As you may have noticed, it's been over a week since my last post. I'm still getting used to posting to this blog, I'm sure in time it will become more of a habit to post my day's work, but usually when I'm done for the day, I just shut down my computer instead of show people what I did.
My second excuse for failing you is that I've been spending most of my free time re-learning Unreal Engine 4. I hadn't touched it in a few years and I had only ever worked with the particle system editor, aka Cascade. This time I set out to re-create a thing I made in Unity about 4 years ago. It was basically just a software toy where you shot cubes of varying sizes at other cubes that didn't have gravity on them. The result was oddly enjoyable.
Just for the Hell of it, here's that old version, done in Unity...
I've always liked the idea of it, it was both relaxing and destructive and just made you feel good. Unfortunately it ran like shit. The main reason being that the projectiles had lights attached to them and never de-spawned, you could essentially just shoot and shoot until your computer crashed. I always said I'd make a better version in Unity, but since I've been dying to dive back in to Unreal Engine 4, I decided I'd try to remake the same thing again using that.
After a surprisingly short amount of time, I came up with this...
I had to make the projectile more simple, so rather than a lit cube, it's a reflective ball. I also went for a different art style this time around, as Unreal really lets you do a lot without having to know much, so I went a little nuts with the materials and camera effects. It might be a little much, but I like the direction it's going.
After I made that version, I decided to see how it would look if I used destructible meshes instead of groups of cubes. The result is equally enjoyable. In this last video, you'll see two cubes, one with gravity, one without. I really liked the contrast, it makes for something very surreal. Anyway, you should probably just look for yourself...
I think for how quickly I was able to get this set up, it already looks pretty nice and there's definitely something to it. I'll be working on a project based on this idea, however I wont be sharing too much until I'm deeper in to development. This was mostly an exercise to reacquaint myself with UE4, as I plan to use it for most of my art/game dev. work for a while.
Stay tuned for more vague posts about my secret project, more and more MASH animations, plenty of 2D work, and hopefully, some 2D animations, as I now have Adobe Animate at my disposal.
On that note, and since there aren't enough videos in this post yet, I will leave you with this treasure of American animation, and the only thing from college that I am truly proud of...