Blender Tutorial: Animtation and Rigging Tips

We created a collection of 10 tips and tricks showing how to rig, skin, and animate a model in Blender in preparation to use in a game.

 We are still trying to win the Salt Valley Tally competition so if you haven't yet please vote for us.

Please Vote Here!

If we win the competition we will release a animated manticore model to be used in commercial projects such as video games. Also we will make a large tutorial showing how to animate several animations and import the model into Unity 3D.

 Please enjoy the video below: :)

Speedy Sculpting

As you may know Duel Beasts has entered a competition to get $5,000 to put towards its production at the Salt Valley Tally. The top 5 projects that receive the most votes will win.

Please vote for Duel Beasts:  VOTE HERE

We are putting together some really cool freebies and the following speed sculpting video is just the first of many such freebies.

Duel Beast: Salt Valley Tally

Duel Beasts has entered a competition held here in Utah called Salt Valley Tally.

What it is is a way for five technology/game companies to earn $5,000 each for their businesses and help them get necessary resources to realize their products. Many of the products are very early works in progress and ours is only about five weeks or so into development.

We are hoping to win the $5,000 reward and use the money to get Unity Pro, hire out some talent for sound design and some other random assets such as particle effects. If you think this project looks interesting we would really appreciate any votes that we can get.

You can watch our short promotional video below to see some of the assets we have made already.

Please vote for Duel Beasts. 

In an effort to say thank you for all the support we are trying to put together some free goodies; including fun speed sculpt videos, blender tutorials, free commercial fonts, and other mysterious... things... Thanks again, and please leave some comments letting us know if you voted for us.

Week 3 Progress

This week I am working my fingers to the bone (what a gross saying) and am making really good progress, here are three new beasts to add to the roster.

 Beast 1: Frozen Kobra

When first starting Frozen Kobra I didn't know if I wanted to have ice encrusted on flesh or just have the whole snake be composed out of ice. As you can see I ended up going with the complete ice concept and I think it turned out really nice. This image is not utilizing reflections or refraction which I actually hope to use in the final game, but will wait to implement that.

Beast 2: Burning Oak

I like having beasts that go against the norm as far as combinations go, so for Burning Oak I went with plant and fire type to make a very interesting beast. The model is done, but the fire particle system and the lighting are not to my satisfaction yet.

Beast 3: Terrorsaur

I watch a lot of Feng Zhus tutorials online and he said something quite genius about drawing inspiration from everything, so now no matter where I go I am always looking and listening for inspiration. Terrorsaur much like most of my beasts came from just such inspiration when I took my daughters to our local dinosaur museum. All birdlike dinosaurs are from the family "terasaur" which I stewed over for some time, then it hit me I needed an undead type beast and thus Terrorsaur was born.

I hate mosquitoes...

Wow I got a lot done this week; however, most of it was behind the scenes work that I really can't showcase in a blog and if I talked about it you would most likely want to gouge your eyes out with a spoon before you would actually want to read about it. Suffice it to say a lot got done, but not a lot of fancy graphics to showcase this week.

So here is another Duel Beast named Blood Tiger. I got inspiration for this parasite when my daughter had her first real experience this week with mosquitoes. She has now been initiated and has joined ranks with the rest of the world in realizing mosquitoes suck, both literally and figuratively. In fact after creating this Duel Beast my wife and I spent a whole car ride trying to figure out what good mosquitoes have actually contributed to the eco-system and the world besides maybe feeding a fish now and then.

Five Beasts Join the Roster

Here are the first five Duel Beasts to join the line up.

Earth Wyrm:

One of the type of beasts in Duel Beasts is "Blood" type. They will focus on stealing life, dealing large amounts of damage, causing ailments, and other unpleasant but interesting effects. Earth Wyrm is a blood and earth type beast, whose biggest asset is just his cuddeliness. I mean really, who wouldn't want an Earth Wyrm plushie.

Fire Fish: 

Duel Beasts will have a lot of different type of beast, but I wanted to ensure that I didn't just copy the cliche types. You know, air, fire, water, ground, ect. But at the same time, those types are in almost every monster fighting game for a reason. Namely fire, water, air, and earth are your basic elements. So my solution to avoiding being the same thing as every other game was two fold. First I would have several very different types of monsters not seen in other games (for example blood type), and second I would combine the types in interesting ways. Hence Fire Fish is a fire and a water type beast. A combination that goes counter intuitive to what we are use to seeing.

So how will this work? What will be it's strengths and weaknesses if its type is atagonistic in nature? Will I answer these questions in this post?

Octoclops:

I am not entirely sold on the name Octoclops, so I am open to any ideas. Originally she was called Mind Squid, but it looked more like and octopus than a squid. But what do I know, "Octoclops" might be an awesome name and it is just me who hates it. So I would love to hear feedback on this.

Shroomy:

Shroomy is an electric and plant type beast. I thought this would be a fun combination and has lead to some very interesting skill combinations. Though I was trying to go for a darker tone to this game, I can't help but think the beasts that would typically be the most gruesome just come out kind of cute. It might just be me, but look at those cute antennia. Adorable...

Vultchar:

Last on the list, but not least is Vultchar. Vultchar is an earth and fire type beast and has some interesting skill combinations. And though this game is still in very early development I hope to implement a skill for Vultchar that when attacked by water type attacks will actually have him shift from a mix of fire and earth to be more earth, because his molten skin would become hardened into cooled magma. This would be interesting because it would add a depth of utility to him that even when attacked by his opposite element his armor increases and helps make him become more durable. This would also decrease the potency of his fire attacks, but at the same time increase the potency of his earth attacks.

Quick History

Pokemon came out about when I was a senior in high school, and though I played a bit with my younger brother it was the butt of most high school jokes. Yes we could sing the theme song (I still can if you are ever want to hear it), yes we were dragged to see the Pokemon Movie in the theaters with our kid brothers (I didn't cry... much), yes we played Pokemon Monolopoly at nasium during Holiday breaks (still my favorite adaptation of Monolpoly) but Pokemon was just down right uncool.

 Well I got older and Pokemon didn't go away, in fact its user base grew and a strange phenomena happened, it became nostalgic for many of the younger generation much like Castlevania, Metroid, and the like are nostolgic for me. I meet 22 year olds who openly love Pokemon because it is old school. Pokemon is now cool... how the heck did that happen?

So Pokemon is cool, great. But I remember being in High School and giving the game the benefit of the doubt, and cool factor aside the mechanics still stunk on ice. I always liked the premise of Pokemon, collect, train, and show prowess on the battle field, but the further you get into the game the more you realize how broken the mechanics are. Evolution really doesn't mean anything game wise (except in a few cases). Skill overlap is unruly, and strategic choice is almost all but absent from the game. Pokemon is nothing more than a grind fest when all is said and done.

I would sit down and play Pokemon Stadium with my brother and we would set the levels of our Pokemon to 100. And I started to notice that a level 100 pickachu was just as powerful as a level 100 Richu( is that the upgraded form of pickachu?) Evolution didn't matter, most skills you got at level 1 could scale just as well as others, and 50% of all the skills were usless. I'm looking at your harden. Most battles lasted 3 hits and then our pokemon would die, so you better not waste a skill like growl because, well, it just sucked.

So for a very very long time I have wanted to see a game that takes some of the good intentions of Pokemon and improve upon them. I have had many ideas and hopes for such a game, but have never seen them come about.

Well, I am no longer in High School, I have quite a bit of expertise and experience under my belt in graphics/game design. And by thunder (don't know what that means) I am going to make a game that I would have loved to play, and I can still play with my kid brother... who ironically now stand one foot taller than me and is 21...

I am not trying to make a Pokemon remake/tribute game. In fact besides enslaved animals dueling for the ... enjoyment... of their masters, Duel Beasts will not try to be a Pokemon game. I have taken away all the grinding of Pokemon, all the useless decisions, and the lack of consequences and have designed a game that will be strategic, quick to pick up and put down, and hopefully require more activity between the ears.

So in short, was Duel Beasts inspired by Pokemon? Yes but not as many will assume. It is inspired by the shortfalls of Pokemon and not by my love for the grinding nature of a foregone age... that... is... still in full swing. ;)