3D / 2D hybrid tree for OELVN (aka VISUAL NOVEL) use. I am GENIUS!!!

Finally, a solution to a problem that has plagued me for such a long time! How to have decent looking 3D trees but still have low poly count enough to shorten render times so I can get more BG’s produced in short time.

But first a bit of history…

What you see above are a bunch of 2D trees I’ve been using and abusing for a long long time now. I use them in my sketchup scenes whenever possible and it is very good decision because it make my scenes look good  and being 2D they are just one plane so very low poly count but…

Problem with 2D trees is that they are flat objects in 3D world so if you turn on the shadows you can quickly see the problem immediately.

So for a long time I used this really clever but depressing method of hiding the source of imperfection by hiding the base of the trees behind walls, structures, other plants and shrubs or make sure they are offscreen.

It works but this severely limits what scenes I can do which makes UNCLE MUGEN really sad…

Of course, there are 3D trees in Sketchup but chances are the poly count quota for the leaves alone is enough to model a whole town in sketchup. A single tree alone is enough to slow or even hang a low end unit and even if you have a high end unit that can accommodate such polycount intensive resource they don’t quite look anime’ish enough for use with OELVN (visual novel) backgrounds.

So UNCLE MUGEN comes up with a clever solution because UNCLE MUGEN is very smart. Let us combine 3D tree trunks with low poly 2D leaves. I am genius!… not only does it look somewhat OK for use with OELVN (aka Visual Novels) it is low poly count enough that I can put a whole forest of it without worrying too much that it will make machines all over the world crash… and best thing of all… I can now do scenes that I wasn’t able to do before using 2D trees… like scenes where the base of the trees are visible…

Anyway, this is just the first. it doesn’t look good right now but we’ll get better. As always, UNCLE MUGEN is releasing this for everyone to enjoy. You can download it HERE in the Sketchup 3D warehouse… more to come!

“POOF” (Disappears)

Let’s start the new year… with a BG rant… Lol!…

Too much effort for a simple room scene that doesn’t even look as good as I hoped it would be

Sometimes I wonder if there really is a magic shortcut for doing all those pesky internal BG scenes without putting much effort… and that is the holy grail I seek… create cartoony/anime like BG’s with the least amount of effort that will look good with hand drawn images…

Decided to subject one of my latest BG’s for DSE (Date Simulator Engine – The Game) project in Ren’py in 3D map. My plan is to take advantage of Ren’py 6.14′s ability to read and play webm format and create small, compact and dynamic BG’s for my OELVN project… if only I can get the text editor in 6.14 to work that is…

As the title says… I decided to subject one of my latest BG’s for DSE (Date Simulator Engine – The Game) project in Ren’py in 3D map. My plan is to take advantage of Ren’py 6.14′s ability to read and play webm format and create small, compact and dynamic BG’s for my OELVN project… if only I can get the text editor in 6.14 to work that is… oh well… still much room for improvement. At least this 3D map thingy gives me the option to have “pseudo 3D” effects in my BG’s… which is kinda nice looking…

Just a tiny teaser… just a tiny one…

It’s almost time my friends… I’m glad to announce that all the graphical resources for The Fucking Question V2 is completed and is being compiled into the project to be thoroughly tested so we won’t repeat the same embarrassing mistake we had the last time…

So what to expect in version 2?… Well… of course there is the graphical updates, the larger resolution and more unreasonable amounts of animation here and there that will grab your systems resources by the balls and slow down your machine… Lol! Also present are the side stories, a “real” Q&A portion with input questions from anyone that is not me and finally answering the age old question… what is the relationship between Lucy and Uncle Mugen… are they friends? Are they lovers?… you will soon find out… Lol!…

Above is a sprite comparison between the old and the new sprites. While Boyet (Schoolgirl) closely resembles her previous sprite, Diego has undergone a radical change… gone are the hime-cut hairstyle in favor of the stereotypical perky girl generic anime style complete with ahegao ahoge (that dangling hair)

One interesting thing about this project is that while adding a few new nifty tricks… I uncovered an unexpected glitch in the Ren’py Tooltip where the Tooltip remains persistent in the screen after moving to a new menu and in what can be called a rare Uncle Mugen moment… I actually used my coconut to figure out a really ugly workaround to this problem. How ugly you ask? I filled the whole unused space of the screen with Null hotspots that displays an invisible image to override the previously shown Tooltip… Lol!… the game is now 100% slower on older machines!… Isn’t it great!?… OK that’s all for now… one last image to tease you my friends… Wha!… What!?… I’m fat!?… of course I’m fat now but this is 2008 Uncle Mugen… and back then I’m still lean and mean and handsome… oh wait… I’m still handsome… Lol!

“POOF” (Disappears)