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Just a quickie update, the HM3 Alpha "Save as JPG" feature now saves the figure and not just its left leg. Oops.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
I've updated the HeroMachine 3 Alpha with the following changes:
More on all of this after the jump.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3, News & Updates
With that rather cryptic and Star-Trekkie-like headline, I am happy to announced that the early test version of the upcoming HeroMachine 3 is now available! Please note all of the caveats and disclaimers and warnings of incompleteness at the top of the page -- this is a very, very early look at the program, there are lots or more items and features yet to be implemented. Only about half the slots even have any items in them.
So yes, there will be eyes and noses and mouths and pants and gloves and boots and all that other stuff, in time.
Regardless, that page will always have the most up-to-date version of the test program I have.
What I'm looking for at this point is very broad feedback, things like how you feel the multiple item functionality works; whether or not the little toolbars in the preview of each item makes sense and has the buttons you want on it; does the organization of the items in the various slots work; etc. I'm fully aware that there are (not to get too technical) "a crapload" of features that while mostly working are still quite buggy, like the item selection getting hosed up if you mouse out of the menu area and scaling "all items" only works horizontally, that kind of thing.
Anyway, please make any suggestions, observations, complaints, requests (either items or features), or quips you like in the comments to this post. Whenever I launch an update I'll make a new entry for it and we can go from there.
Thanks already for all the great feedback I've received so far; with your help this program will absolutely kick ass!
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Posted in HeroMachine 3, News & Updates, Previews
I wanted to show you some of the "Tops" items I've been working on for HeroMachine 3:
This is the second page of items; the first is all stuff from the Modern Warrior Mini, which you've already seen. Note that I've broken these items down into four types -- vest only, left arm only, right arm only, and complete item. I did this so that you could mix and match "sleeves" with various torso pieces. For instance, maybe you like the first chest piece, but you want to couple it with the big bulky arm pieces in the middle row. With these items broken apart, it's no problem.
I also wanted to include the completely assembled pieces for those who don't want to be bothered with selecting and coloring three different things, but who want just one to do it all. That works fine if you don't want to move the figure's arms, and more advanced users can easily hand-assemble the units they want.
I've been struggling mentally with how to organize all this stuff. Originally I was planning on having "Body" broken up into like seven different slots, including upper & lower arms, upper & lower legs, etc. But the more I got into it, the more it seemed like that would impose a high burden on the user to have to go through and pick all those pieces. I want HM3 to be just as easy to use as 2.x was for kids or lazy people (like me). Then I started thinking that having a bunch of "sleeves" in "Right Upper Arm" was overkill and confusing. If you're trying to dress a character, you're going to be looking where the rest of the shirt is, you know?
It's starting to look like "multiple items" is going to pretty much be a very necessary thing. Having the mini toolbars right there on each item preview makes this less of a pain than you might think, as you can cycle through items pretty easily, quickly getting rid of the ones that don't work.
I hope to have the alpha (it's not really even a beta yet) posted very soon so you can play around and see if this approach works in actual usage or not.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3, Previews
Or are they walking legs? Either way, here's a quick screen grab of the legs I just added to the "BodyMaleStandard" set:
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
I spent the weekend ironing out a persistent and irritating bug that was preventing me from making item set selection easier. To reward myself for my virtuous persistence, today I am drawing. Specifically, I am following up on Kaldath's suggestion that I draw as many arm positions as possible in the "Body" sets to increase the flexibility of the character's position. To wit:
The body in the image is made up of seven different items -- torso, left & right upper arms, left & right forearms, and left & right legs. They've been layered, sized, and moved to create the given effect, along with one of the new RightHand items.
As you can see there are a few gaps in the lineart -- the figure's left elbow doesn't quite match up, and the left wrist is a bit choppy, but I don't think that's avoidable given how freely all these items can rotate and the need to account for one being layered on top of another. Luckily the "outline" feature hides a myriad of these sorts of sins.
Next I think I'll be working on more and alternate leg positions as well.
The drawback to all of this, of course, is that not all of the gloves are going to fit on that foreshortened forearm. And if I draw legs in the classic "flying guy" sort of pose (as I plan to), not all the pants or boots will fit either. But given that you can color the various body segments individually, it ought to be possible to make a pretty convincing body suit in any of these configurations regardless.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
I am happy to announce that I've gotten the "widescreen" or "character preview" mode working in HeroMachine 3! Here's a screen capture of a character in progress in the regular viewing mode:
And here is the same character with "widescreen" mode activated:
Thanks to everyone who kept reminding me about this feature, it's actually pretty neat now that I see it in action.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
I wanted to quickly highlight the "portrait view" feature of HM3. I thought it might be handy to be able to get a closer-up view of the head and shoulders of the character, like you'd see on most RPG sheets. So here's a quickie I threw together just to illustrate what that looks like:
At another suggestion from Kaldath, I have separate arm items turned so you can see the inside of the arm instead of the outside. This is to resolve the problem where some of the new hand positions just wouldn't be anatomically possible with the arm in the default pose.
Anyway, there you have it. I'll also still work on a "fullscreen" type of mode where all the controls get removed and you just have the character filling the whole area, so you can see those bits that might be chopped off by the edge of the screen.
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
I only have about a third of the slots filled with any sort of items at all, and the functionality is a bit hit-or-miss with lots of bugs and undesired behaviors, but ... already this thing is pretty cool. I love the part in developing one of these applications where I've got enough features implemented and enough items ready that I can actually build something. So here he is, the very first character image generated by the early HeroMachine 3 software:
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Posted in HeroMachine 3
Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
Nerdmudgeon.com
