Blog for Danny Ngan at GarageGames.com

Tuesday Oct 11 5:29

Danny Ngan — 2005-10-11T05:29:14+00:00

IGC was a blast, and I'm still recovering...

(This post is mirrored on my blog at blog.dannyngan.com.)

IndieGamesCon 2005 was an absolute blast! It was a wonderful opportunity for me to reconnect with old friends, make new friends, and step back into the indie game development scene for a few days. Lots of beer was drunk, plenty of good conversations were had, and more than a few fun games were played. I'm still tired from the incredibly fun but exhausting weekend.

The good times kicked off on Thursday afternoon with Associates Day. This was a time for GarageGames and its Associates to get together and talk about current and future GarageGames projects, get early information on upcoming announcements, and just hang out and talk shop before the mass influx of people. We were also recruited to help setup equipment at Mallard Hall, but we did get pizza for dinner and unlimited beer.

For me it was very much like a mini-family reunion. It was a relatively small gathering of like-minded people, and I felt like I knew everyone there, even if it was only online. I'll be honest and admit that I zoned out a bit during the main presentation during the afternoon, but I blame that on having driven 5 hours from Bellevue to Eugene and then immediately sitting down in a dark room. I did catch the majority of the information presented, so I wasn't completely gone.

Friday was a relatively short day as far as IGC was concerned. Most of the day was devoted registration and general setup, so Logan Foster, Pascal Bos, John Kabus, and I decided to take a stroll around the University of Oregon campus. I hadn't been back there since I left in March 2004, and I was curious to see what things were like one year later. For the most part, the campus is the same. There are some new covered sitting areas, the museum is finally finished with renovations and open again, and there are some updated traffic flow areas. Otherwise, it felt the same as when I left. It was a nice walk (it was sunny and warm that day) but a rather surreal experience as I felt both happy to be back and happy to have moved away. Many good memories, many not so good ones. Just another chapter in my life.

After the walk around campus, we returned to Mallard Hall in time to officially kick off IGC. Mark Frohnmeyer gave the opening keynote, and everything from that point on was one long and crazy ride. We ate lots of really good food, we drank lots of beer, we played lots of games, and more than a few of us acted like idiots, no thanks to the alcohol. I didn't partake of too much beer, because I had to drive all weekend, but I still had fun.

Between the piles of food and pints of beer and throngs of crazed and drunken game developers, I managed to fit in a few hours of actual game time. There were a handful of Xbox360s at IGC with some Xbox Arcade titles available for anyone to play, including GarageGames' very own Marble Blast. MB was much prettier and more shader-fied than ever, but it was still the same good ol' ball-based action/puzzle game. Geometry Wars was an intriguing title not necessarily for its gameplay but for it's seizure-inducing array of exploding particle effects and distorting grid backgrounds in a circa 1980s Asteroids-style graphics. Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen. Both Marble Blast and Geometry Wars will be among the Xbox360 Arcade launch titles.

It was neat actually playing games on the Xbox360, but I was more interested in the games running on the lovely 30" Apple Cinema Displays scattered around the conference hall. The two games that sucked up most of my game time were TubeTwist from 21-6 Productions and Diner Dash from PlayFirst. Both are great casual games that are easy to pick up simply by playing through the tutorial levels. Both progress well through varying levels of difficulty. And both are amazingly evil and addictive games. I should also mention that TubeTwist won the Player's Choice Awards for Best Single Player Game and Best of Show.

Aside from the games, most of my time at IGC was spent hanging out with all the cool kids from the GG community, switching between beer and Diet Coke every night, and doing my best to get embarrassing and unflattering photos of everyone. There were very few moments that I didn't have my camera armed and ready to capture the moment. For the times when I was too tired or lazy to walk around, I turned my camera over to Justin DuJardin, Ben Garney, and Melinda Russell and let them have a go at getting some fun shots. Yes, I was a little worried about the well-being of my camera, but it survived the weekend unscathed.

The 208 shots that made the cut from IGC can be viewed as one massive set, or you can view each day in smaller chunks:

Associates Day
IGC Day 1
IGC Day 2
IGC Day 3

As usual IGC was an incredible experience. I have fun every single year, and this year was no different. I'm already looking forward to IGC 2006.

Monday Oct 10 21:36

Danny Ngan — 2005-10-10T21:36:22+00:00

Lots of fun times and photos from IGC.

I'm at work right now and still too tired to clearly articulate my thoughts and reactions to IGC. I'll get to that later tonight. In the meantime, here is the complete set of photos that I and some helping hands (thanks Justin, Ben, and Melinda!) took over the course of the weekend.

Photos from IGC 2005

The photos are in chronological order, so if you run the slideshow, you'll get a visual taste of what it was like hanging out with people at IGC.

I'll be back later with more...

Tuesday Feb 1 19:49

Danny Ngan — 2005-02-01T19:49:53+00:00

Little ol' me has an interview in a book.

My buddy Mike McKinley recently released his first book, The Game Artist's Guide to Maya. It's a great book that provides new and experienced artists some excellent information on using Maya to create game art. Mike has a lot of experience teaching and training people both in person and via video tutorials on SimplyMaya. It's not specific to any game engine, but the book is well-written and contains quality exercises for most game art production tasks.

There also some great Artist Profiles scattered throughout the book featuring a range of artists presently working in the game industry. Mike was cool enough to invite me to be one of those artist profiles. In fact, I was the very first artist profile written up as a test-run for the publisher. If you happen to pick up the book, my interview is on page 147.

Monday Oct 11 22:45

Danny Ngan — 2004-10-11T22:45:17+00:00

Back from IGC. Very tired but very motivated and inspired to continue with the Revolution.

IGC was a blast! It was great meeting and talking with everyone and matching faces to names. It was very inspiring to see how much the quality of the games shown at IGC has improved since the first year. Things are looking much more polished and professional. The fun factor is definitely getting there. The art sessions were also a lot of fun, and I hope everyone who attended them got something out of them.

For more detailed versions of my reactions to IGC, please check out my blog at dn.typepad.com. I've posted some of my thoughts about my experiences there over the 3 days that were IGC.

Looking towards the future, I'm going to be hopefully working on some training materials for artists in this community. I'm not sure at this time what form those training materials will take downloadable movies, PDF files, books, DVDs, etc. but it is something I will be working on. The success of the Maya2DTS Documentation has shown that there is a pent-up demand for tutorials and how-to's, so I'm going to do my best to contribute more training for the community.

If you have suggestions for what you'd like to see in terms of game art production training, please feel free to send them my way. I want to produce materials that the community will find useful. If there is a higher demand for a particular topic, then it might get placed higher on my to-do list.

Wednesday Jul 28 6:56

Danny Ngan — 2004-07-28T06:56:58+00:00

Updated dtsUtility.mel for Maya2DTS exporter

I'm going to start posting Maya2DTS-related updates as .plans from now on. Way easier than hunting down the Tools forum and posting there.

Anyway, I updated the dtsUtility MEL script for the Maya2DTS exporter with a couple of bug fixes, a new feature, and some updated items. The bugs aren't really important or interesting enough to note, so I'll just pass on those. Rest assured, I found them and squashed them.

The new feature is the ability to customize export settings without relying on the project workspace settings. Obviously, you can use the regular Export button and save the file wherever you want, but it's kind of a hassle to always go through the dialog box. The quick export buttons Export Shape and Export Sequence are much faster and easier to use.

Prior versions of dtsUtility always used the directories specified in the project workspace (exportDTS and exportDSQ settings, to be more specific). The newest version now has a new Export Settings dialog box where you can specify the names and locations for the exported DTS/DSQ files. These settings override the project workspace settings, and they are saved with each file. This means you can set the options once for a file and export to your heart's content. It also means you can export to any directory you want, e.g. you can export directly into your game's shapes directory.

I also included the option to use global export settings. These are independent of the files and can be used sort of as default locations. There's a checkbox in the export settings dialog that allows you to choose between the file's settings and the global settings.

The updated items are "Export Shape and Dump" and "Export Sequence and Dump". Technically, they're the former "Export and Dump" split up into two functions. They do exactly what the names imply. The commands export the DTS or DSQ file and then open the corresponding dump file in a text editor. Not super essential, but they can be handy.

You can grab the latest dtsUtility.mel here:
http://www.dannyngan.com/tools/download/dtsUtility.zip

The Maya2DTS File Pack has also been updated.

Tuesday May 4 6:23

Danny Ngan — 2004-05-04T06:23:33+00:00

Maya2DTS Reference Guide and Tutorials site now available

I had a bit of free time over the past couple of days, so I decided to finish off as much of the Maya2DTS docs as I could. I ended up getting quite a bit done thanks to the very thorough Max2DTS docs written by Joe Maruschak. The majority of the docs are translated directly from the Max2DTS docs with some changes and additions here and there for clarity, updating, etc.

You can find them here:

http://www.dannyngan.com/torque/maya2dts/

The Maya2DTS docs are fairly detailed now, consisting of 2 separate section: a general reference guide and some basic tutorials.

The general reference section contains much of the detailed, technical, nitty-gritty stuff that technical artists (like myself) like to learn about. Despite its length and technical nature, I think it is reading for all Maya artists creating artwork for Torque, just like the Max2DTS docs are essential reading for Max artists.

The basic tutorials section is actually the former version of the Maya2DTS docs. I cleaned up a few things, and added a Character Basics tutorial. It's nothing fancy, just an animated box, but it does cover some of the foundation concepts artists need to know in order to build exportable characters.

There are still a few things that I want to add, of course, but those will have to wait for another day.

Because the Maya2DTS exporter is still in beta, the information contained in the Maya2DTS docs are still a work in progress. Feel free to send me feedback on the docs.

Friday Apr 9 16:51

Danny Ngan — 2004-04-09T16:51:01+00:00

It must be documentation week, because the Maya2DTS Exporter docs are now underway...

Wow, this is definitely Documentation Week! First the Torqe docs are getting updated, then the GS/TS exporter has new docs, and now....

Maya2DTS Exporter Docs Preview

I got a good start this week on writing the docs for the Maya2DTS exporter, but I've got a long way to go. For the most part, I'm essentially converting over the Max2DTS docs but adding/changing things to fit with Maya and the dtsUtility (plug). Right now, only the basic sections are done -- introduction to the DTS hierarchy, setting up and exporting a simple shape, and basic showtool stuff. I'm starting work on the character section soon.

There's no timeline for when the docs will be done. It all depends on when the exporter will be finished. As has been said over and over again in these forums: It'll be done when it's done. :)

Saturday Mar 20 23:31

Danny Ngan — 2004-03-20T23:31:29+00:00

Hurrah for the Maya2DTS exporter!!!

Anyone who knows me and how I work knows that I prefer using Maya over 3DS Max for 3D animation tasks. That's why I am extremely excited about the beta release of the Maya2DTS exporter. I've been testing it out for a couple of weeks now, and it is really nice. With minimal effort and modification, I got my floursack from last year's IGC exported and running in the showtool.

Also, being the production workflow geek that I am, I started writing MEL scripts for the exporter as soon as Clark gave me an early version. What was originally several scattered scripts that were glorified macros has evolved into a full-fledged utility that I'm happy to say work quite well. I call it dtsUtility.

The dtsUtility is very similar to the Max DTS Export Utility in many ways -- similar button names, similar functions -- but I took it step further and added a couple niceties that don't exist in the Max utility. For example, there is a Sequence Manager that allows you quickly edit attributes for all sequences in your scene file in a single window. I also have a bounding box creator that orients the box correctly for Torque world space. I've got a few more things in mind, but those ideas will have to wait until I have a bit more time to work on it. For now, dtsUtility works just fine.

If anyone is interested in testing it out, please feel free to drop me a line and I'll send the script to you.

Friday Oct 17 3:56

Danny Ngan — 2003-10-17T03:56:52+00:00

My one and only update until the next IGC... :)

Well, I finally got around to updating my plan for the first time since the last IGC. I must say that this year's IGC was a blast. I had so much fun hanging out and chatting with everyone, seeing "old" faces again, meeting new people. Of course, I did drink a tad too much beer, but, hey, it was all free (thanks to everyone who gave me their extra drink tickets!).

I also wanted to comment on how happy I am with how the art track sessions turned out. We had great turnouts in each of the sessions, and all of the speakers managed to cram in everything they had planned. I can't wait to see what the notes look like though. We threw a *ton* of information at everyone. ;)

For those of you who attended my character animation session, I continued animating the little flour sack dude during the lunch break. Just a few additional tweaks to give him more... um.. character. :P You can find the final animation here:

www.dannyngan.com/gallery_floursack.htm

So, I'll probably go back into lurking mode now. See ya around!

Sunday Feb 24 11:23

Danny Ngan — 2002-02-24T11:23:04+00:00

Lurker finally shares work!!! See plan for more details. :)

I've been lurking in the shadows of this site since October, and I figured it was about time I said something (beyond a simple hello). Let me re-introduce myself. I am a 3D artist currently residing in Eugene, OR. I have experience working with the Torque Game Engine, specifically with character animations. In fact, I worked with the Torque back when it was still the Tribes2 engine (I'm one of the many former Dynamix employees). I'm currently teaching animation and 3D classes at the University of Oregon (have been for 3-1/2 years now) and working as an artist for BraveTree Productions. Oh, and Joe Maruschak is my roommate. Why is that important? Who knows. It's late...

Anyway, after lurking around here for a while, I finally have a personal photo on my profile. It is actually a render of the rig I'm using for my current character job. It is a combination of Max4's bones (red ones are animatable, blue ones stay hidden) with control objects that are custom spline shapes (the little green things attached to the skeleton). You can see a larger image here. The image was rendered using the Brazil Rendering System.

This particular job isn't using the TGE, but, just for fun, I decided to export a test animation to see if the rig would work in Show. And you know what? It worked. You can download the dts file if you'd like:

www.dannyngan.com/temp/rig.zip

This file is particularly fun if you play with the Thread Control. You can simulate the whole Matrix bullet-time effect. :)

Please note that this is just a test animation and not some of my best work. I did it to see where the skinning on my character was off and to take a break from painting vertex weights (ugh...). In fact, I hammered out this animation in about 5 minutes (Joe was standing over my shoulder as I did it).

OK, back into hiding...