Week 10- wrapup

I finished the boots of the wearable, and I also finished the pants as well as a surprise item since there weren't any tasks assigned after the shoes. I wish I had more time to finish the rest of the model but my internship is almost up, how did this happen?! I want to stay on the team, there's so much I can learn from them and can provide the team with. It's going to be sad to go, but I had a great time with them and learned a lot from everyone including working on a real team and I was so lucky to have a great team.
After working in a game company with a small team and shorter deadlines, I want to shoot for a job in this industry rather than my major of animation for film. I've learned so much and had a great experience of doing a lot of different things and expanded my knowledge in all subjects.

It's finally time for the infamous tamale party.... I'm not sure how the story originated but we're throwing a tamale and empanada fiesta on the interns' last day. woohoo!


None of the work I've been doing on the team has been released in-game yet, so this blog thus far looks like all I've been doing is having a blast and goofing off which is only halfway true? I been working, but it's been the best time I could've imagined! Can't wait until my models, animations, and textures get released and can then post them. However, you can check out another two completely different FreeRealms-STYLE prototype with Art Institute in the Sony Mentorship program over on my other blog.

Week 9- Modeling

Definitely cannot complain about not learning enough, I've done tasks across the board and really beefed me up in all areas. I have definitely seen a growth in myself as an artist but also how to communicate with my peers.

The concept is complete for all job types in the combat classes. I also modeled the first part of the suit, the boots. The best advice I can give for anyone to draw or model in a particular style is to load up all of the existing relative things within the game. This made the concepting and especially modeling part easier to go through because you knew what other finished products look like. Next is UV Unwrap, Texture, and put some glow maps on those boots!

Week 8- Concepting Wearables

I've been asked to concept a wearable for FreeRealms that I'm super excited about because it sounds awesome but I can't talk about it yet! The body suit is modular and have a color change depending on job choice. There are many job types in FreeRealms and they're all in depth here, But I only have to address this suit for the combat class. This all consists of archer, caster, brawler, warrior, medic, and ninja. The helmet and shoulder pads would be unique to the job to differentiate the silhouette. The color associated with the job, but the suit itself (consisting of chest, belt, pants, gloves) will be modular; same mesh, same texture with exception of job color.

Week 7- Housing & tintable textures!

Finished iterating and exporting the anim cycles, and did some tintable housing textures. Learning what size texture compression and filetypes particular to SOE's engine, and hoping that when I've learned and become an expert after the internship the team would rather hire me than hire someone new and train them how it all works, since the game has been out for a long time the directories are very populated and somewhat confusing!

Tintable textures are completely new to me as an animation student but even the other game art intern didn't know what it was. In FreeRealms the game is designed so the user gets to customize as much as possible, and tintable means the user can choose any color they'd like but still look like a set material (ie concrete, tiles, pebble stones, etc), so the map looks somewhat like an alpha map but instead the white is what is color-changeable. I'm proud to say I made my first tintable texture and it looks pretty good!

 An EXAMPLE of a tintable housing object- the player would have been able to change the blue parts, but not the wood color because it was omitted from the tint map.

Week 5- Iterating the animations

In FreeRealms, you can choose to be a human or a pixie. When animating a player character cycle it's usually based off the human male, but after you're all done with this you need to export the animation and then iterate the animations then for the human female, pixie male and pixie female and adjust the animations due to different character rigs. I thought I was done with the animations after the human male but the iteration and export process takes just as much time as the animation!

Clone Wars team over my desk! These guys are awesome and willing to help even though I'm technically on another team. Clone Wars sometimes do tasks for FreeRealms when needed, both teams are small.

Josh and his creepy Boba Fett lifesize cutout. No offense to Boba Fett, I love Star Wars just as much as anyone working on the Clone Wars team, but he's right behind me so whenever I'm alone working late I see that silhouette from the corner of my eye, scary!!

Week 4- more animation!

 new conference room "Jedi Lounge" where morning meetings "SCRUM" takes place for Clone Wars and FreeRealms, my desk on a Friday donut day and lunch from the tater tot roach coach!

Finished the anim cycles by the end of this week and got the model of the wearable so now I know what these animations are going for! The animations I made this week were very close to what I imagined the wearable to look like and got a lot of good feedback from my team and some people on Clone Wars. Started slotting them in the actor tool to pass off to the designer to put together for the game, and learning exponentially about the workflow of FreeRealms. When I slotted the anims in the actor tool and saw the animation with the skinned wearable, the feet were overlapping because they were too big and it was bugging me although still "permissable", so I went back and exported everything again so the feet were wider spread for the wearable and my team was very impressed with my dedication. It took a little longer but I stayed after work to make sure it got done, and I'm glad SOE campus is very "open" to late workers as well as those who like to sleep in on occasion. It's a very comfortable atmosphere and exciting to work in.

Week 3- moving!

The "new project" is taking over the Free Realms and clone wars area, so we've moved buildings. Poor Matt Case (my project director and mentor) had to move 7 boxes and a lifelong collection of Transformer collectables in the rain. I'm excited about the new move though since there are windows with natural sunlight! The other building was very dark from having the lights off and up a flight of stairs.
I've been learning more about things that commonly happen in the industry, the task I was working on is now blocked because we would need coders to generate a user-driven controls which would mean the rig I am working with would need different naming conventions and would need to be rigged differently. It seems to be low on the list of priority because it's not a holiday release and time-relevant so I don't think it'll be released by the time I'm done with my internship, but it looks really cool! Right now I've been moved onto holiday release for Easter doing some player character animation cycles for when you put on a particular wearable you can purchase. More learning about the industry, the wearable hasn't been modeled yet so I'm animating "blind" hoping the animation will make sense and literally fit when the character moves around. The player character animation cycles I'm covering are : Walk, Run, Backpedal, Backpedal Run, Turn Left, Turn Right, Jump, Fall, Land, Fidgets, and idles, which is quite a few animations for just the character to move around.

 New FreeRealms & Clone Wars Area! Open Spaces!

 poor Matt had to wheel these around in the rain to move his Transformer collection!