This woulda been part two.

Part Two to the previous entry (regarding the animation dilemma) is long overdue. In fact, it went long enough that the problem sort of worked itself out. Partly. There's still a matter of practical implementation (actually doing it and making it work), but so far my current method of problem solving is working out alright. I basically keep looking at it, reading books and articles, watching tutorial videos, scrapping and restarting, and then eventually everything starts working. Then I scrap it once more to have a good working version.

Since the last entry, I've redone the Unicycle 4 times and it'll probably need at least a couple more fixes to get it just right. I was working on doing a whole custom Controller, Motor, and Camera scripts but I got the stock scripts working pretty well. Unity upgraded from 3.5 to 4.x now, and it's given me a few new things to play with and learn. One of those new things is improved scripting, and it works right out of the box so far. I'll have to tamper with the camera controls, but the vehicles actually move pretty well so far.

One of the other nice things about the new Unity is it comes with Mecanim: an animation studio. I've not had a chance to try it out yet, but it looks pretty extensive. There's a good chance I'll use it instead of the stock Blender Animation studio, but who knows. Lately, I've been more concerned with getting the controls working at all to worry about the model animation.

Another nice thing happened, Adobe Photoshop CS2 is now free to download and use for everyone! The way I understand it, it's too old to install properly on 64bit systems so Adobe dropped support for it, I guess to dissuade people from buying it. Anyway, supposedly there's an easy fix to install it on 64bit systems, so now I get free Photoshop to use. I really wasn't liking Gimp.

Here's where I stand now. Actually seeing it laid out is sorta disappointing, but not disappointing enough to stop me.

• Unicycle Model is complete. I fixed the Blender -> Unity conversion problem, redesigned the UVMaps so people can do custom textures easier. The Tire-Treads UVMap needs to be redone, but it's functional as-is. 
• The Bicycle Model rough draft is done, but needs to be redone from the ground up. The shape is alright, but it needs to be made a LOT more efficent. Then UVMapping, then texturing. 
• The controls actually work. The model faces the right direction and moves like it's supposed to. No animation is attached yet.
• A very very simple test level is set up. The platforms are simple enough that they can be created, moved, retextured, and manipulated in Unity on demand. 
• Music software is ready, but I'm still looking for better options. Still need to get a usb-to-midi cable and do some sample loops.

And that's pretty much it for now. The next thing to work on is getting the camera to move the right way, setting the speed/drag/friction settings for the vehicle, and expand the test level a little. Then I'll look into animation. After all that's squared away, I'll work on redoing the bike, getting it set up, and see about adding sound and/or music.

The next entry is going to be about fixing some of the Blender to Unity bugs I've run into, because it was damned hard to weed through the internet to find the answers I needed. They seem to be common issues, and I want to just lay out the answers very plainly for anyone else that's having them.