must learn to ‘read‘ completely through a lesson before I come to the conclusion things are not working. Patience is a virtue and I have an infinite amount when it comes to work and other people but reading, working through lessons, I need to get some.)
Lately I have been on a website “Codecademy.com” learning Python scripting. Talk about confusion when you are working with ‘Unity script’ which is similar to Java script and learning Python at the same time. The two have the same functionality in areas but the syntax, when it differs (which is everywhere) you swear you are coding properly but it fails, duh…. You look at the error, change hats and continue on.
I’m starting to miss modeling a bit. Working with Unity 3D I will start to need some game assets so I’ll start creating a small collection of game objects and get used to this work flow.
This is the finished product after completion of chapter 08 of the ‘3D Game Development with Unity 4’ book. So far that book has been great with a few minor errors and these are mostly to do with the different versions that release almost as frequently as Blender 🙂
Edit:
After hours of fighting with animating the alpha channel of the material for a fade out, I just found out that animating the materials in the current version is broken. Now I can get on with chapter 09 and quit worrying if I was doing something incorrect or not.
I started to get the itch to work in Blender because I was going through withdraws working in Unity so much lately and I did not want my muscle memory to be replaced by the different UI in Unity. I received an email from the Blender Guru showing a wrecking ball and I spent about 20 minutes at lunch yesterday reproducing it. I gave everything very simple materials for a fast render so without further adieu, here it is in all it’s 11 second glory.
The last couple of weeks has felt like I am not working on enhancing my skill set in virtually anything but I know this is incorrect. I have been spending a couple hours per day working in Unity and having a wonderfully fun time doing it. It is not quite as pleasant as Blender because at times it feels more like work however it really is fun.
Working with Unity and scripting is requires a much different thought process than modeling. I am remembering what is was like when I was learning to program back in high school and can remember how fun it was and frustrating at the same time. Fun as in seeing the results of your efforts on the computer screen and frustrating at the same time because you can’t see the results as you are creating the code. Like you can see results as you are modeling correcting as you go.
I am back from my break from the internet (Christmas break from work as well). Time to start digging in and fixing some problems I was having with Unity prior to the break.
Well, the free License is finished however I did not use any of the advanced features anyway. I WILL NOT pay 1,500.00 for a piece of software no mater how great it is if I will not be using it to make some money. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. I found a great tutorial, only watched one minute but liked the layout. When my 30 days ran out yesterday I figured things out and here is my new layout. I like it. I can see the ‘scene’ and ‘game’ view at the same time as well as
I also downloaded “World Machine”, dang this is some cool software. The free version is limited to a certain extent but loading into Unity and playing with the world will be so much fun.
Watched ‘The Santa Clause’, ‘The Santa Clause 2’ and ‘The Santa Clause 3: Escape Clause’ about three times each the last few days. Watch them, they are good.
I have been playing around with python or the learning of python for the last few days using Codeacademy.com. I highly recommend this site for a good introduction to scripting. Also on my list of things to do has been Unity 4 and together these have taken up a lot of time. My schedule has changed from x number of hours of sleep per night to x number of hours per day. This means I will be up working (actual job) for as long as that takes spending lunch and down time in Codeacademy.com. Work in Blender, Unity or codeacademy for a couple hours, sleep for a few hours, get up work in Unity ect. for a couple hours, back to the job and then start over, throwing in a nap here and there when I get a little tired. So far it has been working well and I am looking forward to the Christmas break at which time I will have 17 days off where the job part of that equation can go away.
This it what I have been up to in Unity. Not much to brag about but it is much more fun than I had thought.
I did finished up this module rather quickly because the modeling was not that complicated and I think, in a few days I will be adjusting the other buildings within the city and create a new main Skyscraper for this scene. I have found some cool reference images on a new website I found “Skyscrapers.com”. This site has reference images from all over the world and has given me ideas for a better focus for this image. Plus, I made a mistake on the framing of the model, location of the camera in relation to the main building etc.. Other than those, for a quick and dirty I think it didn’t turn out half bad. Could have been better? Yes, a bunch and the main building has a lot to do with that.
New site covering miscellaneous activities including my favorite activity: Blender
