go-kart model

I made a much larger and more explanatory post about rim lighting on zee blog:

http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2008/02/r ... athon.html

also includes some wallpapers / screenshots

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/rim_west_360.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/rim_champ_360.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/rim_chill_360.jpg]

yea, we already have shadows halfway working on the kart, we just need to spend a little bit more time making that work because right now we can either have the shadows from the kart and a full bright level, or no shadow from the kart and vertex lighting on the level - we just have to spend a day or two figuring out how to get both working at once. I think that combined with the strong rim lighting on the kart and character is really going to make the player pop out against the background. I also want to experiment at some point with baking in some ambient occlusion shadows on the environment via texture shadows, I think that combined with the vertex lighting might make things look pretty sharp. I'm not sure all lower end hardware could handle the texture shadows though since they would eat up a chunk of memory.

What I have started on next though is some new character models, I want to get some straightened away so that you can swap out characters as well and karts / hats / etc. I don't think I am going to be getting much done this week though, I am taking on a bit of freelance work to make some rent money [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

that was our first thought too, but it actually seemed a bit trickier than projecting shadows based on the kart geometry. To do a flat projection we need to do line traces against the render geometry which isn't that fast since our level isn't bsp or anything like that, just a polygon soup. We could use the physics system and the collision mesh we use for that and it would be much faster but we are trying to keep the rendering and the physics parts as separate as possible since we want the server to handle 100% of the physics. There could be a better way to do it we are missing but we already almost have the projection shadows in there and they should still be pretty cheap.

I have started on a new character - I will post a pic of him once I finish modeling him before I start on textures.

ok, bout time to unwrap and texture this guy

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/newchar.png]

hehe, Marshmellow used to be one of childhood nicknames

got the body mostly squared away. The white and blue parts will be separately tweakable.

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/newchar2.png]

here is what I did today

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/newchar3.png]

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/rider001.png][Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/rider001_2.png]

made an extensive blog update about the character http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2008/02/r ... l-and.html

mostly just explaining the process that went into creating and animating it.

I also made a fun render of it posed in a little scene, I made it really high resolution so maybe I will find a place online to print me out a couple for fun.

[Blocked Image: http://www.devbump.com/nimblebit.com/ZGposter_thumb.jpg]

small rez

medium rez

large rez

or maybe thats not a reflection and he is a half breed smurf / human