Creatures 1: The run

Phew, it's been a busy couple of weeks. The funniest part is I'm not actually working as such.

I've just had a major job finish up and the next one isn't due to start for a while, so I've been slaving away in front of my computer either updating my portfolio or applying for short term freelancing jobs. It's finally starting to pay dividens, so I've got a little spare time to do some writing.

On that note, if anyone is interested my 3D portfolio is www.arch-dragon.com Feel free to check out some of my non-Creatures related works.

But, back to the Norns! As I said in the last post I'm a little worried about the population. They aren't breeding as fast as I would have liked and those that can are starting to get on in age.

So my plan now is to leave them to their own devices for a night and see what happens. Judging by their progress so far I'm not entirely optimistic, but they may surprise me. If they do surprise me...well we'll have to wait and see just how surprising they are. I may come back to a full population and it may be worth leaving it longer. If only a couple survive I'll check their genetics and decide what to do.

And finally, if I come back to an extinct world I shall start over with my original 8 Norns and breed them by hand for a few generations to toughen them up more. Then I'll try it all again!

The Norn population at the moment consists of:

Females:
*Grace (9:58 hours)
*Tabby (9:18 hours)
Lillai (10:19 hours)
*Pollen (9:39 hours)
Beatrice (7:40 hours)
*Tracey (6:36 hours)


Males:
*Heartly (9:52 hours)
Jeremy (12:22 hours)
*Troll (7:35 hours)
Jake (7:35 hours)
Billy (1:56 hours)
Abe (1:08 hours)

All the Norns with a * next to their name are already in old age. It's entirely possible the Pow-wow Norns might also be in old age and just not have the sprites for it. I don't know of any way to check this.

So as you can see there's not a lot of young blood and it stands to disappear over the next few hours, leaving only 3 or 4 Norns with breeding abilities. They've all been pretty good at taking care of themselves, but few have been good at passing on these traits to the next generation.

So pick your Norns and place your bets. Tomorrow morning we shall find out the fate of my Norns. Good luck and godspeed little ones...

Artwork: Time to leave the ship

Spent most of the day working on this piece. Been quite a bit of fun but I'm getting sick of tweaking subtle variations in leaves textures. Still, the folliage is looking good. Not only that, but it's starting to look a little wet, like a rainforest should.

The major updates since the last post is the extra folliage. I've added ferns around the base of the tree, some vines to the tree itself, and a whole heap of dead leaves underneath.

I've been struggle for a while with how to get the dead leaves to work. I'd experimented with particles to distribute them but without a lot of success. They just looked a little too generic.

With all the work I've been doing with paint FX though, the answer should have been obvious. Use more paint FX! The dead leaves are just more paint fx with the branches and twigs removed, leaving only the leaves. A little more fiddling to get them lying on the ground and some texture fiddling to make them look dead and this is the result!



I think next I may try working on the Norns hairdo. Still not sure if I'll just give him a head of hair or if I'll do the whole body. Will all depend how good I can make it look, as I haven't done hair on this large a scale before.

Creatures 1: The run

The run has been going...interestingly shall we say. Overall my Norns are pretty good at taking care of themselves. Sadly we have had a few Norns pass away, but that was more due to old age than anything else.

We've also had a couple of new births which I shall share with you shortly. But firstly, I feel we should commiserate the dead.

Sadly, neither Justin or Tony is with us anymore. Justin is quite a loss, as sadly he didn't father any children before passing. Tony has been slightly more successful. Both Norns lived into their old age cycles, although they did seem to reach them fairly quickly.

After reaching old age Tony's life force dropped below 35% and no amount of food or tickles seemed to bring him back up. He did live for quite some time with this low life force, but in the end it got the better of him.

In happier news there are two new baby Norns running about the world. Billy is the first of our new Norns. He is the son of Beatrice and Jake, making him the first generation 3 Norn born in the world.

He has reached his childhood, but he is still too young to know his personality traits.



Our next baby Norn has litterally just hatched. I have named him Abe and he is the child of Tracey and Jake, making him another generation 3 Norn. His first act upon hatching was to eat, and shortly after he's taken his first nap, so I have high hopes for him.



I must confess I'm a little worried about my population. Although they are breeding and are keeping my population maxed out I'm not collecting any backup eggs yet. This is making my experiments difficult to conduct. My hope was to breed a strong batch of generation 2 Norns, then be able to select the best from them to breed the third generation. Being that we are now already getting into the third generation without an egg supply I have yet to do any breeders selecting.

For now I shall let the run continue and see if natural selection doesn't do a good job all by itself. As long as the population remains high I will let things go, but if it starts to drop I will consider restarting the run. If I do a reboot I will take great care to only breed the Norns I want and try to eliminate any inferior genes.

Adolf, eat your heart eat ;)

Artwork: Time to leave the ship

So here's the latest update on the image. Given the textures a solid work over, as you can probably tell.
The door is now complete with the lifted part finally having it's textures done. I've also started texturing the ground outside. It currently looks pretty unrealistic, but it's only a base coat. I intend to put broken twigs and leaves all over it so most of what you seen now will become invisible later on.

While doing the ground texturing I accidently moved the tree, so I've had to put some time into repositioning that. Ultimately it's given me a better view of the waterfall, so I think it's been a good mistake.

Hopefully you can also notice a difference on the Norn. Before he was textured with a basic material, but now I've added what's called 'Sub-surface scattering'. This is a process whereby light penetrates the skin before bouncing out again. It's what gives skin, wax and leaves that fleshy kind of look. In some cases where the skin is particularly thin light will even go all the way through, such as the ears on this little guy.

I'm definitely going to give him a better hairdo later on and I'd like to experiment with giving him a full coat of fur. We'll see how that all works out.

My next major task will be to add additional plantlife, specifically around the base of the tree. I'm thinking prodominantly ferns. Taking a look at some rainforest pictures I have I noticed there's very little grass that grows in these kinds of areas.