My Work

Couple of years ago i worked on Adrian in which we used the Md2 models(i.e, quake2 models) but you know it was all quite troublesome for my taste. It is by no means a complicated format.. in fact it is the easiest format for storing your animated models. The problem was when i wanted to create my own models. .. May be i didn't search hard enough or may be im' just too lazy but basically i could not find anything that i could use to create my own models. .. I tried the blender exporter but due to certain limitations in the format, we had to create certain number of keyframes etc. Well after all that I thought why not create a plain text format which is inspired from the md2 key frames idea.. but with all the limitations of having predefined number of frames for a certain animation etc.. removed. Plain text formats could be really bad for big models.. but when you are targeting low end systems or handhelds im' pretty sure.. it will work out pretty well. I've got the expor...

While working on a recent project, ive' decided that i wanted to give the user freedom to rotate the object about its' axis and see what it looks like. Sounds fair enough right.. i mean its' a 3d object.. so let the user view it as he wants to.... so i started coding.. now i wanted the user to be able to rotate the object on Global X axis and the Global Y axis. So i have two different angles one about X and one about Y. How do i rotate them correctly so that i produce the right rotation? (in opengl) The problem here is once you rotate about an axis, the co-ordinate system is changed and you have to figure out how to rotate around the other axis. Here is the thing.. glRotatef() actually takes in an "angle" and "vector" about which the rotation should happen. I have convinently forgotten this information and struggled to find the answer... .some where in the forums some one mentioned .. its' an arbitrary vector you can rotate about.. wel.. that fixed m...

Ok for some weird reason the firefox on my ubuntu box has been .. you know.. really really slow.. switching between tabs etc.. are slow.. at least so I perceive ... any way.. turns out i wasn't the only one.. lucky for me i found a post on ubuntu forums which said.. i had to disable the ipv6 thing in about:config.... so here is what is supposed to be done if you are facing this issue: 1) type about:config in your address bar 2) once you see the config, search for ipv6 3) you will find only one entry in there.. double click it to toggle it to true. 4) restart firefox.. you will find that it is a definitely better than what it used to be. (well it is for me at least) Now the Video Player keeps flashing the screen while playing a video.. while compiz is enabled.. so the solution.. again... is just a config change.. i dont' see why these things are not put in by default but here you go... check out the link just in case you are lazy to hit the link.. here is the extract... * GStre...

So i've been spending time with inkscape to see how good it is for creating character art and then animations from that... essentially sprites.. so.. here is what i was able to create following some tutorial .. I kinda skipped through some of it coz i think i got the hang of it.. any way.. here we go.. the drawing...

Some thing i drew in inkscape just after getting inspired by svg art around the web.

Yet another successful pyweek flies by.. well not yet.. but at least the major part of it is. Just in case you were wondering what the heck pyweek is.. just visit the website will you. I've been participating in this event ever since i found out about it during college. Enough of this stuff... let's get to the good part ... If you have a wii or heard about it.. you will have heard that its' a low end system with not much of graphics power etc, but some of the games that are available on this system are really very innovative. One such example is the game called deBlob (by THQ). This was a student project which got adopted into a commercial game. So why the hell am i talking about it in a post dedicated for pyweek?.. well this game kinda inspired me to write write something similar. I've been waiting for the right moment and PyWeek9 presented the right opportunity. Why?.. coz the theme for this pyweek was 'Feather' So i thought ill' build a game around paint...

Prototype is a game where the player can shape shift his character and grow blades (you know just like wolverine..) and hack and slash your way through the military and infected people to find who made you the way you are.. (a freak).. now that we have the story out of our way.. let's talk about the gameplay, controls etc.. (im' referring to the pc version here) hmm let's see how i can put it in a single clear statement... "Prototype game kinda sux at combat". I really don't get the free flowing feel that i did with wolverine x-men origins, Devil May Cry, you know the list goes on.. the combat just isn't there. Running around the city is fast paced and fun for a while but it does get old quickly. So im' not sure what the other reviewers are talking about this game.. i.e, it being good and all.. but i didn't like it one bit.. the controls just dont' feel right.. again.. im' looking at the pc version here.. if your experience on the consol...

iv'e been porting this game I wrote for pyweek competetion to a blender game (i.e, using blender's internal game engine). There were a couple of things that took a while for me to get a grap of. 1) Making the trees move when it is being cut, there were a couple of different ways i tried but finally i've put in a lame hack just so it will work. 2) How to make sure each level's objectives are different even while linking it from a different file. 3) Making the smoke look right, making it fade away. 4) A little trouble fixing the camera angle etc. But the current thing seems pretty solid. I've tried to use the feedback I got for the game in the prev competetion as guidance for the dev of this game. Hopefully iv'e fixed most of them.. Well almost.. I still have to design the levels and make sure they are intuitive enough. 1) Heating up only when cutting wood, (stand still and it will cool down.. standard fair.. like in most games) 2) Instead of some weird cooling/h...

Here is another theme for the big-head toy.. and yes.. i modified it a little with extra folding positions etc. Just trying to make the toy a little more sturdy.. i've found the head to be very fragile.. so i guess this does help a little.. and i told before.. if you are uncomfortable with the folding.. just glue them :)

If you have been following the open game dev project " Yo! Frankie " which has lead to major improvements in the blender game engine, You will be exited to know that blender has put up a game dev competition . So if you are as exited about blender and it's internal game engine as I am.. go ahead and post your entry before 16th march 2009. Now that i've made the announcement, ever since the game engine got an upgrade, i've been craving to develop a game on it. So i kinda decided to port the " Transporter " game i made for pyweek to blender's game engine. Pretty easy right.. i mean.. ive' got the art, ive' got the logic bricks from blender game engine.. how hard can it be.. so i started working on that and soon i learnt about the above competetion. Without a seconds' hesitation i registered. Since the blender game kit 1 has been released for free, I was able to better organize the data etc. Whenever i got a doubt about how something would/s...

While browsing through some of the paper toy galleries, i came across a really cool toy. It had a hood, the dude had a black face, the hood was yellow in color and was wearing jeans ofcourse. So after i made the grimm reaper, i decided it would be nice to attempt making a toy which resembles the one ive' seen. While working on this, i realized the hands of the Big head toy are kinda lame, so modified them too. Ill' hopefully be able to get the print out and make the toy soon, don't hold your breath for that though... :) ps: Time and again i keep experiencing problems while putting the big head toys together. The trick to get it right is to cut the slits precisely. Happy toy making..

Hope you have seen the new template that i made. It's a little hard to make, easy to cut though :)... but looks pretty amazing. Note that if you find it difficult to cut and fold the paper through the slits, just glue them instead. Any way.. here is a new theme for the toy.

Don't you love the look of the above paper toy?? .. well i totally loved it.. and guess what.. I had to go over the design a couple of times before i got it right.... well what are you waiting for go grab the template yourself and make your own unique toys. I will as usual try to post some themes for the toy myself.

Here is the second toy in the castle crasher series. This one is one of my favs' i haven't done a lot of shading. I've tried to keep it simple and true to the original inspiration. I actually made a 3D model for showcasing the paper toys but haven't done the texture yet.. So stay tuned for that.. mean while here is the schematic for the Bear Castle crasher.

If you have been following the xbox live arcade scene, it's hard to miss games like castle crashers. The good old hack and slash genre in 2D, has co-op both offline and online. It's a lot of fun to play too (from what I heard). So any way.. got my hands on an image which had icon sized images of various characters in the game. I jumped to the opportunity and made a paper toy using these images as inspiration. So here goes our first castle crasher paper toy.

I've got to admit.. im' pretty bad at shading and colouring... so pardon me for the bad shading in this theme for the paper toy.. but ive' got to keep trying right :) hopefully some day they will be awesome you know just like what most guys put out there.

Used the template i created to make a pirate.. found this very nice image online, thought it would be perfect for a toy. If you have some experience in texturing 3D models, you should be able to create new toys using the template pretty easily. Here is the original image (some obscure site .. through google images) And the corresponding toy theme on the template :) pretty neat haa. well today for the first time i discovered the anti-aliasing problem while using the fill tool in gimp... that lame tool keeps leaving gaps near the anti-aliased lines so this toy is a little rough around the edges.. hopefully will figure out some solution to this problem by the next time :)

As is the case with the programs we write, the bikes we ride, the language we use... paper toys require fine tuning too :)... here is the fine tuned version of the template i created. It's got good looking legs now The Neck region is scaled to be smaller than it used to be. Removed the black filling in the flaps. So that people can just download this template and draw on it instead of having to edit it before doing anything. Merged all the parts into a single image file.(one printout one toy :))

I have been working on refining the schematic i used for creating dexter (prev post) so that people can use it to create custom paper toys. The feet part of the toy is still a little primitive and i am working on another template which has better design for the feet. I've even created a blank paper toy (without any eyes, etc.. just cut and fold the template to get the blank toy). Thought it would be nice activity for the people to come up with whacky faces etc using this template. I would work on putting out different themes for this toy but im' currently hard at work for creating a new template for a paper toy, once im' done with that.. may be ill' try working on this. And here are the pictures of the paper toy made using the blank template.

After i came across the cubeecraft.com website, i've been downloading the schematics and making various toys from the website. one of my colleagues was interested in seeing a Dexter (from cartoon network) as a paper toy but unfortunately cubeecraft.com did not have it. I was going through other paper craft websites linked from cubeecraft and was really impressed by how many types of paper toy templates are available out there. That sparked off the intrest in me for making my own template for paper toys. I've tried my hand at making a paper toy using the template provided at cubeecraft.com, then decided to combine templates from other websites and come up with a good one to make characters like afro samurai, and the evil monsters in Samurai Jack. These initial undertakings went puff as the papertoys looked ridiculous. Which made me thinkg about making just a simple paper toy.. you know with just one cube/cuboid. Fortunately the dexter's images led me to a pretty good paper...