TMNT Project!

[jdebner]

Hey Guys,

So I am currently a student at CMU and we do this crazy thing where we build this structure called a booth for an event across campus. These booths are made for children and people of all sorts to walk through and enjoy. They are themed and contain rooms which go along with the theme and have games for people to play. This year our theme is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My plan which is pretty ambitious is to take the STK game, create a TMNT kart and add some textures to a city level which have some TMNT "graffiti" and set up the game to be played on a Wii Fit balance board.

I have a ridiculous time-line... a week and a half, but I have lots of people to help me with artwork and another guys is almost done getting the balance board input done. I don't know any blender so it's going to be an exciting experiment for me to see what I can do.

If anyone wants to direct me to resources or anything I'm more than open to help, but I'll be posting on here as I go through my learning process and see what I can do.

Tonight, I start blender tutorials!

[Kinsu]

Hi !

I've nearly finished a kart for STK, and it took me more time than I expected to do it. Here are my advices to make a kart in a short time :

1. Before starting Blender : choose well your design ! An angular kart is waay faster to do than a round one. Choose a simple character also (or at least hide his legs, for instance, so you won't have to model them). The more you know what should look like your kart, the more modeling will be fast.

2. Then : get 4 views of your kart : front, left, top, and back, the most important since this is the one players will see the most. Be careful to respect dimensions from one image to another (eg. wheels have to be aligned from one image to another). example

3. Create your modeling environment : You want to have a cube with your kart views on it, like that.
Start blender, create and select a cube, Tab into edit mode, select the top face and one of the side faces (ctrl tab to choose select mode), and delete them. Then, invert normals of all faces (A to select/deselect all, ctrl n or ctrl shift n). After this, you open the UV editor in a new frame of the windom (right clic on the border of an existing frame, "split", and then select UV editor in the bottom left button of the new frame). Unwrap your cube (in edit mode, select some edges, mark seam with ctrl E, select all with A, hit U, unwrap). In the UV editor, you now see the unwraped cube if you select all faces. Now merge your kart images so it correspond to the unwraped faces (the front view should be at the same place the front unwraped face of the cube is), and load the obtained image into your UV editor. If you switch in textured view mode in the 3D view, you can see your kart images on faces.

UV tuto for more details
Another cool one in french, I used it to learn (maybe google can help you to read it in english)

You can now begin to model your kart in 3D ortho view mode (numpad 5 to switch persp/ortho mode, 1, 3, 7 to switch views, 2, 4, 6, 8 to turn your cam).

I don't have the time to continue right now, I'll come back later to tell you about modeling, UV texturing, and animations.

[STKRudy85]

Another cool one in french, I used it to learn (maybe google can help you to read it in english)

Thanks I had some problem with UV textures

[hiker]

I've nearly finished a kart for STK, and it took me more time than I expected to do it.

Note that all our models are released under a license that allow you to modify them. Given your time frame and experience I would strongly suggest to take an existing kart. Note also that there are a lot more karts created than we included in STK - have a look at the forum, and perhaps our upcoming addons web page (http://www.stkaddons.net/),

If there are any questions re programming, just ask here as well!

Cheers,
Joerg

[STKRudy85]

We can Make a tortoise riding a mountain board ? with or without sail ?

( We can re-use it ! TMNT are under an unfree license I think)

Document numérisé.png (35.57 KiB) Viewed 11144 times

[jdebner]

Wow,

Thanks for all your quick responses! Yes, I plan on taking an existing kart and editing it. This entire process will be an exercise in what can be done when you are building on the shoulders of giants.

I'd love if you guys could use it after in some capacity to convert to a Tortoise SVN character.

What I've found...
Last night I had two mini levels of success...just in the degree of how this might all begin to fit together

1.) I was able to take a blend file, (I believe of Beagle kart) use the export script and install it into the game.
2.) I was able to take this free 3d model and import it into Blender.
http://thefree3dmodels.com/stuff/charac ... z1IWpiozTB

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/Screenshots/01.png

I want to get a good sketch of what I want the kart to look like tonight so that will help as I continue to model it.

Thanks, so much for all of your helps so far!

[Kinsu]

OK, now that you have a model, you will later have to texture it with UV, then animate it with an armature (I learned armature animation with this tutorial, it's great).

I want to get a good sketch of what I want the kart to look like tonight so that will help as I continue to model it

I could help you with that if needed. Do you have any idea of the style of vehicle you want to use ? Rather F1 like, or more rounded, colors, wheel size, etc etc ?

To model it (or modify an existing one), here are the actions I found useful in edit mode :

Select/Deselect all : A
Rectangle selection tool : B
Pencil selection tool : B B (esc to exit)
Select all loop : Shift alt clic on an edge of the loop
Add/Suppress object of selection : shift clic
Change selection mode (vertices, edges, faces) : Ctrl Tab
Extrude : E
Merge vertices : Alt M (it's useful to extrude edges to create new faces, then merge their corners with existing vertices)
Translate selection : G
Rotate selection : R
Scale selection : S
Transformation with axis constraint : R/S/G + one axis letter (ex : R Y)
Full screen on/off : ctrl up/down
...

One detail for later (after the model is done and textured) : when animations are finished if you have the time, be careful when exporting it with STK's kart exporter : I tried to export two different meshes and two armatures : it didn't work well in game, so I think in your case you should have only one mesh (which includes both the character and the kart) and one global armature. To merge two meshes, select them then hit ctrl J (be careful to separate the two objects otherwise it will be hard to select only vertices of only one of them). One thing that is not told in the tutorial because it is STK specific, is that the armature have to be parent of the mesh. In my case I also had to suppress the mesh "armature" modifier, because the animations were applied twice to the mesh (one with the parent link, the second with the modifier). To make the armature parent of the mesh, select the mesh, then the armature with shift clic, then hit ctrl P, choose 'don't create groups'.

[jdebner]

Wow Kinsu that was amazingly helpful!

so I've been hacking away trying to get something... slightly working as a proof of concept that I can iterate on after.... and here is what I got

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/Screenshots/0c.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/Screenshots/0b.png

I broke the front axel, need to fix that then shorten both of them and I need to thin the board, curve the ends and bend it up
then I need to start dealing with the turtle and maybe turn his head, change his stance a little bit

then eventually texture everything and animate it?


here is my blend file if you want to see how messy I am...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/skate.blend

So... am I headed in the right direction at least?

[Kinsu]

Yes, you're heading quite fast towards a ninja on a motorized skate, which could be great as an addon for STK

Some ideas to improve your vehicle shape : this, this and that
Just modify a dozen of vertices and you'll have a shape like these ones, you made a pretty good choice of a skate board as a kart, you could not have chosen a faster vehicle to model

I forgot a shortcut for hiding objects : H, and Alt H to unhide all hidden object, useful when you begin to have a lot of vertices (also works for vertices, edges and faces in edit mode).

Next, you'll have to make the UV textures of your ninja and your board. For this, follow the tutorials I gave you, I think the hardest part will be to choose the seam of Leonardo. Here is a complete tutorial for the head which is a complicated part to UV map, I found a video for a whole humanoid body, it's long but I don't know if it's good, and another shorter one, I've only seen the first image, and it's enough to understand 75% of the idea . Then, you'll have to export your UV coords (the unwrapped surface) with UV>Scripts>SaveUVFaceLayout. To make your images above these UV coords, you can take parts of pictures (deviant art for ninja turtles face ?), the most elegant way to do it being to make everything but in your case elegance is not the most important criteria of success Just if you use pictures, try to respect a little their licenses ...

And after, animations ! For the steering ones you could copy this kind of position, I think it would have a great effect .

Keep us informed !

[jbrieger]

I'm also working on this project and was wondering if i can modify the code so that it registers nitro and turning at the same time

[Auria]

I'm also working on this project and was wondering if i can modify the code so that it registers nitro and turning at the same time

I'm not sure I understand, but check http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/FAQ ... eyboard.21 , I suppose this is the case

[jdebner]

Wow... so much going on!!!!


So here is the model currently
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/skatewithturtle.blend.zip

I exported it as a kart so you can check it out if you want.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/turtle.zip

Check out the picture
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/71574/Screenshots/0d.png

So we have three main things left to do...


1.) Texture, gotta uv texture it all, the texture actually looks pretty good on the wheels already so we might leave those wheels...
2.) I want to try and animate him for the turns, not sure if that is actually going to happen, as I don't know how to "bend" things and record them with timestamps
3.) Right now his kart is very "light" in that he jumps around a bit, is there anyway to fix that? Help with his center of gravity? He is very jumpy and lightweight right now.

Otherwise it is moving onto the city to see if we can add some custom textures and stuff...

[jdebner]

I would like to use the track Skyline, is there a blend file anywhere for that?

[KroArtem]

I would like to use the track Skyline, is there a blend file anywhere for that?

Of course, check it here: http://supertuxkart.svn.sourceforge.net ... s/skyline/

[jbrieger]

-it was a keyboard issue

WE GO THE BALANCE BOARD HOOKED UP! IT WAS AWESOME!
For some reason, the model for the kart registers constant collisions if we make it higher than 1 unit. is there any way we can change this?

[Kinsu]

I've tried the skateboard, this is fun !

I to avoid jumping around you may want to scale up your wheels (around +100%) so that you keep an open space between the road and the board (don't forget to apply the new scale so when you hit N, the model has a scale of 1).

For the UV, this can be done very quickly if you just use plain colors, the render will be very toonish - without much shadows, but I think what is needed the most are the steering animations. You'll have to rig first your character, the most boring part, then you open an action editor frame in blender, you drag the timeline and set transforms to your armature, this is very fun ! See here, rigging and animation parts.

[hiker]

For some reason, the model for the kart registers constant collisions if we make it higher than 1 unit. is there any way we can change this?

I would have to look at the model. Most likely the chassis keeps on hitting the ground. Could you post the latest model? But I won't have time before Monday. Besides, a model that high will most likely have stability problems (and before someone ask: we always move the center of mass down, but still the shape of the boundary box plays its part).

Cheers,
Joerg