TGIF

12 Jun (Friday)
UI (Trainer: Miyazawa-san, Murase-san)
In this continuing lesson, we were shown how the 3D animation portion of the Shikitei were created. The interface was design around the sakura tree concept which grows in real-time, and the menu items appear on the branches. The tree trunk and branches were animated in Motion Builder, the animation exported to Maya and then exported to the Chidori Engine using the PA Tools.

Other than that, we were shown some of the multitude of animal animations created for Shikitei. Some of the birds animations were art directed by the famous director Ichiro Itano (of Macross fame), so they looked like dogfights or aerial formations. XD

Collision (Trainer: Ooi-san)
Ooi-san, one of the key programmers of PA gave a lesson on how to create collision in the Chidori Engine. Although this was mostly for the benefit of Andrew, since both Ron and I are not programmers. However, we did learn some useful things regarding the creation of collision for games in general. As an example, Ooi-san showed us how collision nodes could be added to a complex skinned character like a dragon.

Next week we start our second mini-game.