| journal purpose |
[Jan. 27th, 2020|03:06 pm] |
This journal will be used as a worklog and for documenting my many pitfalls in the world of Media Studies, particularly starting with my Machinima class, and possibly continuing with further projects.
If you're interested in constructive criticism, please add and comment often. Otherwise, please move along. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 26th, 2009|04:37 pm] |
This helped me out a lot, though posing NPCs is still such a PAIN IN MY BUTT. I even searched to see if they came pre-posed, but I don't think there would be a bunch of different seated ones.
I CAN'T GET MY NPCs TO SIT DOWN. THIS SHOULD NOT BE SO HARD. |
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| looking up |
[Apr. 13th, 2009|01:54 pm] |
Tested both face posing AND using my scenes in Garry's Mod (through console commands) on Hans' computer. Works just fine. WHAT.
Setting up things on another computer right now, where I will hopefully be doing most of my work, much, much quicker.
Anton theorizes that maybe I was missing having a few Source files downloaded on my home computer (possibly the lab one I was using now.) Will check when I get home: Source SDK Base, and Source SDK Orange Box.
Using the console commands to play the scene worked better than NPC_scene, in my opinion. This plays animations in a continuous loop, which I think will be easier to edit around, and find new angles as the animation repeats and repeats, without shooting the gun and trying to remove the hud and everything.
Waiting on a couple billion downloads, then I'm gonna have to open up the games before I open Garry's Mod at all. So I won't know for a while. Will probably grab something to eat after my next class, and come back to the lab. At the very least, can face-pose all the audio I have.
Wonder if Zak's files are gonna work. They are very quiet, and bad quality. May have him re-do them, or get Jesse to do some voice for me. Or it may work with the white noise for the airplane. (thinking of recording my humidifier for this, rather than wasting time looking online. But I'll have to test.
Stay tuned, yet again. |
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| Thanks for nothing, lab! |
[Apr. 11th, 2009|10:17 pm] |
Went to the lab today, to at the very least, get some audio files lip-posed. Didn't work. Still got the "could not extract" red text. Speech SDK apparently needs me to be an admin on the computer to download, and I'm not...?
Still can't get scenes to play in Garry's Mod. I'm so incredibly frustrated. They populate into the NPC_scene list, but now they're not so much as making a peep, much less moving. Interestingly enough, none of the scenes from the games seem to be working either. What did I do now?!?!
In my desperation, I watched this awful tutorial, yet again:
trying to see if there's anything I missed. And I even resorted to asking this tween for advice, via a youtube comment. I shudder at the thought:
For the life of me, I cannot get my scenes to play in Gmod. I've got them showing up in the list for NPC_scene, but the characters only speak and don't gesture. I tried this at a lab computer for school and they won't do anything at all, now! At home I have Vista, but I posed the face myself and it works perfect in Face Poser. The console in Gmod says "Couldn't find scene 'scenes/myscene'" as well as not even loading scenes from the game. Did I really get my folders out of whack or what?
Upon more searching, I found this other tool, or "stool" (whatever that means... it makes me think of poop.) This one's called playscene, and it's found on garrysmod.org, here: http://www.garrysmod.org/downloads/?a=view&id=19053
It's supposed to have buttons available to play the scene, rather than firing the gun at the NPC, so I've got high hopes that I'm sure will ultimately be crushed. Stay tuned.
Okay, this would be a lot more helpful if Garry's Mod would stop freezing when I open it. Also, I keep getting a Windows Security Alert about hl2 that my computer's administrator can unblock for me. Yet another complication for no good reason... thanks a lot. Can I bet set as an admin, or what? I feel so second rate.
Wow, that was a whole lot of nothing. Here's what it shows me in the console:
Couldn't find scene '.vcd'
Scene '.vcd' missing!
Scene "../" not found!
Couldn't find scene 'none.vcd'
Scene 'none.vcd' missing!
Scene "../" not found!
Scene "../" not found!
Scene "../" not found!
Scene "../" not found!
Scene "../" not found!
Scene "../" not found!
Couldn't find scene 'scenes/dinosawesome'
Everything above the last line was tried in PlayScene, with a preset scene. (I couldn't even find my scenes in that list, and didn't have the patience to try.) The last one was a last ditch effort at NPC_scene again.
I did get the Windows Security Alert again. I'm really hoping my scapegoat turns out to be the real problem here or something, because I'm at my wit's end and about to film my final project in SL with some shitty fish-mouth animations. |
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| dialogue examples in face poser |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|11:01 am] |
FOR GOD'S SAKE. Why can't I get these animations to work in Garry's Mod?? They're the best part, not my stupid voice. Ugh ugh ugh.
Anyway, here's an example of what some of them are supposed to look like. I'm gonna try uninstalling and reinstalling gmod to see if that does anything. |
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| I finally have control in gmod! |
[Mar. 21st, 2009|05:31 pm] |
After what seems like an ETERNITY, I finally got NPC scene to work in gmod. Of course, and as always, it was a matter of small things, like placing things in the wrong folder, refreshing, and of course, labeling something as "sounds" when it's supposed to be "sound" and not noticing it until the 50th time you've landed on the same tutorial by a 12 year old than knows more than you.
Recorded a few test shots, but for the sake of time, I'll upload them later, maybe. Thank god I got most of my pre-production done before now. Now that I have that tool working, it should be a lot easier to get rolling on filming today, and editing tomorrow.
HOPEFULLY, I find no further hitches in the plan. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 18th, 2009|12:48 am] |
Found an airplane set for Garry's Mod, which I think will work out nicely. Must have missed something about Face Poser, because I can't figure out how to animate eyebrows, and I'm having the most annoying, stupid issue right now... it won't switch to a different model. Stuck on Alyx, and I'm getting sick of looking at her. Though I suppose I can animate her and hope that anyone I animate will do the same thing. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 16th, 2009|12:40 am] |
Okay, so I finally got the face poser in Source SDK to work in Windows Vista, even though I was up all night doing it one night. Awful. I even tried to find ways to dualboot my computer with both Vista and XP, because I happen to like Vista. But it turns out that I could just play around with phenomes and get my character to talk the old fashioned way. You know, by learning what phenomes are. It's more tedious than the voice-recognition, I'd imagine, but I sort of like the level of control it gives me.
My sound seems to have a lot of white noise when I record, and I can't quite figure it out. I have a hand-held mic, albeit a second-hand one, but it's better than a computer mic. For the time being, I'm not going to worry about it, since my bio film will have a lot of airplane white noise going on anyway. My friend Zak says he'll help me troubleshoot- he's my sound/music go-to guy. Recorded some of my scenes with my cousin
Currently having trouble getting my NPC Scene to work in Garry's mod. Well, it works, but I can't find my saved scene, so I'm thinking it's just a matter of misplaced files. Gonna get on that, and continue to look around for some sets and characters to use. |
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| it's working!!! |
[Jan. 31st, 2009|12:32 pm] |
I found a tutorial on the 360 controls, and thank GOD for it! Of course, I would just be missing something tiny like a negative number. This is gonna help me smooth out my camera, not to mention control my av functionally! I am SO much more comfortable using an X-box controller than I am with keyboard buttons.
I emailed John (my partner for this project) a few times today, and we've got the basic concept for our movie all set. So I'm off to scout for locations and tweak the environmental settings to see what works, and he's doing the same. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 30th, 2009|12:31 pm] |
Well, I got my new computer, and first things first, registered for all my software needed for class. Then started playing around with Second Life properly.
Since working with it in class, I can use the controls a lot better. However, I'm still having trouble with my camera- all my shots are still really choppy as I drag my mouse along. Changing the sensitivity and smoothing doesn't seem to do much. I also hooked up the 360 controller, but still can't get it to do anything. Definitely doesn't work like it should, and I'm guessing I have a setting off somewhere.
The mouse vertical controls are also opposite of the way I am used to, but it looks like you can only invert it horizontally, so I'm just gonna have to get used to it. |
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| First experience with Second Life |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|12:40 am] |
I spent about two days trying to get Second Life to work, which doesn't say much about the computers I have access to. I finally got it to work, but not well, at my sister's house this afternoon.
I then continued to customize my character for probably hours... which was baffling and amazing, because you could alter basically EVERYTHING about them. There were three different categories for boob shape alone! It was pretty awful though, because I was bad with the controls and new people kept slamming into me and knocking me out of sight. Not to mention the computer connection kept jerking around. I had to restart a few times.
I spent the rest of the day exploring around with my friend Zak, who joined after a brief chat about it. I found the controls really hard to manipulate at first, and couldn't figure out how to move my character separate from the camera. When I connected my X-Box 360 controller, going forward sent me the equal amount backwards. I'm not exactly sure what that was about, but I went back to using the keyboard rather quickly.
The computer wasn't running smoothly at all, and my sister's apartment requires constant attention to both her small kids, so I didn't get to do as much playing and exploring as I'd like to at all. I can't wait to get my new computer set up and get really involved. |
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