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Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 09:57
by desmovalvo
Hello!
I'm strongly in love with SuperTuxKart so I decided to start modeling karts for this game. I created a kart for Blinky (the FreeDOS' mascot), a nice fish :) I decided to create its kart (mostly) as a water motorcycle because Blinky is a fish... :D

You can download Blinky from here: http://salug.it/~fabioviola/supertuxkart/blinky.zip

I know that maybe my kart does not respect most of the guidelines, but don't be angry with me, it's only the first work :)
I hope you'll like it and I wait for your suggestions to improve the kart.

Bye,
desmovalvo

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 11:46
by STKRudy85
I tried your kart and it works as it is. It's a nice start you can congratulate yourself

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I take an eye on your blender file, kart and hero have too many poly and vertex group seems badly made.

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Can you rename your license tou "license.txt" then you can upload this addon here :
http://stkaddons.net/

:)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 14:42
by desmovalvo
Hi, thanks for your reply. :)

I'll re-model the kart and the hero as soon as possible, that was just an experiment so I didn't made everything so well :)

I already uploaded it to stkaddons. If I'm logged in I can see it in the karts list, otherwise no (maybe I have to wait for the moderator to approve it). The license is CC 3.0, BY SA (I included the License.txt file in the zip I uploaded to stkaddons).

bye,
desmovalvo

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 17:39
by Kinsu
Nice one for a first try !

I would add a kind of bubble around the fish, a little as this (except the fact that this is a body and not a kart :p) :
Image
With a system like this one, it will also be possible to make fancy steering animations ;)

Maybe it requires a little bit of ambiant occlusion on the texture ?

For the tris number, 2K is ideal, 4K the maximum for a little-config-friendly kart (cf. the wiki).

Keep us informedĀ ! :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 18:45
by Funto
We just discussed the possibility of having this kart like yesterday or the day before on IRC, and then you bring it up :)
We were thinking it would be fun if this kart had a blocky, Minecraft-like look, reflecting the age of MS-DOS :p
I like the design and animations you made :) As Kinsu said, some ambiant occlusion would make it much better (see what it looks like on the new Suzanne kart), although if we end up with SSAO, maybe that would be too much occlusion, I don't know ^^
Also, when looking at the Blender file, it seems that there are too many polygons considering the quantity of details on the model, but on in the end the total amount of vertices is not that important (it's less than the Beastie kart for example).

I wonder what it would look like with Kinsu's suggestion about adding a bubble, but I also like it as it is :)
Maybe with some water recipient and a way for it to "breath" it? :p

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 19:36
by desmovalvo
thank you guys, your advices will help me improve my kart :)
Ok, as I said I will model again the kart with less polygons, no problem ;) I will also add ambient occlusion, it's a good idea :)
I will try to do the new kart with your advices and will let you know :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 21:21
by Arthur
Looks good, keep it up. :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 21:49
by Funto
Looking forward to the new version then :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 29 Jul 2011, 23:11
by Tuxfan
Great first draft. I could even break some highscores with your new kart :cool: I like that the blinky kart doesn't look as a usual kart.

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 30 Jul 2011, 11:58
by Kinsu
A little graphic brainstorming :
blinkypreviewbubble2.jpg


And for the steering animation, maybe the eyes of the fish could turn as they are pretty big :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 30 Jul 2011, 13:49
by desmovalvo
Ok Kinsu :D Thanks for the suggestions :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 30 Jul 2011, 18:15
by Iridium
Kinsu {l Wrote}:A little graphic brainstorming :
And for the steering animation, maybe the eyes of the fish could turn as they are pretty big :)


I like your idea Kinsu. And also, change the spoiler design a bit - Make it lower down (so we can see more of Blinky) and wider too.

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 05 Aug 2011, 12:11
by xeno74
I like the Blinky Kart very much :) Thank you!!!!!!

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 18 Sep 2012, 10:29
by desmovalvo
Hello, I'm creating a new version of Blinky following your advices. I apologise for the delay, but it's been a long and heavy year... :(

However I'm having a problem and I hope you can help me to solve it. I'm modeling this new kart with Blender 2.63 (while the older version was realised with Blender 2.49). I created the fish and the water motorcycle, then a really simple (at the moment) armature. I use this armature to animate only the fish. No animation is needed for the water motorcycle. In blender everything works fine, but in SuperTuxKart the fish has no animation and the kart is deformed every time I turn left or right. I tried to put "Ignore" at the motorcycle type in the object data, just to see what happens and... the fish is correctly animated O_o

Do you have any ideas about what's wrong?

Thank you,
Fabio

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 19 Sep 2012, 00:24
by Auria
Deformation usually occurs because of one of these :

1) the model is rotated or scaled at rest (it was rotated or scaled before the armature was attached to it)
2) the armature is rotated or scaled at rest (it was rotated or scaled before being attached to the model)
3) the armature and the model don't have the same center

those are known limitations of our exporter, I'm sorry. I'd like to fix them, but my math and my motivation aren't quite up to the task ;) see the red note at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Sep ... ed_Objects for more information

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 19 Sep 2012, 08:39
by desmovalvo
Auria {l Wrote}:Deformation usually occurs because of one of these :

1) the model is rotated or scaled at rest (it was rotated or scaled before the armature was attached to it)
2) the armature is rotated or scaled at rest (it was rotated or scaled before being attached to the model)
3) the armature and the model don't have the same center

those are known limitations of our exporter, I'm sorry. I'd like to fix them, but my math and my motivation aren't quite up to the task ;) see the red note at http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/Sep ... ed_Objects for more information


Nothing to do :( I fixed everything as you said, but I'm still having the same problem :(

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 19 Sep 2012, 09:30
by desmovalvo
I attached some images to better explain my problem. Without the motorcycle everything's fine. With it, when I turn I get a garbled mesh and the fish receives no animation.
The fish and its armature have the same center and no rotation/scaling. I don't know what to try :(

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 19 Sep 2012, 17:05
by STKRudy85
Please send us the blender file, I can check.

I had the same problem with "Proof" But I don't remember what was it..;

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 19 Sep 2012, 17:20
by desmovalvo
STKRudy85 {l Wrote}:Please send us the blender file, I can check.


I uploaded a zip archive here. I hope you can find the key :D Thank you

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 20 Sep 2012, 00:21
by Auria
Hmm can you give me this information :

1) it's Blinky.blend and not blinky-low.blend right?
2) which version of blender are you using?
3) which version of STK are you using?
4) which version of the kart exporter are you using?

Because for me, with STK latest trunk, using blender 2.62 or 2.63, using the latest exporter, Blinky.blend works just fine for me, without the problems you mention

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 20 Sep 2012, 05:54
by desmovalvo
1) it's blinky.blend (sorry, I forgot to delete the old one)
2) blender 2.63a
3) supertuxkart --version gives me:
Irrlicht Engine version 1.7.2
Linux 3.2.0-23-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 10 20:39:51 UTC 2012 x86_64
[FileManager] Data files will be fetched from: '/usr/share/games/supertuxkart/'
==============================
SuperTuxKart, 0.7.
==============================
however it's the latest version available in the Linux Mint's repositories.
4) I installed the tools linked here

I'm going to compile stk so that I have the latest version. I'll let you know what happens..

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 20 Sep 2012, 07:10
by desmovalvo
Solved! With the svn version of STK it works correctly... Ok, now I can begin to work seriously on this kart to make it better :) Thank you guys for the support

...however guys congratulations, the snv version is FANTASTIC !!!!!! :o

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 21 Sep 2012, 01:38
by Auria
desmovalvo {l Wrote}:Solved! With the svn version of STK it works correctly... Ok, now I can begin to work seriously on this kart to make it better :) Thank you guys for the support

...however guys congratulations, the snv version is FANTASTIC !!!!!! :o


thanks :)

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 21 Sep 2012, 03:22
by hiker
desmovalvo {l Wrote}:...however guys congratulations, the snv version is FANTASTIC !!!!!! :o

Thanks as well. And just out of curiosity: did you try the new skidding? Usually people hate it the first time they try, and it takes quite some time to get used to it (and we are still tweaking it).

Cheers,
Joerg

Re: Blinky kart

PostPosted: 21 Sep 2012, 06:57
by desmovalvo
hiker {l Wrote}:
desmovalvo {l Wrote}:...however guys congratulations, the snv version is FANTASTIC !!!!!! :o

Thanks as well. And just out of curiosity: did you try the new skidding? Usually people hate it the first time they try, and it takes quite some time to get used to it (and we are still tweaking it).

Cheers,
Joerg


Yes, I tried it and I like it very much. Really funny! At the time I am very slow and I lose almost every match, but I think it's only a matter of time :)

Fabio