--- 6th Oct ---
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Belated but finally updated!
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First up, please excuse the hyphens down the side of the page. This blog host is particularly rubbish and doesn't put any spaces in the lines, giving me a solid block of text (Wonderful). So until I can find a way around this, I'm resorting to this...
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I've been doing a bit more back-work and Sandbox stuff for you, my lovely cherubs, hence the rather hefty delay in posting. Thankfully though, after I'm done here, I should have caught up on everything!
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My typing is a wee bit slow tonight, as most of my muscles have decided to seize up after some training. So now, I sit here gingerly typing away and listening to the one and only Coldplay (Best band in the world.) and with a nice cuppa by my side.
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Week 3 was where the heavy stuff was broken out! No longer playing with shapes and morphing cubes into mutant cubes... We now started giving said mutants some texture and life*! So that's a Level Up and 5 additional Hit Points for Captain Pineapple!
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We started off with the basics. Using the material editor and how to have fun with shading and adding a bit of shine/reflections to materials. Shiny stuff can at last be broken out! Perfect! You can also play with opacity to make things see-through, which is exceptionally useful.
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And because we were particularly intelligent (and awesomely sexy), we also got some info on 'Mapping'.
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I admit, mapping seemed quite arduous. I had visions of drawing lines all over my shape, trying to 'guide' some sort of pattern. Turns out that 'mapping' is just fancy computer talk. All it really is, is just setting patterns. A few preset ones were available, but highly limited. The only useful one was checkerboard, allowing us to fill our screens with a myriad of beach balls and chess tables. Maybe both together! Volleyball on a chessboard. A geek's dream!
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Adding our own designs was pretty easy too! All we needed was a bitmap. Make a design in photoshop (or if you're feeling really posh, 'Paint'), save it as a bitmap... and there you go! Simple as! You can use the bitmap as a skin to wrap around your shape!
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Of course... making it wrap around the shape correctly is another matter! For basic patterns (Especially repeating/tiled ones), it's an easy thing to do, and leaves plenty of room for error. Unfortunately, complicated designs with specific details (which need to go on a particular bit of the shape) are a little bit harder to work, and require a lot of trial and error and adjusting. There's a lot to do with textures, but it really helps bolster a bunch of shapes and make them look a little bit more 3D (or at least cooler)
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My next lecture is in... just over 6 hours... oops...
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*DISCLAIMER: Mutant cubes did not come to life with textures. I was very disappointed
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