It would be easy for me to waffle on about first discovering seaside arcades whilst holidaying in the late 1970’s as a kid, or to go into detail about all the home computers and gaming consoles that I have owned since 1982 to the present day. I could lose myself for hours writing about all the great games I have been lucky to own and play over the years, or how awesome it has been to watch video games evolve into what we all take for granted today, but I’m not going too. All you need to know of my gaming past is that I have loved video games for a very…very… long time.

The plan for this blog as we head towards 2012 is to put every effort into documenting at least a years worth of my collecting and gaming habits. It’s just for fun, I’m not a writer of any talent, and my grammar and punctuation will often be of low quality. I also tend to have problems with my typing skills keeping up with the speed of my inner voice as it rambles away in the dark reassesses of my mind, so don’t expect great sentence structure either.

What you can expect during 2012 are the ramblings of a casual gamer as he loses himself to the power of the force in Star Wars: The Old Republic and a good laugh as you watch me waste money with my obsession for Collector Editions.

Happy Holidays Guys!

VGM-UK

This was my first attempt and as such I really didn’t want to try anything too complex, this was really more of a test to see if the software and hardware I had would work together in giving a result I was happy with.

I remembered a child’s alphabet toy block on the floor near to the beginning of Fallout 3. Nothing easier than a cube I thought, although on closer examination I noticed it wasn’t a perfect cube – it had some uneven modelled edges. This I guess was either to make it look worn; perhaps it was a remnant from the old world before the area was nuked, or maybe it was modelled that way so that when the block was interacted with by the player it would roll around the floor better using the games physics engine.

I launched the Fallout 3 game through the 3D Ripper DX software and was please to see the game running with the yellow capture ready bar in the top left corner of the screen. Pressing F12 captured the frame and associated textures and located them to folders within the Rippers default folder.

Using 3DS Max 5 I imported the frame and removed all the unwanted bits except for the toy block.

This I saved by exporting it as a .3ds file. Next still using Max I looked through the textures and located the one associated with the toy block. This was then opened and saved out as a .jpg file.

I opened the texture in Paint Shop Pro and sharpened the image a little.

Next I started up the Pepakura Designer program, opened the .3DS file of the toy block and applied the texture to it. With such a simple model I unfold it using auto settings and after rotating the unfolded box to better fit the page it was saved as a .pdo file.

The .pdo file was then opened in the Pepakura viewer for craft ROBO. This is a version of the viewer that adds registration marks to the A4 sheets of paper when you print out your paper model pieces. It also translates the different lines in Pepakura (edge, fold, and flap) and sends cutting data to the Graphtec Craft Robo CC200-20 when you have set-up a page for the machine to cut the pieces out. I also set it to perforate the fold lines for speed.

All that was left was to fold and glue it into shape.

The whole process from start to finish took about 30 minutes, aided greatly by the cutting machine.

Software used:
PC Game: Fallout 3
3D Ripper DX
3DS Max 5
Paint Shop Pro 7
Pepakura Designer 3
Pepakura Viewer for CraftRobo

Other items:
Colour Printer
Craft Robo Cutting Machine
120gsm A4 Matt White paper
PVA glue

The viewer software which is all you require for printing and construction was free. It was also quick and easy to acquire with no registering of details before downloading.

The model I found and decide to have a go at making for my first attempt was a treasure chest from World of Warcraft. It was a 2 page model without any really complex pieces to cut-out and fold into shape.

In the screen image above you can see the working area of the pepakura software is split in two halves. On the left side is the 3D model, you can rotate the model on all its axis using the mouse and also zoom in and out. On the right side you see the model split into parts and flattened out as if on paper.

The really useful thing this software does is that clicking on any part in the how it appears on paper window highlight’s that part on the 3D model, so it’s really easy to keep track of what goes where and how a piece should be correctly folded before any glue is applied. This also works the other way around with parts of the model you click on in the 3D model being highlighted in the on the paper view.

Also useful is that running the cursor over a gluing tab will show where and what that tab needs connecting to.

After spending time familiarizing myself with the model and the software a little I then printed out the two A4 sheets of parts using 120 gsm White Matt Laser Copier paper.

I bought an A4 cutting mat and craft knife, a few spare blades, and some Hi-Tack PVA glue from one of the many crafting suppliers found online.

I then realised the value and need to have a ruler with a stainless steel cutting edge. I managed cutting parts out free-handed without any problems, but a ruler really help keep things nice and straight when scoring along fold and tab lines. Most of the crafting supply stores will have them.

Overall I am pretty pleased with my first attempt, more so in the fact there were lessons learnt along the way that will improve and make life easier on the next model build. Most important lesson was to get myself some wooden cocktail sticks to help manipulate and add glue to areas that are difficult to access during construction. Another is not to get obsessed with trying to make things created with paper look like they are not made from paper.

Lastly I think I need to experiment a little using a few different weights of paper until I find balance between ease of cutting, folding, and the end resulting look of the model.

And here are the links for you, should you wish to have a go yourself.

The Free Pepakura Model Viewer Software

The World of Warcraft Treasure Chest Model

Building models from pre-printed sheets of card is not unknown to me, having attended model engineering exhibitions in London with my dad when I was younger I had seen model railway buildings constructed this way, also similar structures in tabletop war gaming, and of course Dungeons & Dragons.

The thing that initially caught my attention was a computer game figure from the Nintendo Zelda games. It wasn’t until I did a little more searching on the Internet that I discovered a whole range of interesting computer game related paper crafting going on.

Basically what some of the model makers are doing is taking the 3D models out of computer games and laying the parts out flat in 2D on paper. Gluing tabs are added to polygon edges that were originally joined together and the parts are cut-out. The fold lines and tabs are lightly scored so that the parts can be folded back into their 3D shapes. The tabs are then glued to hold everything together and the shapes are assembled back into the model; it’s kind of like bringing virtual reality into the real world.

Basically – does not mean that it is easy.

First you need to get your chosen model from the game. There is 3D DX9 Ripper that works only on true DirectX 9 games and not compatible ones. It intercepts data from the graphics buffer and takes geometry snap-shots of a game. These snap-shots include multi layered bit maps, but not bone or animation data, so when loaded into a 3D program like Studio Max – characters are not poseable. It’s just like taking a photograph, what you see is what you get.

Also remember if you go hunting for the ripper that Windows Vista only emulates DX9 unlike XP – so it may not work.

You will then need to load the snap-shot into a 3D program like Studio Max and remove all unwanted geometry - keeping just your model, and also locate and save a copy of the models skin.

Next load it into Pepakura Designer, a program that aids you in getting the model onto paper.
Pepakura is cheap and very popular, and the good news for builders is that the viewer you require is totally free with no registration requirements before downloading it.

Pepakura Designer will do its best at unfolding the model and putting the gluing tabs on it automatically at the click of a button, but it will take some manipulating of the pieces and test building before you produce something worthy of releasing for others to build.

One thing to keep in mind is that as good as the Pepakura software is at unfolding a 3D model onto paper – it can’t perform miracle’s. As an example, in 3D space a characters legs underneath their robe may not in fact be joined to anything at all, why as a graphic artist spend time creating polygons that will never be seen by a player?

Another example of possible problems could be with the paws of a big cat model. Its claws may have been modelled as seperate objects and then pushed into the model until the artist was happy by how much they are pretruding, this does not translate well to a paper model – it could mean cutting holes in the model and pushing them through to copy the original 3D construction. It would be much easier to build if you remove the claws and adjust their size so they can be assembled as seperate items and glued to the outside of the paws.

So the ability to use a 3D editor to fix things, remove hidden faces, or to simplify areas of a model whilst keeping its original looks before it is unfolded with Pepakura Designer will help a great deal in producing an easier to construct paper model.

If you have the skills and ability then Pepkura and a 3D modelling program can be a good gateway to producing original models or pieces of art.

As an artistically challenged individual I will stick to having a go at making something small, and comprising of no more than 2x A4 sheets of parts.

I’ll keep you informed…

This task was pretty much achieved with a single Mod, or rather a Mod that collects and combines a few Mods into one package. Beautiful People 2.7

This mod combines the following mods:
Ren’s Beauty Pack and Mystic Elves
Nequam’s Ainmhe, Nequam’s Elaborate Eyes
KyneTarse’s Vampire Hunter’s Sight and Khajiit Night Eye toggles
Grimdeath and Syko Fox’s Tang Mo
Capucine’s Colorable Beast Hair
Com’s Argonian Headsets
Trigger190′s Bald Hairstyle
Theodic Marthil’s Skyrim Khajiit.

It was Ren’s Beauty Pack and Mystic Elves that caught my eye. The higher resolution skin textures remove the vanilla games blotchy skin look, and there are some nice hair and eye choices. Plus of coarse I want to play the female Mystic Elf character.

Happy that my character creation needs were met I then found a few smaller, but very nice little Mods:-

Vagabond’s Better Gold.
This changes the gold coins you sometimes find in game to look like the one that came with the collector’s edition of the game (and very nice it was – I do have one).

Better Potion Bottles.
This is just a re-texture, but they sure look better than the vanilla ones.

Reznod’s Mannequins.
You can buy Mannequins for your houses and store your armor sets on them.

DarkUI’d DarN
Slightly more important Mod this one, it changed my UI to be a little more PC orientated.

Improved Soul gems by Quarn.
Adds color to Soul Gems so they no longer all look so similar.
petty – light green
lesser – dark blue
common – light blue
greater – dark purple
grand – orange

That’s about all the mods I have installed to date – except for an improved weather one that I can’t remember the name of at this time (I’m at work now).

Talking of work – I had better get on and do some.

Griss.