This week I wanted to step back from talking about development on Labyrinth of Despair, and gush a little over the software that is making it happen. I went to college many years ago, to learn a program called Alias Power Animator. Half way through the school year, the college upgraded to a strange program called Maya. Maya 1.0 was buggy and very incomplete, but I took it home to bed one night and by the morning it was my mistress. I have been a loyal Maya user ever since. For any professional work I have done. But as a freelancer, I don't own a license of Maya. I usually contract with companies who do. So when I began down the road of indie game developer, I needed a solution. And it had to be cheap.
Thats when Blender walked into my life. We had crossed paths before but it wasn't love at first sight. I admired her strengths, her UV's were very appealing. Something Maya falters at still. But the workflow was cumbersome and time consuming when compared to the speed at which I could create content with Maya. Earlier this year I took a spin of the 2.5 Alpha version. I was impressed, it felt more like home. The UI was so much improved. But it was Alpha software and it showed. Incomplete and buggy.
I decided to wait. And I'm glad I came back for a look. The recent release, 2.55 Beta looked production ready. With over 300 bug fixes and 99% functionality I decided to test it in my workflow. First thing first, it asked me if I wanted a Maya like workflow. I said yes please ! I started with modelling, and was impressed. Creating the UV maps for my models was just as I remember in Blender, a dream. Then I began weighing and animation tests. Heres where I expected to hit a wall, a show stopper. But, to my surprise, it excelled. Animating in the time line felt like an old shoe. The dope sheet is easy to use and very powerful. The weight painting was actually easier and the resulting deformations were very nice. The armatures are easy to create, mirror and skin. I am blown away.
The final test. Exporting an .fbx file into Unity and seeing if it all goes BOOM! Select the mesh, select the armature, file / export / fbx, export to asset folder of current project, launch Unity, fingers crossed .. ... ... Asset imported automatically! I drop it into my scene, set up the animation loops and there it is, perfect!
I may be gushing a bit over an old sock. But I don't see a lot of blender love in these parts. In fact I couldn't even find a blender group on this site. Maybe I simply missed it, But it should be front and center. Blender is up to the task of game development, it seems, and deserves some hype.
