Pikkipi source files

When I was building Pikkipi I had to really scratch around to find useful references for both the Lightwave 3D models and the Director coding.  So I thought maybe people would like to peep inside of the files that make Pikkipi.  They may not be the most perfect implementations but I figure they could be useful.  Also if you make something with them I’d love to see

Here’s the Adobe Director source file that the web version is built using.  You’ll need a recent version of Director:

download pikkipi Director source (zip file)

Here’s the object and scene files used to create the 3D people and their accessories in Lightwave 3D. The models are broken down into separate head, body and accessories (including hair) which are put together in Director.  (it was tricky to do this – I can see why they avoid it in video games)

download 3D Objects (zip file)
download 3D Scenes (zip file)

If you’re interested in bone animation for Director, I found that W3Ds needed only the most basic features of bone animation activated in Lightwave.  Check out the weightmaps on the objects and the rigs in the scene files…

For all these you’ll need the correct software of course.  They both pretty complex software so I wouldn’t recommend digging into these without a little knowledge of them.

Hope this stuff is useful – enjoy!

Pikkipi on ComicDish.com

Apparently the guys on TheDish podcast had a play with Pikkipi and made a couple of simple comics

 

 

 

 

 

You Own What You Make With Pikkipi

A few folks have commented that they weren’t sure whether they had ownership rights of anything they made with Pikkipi.  I want to set the record straight – you have total ownership, there’s no watermarks and there’s no catch.  Enjoy!

Posted on DeviantArt

I can’t say I’m a regular visitor of DeviantArt, but I’ve browsed through there on occasion for character artwork and to see how people have done low-polygon 3D models.

I thought I’d put some Pikkipi shots up on there as it seemed a good place – maybe more appropriate even – than Flickr.  

Pikkipi on DeviantArt

…or go to Pikkipi.com itself

Sharing scenes

When you’ve made a scene the next step is to save it to your hard drive via the clipboard.  On the Finish tab the ‘Copy to Clipboard’ button will do exactly that.  

After this, the scene is on the clipboard of your computer and you can do whatever you want with it.  To simply save the scene as a file on your computer’s hard drive, open an image editor.  

If you are using a Mac you can use the Preview program. Start Preview, open the File menu and choose ‘New from Clipboard’.

On Windows you can use Paint.  Open the Paint program, then press Ctrl + V to paste the scene image, or open the Edit menu and choose ‘Paste’.

Now in either program you can Save the image (from the File menu) on your hard drive. 

Once it’s on your hard drive you can do all sorts of stuff… here’s some ideas based on what you’ll find on the web:

• Share it on Flickr – remember to tag it with the word Pikkipi
• Add effects and paint on the scene with an image editor like Picnik
• Add comic effects with FunPix or a program like Comic Life
• Create a Visual Novel (someone tell me if you try this!) 
• Animate it with a soundtrack using something like Slide