I don't know when this happened (or it may have just always been there but I never noticed) but Weebly now has an Alt Text feature that allows you to easily write image descriptions on any images on your website! This is very cool, for a couple of reasons.
The first, less important reason, is that if your alt text contains keywords, your image may be found by these keywords, but the normal description doesn't have to include them. It could help images or entire websites get a little bit more exposure. However, what's even better is the second reason: accessibility. Alt text will be read by screen readers, so people who are blind or have any sight problems who use screen readers (programs that will read online text to them) can also understand what is going on in the image. This is something that a lot of people never even think about when creating content, so I am very glad that weebly has brought this technology to an easy to edit place on images (the same place you would click in order to write a regular caption). I learned a lot about this as I've been doing fan art for a podcast, because as a completely auditory medium, there's more hard of seeing people in the audience since it is a media form that is more accessible to them, and so many people in the community have been encouraging more image descriptions. There are people who aren't completely blind who can definitely enjoy visual art, but may just need a little bit of extra description in order to figure out what they're looking at. For instance, telling someone who sees a blob in the middle of the screen, "hey, that's a face!" might clarify it enough for them to be able to see the face you drew, much like how when we look at clouds, if someone suggests what the cloud looks like, it becomes much easier to see. If you include an important image or diagram that is crucial to understanding a blog post, an image description means that there is a better chance that people who have trouble seeing can still follow. It's also helpful if you took a screenshot of some text to transcribe it to alt text, because a screen reader wouldn't be able to read that. Personally, I think, from both a business and humanitarian standpoint, the more people who can enjoy your content, the better, so even if this feature would only help a few people, it's still very worth it to use. Of course, it is a bit more work, but image descriptions should be less than 125 words (this is so that people with screen readers don't have to sit there for a long time as each image is being described) so it shouldn't actually take that long, and it's a really great thing to do.
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This week was more UVW editing! I didn't get too much done, but I started modeling some "Beats by Broke" headphones as a little inside joke for the game. I started off by doing traditional UVW mapping since it's not terrible, but I ended up having a lot of problems lining up the letters. I downloaded the Lazy UVW mapper that Mr. B suggested, but when I gave it a first try, I just gave me the same issue that photoshop does when you don't unwrap at all. I don't know if this error was because of the complexity of the object or what, but I'm going to figure it out on Monday, and if I can't I'll go back to the old method of UVW mapping. Goals for Next Week:
This week was pretty relaxed, I spent all of it relearning how to UVW Unwrap, and making textbook textures. So far I've only finished a chemistry and biology textbook, but now that I have the base figured out, I could easily make other books if we want more. However, I think instead I'm going to try to work on making some bookshelves or other furniture for the new building. I need to discuss with my team what objects we really need right now, because we're getting close to the end. Goals For Next Week:
Although this week was cut short by illness and playtesting (which I will make a seperate post about) I did manage to get the pig textured! Well... sort of... There are some surface issues, BUT! It isn't entirely my fault this time! I went back to the old, fully polyed models, and they still had some weird spots when textures were applied (though far fewer...). Anyways, I don't think it's something worth fixing at this point in production unless I can find an easy fix, or if it really bothers one of my team members. I made all of the textures metallic because I thought it made the pig look sharp and scary, but this may change depending on computer capabilities (lag) and my teammates' preferences. Goals For Next Week:
So turns out the pig is big time goofin' so looks like I have some more work to do with him. He did not transfer over to Sam's computer very well at all, many things were scaled and placed weirdly. So step one is fixing that. However, I did spend this week playing around with textures for the pig's skin. Unfortunately, our computers do not have Unity, so I am unable to currently test those textures out. (Again, Photoshop will not work for this purpose because it tries to texture every single face of the object as having the same texture.) I haven't yet made the textures tileable either, because I want to see which one I like on the model the most before doing all of that work. However, I don't think texturing will be much of an issue, I am more concerned about the export issue. This is the end of the quarter though, so I have to get moving on to modeling classroom assets. I also need to make sure that I have a plan to finish everything within the next 9 weeks so that we are able to actually finish the entire game in time.
Goals For Next Week:
I've been thinking a lot about social media lately. As someone who wants to try to make a career out of being an artist, putting my artwork out there and networking are both super important, but social media can often distract me from work. I thought that it was motivating me to make more art so that I could post more, but I reviewed my entire art account at the start of 2019, and I realized that there were entire months where I didn't make a single art post! Most of my posts came in bursts of like four pieces at once and then radio silence. I spend most of my social media time on my personal account instead of my art one, but am I really gaining anything from that?
So I'm trying to make some new social media goals for this year. Unfollow Everyone (Personal Account) This is an exaggeration, but I have been gradually unfollowing everyone who is
Post Schedule (Art Account) I don't want to have months of no content, so even if it's posting works-in-progress all of the time, I want to start having specific days that I'll post on, and I think this starts with creating an art social media trello board. This way, I can have deadlines for when to post things, as well as what I want to post (progress on project A or project B? Finished piece C?). This will also help me stick to deadlines for completing pieces since I want to be able to post. However, as a trello board, it's also flexible enough that I could always move stuff around and post random doodles if I need more content/ want to post more often. Comment on Other People's Posts More (Art Account) If social media feels more like a community and I potentially make some more art friends, I think I will feel more motivated to post. And if not, well, at least I'm letting other people know that I appreciate their work. Anyway, those are my goals, if anyone who reads this has any other tips, comment them I guess! It's fitting that as the quarter draws to a close, I have finally, FINALLY finished simplifying the pig. Finished may be an overstatement since there is always the chance that I'll have to go back (that's still a lot of vertices) but I feel good about how it looks and I don't think it will cause too many problems, especially now that our computers are working better. But I used a lot of smooth modifiers, greatly reduced the detail of the hands, and feel pretty good about how it turned out, so I'm saying that I'm finished for now!
The next step is to move on to texturing it in photoshop and unity, and then I'll pass it over to Sam so he can animate (or I could animate it myself depending on what he needs to do, because after texturing the pig, I'm pretty much down with all I've needed to do for a while). Goals for Next Week:
Just getting back from break, this week was kind of just frustrating, because it took me a while to get back into the swing of things. Thankfully however, I did get back into the swing of things, and the pig has less than 3,000 polys now, but still around 5,000 vertices. I still have some simplification that I can do, and some shapes to fix on the eyes and nose, but I am confident that in 1-2 weeks it will be done, and I can move on to texturing. In more exciting news, we are testing the chicken in VR soon (once Ryan can get the lighting fixed and Sam is willing to do some VR playtesting).
Goals For This Week:
Short week. Snow days. Pig Eyes. Poly Simplification. Nuff Said. Seriously though, there was very little progress on my part this week, but I did accidentally learned about a cool feature of 3Ds Max. I was trying to merge vertices, and while this feature was unable to help me because of some really funky geometry stuff going on, it would be really useful for other situations. Basically, you can figure out how many vertices are overlapping, and then either manually or automatically, combine all of said vertices. This is a pretty basic feature, so it's probably a wonder to anyone who has ever used 3Ds Max that I didn't know about this before, but I somehow didn't. Anyways, it will certainly help me out as I continue trying to simplify 3D models. Poly simplification has also proved to be very necessary because the chicken was still too complex to animate without crashing the program multiple times. Our computers are very bad, so our polygons must be few. Goals for Next Week:
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AuthorHi, I'm Abi, a DSA student who likes games, drawing, writing, and acting. Archives
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