About me

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"hi i started checking you out after seeing the xenos explorer ship post.
could you do an about me post, are you working in design, where you a from, what software you use, even some tips on how you get your inspiration."

And so by popular demand (I have so few people who actually read my blog that any demand is popular) here is a post about me.

Uh...
I am a nerd. I think I should get that down first of all, as everything else kid of revolves around it. Secondly, (though not actually being related to me being a nerd) I am a human male who has travelled around an uninteresting star roughly 20 and a half times since I was born.
For anyone who want's to see me, here is a picture of me desperately trying to look cool:

It's not actually very good for seeing what I look like, I just really like my coat, and my hat.
Which brings me to one interesting thing about me, if there's a room full of people, and you know I'm there, I'm probably the one in the hat. Unless it's a very swanky indoors do, in which case I'm probably outside, so I can wear my hat.

Maybe I should do something chronological...
A few billion years ago a large amount of energy suddenly decided it wanted to explode, and BOOM! shiny new universe. It was all a bit hot for a while, and I mean way past nice sauna temperature, then things started to cool down and become proper things made of atoms and such. and then, a few billion years later there was an unassuming little planet, orbiting the afore mentioned unassuming star in an unassuming galaxy. Some chemicals bonded together in a way that let them make more of themselves, and suddenly there was life. Evolution took hold and one thing led to another, and eventually there were things that called themselves people. They weren't actually that different to anything else that had been around for a few million years prior, but they thought they were. And it was this ability to think in a useful, constructive and self deluding way that really made the species take off...
So what does this have to do with me, I hear you ask... Well go on then ask it...
The answer, I am one of these little self deluded creatures which presumes to think itself more important than it could ever really be - I am a human, as I've mentioned before, I think.
The life cycle of a human is generally 50 to 100 years and is mostly pretty dull. That's why this post won't take as long to read as it did to gather data for it (20 years so far).
The life cycle of these animals starts with infancy. Babies are small, smelly, pathetic, fragile creatures, and don't greatly differ from their adult forms. When I was one I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be one. In fact I wasn't sure I really wanted to be one of anything, so I tended to stop breathing. Which led to two very scared parents, some cost to the tax payer through the NHS and me having one extra interesting anecdote. Besides that, there were no permanent affects.
Things continued for me in a fairly ordinary fashion for several years. I slowly learned to walk, talk, read, and most importantly, in my opinion to think.
In my early schooling it was often thought that I would amount to nothing. I would spend hours on end staring into space and thinking. I can remember my teacher showing my mum an exercise book with the date scrawled (well half of it) on one line, and below it was written something like "This was an entire afternoon's work".
I did get better at the whole 'school' thing. I eventually became very good at science, allays wanting to know more than the teacher would tell me (sometimes more than the teacher could tell me). I remember in the last year of junior school, at the age of maybe 10 or 11. We'd just started learning about forces, and I was already demanding that the teacher explain how a desk could apply a different force when it was sat on to when it wasn't without the desk itself actually changing. I don't think the teacher was prepared to be grilled on the fundamentals of science by a 10 year old.
My love of science has only grown since then. Jumping back a little, the shows I really remember from my childhood aren't those intended for children, which kept me happy while I was watching them, but formed no real memories, It is Star Trek that I remember. I had to go to bed before Voyager was on, but I would often stay up listening to it from my bed room.
So, I passed through the rest of school, always loving science, hating English, and mildly disliking maths. Whenever I had the chance to choose a subject it was almost always science. except at GCSE, where you couldn't do all science, and I ended up doing Art and Drama. Art I didn't really like, it was too much research and reference, I just wanted to build stuff with clay and do drawings. Drama I did enjoy, though I don't feel it was particularly useful to me.
Then at A level when the subjects get distilled down to just four, I chose Physics, Chemistry, Electronics and Geology. I loved and excelled at physics and Electronics, in fact in electronics the teacher would occasionally have me check his answers. Chemistry wasn't so fun, it was too much remembering facts and names. I think one reason I didn't like it as much as physics is because so much of it is just what humans have done, not what is really there in nature. Geology came out of no where. I believe I was the first student at my school to take the A-level in Geology without having taken the GCSE, so I think it was of some surprise that I did well in the subject passing with an A. It is usual to drop one subject after the first year, but I chose not to. after both years with 4 subjects, I got three As and a B, the second best grades in my entire year. (The B was in Chemistry.)

I decided to go on to university and study Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE). but first I took a year out in which my brother and I travelled around Europe, staying with various people we know. this trip was insightful, exciting, interesting, scary, long and expensive. And generally a brilliant experience. I have yet to fully write up my experiences, which I may do one day, so watch this space.

I started university very nearly two academic years ago. I had to do a foundation year as I didn't do Maths at A-level. This year was generally aimed below A-level standard, so I found it all quite easy, especially the electronics we did. The most interesting thing we learned was quantum physics, which is both fascinating and confusing. Probably the best thing I got from this year was a very good friend, though, alas, he chose not to continue with the course and now lives in America.

I am not at the end of the first real year of my EEE course, and the jump in difficulty has really caught me off guard. I've been struggling to pass some modules, as I actually need to revise, which I didn't last year, or at A level as I could think my way out of most problems.

Well, that became an academic section, I hope it wasn't too boring. I guess I'll go for a categorical approach instead of a chronological approach, as that seems to be what's happening anyway.

So this section will be about design.

As I said, I grew up watching sci-fi. This meant that the things I would draw in my lunch breaks were of three types; Starships, aliens, and dragons. Dragons because everyone loves dragons.
As well as my abilities with a pencil, my knowledge of and attention to science improved with time. in high school I mainly designed ships for my brother's science fiction (he has no skill at drawing, but this is more than made up for by his story telling ability). We wanted to make these ships exceed startrek in the logic of their design, and their scientific accuracy. Recently we have decided on two scientific concessions; FLT, to get us to the aliens, and translators, so most of the storey isn't spent saying hello. Besides these the drives, the gravity, the power systems and the weapons are all done in a logical manner and can be explained with real science.

I found My ideas outstripped my abilities to draw them, so I turned to my computer, Sparky (sparky 1). I tried to draw using the gimp, but found it too hard to make ships look good, so I started to draw them as blueprints - orthographic side, front, top and bottom views that showed the designs of the ships. this allowed for an accuracy I had long desired.

It was at this stage in my scifi career, as you might call it, that my brother and I took our trip around Europe. In Berlin, I believe it was, I started to write my novel. this was done in pencil in an A8 notebook which I never plan to show to anybody. When I returned to Wales, I started to write it up onto Sparky, editing its content as I went along.

A while after we'd settled back in I started to learn to use Blender to build ships in 3D.
It is a complicated and versatile program, which makes it quite overwhelming to new users.
I was determined to learn on my own, and didn't even look at tutorials until I had some competence with it. my first attempts were dire, a random squiggle, which doesn't even look much like a shape. eventually I understood the buttons and modes and started to make things that looked like I wanted them to.
Eventually I had to concede, and look up tutorials on the internet, filling in the gaps I had left in my knowledge by my solitary approach.
I don't think I will ever be able to use the program to the best of its ability.

While learning Blender, I continued to write my novel in secret. Originally it was a rather cruel story where I tried to torture my main characters as much as possible. as I continued, I found I grew to care about my characters, and I stopped being pointlessly cruel to them and the story took shape as a science fiction rather than a pointless gore-fest. This is why anyone who wants to read my novel will see book two, first, and probably never book one.
I deliberately let my parents know that I was writing, as the story became more prominent. My mum wanted to read my novel, despite (and possibly because of) numerous warnings about it's content. I edited each chapter before I let her read them, reigning back the worst bits, and bringing the earlier craziness in line with the later, lesser craziness. I think I may have actually permanently changed my mother's opinion of me with this book.

In some ways I think it would have been better to keep my book a secret until it was finished. I found it easier to write when it was just me and the characters, though this would have made me lack the restraint that comes from knowing that someone will see it, so It may have continued to be unpalatable gory torture (for both reader and characters).

After well over 200,000 words and more than 100 chapters, I still don't know where my novel will finish, but I do know where it's going at the moment, which I didn't for a while (my mum used the phrase treading water quite aptly). Several people have suggested I try to get something published, but I know that it all needs a lot of work before it's fit for public consumption. one person I sent it to (and this is the almost reasonable second book) hasn't spoken to me since.

Well, that pretty much brings this up to the present, and I think anyone who's read all the way through this horrendous (and unedited) block of text, now knows me quite well, if only by the way I write. Of course I don't actually expect anyone to get this far before gnawing their own arms off.

For over a year (I think) I made sure I wrote 500 words or more every day. this was very good for getting my novel out, but I think it's made me overly verbose, I'll have to word count this when I'm finished. I've been sat here writing this for nearly two hours! So I think I'll leave it here. I have to revise tomorrow for an exam the day after; Power engineering... I actually have no idea what might come up in that one as I missed most of the lectures. Wish me luck, please.

So goodnight all. And to the anonymous who asked me for this I expect you will have learned to regret asking me questions, I always give far too much in my answer and bore people to insanity. I sincerely hope you will ask me more questions, but I would ask that you make them specific, for the well being of my fingers, your eyes, and both of our sanities... you might want to ignore that, I'm rambling... I could say more, but it would still be rambling...
Oh, and then there's... no, must stop rambling now...



bye :D



P.S. Kiml42 comes from Kiml - a few random characters I punched into a game one, and 42 - which is, of course, the answer to the ultimate question.

p.p.s. I should probably include my name in an about me post. It is Richard.

Profile: Cassandra Green. Part 1

I like to start a post wit something visual, it's not particularly useful with her being in a space suit, but I've found the imagination paints the bes pictures.

Character profile. This profile details her life before the events of the first of my books, so there aren't any real spoilers.

Cassandra
Name: Cassandra Green
Age: 37 (in book one) 39 (in book two)
Hair colour: Green
Eye colour: Emerald green
Height: 170cm
Adaptation: regeneration, extra senses, precognitive, strong, fast, very clever, can ignore pain,
Temperament: childish, very curious, likes to experiment, silly, show off, likes to cook,always aims to please others.

Three years after River was viable, Helen and Ernest completed their second clone. River spent a lot of time watching her grow and subconsciously communicating with her telepathically. This has led to a very strong connection between these two, and later Anna as well.
Cassandra spent most of her early life playing and learning with her family. She relished all Ernest, her father, could teach her in his field of bionics. Before she was five she was already a great help to him in his lab.
When she was eleven her mother, Helen, was killed by an anti-genetics activist. Cassandra was mortified and fell back on her three remaining family connections with her father and sisters. Even though she was only two years older, River became almost a replacement mother to her.
Cassandra continued to assist her father which helped him to overcome his loss. The murder of her mother made her feel more scared of the world beyond the walls of their house and its extensive grounds. River and her started to teach themselves combat techniques, becoming very adept in unarmed, melee and ranged combat, Anna was more willing to rely on River's protection, but she was encouraged to learn some skills with her two older sisters. Ernest encouraged the girls with their training, as he was afraid for their safety when the wanted to start going out without him.
Around her eighteenth birthday Ernest reluctantly started letting her go out with River. They would often go to pubs and nightclubs, attracting a lot of attention for their appearance as well as the way the liked to dance together. Of course most of the attention was from the men at these places who would often make passes at either or both of the girls, which were either successful or painfully unsuccessful, mostly depending on what River's mood was at the time.
Cassandra became sexually experimental with many partners of both genders. Neither she nor River settled into stable or lasting relationships until later.
Cassandra enjoyed helping people, often going far out of her way to please even a complete stranger. This would occasionally get her into awkward or even dangerous situations, fortunately River's training and help kept her safe from any more harm than she found enjoyable.
In her home life she was the main cook of the family, and enjoyed trying recopies she found on the internet as well as experimenting on her own. Her heightened senses of taste and smell became a great asset in this.
Ernest would often enter various technologies at a major scientific competition funded by the military. Cassandra, River and Anna all helped him with his shows on stage. The three girls became popular amongst this small group of elite scientists.

And that's the set up for her character at the beginning of the story.
I hope you enjoyed watching the video and scrolling past the tedious pros. All comments and questions welcome.

Sting, the robot wasp.

This is a video of the development process for this little robotic wasp, called Sting. It's sort of a character in the novel I'm writing, along with its cousin Spike and half brother Mr Shrimpsley (Later renamed the VCR - Vacuum Combat Robot)
Here's an excerpt from my novel, feel free to ask any questions that may arise:

A loud cheer emanated from the crowd. Black and the General looked towards the mid-air robot wrestling match. One of the little bugs was limping round with one of its wings hanging by a thread. It was Cassandra's robot, Sting.
“They're vicious,” said Black.
“Fun isn't it,” said an officer floating by them. “I mean, sir.”
“At ease, lieutenant. We're here for the fight, just as you are.”
“Thank you, sir.”
River's robot, Spike, appeared to have the advantage, taking a moment to aim its lasers at its crippled foe. With the rules they were playing by, a sustained hit on one part of the robot's light sensitive skin for two seconds would kill that section. If it was the head, abdomen, or any of the limbs, it would become paralysed, deactivating that section. If the thorax was hit for two seconds, that was game over. Just before Spike fired, Sting jettisoned its damaged wing and pushed itself sideways with the remaining three, dodging all but the first fraction of a second. Spike almost looked disappointed, it dived on Sting, deciding it needed to do more melee damage before it could sit back and laser its way to victory.
“That's a new trick.” said River.
“Yeah, I've got to keep you guessing.”
“But he can't win with three wings. Spike's bound to out-manoeuvre him, and Spike almost always wins when he gets a good grip.”
“I wouldn't be so sure about that.”
Spike chased Sting on a wild course around the open space of the cargo bay. Most people couldn't keep up with their speed and looked at one of the holographic screens which kept them in the centre of the shot and replayed key scenes mid battle at either River or Cassandra's will. Spike managed to force Sting into a corner, still going at ten metres per second. There would be no where to turn around so the only option would be to stop. But Sting didn't stop. It ploughed into the corner at full speed, bouncing off, apparently unscathed. With its velocity maintained, though reversed, it took Sting completely off guard, forcing the point on the tail, for which he was named, straight through the other robot's abdomen. The pair stopped, linked in the air, their momentums having been equal and opposite. They both twisted in the air trying to slash the other's wings while keeping its own safe.
Suddenly the mad, high speed chase around the bay had turned into a battle of strength, as they wrestled while drifting across the cargo bay. Red lines of lasers passed through the air, as they tried in vain to hit the other with their ranged weapons. Spike's strength waned as the electrolyte bled from the batteries in his abdomen. Sting pulled out his stinger, allowing him to move freely across the other robot. With minimal resistance he plunged his sharp mandibles into the soft connective parts at the base of the wings and legs, completely immobilising his opponent. They drifted apart and Sting turned around, took aim, and fired all four lasers into Spike's chest for ten seconds.
A minority in the crowd cheered, but most people had favored Spike as the winner. The holographic barrier vanished, showing it was safe to move forwards and see the combatants up close. Nobody wanted to move first, all of them had learned a little fear for robots in the last few minutes. River and Cassandra pushed away from the far wall directly towards their own robots, with surprising accuracy for what looked like an ordinary launch.
Sting grabbed its jetsome and flew to its master, while Spike could only look forlornly at River, waiting to be repaired.
To the General's surprise Black was the first to step through the now imaginary barrier. His feelings for River must be stronger than his fear of robots.

Blender game makes 3DVIA top ten.

My Blender game made the 3DVIA top ten!
http://www.3dvia.com/blog/top-10-models-034/
As you might have guessed I'm quite excited about this. I guess I should develop it a bit more.
I was thinking of naming it 'Blenderoids' I'd like to hear what people think of that name, or suggest a better one, if they wouldn't mind me using it.

Blender 3d fighter game.

The game discussed in this blog is available here: http://www.3dvia.com/kiml/models/61890657697B4D5F Click on download, then original blend file.
Yesterday I started to make a game in blender, I was going for a little game where you move some sort of rudimentary car around, but I ended up with this. I'd say this is about a 0.3 release, so don't expect perfect functionality. I'd like to hear any sort of feed back, especially if it helps me make the game better. I've added the instructions and description at the end, so I'll just show you the video.







You'll need Blender to run this game, which is free, open source and works on most operating systems.
Just open up the game and press p to play.
The controls are as follows:
arrow keys - turn the ship
space bar - fire main thrusters, also acts to stop rotation.
w,a,s,d - move camera.
q,e - roll ship
z - fire guns
x - fire main engine
c - detonate all bullets
left Alt - reverse (Alt and space together work quite well to keep you stationary)
m - start the music... which won't have been included, sorry.

The aim of the game is to destroy the asteroids without getting your ship broken. You can shoot 'em, ram 'em, hit 'em with the traps, whatever, if your ship still works after what you did was fine. When you've got all the asteroids, well done, it doesn't say it, so just pat yourself on the back.

Damage; This game doesn't have any sort of damage meter, but you can be damaged. The engines are not connected to the ship at all, you'll see them moving around in little boxes. If you hit something too hard (or something hits you too hard (beware the spinny and the crushy things) an engine might get turned around or come loose entirely and fly around on its own. If you do loose an engine you can still manoeuvre with the other ones, but you can't get that one back. If you loose all four engines all you can do is move forward and shoot, but you'll never be hurt any more.
It's sometimes an interesting challenge to try to manoeuvre when damaged.
The gun is a bit odd. It looks normal enough when you fire, a continuous string of bullets come from it. The odd part is that they explode when they hit anything, or if you press c. But after they've exploded they're able to explode again and again until the cease to exist after a certain time. These bullets are the thing that can most easily damage you ship, so don't fire at too close range.

If you're more familiar with blender, you might want to try viewing from the lunar lander view and using layer one and the one beneath it to play the lunar lander variant of this game, all controls are the same, but I haven't set up the camera. You'll also want to set the world to one with gravity (in the materials tab) or just put the gravity slider up a bit.
In this game the aim is to get the three coloured spheres back to the pad you start over. If anything touches the pad beneath the sphere it'll jump to your location and move with the ship until you touch the home pad again. Logically you'll go and land on the goal's pad, but there are other ways to do it. The third one is a little different. You have to fly all the way down the tunnel and through the sphere to pick it up, which is easier said than done as there's and endless stream of balls rolling down with you.
Oh' and with the gravity on, be careful of shooting straight up, you have been warned.

I've only run this game on my computer which has a 2GHz dual core processor, and it's frame rate sometimes gets a bit low, so if you're running on a less powerful computer you may have to be careful how many shots you have flying around at once, or even delete a few objects to make it simpler.
I hope you enjoy this game, all forms of feed back are welcome and encouraged.

Water test

I've tried using blender's fluid physics emulation in the past without much success. I realised this morning that I could probably emulate the desired effect using the wave modifier. Please tell me what you think.

Yay for doom finger!

My favourite, okay third favourite, pet has had a couple of happy victories this week.
Firstly I finished the first cut of a video featuring her.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbryouzkvko

And secondly she made it to the weekly top ten on 3Dvia!

http://www.3dvia.com/blog/2009/03/10/3dvia-top-10-models-017/#

Blender basic animation tutorial.

There are many different ways to do an animation. I'll tell you the one I find easiest.

1. Where it says "SR:2-model" (on the bar near the top.) click the arrow button and select "SR:1-Animation". Three more sub windows will appear.
2. On the sub window below the 3d view click the red circle button a drop down list box will appear beside it. click its arrow and choose "Add/Replace keys"
3. If you move, scale or rotate an object (by object I mean object, camera, lamp etc.), a lines will appear in the far right window, the "IPO curve editor" The object is now set to be at that position, scale and rotation for the currently selected frame. The current frame is shown on the "buttons" window and the "time line" window as a number (probably 1 at the moment) with an arrow either side of it. It is also shown as a green line on the "ipo curve editor".
4. Move forwards a few frames, the left and right arrows go backwards and forwards (respectively) by 1 frame, the up and down arrows, by 10.
5. move, scale, or rotate the object again, to set its ipo curves for the new frame. You should see that the "curves" are no longer straight lines, but curves, constrained to two points.
6. keep doing this until you've told the object how it's meant to move for the entire animation.
7. if you want to change the length of the animation change the number in the "start:" or "end:" buttons.
8. you can click the play button, or press Alt and A to play back the animation. To get the best idea of ho it'll look rendered, set the view to camera before hand.

Ipo curves can be selected and edited in a similar manner to meshes.


Rendering an animation.
1. In the "render" menu at the top there is an option, render animation, click it. A window will appear and render each frame of your animation. the frames will be saved as jpegs in the default directory. if something's not right, press Esc to quit the animation.
2. to change, or find out, the directory it saves the renders to go to the "Scene" tab in the buttons window (or press F10). The first directory selector in the little panel on the left shows where it saves the renders.
3. To save the animation as a video file rather than a series of pictures, look to the little panel on the right of the buttons sub window. Where it says Jpeg, click the arow and change it to a video format. I tend to use AVI Jpeg.
4. Now if you render the animation it'll save it as a single video file in the selected directory called something like "001-250.AVI", you're now ready to do what ever video processing you want, or just upload it straight to you tube.

There are far more complicated things you can do with ipo curves and animation, but this should be enough to get you started.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
Good luck.

Swimming with whales part 1 - 1.1

Hercules walkthrough

This is pretty much the finished version, though I did fiddle at various points, so I might re-render some of it.

turret tests.

I wanted to see how the blog's video feature compared to youtube.

Staff1.0