K9 (Dr Who) Cosplay MAsk PRoject

Posted on November 15, 2015 by alfredo

A few months ago a friend of mine mentioned that she wanted some headgear for a cosplay costume. I’m not a doctor who fan, so I had no idea what was involved when she said K9, but thought that maybe we could 3d print it. Got home pretty excited about having a new project and went to google to see what it was.

So it was the headpiece for this:

Interesting!! I decided that it did not had that many curves so it was probably something that I could do in openscad. Called my wife had her measure the dimensions of my head. So I could use them has a base and started hitting it. After about an hour or two I was here.

I send that image to my friend and we talked about a few revisions that it could have. For example airflow is pretty constricted in here. So we decided to add some vents and that I was going to go ahead and get the ears modeled. The vents became a bit tricky because substracting a lot of geometry became heavy for openscad. So I had to make them bigger till it was within the boundaries of what I could render. The final design was the following:

So here we were it was modeled and it looked the way we wanted it to be. With that said there was no way that we could fit this into the print bed. So I measured my print volume and placed into openscad to make distinct stl’s. Ended up with Basically 10 stls 8 for the parts surrounding the head and 2 for the nose. Some of the sides where interesting to print because they consumed the entire bed of the printer. I printed at lowest resolution due to the size of the printe with that said still ended with at least one 28 hour print.

Nose top printing

Parts stacked

Testing the volume limits of my printer – printing the sides

So yeah it was an experience to print it. I basically finished an entire roll of hatchbox most of it was at 60% infill since it was going to be worn I wanted for it to be solid. So after about 130 hours of printing and one z end stopper that broke halfway thru it I was done printing.

So got some loctite extra strength and started the gluing process. Once we got to this point we started checking to see if the face actually fits inside of the mask. We realized something, the measure we got was not accounting for ears. So we decided that we would not make it completely closed and use a strap in the back and bend the sides to fit(A bit of a spoiler that plan worked).

So here it is all glued together.

I delivered it in this state and let them do the finishing touches since I had ran out of time and they needed it for the Providence comic con. Here is the final piece(Aparently the ears fell during the con).

So things ended up pretty well with that said learned a few lessons:

1. Make sure to measure ears or use a model of a head when modeling head gear.

2. Try to slice parts to maximize volume. I think some better alignment on the bed would had help with printing the nose on one piece.

Hope this was worth reading.

Oh yeah before I forget you can find the files in thingiverse at:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1133842

How things are going current projects and sorry for the lack of update

Posted on March 7, 2012 by alfredo

Hi Everyone,

How come I have dissapeared for a few well the new contractor life and settling into the new pace has taken a bit more of me than I expected. On the good news Im a lot happier than I was in the sept – january time frame and gainfully employed.

I’ve been doing a lot of WPF for two reasons one i’m studying for a cert and second its what i’m currently doing at work.

I’m hoping to be a lot more active this month and bring some update to my old projects

There is no place for gnomes needs a new scoreboard and want to do an add based version
Reddit Screensaver needs and update and i want to transform it into a MMVM app
HDR raw want to try out some new formats in particular for the new sony lines is anyone still using this paint.net plugin??

I have been working on a Platform game aussie puncharoo probably for almost a year this weekend im going to commit to getting some progress and uploading a demo. Hoping to finish this project in the month of march to move to some ideas that i have to start my own business.

In terms of the blog im going to install win 8 today and then start describing the construction of an app that i will be work on a bit each day is going to be called contract manager and the purpose its to help you be a contractor on yourslef and keep track of everything that is going on in the life without a mother company

Happy Coding

Blender day 3 camera animation and some scenery

Posted on July 13, 2011 by alfredo

Added a table to my hookah scene and a Floor i ‘m still not convinced I like the floor. Tried placing some walls had some weird effects.

Learned that I can move the camera for the video so I had a blast doing that and making a little animation out of it. It looks like crap but makes me feel like progress is happening.

Tricks I learned for the day

The top menu lets you select the layout
Using the cross in the corner you can divide the interface
Ctrl alt lets you split for an extra window

I watched this video today was pretty good.

http://www.blendtuts.com/2010/06/blender-25-interface.html

Tomorrow by looking at the tutorial site looks like I will be doing baloons.

Alfredo out.

Taking a dive attempt to learn blender

Posted on July 11, 2011 by alfredo

I got bored at lunch today and decided to go revisit learning blender. Last time I tried it was in blender 2.0 and honestly Got so stuck that never managed to get anything done. Seems like the new version got an ui revamp and all I gotta say is that I dig it.

I started by following the following tutorialhttp://www.blendercookie.com/getting-started-with-blender/ After about an hour of work i had the following done.

Nothing fancy but a lot more than i had ever gotten so it got me pumped i kept doing the tutorial and ended up with the following image.

I tried to do a little animation and here it is for your enjoyment. http://alfredoalvarez.com/0001-0250.mpg Open it up its kinda funky.

Now to some useful information here are the list of commands that i learned from watching the series still need to learn how to extrude correctly

A – Select unselect all
S – scale
R – rotate
g- for grab translate
Tab to switch between object and edit view.
Shift D Duplicate
Numbers for view control
Scrollers zooms in an out shift scroll up and down viewport

Ludum Dare 20

Posted on April 29, 2011 by alfredo

I will be commenting here about every two hours of the progress of the game that im going to create for the competition.

6:52pm

Hi Everyone. Im ready to hear the title anouncement grabbed dinner and ready to go. After the title i will think a bit what the game is going to look like and get started on the mechanics of it :D.

8:25 pm

Got the character animation running right now is just a stick figure that changes color and working on using the accelerometer for movement. At the moment having issues since i have never used the accelerometer before and he seems like he is not that much into cooperating. Will post back around 11 hopefully i can do some screenshots The game is about an australian guy fighting his way to the outback to go get to a bar.

10:23PM

Finally got the accelerometer controls down and it works in conjunction with the animation. Used the pattern to manage scene that I used in there is no place for gnomes.

Plan on adding the buttons to be able to kick, jump and change weapons now. a Screenshot of what is looking like so far is not much but it’s a good start.

12:01 AM

Moved to work on creating buttons got 3 of them and found optimal placement for the gameplay also went ahead and added gravity in to the game since at the moment I haven’t added a floor the character falls pretty easily through the floor. I have decided that the tile space for the level is going to be as follow. 30×30 tiles with 14 tiles of height and then 40 tiles of width.

Another screenshot below has you can see not too mucho to look at the moment. I’m trying to get the mechanics solid and figure out the spots that need animations and later on I will reskin. The character is not on the screenshot since he fell through the screen.

2:22 AM

I took a break to take a shower eat something and look at other people talking in the Ludum Dare MIRC. Is cool to see the different levels of motivations in the time that I worked I managed to complete the tile map. Planning on dedicating the next hour to making the player be aware of the tile map and add tile map scrolling so that we can see the parts that currently don’t show.

Here is the screenshot of the tile map in action.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to actually get to implement weapons and different monsters Right now I feel like i;’m behind.

3:43 AM

I think this is it for me for today I got some more progress now the collision system works therefore I can stand on the tiles got a bit distracted and decided to work on a background and changed a few colors tomorrow morning I will pick up making the tile map actually scroll to the sides and adding the jumping, Changing weapons and punching functionality.

Below is a description of what im trying to do with the game and to be with the theme the outback is dangerous to go alone so at the beginnning I’m going to have a conversation reminding him to take his hat he also gets a knife and a boomerang on the way.

Aussie Puncharoo

3rd person sidescroller

Each level basically consists of a map formatted to the phone screen’s dimensions with limited left to right sidescrolling abilities. the maps will be set on a level plane for the player to scroll from left to right. the player is centered on the screen at all times as enemies in the form of koalas, kangaroos, etc. attack from both sides. the player switches from left to right to attack depending on where an enemy is attacking from. ideally, the player’s basic movements will be walk, jump and punch (knife and throw boomerang in later stages).

I will see you guys tomorrow.

April 30

9:30 pm

I have resolved to keep working on the game after taking a power nap when I came back from my daily routine. I figured that i f I don’t sleep I still got a good 21 hours to finish the game and submit.

I will report in about 2 hours with progress and some screenshots. Going to get this character functioning completely. Wish me luck on day two and on serious sleep depravation.

11:14 pm

Currently the character no longer runs out of the screen and the screen tiles move in relationship to the character. It seems like my brain at this point is kind of shot and my productivity has dropped significantly. Therefore I’m going to take a bit of a break from coding and do some art. Going to draw a better main character since red head ball is annoying me and also design the health bar and the entrance window hopefully by the next update I will be able to jump and have a start screen.

C ya in about 2 hours.

1:08 Am I worked on the art for the last couple of hours and got to the conclusion that I need to take a break and drink some water which I will be doing after writing. I remade the main character , Game loading screen. Text for When the game starts and the life bar. I Need to integrate all this parts into the game still since only the character go integrated.

Below the other two pieces of art

I’m going to take a break and then return will post again at 4:00 am with hopefully the actions done.

For those that are going to sleep have a good night.

3:54 AM

Took my break and came back and started coding working on making the jumping work. Sadly it has proven a lot trickier than I expected and revealed a bug in my tile map code so my character is falling through a few blocks that I can’t really tell the reason why. I’m going to be working on resolving this issues for the next few hours Confused smile . Will check in about 7:00 AM.

4:43 AM

Woot managed to get the jumping and collisions bugs resolved. Therefore you get an extra update.

To summarize a bit condition super tired. Part of the game remaining quite a lot so this is the plan:

-Do HealthBar
-Score System
-Add Enemy and ensure he gives damage
-Give main character the ability to be able to switch side is looking
-Add PunchingAbility
-Add Random Health Items
-Polish and give the game flow so that I can post it for the competition

Therefore I think I’m going to be removing from my scope the following items. Changeable weapons and variable monsters.

At least now that I don’t feel stuck. The motivation is coming back and moving some of the sleepyness away.

Will post progress at 7:00 again.

12:38 AM

It seems like the lack of sleep decided that I was it’s the master here and I crashed at around 7:00 so my last update was missed. I woke up at around 9:45 But had to do some stuff pertaining living like eating at take 1000 pund of tiles back to home depot so here we are. At the moment I’ve added the enemy kangaroo with animation the Helath bar and score point system Just need to make the kangaroos spawn by themselves. At this point there are six hours left and 4 things to do in my list so if I can kick one per hour and submit I should be ok(I don’t think I’m making it but not stopping). Latest screen shot is below:

I will report back at around 4. Official time left in 6 hours, 16 minutes, 9 seconds…

4:06 Lets see what has gone in the last few hours from the list I had from last night I’ve tackled the following:

-Do HealthBar
-Score System
-Add Enemy and ensure he gives damage
-Give main character the ability to be able to switch side is looking
-Add PunchingAbility

Additionally added game over event and enemy destroyed event in which a dead kangaroo gets Removed. sadly I have not added any way for more kangaroos to be added. So I made a decision In order to get the game today.

The game is going to be just a fight between you and one kangaroo for now. Going to remove some tiles so that you is simpler to fight. Whoever gets the life to Zero wins.

Will post again at six. I still need to figure out exactly how to post an xna game into the Ludum dare form.

5:02

Decided to do an extra post I made the game be able to handle the flow of starting window , context , game and ending. Honestly it functions but is not a very fun game at the moment. Feel really bad that I did not get to do add weapons variety of animals or even spawning and control of the monsters but you do what you have to. Going to clean up an remove the scoreboard and Change weapons button. Then add music that I got from wolfram tones turned into mp3 by http://www.hamienet.com

That’s the progress talk to you guys at 6:00

time left 1 hour, 52 minutes, 47 seconds

6:00

I’ve spent the last 15 minutes trying to get the music to work. The game works the mechanics are still a bit quirky but you can kill a kangaroo.

It was a pretty awesome experience this whole ludum dare I’m going to submit and let people critique it.

Thanks for reading.

The applications background music overlaps the users selected music

Posted on April 2, 2011 by alfredo

To solve this issue this was the approach that I took. I added code in the constructor for the game to call the guide and ask a what music he wants. There is a boolean to control which sound is played.

if (askForMusic && !MediaPlayer.GameHasControl)
           {
               if (!Guide.IsVisible)
               {
                   Guide.BeginShowMessageBox(“Select Music Of Choice”, “Do you want to play the game music”,

new List<string> { “Yes”, “No” }, 0, MessageBoxIcon.Alert,

asyncResult =>
{

                       int? returned = Guide.EndShowMessageBox(asyncResult);
                       if (returned == 0)
                       {
                           MediaPlayer.Stop();
                           playMusic = true;
                       }
                   }, null);
               }
               askForMusic = false;
           }

Expression Design: Step By Step Designing my Dragon icon

Posted on October 2, 2009 by alfredo

This article is not exactly about programming or photography. Is about a tool that i enjoy a lo when designing icons or creating UI interfaces for XAML and silverlight. Or simply a vector image. I’m going step by step through the process i followed while creating this draconic symbol when i was imagining a logo for myself. First step open expression design this is what the program looks like:

We are going to continue by drawing a black square on the board by selecting the square tool and dragging the mouse it should look like this:

Now we draw the shape that we want to cut from the square to begin giving it shape in order to cut the shape from the box in order to start making the design you want to end up with. In my case I’m trying to remove a part of the square to create a snout for the dragon icon. I made the shape then go to Object > Path operations > Back minus front. It ended up looking like this:

I repeat the step to create the small bump on the dragon head it starts to look as follows:

In the next steps i want to design the left side of the design my idea is to make it look like butterflies wings to make an E like the one in the middle name and be connected to the back of the dragon. The first step of this was to do a circle in a color that contrast with the color I’m using for my design. I elongated the circle to look like the top part of the wing using the direct selection tool the white arrow in the tool box and select an anchor to elongate it and make it look like below:

In order to create the bottom of the wing i selected the shape and made a copy of it afterwards i reflected it horizontal and align them then removed the circular parts of the shape using a square and the Object > Path operations > Back minus front. This is what i ended up with

For the next step we wanted to hollow the wings in order for it to look the way that i envision it. I copied the wings and change their size to fit the one i wanted. At this point it looked like this:

To Remove the red filling we use the same technique as before Object > Path operations > Back minus front. Making the wing look as follow:

With the wings ready we need a back of the dragon in order to attach them. I created shape using the pen tool that would cut the way i wanted it looked like this:

I repeated the step before until i got the back that i wanted and it ended up looking like this:

Now it is ready to attach the wings to the back in order to do this i grabbed the wings objects and place it in the position that i want it. Afterwards pressed Object > Path Operations > Unite. To make it all into one image it ended up as follows:

After this i decided to work on the eye i created a circle again of a color contrasting with the background then using the direct selection tool made it have the shape of an eye by placing the circle inwards toward itself.

Next i wanted to give the dragon piece the shape of A therefore i needed to cut the innards on that shape. After creating the original shape it went like this :

I used the direct selection tool to make it exactly the way that it would cut. This was the way that it look:

After this we needed to shape the bottom and it was done in a similar fashion, Created a new shape and distorted till it would eliminate the bottom in the shape. It looked like this at this point:

The next steps was to create the claw of the dragon shape procedure like the one used in the steps before was followed and it looked like this :

Afterward we created the last leg by cutting and uniting again and ended with the final product that was the following :

Hope that this helps anyone interested in starting to use Expression Design.

Creating a game on windows mobile

Posted on April 13, 2009 by alfredo

Hello this is my first blog post in this blog of mine and i decided to write a bit about what i’m doing today.
Microsoft recently anounced that it was going to make it’s application market for windows mobile 7 and a lot of development it’s being put into that therefore i decided i wanted to see what i could do if i wanted to make a game i decided i want to make a tactics RPG and therefore that i needed a 3D engine in order to make my game look nice. I went to MSDN and started reading about it. Found that i needed the tools for visual studio in order to get me started got those from www.developers.windowsmobile.com, then read a bit on the graphics API this where my findings. There are 3 APIS that can be used
GAICA – it was deprecated after windows mobile 5.0 therefore no longer care about it.
DirectDraw – useful for 2D games.
Direct 3D mobile – this is the one that sparked my interest and i went and found the samples on MSDN after installing the sample i converted it to a visual studio 2008 project and compiled and it ran well right now i can clear the screen. I have started defining the classes for the project and will be working more on the rest of it tonight and during the week i will keep this posted.

After doing some more searches tonight i found this pages that contain samples that help get up to speed with the framework.

http://www.brains-n-brawn.com/default.aspx?vDir=cfmdx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181014(VS.85).aspx

Alfredo Alvarez

Programming topics, creative projects discussion and photography.

Tag Archives: personal projects