My Work

Normal mapping is a technique which allows game developers to put in high resolution details on a low poly model. This technique has been around for a while. There are various other algorithms like parallax mapping, bump mapping etc, which typically do almost the same thing. I found this wiki page very useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_mapping . I was specifically impressed with the external links section which points to various tools and methods in which normal maps can be created. I tried creating normal maps using blender. It was a very good experience. I think it would be helpful if you are trying to implement shaders for normal mapping.

Remember the good old blender :) yes.. I am still looking at blender and its' wonderful game engine. Till yesterday i was still wondering how people write complex games using such simple open source game engine. Today i realized i was wrong. The blender game engine is so complex and yet so easy to use. I was able to get my hands on some of the examples showing off the physics engine and the rendering capabilities based on GLSL shading language. The examples provided are very impressive and would instantly make anybody want to use it. Through the past few days i have been modeling a character model. With the help of some tutorials on 3Dtotal.com. It has been an amazing learning experience for me. All that seems to be left to be learned is how to provide GUI and how to show dynamic text (score, ammo, etc) on the GUI. This is plan to learn during the weekend. I would recommend all graphics lovers to go through blender examples at least once just for the viewing pleasure. Me and my fri...

Blender is a Free, Open source, Multi Platform 3D content authoring tool. It even features a game engine which i have described in my previous post . I was really exited about the possibilities for using Blender. I wanted to see if it could be used by users without any professional training about this too. So i set out on testing the character animation and modeling features provided by this tool. Fortunately for me, the blender foundation has done a great job of creating a wiki for each and every important feature of the tool as a part of the Blender Summer of Documentation (BSoD). This helped me greatly with the modeling, rigging and animating my first character. I would like to go ahead and make a small game using the stuff i learned about the game engine. Here are the two simple videos i created using blender: Character Walking Character Waving

Old Look New Look Yesterday the Windows automatic update installed ie7 on my system and hence i got a chance to use it once again after a long time. I was impressed by the elegant GUI. Some people actually hate the idea of not having a menu bar but not me :D any way.. this triggered my interest for finding out if this look could be achieved in FireFox. Removing the menu was good enough for me. I achieved this by editing the userChrome.css in the %APPDATA%\mozilla\firefox\profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome directory. In this file i added the following lines. /* Disable all the menu items*/ #go-menu, #file-menu { display: none !important; } #go-menu, #edit-menu { display: none !important; } #go-menu, #go-menu { display: none !important; } #go-menu, #bookmarks-menu { display: none !important; } #go-men...

9/10/2006 Since the last couple of days i have been trying to learn how to use Blender Game Engine. I summer of documentation sure did help me get a better documentation then ever before. In fact the pros in #gameblender envyed my luck :) The things that can be done using this seem unlimited to me. After having a look at what people have created using Blender Game Engine this seems to be the best options for startups etc. I doubt if there is any scope and market for new game companies out there but if you are eager to start off with someting.. this could be the right choice. One of my friends is going to work on a project of creating virtual worlds for interactive education for school children. The blender GE would be a really good platform to start off from. The physics which is so beautifully integrated would make the development of acceptable physical world simulations. 12/10/2006 The basic and the most important reason for my choice of giving up writing my own game engine is the f...

My current game is warhammer, i've been waiting to play this game since last year. Thanks to the qa team here, i have access to this game now. Yesterday was one of the most exciting gaming days. I was playing the campaigns in the game since last two weeks and even played a couple of games against the computer. I was able to defeat the hard ai with a little difficulty. I always wanted to play all the games i know online with other people around the world rather than just our college lan. Yesterday i had the oppurtunity of going online and putting my game exp to test :) Turns out.. i really did not learn the game that well :) i won just 3 games out of 12 games i played yesterday. I guess its' common when your learning a new game :D

I've been listening to Rammsteins' songs lately. Actually only three of his songs..This is an drawing inspired by him :p doesn't quite look like him.. hey.. tis' just a cartoon.. so i guess it's ok. Rammstein's songs i like are Ichiwill, Feuer frei, Du Hast.

Gone are those days of one of the most addictive games. The extruciating pain in waiting for just half-an hour for the classes to end and the people to come back to play the game. It was like an every day ritual for me, Used to wake up at 8.30 rush to CVIT and write some pages of thesis eagerly waiting for the time to read 2.00pm. That was ilke the unspoken time of day break for any of the gamers at IIIT-H. My last few days at IIIT were more exiting than ever before, it was a long time since i had been a newbie at any of the games played at IIIT, the new batches were coming up with better and newer games for playing and it was really hard for me to catch up with them. You know i was busy with all my research work which was eating up my gaming time :( Warcraft was never a popular game in IIIT-H, but all that changed once DOTA was discovered. I for once got so hooked to the game that i did not mind being a newbie again, it was fun learning the game and playing it too. Thanks to some of t...

I was asked to create a video tutorial of how to use the tool i developed in linux. Well there are many softwares in windows which allow you to create a video of what ever is done by the user. For instance Fraps is a popular software which can be used to capture the game play as videos. But i did not know of any such software for linux. I started hunting for it and i was exited to find that i did not need a software for doing it.. I could do it myself... i found a wonderful tutorial about making a video of the screen capture . It took me only a few minutes to get my video done :) I think this would be a very useful tutorial for all those linux lovers who envied people presenting their windows tools in the form of videos. After i created a video using this method, i realized that it was too slow, actually my prof did not like the video. So i started searching for alternatives. That is when i came across tools like vnc2swf, DemoRecorder, etc. These tools work just fine if you want to re...

I wanted to draw something cute.. did not know what to put in.. well all cute things in my world have big eyes, cute shiney nose.. and are obviously fluffy.. you know like rabbits etc :D and ofcourse the generic cartoon hands .. i love these.. they are quite common in disney's cartoons.. but aah.. i've never been able to master drawing those hands.. well here is a drawing trying to depict a cute thingi :)

InkScape is an awesome editor for creating SVG images. It's almost like drawing stuff with pencil on a paper. I never really wanted to try anything other than gimp but then.. you would not be able to appreciate what you have unless you lose it :D so i gave inkscape a try. The best part of using svg representation is that there is minimal antialiasing problem. So here is a small drawing of a person with headphones :) And here is another drawing of a samurai this was quite a fast drawing.. i did take a lot of time for doing the proms though.

Valve studios is not a new name to any body who knows or played their popular game Counter Strike. Till date the only titles i knew they produced were Half-Life and Condition zero. Half-Life 2 has been their most sucessful game i should say. They have shown the world that not only can they make use of existing game engines for creating wonderful games.. but they can actually develop their own game engine. The Half-Life 2 game engine is now widely used for benchmarking the graphics card's performance. The buzz words in their engine were hydynamic range rendering and the awesome physics. There were actually lot of demos showing off physics in the game. Well all that apart, If you have played the recent title from EA sports .. the BF2, you might have thought that the idea of having different personal in the team (medic, engineer, sniper etc.) was a new ground breaking idea.. that is where you would be wrong. You see, our beloved valve studios had another title called Team Fortress, wh...

Ever wondered how to make a gif animation using gimp?? Hmm ofcourse you did.. well even if you did not.. it would be good to know how simple gif animations can be made in this Free image editing software. Here is a sample of what can be achieved. Yes it looks crude.. but i made it in less than 20mins.. so i guess its valid :) any way.. coming to how we do it.. open gimp, create a new image, press ctrl+l this will bring up the layers dialog. In this layers dialog you are provided options to create delete, move the layers. So keep adding layers, each with the next image in the animation sequence. Want to check how your animation looks?? go to filters->animation->playback this will launch a dialog box which has playback, rewind and step buttons on it. Click on playback button and you will see how your animation looks. Satisfied?? just save the animation with an extension ".gif" ..you have to note that while saving you will be asked if you want the different layers to be mr...

If you follow slashdot regularly you might have seen the post about PS3 not doing so well at E3 this year. Iv'e seen pretty good videos of realtime footages being run on PS3 i wonder how it did not make a good impact at e3. They had this awesome footage showing a virtual actor.. with various emotional changes.. and for heavens' sake they made it cry!!! (if you are interested in the video you can download it from Shreak@dc++). And guess what.. that footage was made in less than 3 month or so (they built the whole engine for PS3 and had an audition for actors and then finally modeling and animation and then rendering.. ). Trust me.. 3 monts' is a very meager amount of time for bringing out such an awesome demo. Ok the demos on the PS3 are good and you can achieve a lot and what ever.. but what good is a PS3 if it costs as much as a pc with a reasonably high end graphics card?? and by the way.. the representatives of sony say "PS3 is not a console.. its' a pc.. each p...

After six year of stay at IIIT i can't help but wonder who am i.. what am i doing.. and where am i going?? These are the questions i tried to answer today.. disappointingly.. there were only a few that i could come up with. Iv'e played more games than any single person in the campus (count not in different games .. count in terms of much time ive' spent gaming). Iv'e never kept track of how much time i play computer games.. but my juns were kind enough to keep reminding me that im' the only guy who has played almost all the games with all the batch.. not great but i really like it when people say that. The other day i saw an article on slashdot saying that there was some rehab being setup for video game addicts.. i was wondering if i needed that.. :p PS: not going there any time soon :D

Finally got my hands on vista beta2 and installed it. The aero (a new feature in vista) which allows the os to have transparent gui.. .. well its' awesome.. the animation effects, the way the icons pop up.. you have to see it to believe it.. Even the bootup screen its' like door way to heaven.. this may sound too much to hear.. but its' true. I'm a linux lover but the desktop looks are something i never compromize about. Vista now thats' something nice. Now.. the media player 11 the number seems a little out of place :p well any way it looks as beautiful as everything else. Here is a screen shot showing media player in action. Coming to the most important part.. the games :). The quality of the default games provided by windows has for sure increased. They provide a chess game which is called Chess Titans.. essentially a 3D chess board and the same game though.. but the look and feel you get actually makes you want to play it.. similarly the purble place a collectio...

Last couple of days.. ive' been too busy to do anything.. absolutely anything.. ofcourse i never knew what i was busy with.. but ya i did maintain with all my friends and family that im' really busy :D well any way here is today's drawing.. something with symmetric objects :p

not talking.. just the picture today :D

The world is full of situations which can be found similar to the Cat and Mouse game. There is a saying in telugu which goes.. "Pilliki chelagatam Elakaki prana sankatam" meaning.. the playful acts of the cat are deadly for the mouse. Take for example our beloved security guard (prakash raj) well that man can be cited as the perfect example for the above saying. The other day some students were you knoww.. having a party in their room.. this guy somehow managed to get the whole scene out in the open in front of the hostel incharge.. It was just a funney play for him.. (He was actually smiling all the way through) any way i was so frustrated.. i could not sleep that night.. well life goes on..

Remember those good old school days when the school teacher used to draw on the black board and you used to try and replicate each and every line the teacher drew.. Hmm.. well you could just try to do that again :p Here is a scene where two people are hunting an elephant and a monk is healing them.. .. too much of age i guess..

On 28th of may 2006 ESWC city level competetions were conducted at diginet in Hyderabad. I had no idea that i would be able to participate in this event... but thanks to Ravi (Tiger) i sucessfully made it to the venue and registered. Q4 is the only game i felt where i had any chance of getting through so that is what i registered for. Since i had experience with Q3 it was quite easy for me to pickup :). I thought i would make it to the first place but lost the crucial match with just one frag and hence became the second best at Q4 in hyd. Any way it does not matter coz the top two from each city are sent to the national finals. And each finalist wins a nvidia 7300GS (essentially i won a card for myself) but the downside. i have to go to Delhi to get the card :( not sure if ill ' be able to make it there. Ravi is quite pissed off that im' still in doubt... I want to get that graphics card some how Gr.r.r.

Have you ever wondered what the heck that FC5's new logo means.. ?? well i never did too :p but accidentaly i came across this wonderful image which explains it all hope you like it.

we all know about circles from our 5th std or so.. and i'm sure it was a really great pleasure meeting the ELLIPSE in 10th std. Circle was all we knew... we even wrote logo programs for drawing circles (both filled and non filled) and now suddenly this new thing seems more complicated and more general than the circle. Just when i thought it was all.. i meet SUPER ELLIPSE. The one ellipse which can transform into a square or a circle depending on the values of its' parameters. Circle Equation: X^2 + Y^2 = 1 Ellipse Equation: (X/a)^2 + (Y/b)^2 = 1 Super Ellipse Equation: (X/a)^n + (Y/b)^n = 1 Since we already know about circles and ellipses lets' just look at super ellipses. Here are the images (from answers.com) that best describe the equation. The super ellipse's equation can be further generalized as the following: (X/a)^m + (Y/b)^n = 1; m,n>0 Hope to find out more such beautiful geometric equations. :)

If you go through the official website of 'world of warcraft' or 'warcraft' you would find stunningly awesome artwork every where. These are some of those games which really show how important the art work is for a game. Each character is so distinct and has the blizzard tag hanging arround it.. i mean literally every character they make has this distinct look. Im' sure pretty much every body can actually look at a character and can guess if its' by blizzard or somebody else.. :D. I tried to imitate that look in this drawing. You can find the originals' here ..

Well.. bears could hunt us too :) open season.. releasing 2006 a animated feature by sony dont' miss it out.

There was a discussion about how to make a logo for a site which makes money out of football games.. i thought about it for a while.. and came up with this idea.. The usual .. a single character posing for the whole kinda events on the site. The coloring has to be done.. but i was just curious if this was ok. Most people (including me) did not like the think lined drawings... so shifted to normal brush instead of flint pen brush :)

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.. :) this is a drawing based on some beautiful features of some beautiful people :)

Wallpapers can have a lot of effect on the way the desktop looks. For example today the gnome-look.org had this beautiful closeup picture of leaves as wallpaper. At the first sight of it.... you will feel so refreshing.. the greenery. Well here is what such a greenery based wallpaper can do to your desktop :)

I've been trying to make an alternative model for the wood cutter model that i made for the transporter game. Came up with the idea of combining the wood gnoll from warcraft and some of my own ideas.. ive' come up with the following concept ;)

I've been trying to do some different kinda coloring for the characters that i draw.. the style i used in this pic is kinda cool i think ill' be continueing that.

We were discussing about the kinda guy my friend would like to hook up for the rest of her life.. she came up with the following features.. he can cook he is fun he will like me a lot i will never stop smiling when i talk abt him The above featuers seemed to match todays' drawing.. he can cook see the torch in his hand he is always ready to cook :) ofcourse he is fun.. you can listen to him sing those weird songs to his god.. well given that he is what he is.. im' sure he will like pretty much any woman who likes him.. and finally the killer.. not just her.. nobody can ever stop smiling when she starts talking about him :))

Some of my friends told me that the drawings made using the felt pen brush in gimp were good.. so thought i would do it agian.. It's funny how comedy serials effect the way you behave that day. I atleast believe that you should watch some comedy serials like friends or scrubs if you are feeling a little low.. It will instantly boost up your mental status :) Dont' forget to stick to one of those comedy serials for those days when you are just not feeling up to the mark.

There was a wall paper on gnome-look.org which made me think about brown color and how the desktop could be made to look beautiful with that color.. ubuntus' human theme proved it before... i just wanted to try out my creativity on this one :). So i started off with the icons first.. i picked the nerdy lines icons.. they are simply the best.. literally look as if they were drawn with pencil..and then the smooth human theme. Hope you like the look. Nerdy Lines (icon theme) Gdesklets side bar Smooth human (gtk2x theme) Blended square( metacity theme) Gentle panel background. Try it out its' really cool :D

I had done a lot of thinking about whether i would take part in pyweek2 challenge or not.. but then.. i wanted to see if i could really pull it off i actually never had a chance to write a whole game all by myself .. i was always teamed up with somebody or the other.. so here was a chance to see what i really could do.. :). The themes for this time were very good. Somebody else's trash It runs on steam Mind the gap A fraction too much friction And finally the theme selected after polling was "It runs on steam".. I did not expect this theme to be selected and did not think much about it.. but then.. finally i could come up with a good idea for the theme.. It goes something like this.. You are an upcoming smuggler.. you are unique because you have a steam powered robot which can be used for doing the job. Since there are many competetors in this business.. you are put through a series of challenges... which you have to complete to get the job. With this basic idea... i star...

AAAh.. this is one hell of a tool.. well thats' why it has been bought by google :) I spent couple of hours reading through their site.. reading about the features and what's so special about it.. and tried out the trail version. For the first few minutes.. it was just another 3d modeling tool.. which had different names for the smae commonly used features.. for example pull tool is nothing but the extrusion tool.. any way... after some time i decided to go through the video tutorials that they had on their site. Due to the obvious reasons like the slow internet connection which is quite common at my college... it took hours to download the whole tutorial. I looked at the follow me tool which was really awesome.. unlike the features ive' seen in any other modeling tool. I found it quite difficult to make organic models (models like human beings.. animals.. etc.) But if you are planning to make architectural models... im' sure this is among the best....:) try it out if y...

Making a car is one thing... but a car is meant to be on the road.. :) so i thought id' take my car on a ride. Dont' mind the crappy texture.. i tried to make it as good as i could.. i think i still require a lot of practice for doing this. Is there any way of getting the polygons on an image so that i can fill that up with the texture? I really would like to see which tool has that feature.

Iv'e spent around 3hrs+ in the complete modeling and texturing of this car model. It really isnt' up to my expectations.. but its' lot better than what could do before :) so im' kinda impressed with myself. Why make a car..?? well have a tree, grass and a small town too.. so why not have vehicles.. so started out with a car. The tools same as before AC3D and Gimp. Ac3d rox for creating 3d models. You should really try out if you get a chance. Hope you like these renders :) (rendered using povray).

This is again a render of a 3d Model that i made using ac3d..I drew the grass and house textures using gimp and used them for the models. Hope you like them. I generally like houses that look like this just did some low poly model of house and applied the textures.

I always wanted to do some 3d Rendering.. finally ive' made something reasonable to be accepted as 3d Models.. i used the trees that i posted before and made a scene with a theif inside it. It took me roughly around 3.hrs to make this thing... hope you like it..:D by the way the tools AC3D for 3d Modeling Povray (a free raytracing engine) for ray tracing :)

I've always relied on downloaded textures for the games that i developed. I was never confident that i would be able to make my own textures for the games that i might develop. Finally i have gathered the courage to go ahead and make my own textures for making tree models. I took inspiration from many tree models and textures to come up with these textures. Since the normal tree textures are available any way, I thought it would be nice to make textures that look cartoon. So i started drawing stuff using gimp and it turned out pretty good. Let me know that you guys think about it. Below is the texture that i used for making the trees :D as i mentioned before.. this is the texture i drew by myself.

A python game designing contest. Most of you should be familier with this. This contest was a grand sucess the last time and it was just the first time.. the contest is back with a bang. If you got the skills to make the python scripts fun for others to use by writing games this is the contest for you. I have learnt python while i was a TA for a course. I never expected this language to be come such an important part of my daily routine. I thought it would be nice to share info about this competetion. The home page is http://pyweek.org check it out and register.

It's dp's birthday today.. i missed the bumps session yesterday i just hope he got enough bumps.. to my surprise i was asleep by 12.00 i generally tend to be awake till 2.00am ... any way i had to wish him some how.. :D DP happy birthday :)