A while ago, I decided to try monetizing my videos to see what kind of money I'd make. Conclusion: Enough to possibly buy a hotdog and soda after 14 years. Why am I writing about this now? Well, I got an email saying my Cube Freezing tutorial for Portal 2 needed more information in order to be monetized.
When I started monetizing my videos, YouTube had a text box you'd have to fill in to explain why they should monetize your video. A few months ago, they removed that box. While I was glad not to have to keep typing out the same spiel over and over again, the looseness concerned me. And now, I've set off their alarms or was randomly chosen to prove myself worthy.
In either case, I looked at how much money I "made" since I started and came to the conclusion of "Not worth it." So, I logged into YouTube to uncheck the monetization checkbox and was greeted by a "Changes cannot be saved" error. This also prevented me from changing anything else about the video even when I rechecked the box. I had to go to the viewing page of the video and click on the description to change anything.
So, in an attempt to remove the uncheck the monetization checkbox, I filled out the form YouTube sent me for "Proving I have ownership" and basically said "It was a fun experiment, but as you can clearly see, not worth it." This probably means my account has a strike against it now, so, joy.
For whomever it was that blew up when I started monetizing and said "You're getting greedy man! I'm not going to pay for this! What's next? Paying to read the titles of your maps?! What is wrong with you!?" Look, no money gain. Just like I said would most likely be the case.
Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youtube. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Duster and other issues
-------------------------------- In response to a comment on YouTube about if I'll use the Portal 2 PTI editor or stick with Hammer. Original post here: http://rand0mnumbers.blogspot.com/2012/05/portal-2-map-maker-versus-authoring.html
The argument of "easily roughing out a room" doesn't hold water with me. If I want to rough out I room, I want exactly that, a rough out. Simple walls thrown up with dev textures. Using the PTI gives you semi-polished rough outs. Panels all set and ready. Now, don't get me wrong, that can be extremely useful...if you aren't going to toss the entire thing into Hammer and have to deal with aforementioned 128x128x128 blocks (which are a completely valid way of blocking out a level) and then touch every element to make it easier to work with. I'm better off staying in Hammer. To save space, you can find the rest in my original post on this topic.
The blocks also annoy me because they remind me of my first run in with UnrealED in high school. Everything was subtractive brushes and models. We had limited modelling experience and were expected to use a model-based engine to build levels/games (it was a Video Game Design class). I had been using Hammer for about a year at that point.
Off topic: I hated that class. Why? The final was a game design doc that had to be completely filled out with a minimum number of pages per section and feature. I wrote down and fleshed out as much as I could using a 12pt font, but fell short of the minimum number of pages in a few sections. I can understand getting a low grade for that, but when classmates get high scores for using 20-60pt font to meet the minimum number of pages, that gets on my nerves. "But they thought outside the box!" Grr....
-------------------------------- In response to typing out my response to the above comment only to have errors popup everywhere
I'm really disliking YouTube right now. Every time I open a page, my keyboard input is immediately snatched by the player. This means that every single keybinding is fired off when I start typing in a comment box despite clicking in the comment section to give it focus (Fullscreen! Select button! Hit play! Pause! Change resolution! Mute! Pause! Play! AAAARRRRGGGHHH!). I have to hit escape half a dozen times to make flash realize I don't want it to have focus.
And another thing. Hitting Enter in comments posts the comment instead of starting a new line. I was halfway through a comment and, upon hitting enter, wound up posting it unfinished. That irks me to no end.
Maybe this is just that Flash Player bug. It completely crashes Firefox on Windows Server 2008 R2, but Windows 7 seems to tolerate it. How in the world did 11.3 get past QA? Does Adobe even use QA for Flash? Surely someone had the issue before release given. Do they not test on Firefox anymore (I think it works fine on every other major browser)?
-------------------------------- Duster model issues
I got the bone weights all set for the duster's light model, exported it into Skyrim, and watched the poly deformations work like I wanted them to...almost (more in a bit). So, I though I'd use the SoMuchMorpher plugin to bulk out the model and put my skin weights on it. Here's where the problem started: I exported the bulked out model. This changed the vertex numbering thus resulting in my character turning into an exploding ball of polygons. Each model works fine on their own, but naming them to work with the weight slider blows everything out of proportion, literally.
Okay, so I'll just go back and keep it in the scene instead. Wrong. I don't know how, but 3ds Max saved the changes to the skin modifier and, when I opened backup scenes, botched the weights when all I did was select the modifier on the stack. Now, the only working copy I have is the exported nif that, when imported, only imports as an Editable Mesh; severely limited the modelling options I usually have with Editable Poly. I can't convert to Editable Poly without deleting my fine tuned skin modifier.
Now, I think I'll have to duplicate the mesh, delete the skin modifier, convert to Editable Poly, copy/paste the Skin modifier or Skin Wrap it and hope that it works. I can't move the original around because it'll snap back to the skeleton and choose some arbitrary offset that I can't get rid of.
For making the bulky model work, I think I'll have to use the morpher, and add a 3rd skin wrap modifier to overwrite the weights with the ones I want, export, and hope that it doesn't screw with Skyrim's interpretation of the models.
Update on Duster:
It seems anything I do will destroy either the skin modifier or the vertex order, meaning the 3 hours I spent working on it have gone out the window. But at least I'm more familiar with weighting vertices.
There's also a big issue regarding the duster crumpling into itself because the female idle animation squashes body parts together. I don't know how I'm going to address this.
The argument of "easily roughing out a room" doesn't hold water with me. If I want to rough out I room, I want exactly that, a rough out. Simple walls thrown up with dev textures. Using the PTI gives you semi-polished rough outs. Panels all set and ready. Now, don't get me wrong, that can be extremely useful...if you aren't going to toss the entire thing into Hammer and have to deal with aforementioned 128x128x128 blocks (which are a completely valid way of blocking out a level) and then touch every element to make it easier to work with. I'm better off staying in Hammer. To save space, you can find the rest in my original post on this topic.
The blocks also annoy me because they remind me of my first run in with UnrealED in high school. Everything was subtractive brushes and models. We had limited modelling experience and were expected to use a model-based engine to build levels/games (it was a Video Game Design class). I had been using Hammer for about a year at that point.
Off topic: I hated that class. Why? The final was a game design doc that had to be completely filled out with a minimum number of pages per section and feature. I wrote down and fleshed out as much as I could using a 12pt font, but fell short of the minimum number of pages in a few sections. I can understand getting a low grade for that, but when classmates get high scores for using 20-60pt font to meet the minimum number of pages, that gets on my nerves. "But they thought outside the box!" Grr....
-------------------------------- In response to typing out my response to the above comment only to have errors popup everywhere
I'm really disliking YouTube right now. Every time I open a page, my keyboard input is immediately snatched by the player. This means that every single keybinding is fired off when I start typing in a comment box despite clicking in the comment section to give it focus (Fullscreen! Select button! Hit play! Pause! Change resolution! Mute! Pause! Play! AAAARRRRGGGHHH!). I have to hit escape half a dozen times to make flash realize I don't want it to have focus.
And another thing. Hitting Enter in comments posts the comment instead of starting a new line. I was halfway through a comment and, upon hitting enter, wound up posting it unfinished. That irks me to no end.
Maybe this is just that Flash Player bug. It completely crashes Firefox on Windows Server 2008 R2, but Windows 7 seems to tolerate it. How in the world did 11.3 get past QA? Does Adobe even use QA for Flash? Surely someone had the issue before release given. Do they not test on Firefox anymore (I think it works fine on every other major browser)?
-------------------------------- Duster model issues
I got the bone weights all set for the duster's light model, exported it into Skyrim, and watched the poly deformations work like I wanted them to...almost (more in a bit). So, I though I'd use the SoMuchMorpher plugin to bulk out the model and put my skin weights on it. Here's where the problem started: I exported the bulked out model. This changed the vertex numbering thus resulting in my character turning into an exploding ball of polygons. Each model works fine on their own, but naming them to work with the weight slider blows everything out of proportion, literally.
Okay, so I'll just go back and keep it in the scene instead. Wrong. I don't know how, but 3ds Max saved the changes to the skin modifier and, when I opened backup scenes, botched the weights when all I did was select the modifier on the stack. Now, the only working copy I have is the exported nif that, when imported, only imports as an Editable Mesh; severely limited the modelling options I usually have with Editable Poly. I can't convert to Editable Poly without deleting my fine tuned skin modifier.
Now, I think I'll have to duplicate the mesh, delete the skin modifier, convert to Editable Poly, copy/paste the Skin modifier or Skin Wrap it and hope that it works. I can't move the original around because it'll snap back to the skeleton and choose some arbitrary offset that I can't get rid of.
For making the bulky model work, I think I'll have to use the morpher, and add a 3rd skin wrap modifier to overwrite the weights with the ones I want, export, and hope that it doesn't screw with Skyrim's interpretation of the models.
Update on Duster:
It seems anything I do will destroy either the skin modifier or the vertex order, meaning the 3 hours I spent working on it have gone out the window. But at least I'm more familiar with weighting vertices.
There's also a big issue regarding the duster crumpling into itself because the female idle animation squashes body parts together. I don't know how I'm going to address this.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Portal 2 - Don't Look Back video release
Took a while to get this together. I was working a lot on a mod and things didn't click for a bit.
I'm pretty happy with it. It does make me want to mess with material proxies again. You can achieve quite a lot with them.
I believe I have 7 maps done, so now I can get to compiling Test Map Pack 4. That means linking them up with transitions/triggers, compiling both HDR and LDR, playtesting, and packing materials.
I'm pretty happy with it. It does make me want to mess with material proxies again. You can achieve quite a lot with them.
I believe I have 7 maps done, so now I can get to compiling Test Map Pack 4. That means linking them up with transitions/triggers, compiling both HDR and LDR, playtesting, and packing materials.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Portal 2 - Push and Pull Video is up
I finally got Steam working again by deleting my botched skin and all files except my steam.log, screenshots, and DX:HR saves. Had to do a check with TreeSizeFree to see which folders contained screenshots and save files (I hate Steam's obfuscated userdata folders).
I had to restart Steam, again, and almost everything worked. I had to let it redownload missing game files (turns out not everything is in the SteamApps folder aside from saves/screenshots) and convert various games to the new file system that were already converted before I began (at least, I thought they were).
So, here it is: Map 6 of 7 for Test Map Pack 4. More details in the video description.
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