Splash Screen Working

Splash screen is now working.

App Development

The past week or so I've been following tutorials by The New Boston, learning about app development, and over the next few days I'm going to attempt to create my own Android app that will enable the user to take a photograph.

I've already created a splash screen that can be seen below, that will appear for a number of seconds before the app begins.

Smartphone Research

In my last post I talked about how the picture quality of the face will determine the effectiveness of my mechanic. The tests I carried out in the last post proved that poor quality photographs will not be suitable as a source, but the source I used came from a Blackberry Curve 8500, the bog standard Blackberry, which has a very dissapointing camera compared with the smartphones that are on the market right now.


Camera Research:

I've been looking at a lot of sample pictures from smartphone cameras, including the top Apple, HTC, Samsung and Blackberry smartphones. Apple and HTC smartphones are the ones I'd primarily target as application development is huge within these two brands, HTC especially, as it is free and easy to put your apps up on the HTC store.

I used a photograph from Blackberry Curve 8500 camera in attempt to create a good face texture, but failed, as camera, and picture quality is very poor.

I carried out another test with a good quality picture and the results were great.

So evidently, photographs of equal quality are recommended for a great texture that can be used in game. I've taken the time to study sample pictures of Apple and HTC smartphones, as well as others, and it's safe to say that most of them will do the job, easily.

A website named 'engadget' carried out an experiment with a number of smartphones to determine which has the best quality camera. They spent the weekend shooting around New York City with the iPhone 4S, along with some other top smartphones like the iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S II, Nokia N8 and HTC's Amaze 4G.

There are a large number of photographs portrayed in a slideshow on the website, including comparison pictures. Click here to see the slideshow.

From just a quick glance at each of the images, it is clear that the quality from all 5 smartphones are far more than adequate to use when creating a texture for a face, which is exactly what I aim to create. As I mentioned earlier, the picture quality needed to be pretty much as good as the 'average face' photograph, and it surely is.

Even though these smartphones are fairly new and and far from cheap, my game concept wouldn't be perfectly ready and on the market for some time, leaving time for these smartphones to come down in price, therefore being more accessable to the general public, creating a broader audience for my game mechanic.

Here are some other sample pictures I gathered from around the internet...

iPhone 4S:

HTC Sensation:

HTC Desire:

Blackberry Bold 9900:

After carrying out this research, I believe that the most appropriate smartphones to build the app for have to be the iPhone and HTC.

First ZBrush Spotlight Test

Using the average head I made in FaceGen, and a photograph of classmate Christer, I used ZBrush's spotlight feature to project the photograph onto the object. The photograph was scaled, rotated and nudged (aka. Photoshop liquify feature) to fit perfectly on to the head model.

I used my Blackberry Curve to take the photograph, which is known to have a very poor quality 2.0 MP camera, but this was the only smartphone I had access to at the time.

Blackberry Curve 8500 camera specifications:

• 2.0 MP camera
• Fixed Focus
• No Flash
• 5X digital zoom
• Video Camera Recording:
  Normal Mode (320x240 pixel),MMS Mode (176x144 pixel)

As you can see, the quality is poor, but this is all down to the poor camera quality of the Curve 8500. The source photograph lacks colour, contrast and there is a lot of noise, as well as the obvious lack of crisp detail.

I carried out another test using the 'average male face' photograph I used to produce the head model, a fairly good photograph, and the results were much, much better.

It is clear that the quality is far better, rendering a usable texture for a head in game. Though the source photograph was surely not taken using a smartphone, there are a number of smartphones on the market right now that can take as good, or even better of quality photographs, and I'll be researching smartphone cameras to determine a target market for application development.

Average Faces

I found some research on the average face shapes for both male and female, which was useful for generating a head to paste photographs onto.

Constructed out of 32 different male faces.

Constructed out of 64 different female faces.

I've made a FaceGen out of the male face, and imported it into ZBrush, ready to paste some textures of familiar faces onto it using the spotlight feature.

What the character should look like pieced together in UDK.

Character Update

After not knowing about using normal maps for detail, dividing the character's geometry way too much, exporting over the original and saving in Maya ending up with roughly a kajillion polys, I had to go back a few steps. This is the model in ZBrush right now.

Going to add a little more detail, then get painting.

Maya Update 3

3 more completed

Piano Update

Added some more details to the piano before heading to sleep. Only the pedals to finish now.

Piano

Halfway through modelling a grand piano that will be found in the main entrance of the villa.

Maya Update 2

Five more modelled...