Unity Project... Day 3?

I forgot to post a second update.

About a month ago, I tested exporting the APK and using the phone's accelerometer to drive the ball.

After some updating and dealing with some settings issues from moving to Unity 5, I exported a working APK. However, the ball didn't initially move with my existing code.

Some of this code was already there, such as the variable names. The primary things that needed to be added to use the accelerometer were enabling it in the Start() function, and

    private Rigidbody m_ballRigidBody; //This is our player
    private Vector3 m_gyroMovement; //This will be the vector to move him.

  void Start()
{
        Input.gyro.enabled = true; //This lets us access the accelerometer
        m_ballRigidBody = GetComponent();        }

private void FixedUpdate()
{

                  //These transfer the accelerometer's force to movement in the x and z axes.

        m_gyroMovement.x = Input.acceleration.x;
        m_gyroMovement.z = Input.acceleration.y;
        m_ballRigidBody.AddForce(m_gyroMovement * speed); //And this adds that force to our player.
        }

Today, I did some texture painting.

The walls look strangely tall in this camera view. You can see how much flatter they are when I rotate it at the end.

Unity Project Day 1

I brushed off a project that has been on my mind for a long while. When I originally started on this project I thought mostly about the look of the environment, where the main character, a ball, would roll around.

I recently got pulled back into thinking about this project, first really reviewing the textures I had started. Like I said, my thoughts initially went to the environment, and how I wanted to make it look.


I already had a scene set up in Unity from long ago, and decided my next step would be to make the ball move and attach a camera. Simple I'm sure, but it's something that's pretty new to me. I've done some C# programming on a fairly recent project, but I want to get more fluent with it (and programming in general).


After spending the weekend at SIEGE, both a session on level design practices and environments (though in UE4-I'm working in Unity) fueled my desire to work on the project. Although I wavered between working on my original plan of programming or working on just making environments, I decided to stick with working on the programming to make some quick and dirty tests.

Though I was surprised to see that I had already set up the movement input, I still reviewed how this was set up since it had been a while. Unity had some tutorials that were exactly catered to what I was doing. Though this is possibly testimony to it being a simple project--I'm okay with that because it is a project as opposed to doing nothing.

These tutorials also covered some good organizational techniques. Outside the tutorials I looked up how to set my grid snap settings. Although I'll need to go over how I have units set still, this will make setting up the world much easier. Both this and gray boxing were hit pretty heavily during the level design panel.  Primarily I reviewed the input for the ball, set up a camera to follow the ball, and set up walls for the ball to stay inside.

The next tutorials in the series cover picking up power items.
I'll hit those up soon, but first I want to go through the process of creating an APK for testing on my phone. After setting up some power items, I am going to create a library of different mini design scenarios and playtest how they feel.

Crafting a White Walker: Wearing and Final Notes

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Wearing

Lessons Learned

Practice putting everything on before it's time to wear it.
There are several things I learned in the practice run.

1. I have no chin.
Anytime I looked sideways, the pantyhose stretched at my neck (see photo below).
I fixed this by adding spirit gum to my neck and jawline when I wore it.

2. Cool poses showed off my fleshy human stomach.
I fixed this by using the waist area of a set of pantyhose and adding latex and tissue similar to the arms.

3. My shoulders were neglected.
The shoulders were difficult to reach, so I hadn't worked on them as much.
I fixed this by stuffing the arms with plastic bags (though in the future I will use balled up wax paper) so that I could work on them while they were not on my arms.

Order of Operations

Put contacts in first. Make sure your hands are clean.

Save your arms for as late as possible because they will prevent you from handling other items.

Put on any of the clothes while your hands are free.
Add the mask and the wig.
(See the next two paragraphs about attaching the mask).

When you wear the face for the costume, use spirit gum to adhere the mask around the eye holes, sides of the nose, and under the jawline. Put the spirit gum on your skin. You'll feel it get warm as it cures. Once it's warm, press the mask against your skin to seal it.

I used Ben Nye white clown make up on the skin around eyes, then setting powder, then the black face paint, then setting powder again. Do not worry about this make up also getting on your mask. It's the same make up that is already on your mask anyways. The make up color should blend fairly seamlessly from your eyes through to your mask.

Lastly put on the arms, and any clothing items that goes on top of the arms.

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Crafting a White Walker: The Face

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Items needed:

• Queen sized pantyhose
• Liquid Latex
• 3D gel
• Ben Nye clown white
• Ben Nye black
• Spirit gum

Face

For the face pantyhose I bought a queen sized pair, cut off one leg, and put that over my face.

It looked a bit silly (especially with the wig).
I thought about trying to incorporate this freaky thing happening with the lips, but did not.

Making the ridges

For the face, I started by sculpting the face lines. For this I used 3D gel, which I only have a bit of experience with.

Start by painting a layer of liquid latex as a base.

To use 3D gel, you place the bottle in a cup of hot water, which melts the gel into a malleable state. I believe I used the handle of a cheap paint brush to apply mine into the lines. Something like a popsicle stick would work as well. You'll have to work quickly before the gel cools.

Note on the 3D gel: I think I will be researching other options on materials to create the lines. Because 3D gel melts with heat, it does not hold the shape that well in warm conditions. Someone suggested trying hot glue for this.

After the 3D gel cooled, I covered the face with liquid latex.


Here is the face with the 3D gel. I believe this is before any latex, but may be wrong.

Latex surface

Note on the latex: I did not put the latex high enough on the mask to cover my hair line because getting latex stuck in the hair is hell. Sometimes (not often) my wig would slip and you could see my hair. What I would do in the future is ball up wax paper inside the mask, and continue painting the latex higher for better covereage.

Make sure you latex around the eyes and the mouth to solidify those shapes. Keep your mouth open and make sure the latex forms around the shape of your lips. Be careful with the eyebrows. If you are going to latex over them, put vaseline generously on the skin first. Optionally, you can latex around them and then fill in the gap after you remove the mask.

After the latex is dry, cut out holes for the eyes and mouth.
Be very careful cutting around your eyes.

Painting the color

Once the latex dried, I used acrylic paint to make the interior surface dark (grey) and the exterior white. I'm not sure this was that effective.

Here is the face with gel, latex, dark undercoating, and some light white over painting:

Later, I ended up using Ben Nye Clown White on the face, especially on the ridges--this really made them pop. I also later painted a water based black, Ben Nye again, on the surface to bring out the dark areas of the white walker face.

The clown white is water resistant and my black is water based, so I then applied setting powder before using the Ben Nye black. I used the water based because it's what I have and am experienced with. Depending on how much you load your sponge with pigment, this will end up lighter or darker. I cover all of this with more setting powder.


Here is the complete face once done, without make up on the eyes.
These will be painted in with the same clown white and black face paints used on the rest of the face.

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Crafting a White Walker: The Spear

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Items Needed:

• Mold (I used a 2 part mold from Hobby Lobby)
• Mold release or vaseline
• Resin (I used a 2 part resin from Hobby Lobby)
• Glitter (optional)
• Blue food coloring
• Dowel/walking stick
• Threaded rod
• Epoxy
• Duct tape
• Leather or pleather wrap
• Twine wire
• White spray paint

Spear

For the stick itself, I just used an old walking stick I had lying around that I didn't actually use for anything else. If you were to buy a dowel, you would want to rough it up, make it look old and used. Dent it, stain it, make it look dirty and maybe subtly bloody.

Spear Head

For the spear head, I made a mold and did a resin cast. This is my first time doing this, so I'm sure there will be lots more information out there than what I can provide. However, it wasn't as scary as I initially imagined, and nothing went too horribly wrong.

I picked up a 2 part mold and a clear drying 2 part resin from Hobby Lobby. I wasn't sure how much I would actually need, but I ended up with left over resin, and only bought one package of it. 

Spear Head - Mold

For the mold, I was lucky to have a training sword I could use. If you do not, you may be able to carve one out of foam. I wrapped my training sword in saran wrap and formed the mold around it on one half. The saran wrap ended up making these sort of ridges in the surface of my mold, which ended up as really cool cracks in the surface of my resin. It was perfect for an icy material, though I ended up covering them with another layer of resin (which I'll explain later).

I created the mold so that it only formed half the blade. I planed on making two halves, then adhering them together.

It is recommended to use either a mold release or vaseline or some other product that will prevent your resin from sticking to your mold. I did not do this. I did not have trouble getting the resin out of my mold, but I did end up with a very cloudy surface where it had been against the mold. I don't know how much the type of mold played into either of these results. But, it is usually recommended to put some sort of mold release into your mold before you pour the resin.

Spear Head - Resin

It is also recommended to work in a well ventilated area. I did all my casting in a carport outside. You may want a dust mask too. Resin fumes are considered toxic. Whenever working with strange materials for crafting or any other project, be sure you research for safety.

Any time I wanted to test something on a small part of the blade before fully committing to it, I'd test at the base because I knew that would be covered after I attached it to the staff.

I was using a 2 part resin, so I'd pour out an equal amount of each bottle, then mix them together. It's important that you use equal amounts and that they are mixed evenly. If you do not, your resin will not cure properly and may be sticky instead of hardened. I also added a hint of blue food coloring (less than a drop) to most batches. Even though the resin was clear, it tended to have a yellowish hue to it by itself.

I did not pour all my resin at once, but instead worked in layers. I would pour an ounce of resin into my mold, cover it (to keep bugs and dust out), and let it cure for about 4 hours. Then, I would apply thin layer of that glitter glue stuff, and add another layer of resin. I think this helped to create a sense of depth in the final product.


Here is the mold with one half:

And the first half removed:

Once I had two halves of my blade, I trimmed the excess resin at the sides using an X-acto knife. I then put a layer of resin on each side, and pressed them together, and tied them at each end with a rubber band. Try to have a way to set your blade vertically, so that the excess resin comes out the base, and doesn't create artifacts along the side of the blade. I did not set mine vertically, and did get artifacts which I had to fit later, especially along where the rubber bands were.

You may noticed the resin surface is cloudy where it was against the mold. I researched several suggestions on fixing this, including extremely high grit sand paper and car waxing techniques. What I ended up doing was putting another coat of resin on the surface of the blade. This is why I lost the cracks created by the saran wrap. I would suggest doing this after attaching it to the stick. I will explain why then.

If you do get any artifacts during the process, you can use an X-acto knife to cut them off, then resurface them with fresh resin.

Spear Head - Attaching

Once you have your two halves stuck together, you will want to get a threaded rod (like a bolt but with no head) from a hardware store. The length should be long enough to go into each 1.5 inches. The shorter it is, the more pressure there will, and more likely it will be to break. The diameter should be plenty smaller than either your stick or the blade so that it doesn't end up cracking either. 

Drill a hole into the stick and screw the rod in. It should form threads into the wood as you screw it in.

If you made the hole in the stick too large, add epoxy, and let it cure.

Drill a hole into the resin. Be careful drilling, as the friction of the drill will heat up the resin. Put epoxy inside the hole and put the rod in. Set the spear sideways with something under it (newspaper, plastic bag) to catch dripping epoxy. Rotate it occasionally to help even out the epoxy.

Once the epoxy was fully cured, the blade seemed to be pretty firmly attached.

However, I wanted to give it more support, and if you don't want something to move, you use duct tape. I wrapped duct tape around the circumference of where the blade met the stick, but then also did short vertical strips, as well as some diagonal strips. One thing I learned with sparring weapons, is that if you only go horizontal with the duct tape, it can snap in half. 

After I was satisfied with the duct tape, I wrapped the area with a wide pleather belt I had found in the hardware store. I used fabric glue to hold the belt into place. This both provided more support, and hid the duct tape. Finally, I used a twine covered wire over the pleather. Again, this added support as well as looked good.

Spear - Color

Once everything on the spear was attached, I sprayed a light dusting of white spray paint over the handle, and just a bit at the base of the spear head itself.

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Crafting a White Walker: Hair, Eyes, Clothes

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Items needed (hair):

• Wig
• Grey and/or preferably white hair color spray

Items needed (clothes):

• Leather/pleather jerkin/jacket
• Leather belts
• Brown (or make kleenex leggings like arms)
• Brown bags
• Anything else that will work from thrift stores
• White spray paint

Hair

Buying a Wig

I went to a place that sold wigs. They also had a bargain bin. You can find a decent wig for $20. I've bought another wig for $13, and it was really hard to work with.

My wig was curly and red. I would avoid very dark wigs because it may make it difficult to bring it to the light color you want.

This is the wig I started with:

Shaping the Wig

As I mentioned, my wig was curly.

I put it on a wig stand in the bath tub. If you can, make sure the surface of the wig stand is smooth. My stand held the wig with a thin piece, which indented itself into the shape of the wig.

I heated 3 large pots of water on the stove. When the water is very hot, but not yet boiling, pour it onto the wig. The heat will loosen the curl, and the wig will straighten.

Do not use any sort of iron directly on the wig. Most wigs are made of a synthetic material which will melt under too much heat.


Here is the wig after I experimented with some grey hair spray, then straightened it with the hot water method. It still has some kinks, but those could be fixed by repeating the hot water technique:

Coloring the Wig

Look for silver and white hair color spray. This can be difficult to find. Many places do not carry white. Be careful not to accidentally buy the silver "glitter." This is just glitter, and not color. Silver was easier for me to find than white. I used 3-4 cans.

When spraying the wig, if using any silver, use it first so you can save the white for the top coat.

When spraying the ends, keep something against the back of the hair. The force from the spray of the can will blow them back and keep them from receiving the color. If you have something against the back of the ends, the color will build on them better.

Eyes

I went through my eye doctor for contacts and got Freshlook Brilliant Blue. They are definitely bluer than what is natural, but still a bit subtle for a white walker I think. I was trying to find toric lenses (for astigmatism), and this was the only brand I could find that carried colored toric lenses. However, it turned out that they did not have them for Brilliant Blue.

I learned that toric didn't make that big a difference for my astigmatism. For the time I was wearing these, I noticed no difference, actually.

What I will say about the contacts, is that if you are not used to wearing them, you need to practice.

Wear them for a couple hours, and each day increase this duration so that your eyes are used to them.

Also know that different brands of contacts will feel different. I got a sample pair from my doctor that I was able to preview.

I heard lots of people talk about how they got contacts for their costume but didn't like wearing them. It took me a few weeks of daily wear to get used to wearing soft contacts, and this is after being used to RGP contacts.

Clothes

For the clothes, I found all my clothes at Goodwill. Look for leather or pleather jackets that have fur on them. Even if you don't want to use the whole jacket, you could use the fur piece from one as a piece on another. You may need several trips to several different places to find something that will work for you. Shop early. Shop smart. Shop S-mart.

Keep an eye out for brown leather belts and bags too. You'll want to have some utility in your costume. This means pockets or satchels or bags that fit into your costume but allow you to store things you'll want to carry.

Brown leather belts make a good accessory. Add them where they fit. If they attach something to you (a satchel or weapon), or look like they are holding your clothing, even better. Form follows function. Thank you, Louis Sullivan.

Lightly spray the clothes with white spray paint so it looks like they've been dusted with snow.

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Crafting a White Walker: The Arms

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes

Items needed :

• Pantyhose
• Straight pins
• Needle and thread
• Liquid latex
• Vaseline
• Kleenex
• White spray paint
• Cheap super long nails
• Nail clippers
• Nail polish (or something that can prime the nails)
• Black and white acrylic paint

Arms

From hose to gloves

I got this idea from someone who made a weeping angel costume:

I should have looked her tutorial up before doing it myself. One of the mistakes I made was that instead of cutting a hole for the neck, I cut the leg pieces completely off the stomach portion of the hose. This ended up allowing my shoulders to be exposed at times, even though the sleeves were attached above the shoulder.

Basically, turn the hose (or tights) inside out, pin them along the sides of your fingers, sew around your fingers, then cut between the stitches to make gloves. She used nail polish to cover the stitches to prevent runs. I used that at first, but ended up using latex, since I would be covering them with latex anyways. Use the nail polish/latex before you cut. It makes it a bit easier to deal with runs. Also, make sure to leave your fingers or some other similar spacer in the glove any time latex is drying. Otherwise, it will dry smaller.

Lube up

Now that you have your gloves, you can turn them right side out and put them on. But if you are going to start putting the latex on them, first cover your arm with a generous amount of vaseline, especially anywhere there is hair. It can be painful to detach the latex, but the vaseline will help immensely. You may want to consider shaving your arms. You seriously do not want the latex sticking to hair.

Adding the Texture

The arms were the most time consuming piece. The whole process is similar to paper mache, but instead of newspaper and glue, I use tissue and latex. They required a lot of "rework" to fix rips from putting them on and taking them off. I'll explain this more in a bit.

Take Kleenex and separate the sheets so they are 1-ply instead of two. Rip up the sheets so you have smaller pieces that do not have straight edges. The larger the piece is the more likely it will tear, but the more area it will cover.

A rip of 1-ply tissue:

Put latex on one side of the Kleenex and stick it to the glove while wearing it. If you have a cast of your arm to work off of, that will be easier. I didn't so I used my arm. If you do use a cast, make sure it's a material that latex will not stick to.

I recommend not doing the entire arm at once. Do a section. Let it dry. Whenever you finish a session of latexing, once the latex has completely dried, use baby powder (or talcum) to set the latex so it does not stick to itself. Move your arm into extreme positions. Bend the elbow a lot. Remove the glove. Put it back on. See if anything ripped.

Your arm varies in diameter, so you will need to test the glove and make sure your glove is stretchy where it needs to be stretchy. Break things early and often. When you replace the break spots in the tissue with latex, you increase the durability. It's very important to do this so you don't have unexpected tears on con day. I was not worried about my arms falling apart when it came time to wear them.

Wherever you put the tissue, the glove will no longer be stretchy there. I tried to keep an area on the underside that had no tissue so that it had space to expand when I put the gloves on.

Repair tissue as needed.

Any time you will be adding latex to an area that hasn't been covered yet, you will want to put vaseline on your skin first.

When I remake this I would like to have less overlap on the tissue. I think this will make the sleeves more flexible and easier to get on and off.

Color

I mixed water, acrylic paint, and latex together in an aluminum lined bowl. I did this twice. The first time I mixed some grey paint, and the second time I just used white.

The latex will create a yellowish texture by itself, so you'll want the paint.. Use a really cheap foam brush that you don't care about, or wad up a paper towel (this is what I did) and use that to dab the mixture onto your arm.

Anywhere the edge of the tissue is obvious use extra thick latex (no or very little added water). 

I still wasn't happy with the whiteness, so I spray painted the arms with white spray paint.

To add more dark spots, especially between the tendons in the hands, I used the Bill Nye black paint. In the future I'd like to remake these with dark hose or tights instead of sheer underneath. 

Overall, you will use a lot of latex.

Nails

For the nails, I bought some of those cheap super long nails.

The acrylic paint wouldn't stick, but nail polish would. I coated them with nail polish then used the black and white acrylic to color them.

To stick them to the gloves, have the gloves on, and make sure the area above your nail is completely covered in latex. You will be putting glue there, and you don't want any to stick to you. Having the gloves on helps you get the nail in the correct spot and helps you apply pressure from the opposite side.I used super glue to stick the nails on.  This was a wee bit scary. You can probably also use acrylic glue if you wish.

I then put latex at the base of the nail so it looked like skin was covering them. When this latex dries, use the black and white acrylic paint to cover it.

Once the nails are on, you can cut them with nail clippers. I cut them shorter and also cut vertical breaks in them to make them look a bit ragged. After I cut them I put more black paint on the very tips, then used a paper towel to blend the black paint into the rest of the nail.

Here's a closer picture of the nails before I painted over the last bit of latex surrounding the nails.

Intro - Face - Arms - Spear

Hair, Eyes, Clothes - Wearing and Final Notes