It’s officially been a week since the Best Boi model was released.. and I never made ‘Benie the Dragon Boi’. I did attend the ‘catwalk event’, but I didn’t show off the tall version of Red Boi (that I actually put quite a bit of effort in). And the reason why I didn’t do it, is I simply wasn’t ready for it (and I had my expectations way too high, for my limited skills to do).
Of course I blame myself for it. There’s no one else at fault here.
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Most of what happened (since the last blog post) went to trying to find a baseball cap, and also spending two evenings in a roll watching someone’s stream (who was trying to help people like myself learn how to do everything, from installation to attaching props on the model). This even included a Blender tutorial (on importing an mmd into an fbx).
The entire process took roughly 3-4 days (from importing to retexturing), and that really drained my desire to make a Best Boi based on my 2D avatar. Not to mention, hearing “someone’s already done that” didn’t help my mood.
But I fucking finally had the cap in a condition that I liked, and used the knowledge I gathered from the stream, to finally attach my first prop model to an avatar. It felt pretty cool, but I didn’t want to stop there. I had an additional idea for a backpack. Had help from a friend to find a pretty reasonable model (tris and polys). I also then had an idea for a weapon, like either a spear or a walking stick (but settled with a walking stick, thinking I could use it to poke people).
Adding them was easy’ish (the walking stick was a bit of a pain to rotate (due to the way the pivot point was located)). Though I am very glad that Unity allows multiple props to be connected to one bone. But I basically have it set similar to a traditional sword/shield combo (with the walking stick inside of the backpack, while both are sitting right on my back).
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The animation, was the biggest bitch of it all– an even bigger pain in the ass than retexturing the cap, due to how the background of the texture sheet, was masking with the components. I had to get the one that streams to help me with that.
Going by limited knowledge from the stream (and derping just like the streamer, of having the cap in the wrong hand), I eventually remembered how to do it. The first few attempts (using a mirror in a private instance), the animation was looping between being in the hand and the head. I figured out that switching the two was actually causing the unwanted looping, and set it where the cap on the head is disabled while the cap is in the hand.
I did a similar animation for the right hand (with the walking stick).
Of course, no animation goes without an issue. Since yesterday, people were saying the cap was in my head and on my head (at the same time).. even attempting to reset the animation (by using SHIFT+F1) wasn’t working. In a mirror, it’s working perfectly fine to me. So.. WTF?! I tried rebinding both animations to F3 and F4 respectively, but this wasn’t fixing the problem.
I then completely deleted the Cap Hold animation and redid it from scratch.. and that fixed it!! FINALLY!! I was then told by someone, that F2 (the key I originally had the Cap Hold binded to) has “been known to get stuck”. Yet if that’s the case, then how come rebinding it away from that key.. didn’t fix it?
Whatever, it’s FIXED now! Rejoice!
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To end this blog post, I have two weeks from now (before the next catwalk event), to work on ‘Benie the Dragon Boi’ . The winner gets a free Steam gift card (unknown amount at this time).
As long as I don’t procrastinate (like wanting to do what I did for the tall Red Boi, to the original Red Boi), I should have plenty of time to do it. I will likely require the help of a few people (such as possibly replacing the tail with a more scaly version). But the rest… “should” (hopefully) be easy to do.
I know how to import a model in Blender now (how to delete the bones and set the pivot point). Though, Blender also showed its “WTF?!” side (by showing me four menus that look the same, and having no idea how to close them out).
FUCK Blender… I wish I didn’t need it, but I know I may not have a choice if I can find a certain prop I require, from one of these 3D model websites.