Craig Bloom

Too many ideas, not enough lifetimes. Making indie games, music, and other things with AI as my creative accomplice. Sharing the journey.

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@impulse9studio something dumb and heavy. a shovel. nothing beats a shovel sound in a boomer shooter

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@Cory__ oh this is great. been wiring mcp into ue5 for my zombie game and uv work is exactly the part i keep running back to blender for. does it handle skeletal meshes too?

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@JesseFins Thats helpful thank you!

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@SpawnCamper9000 been thinking about this. anyone actually doing it with bevy or ue5?

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@melvindvivas honestly the playtest is the fun part for me. waking up to see what changed overnight never gets old

[NOVABRAND @novabrand]

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[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@GamewithDave @SnailBiteGames Very up my alley

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

Yes! Silver lining for sure. I have days of riding high on something I've brought to life, and the next day feeling deflated, like the thing I envision is so different from what I'm able to produce. I believe that delta will collapse, but for now its an interesting tension. The biggest gap for me is art direction/consistancy.

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@solarise_webdev @mosesbabychrist Yeah, I’m going through a similar loop. I optimize heavily to create headroom for environment/immersion and inevitably need to go back and optimize once again. I am trying to persist optimizations across all branches and document learnings though.

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

While working on my solo cave crawling adventure using Rust, I thought I’d share something fun I played with earlier this month. Valuable learning was the 2D drawn sprites and levels have been very problematic for animation quality, pathing, artistic consistency, etc. The vision for this game is insane. I’m going to rebuild this towards my original vision with Unreal. More to come!

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@GamewithDave Thanks so much! I’ve always had a deep fascination with it and never had the bravery to do it myself. My game explores the solitary nature of it, the risks, and how far you’ll go to find someone missing. Going to post updates weekly as it progresses!

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@Dimillian How is the sound design portion coming along? I am messing with fish audio right now and would love to know what is working for you. I’ll share a link to my results shortly

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

Deep in the unknown, Danny finds a moment of calm beside a moonlit waterfall. Time to rest, piece together clues and decide what comes next.
He’s looking for something. Or someone. His adventure is only beginning.
WIP: refining hands, breathing and blinking.
Built with @BevyEngine and Rust, with a little help from @MeshyAI and @Blender .

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@Giulio6686 Agree. Force multiplier

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

I hear you, but I think what makes the most successful shows, stories, and games resonate goes far beyond the initial idea. Execution, timing, and the cultural zeitgeist all play enormous roles. I’m fully sold on AI’s ability to help create amazing content. What I’m not convinced of yet is that a single prompt can carry something all the way to a truly great finished product. We’ll get there, but there’s a big difference between generating content and creating something that genuinely connects.

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

This is gold. Can all be done with meshy/mixamo too. I haven’t seen how meshy does rigging though yet.

[rewind @rewind02]

ready-to-use 3D models created using tripo + claude opus 5.5 + blender...

tripo makes the model. opus checks and fixes it

the trick is never letting opus model from scratch, but there’s a smart way to set it up:

- step 1: make a 4-view reference sheet (front, back, sides) with the character in an a-pose
- step 2: generate in tripo p2.0 (~26 sec per textured asset): head, body and hair as separate parts, up to 25k quads each
- step 3: auto rig in tripo (humanoid, vrm 1.0 preset with fingers), then export glb with textures + animation on
- step 4: open it in blender, connect opus 5.5 through blender mcp and ask: “check the skeleton, weights, texture links and foot contact. don’t fix anything yet”
- step 5: let opus fix what it found: missing tail bones, hair weights, hands clipping into the body
- step 6: have opus cut it under 40k triangles and export fbx
- step 7: import into unity 6 as a humanoid rig and compare the rest pose to the original before touching animations

who does what:

- tripo p2.0: mesh, textures, rig, base animation
- opus 5.5: inspects, fixes rigs, weights and clipping, exports
- blender: the workshop where every fix happens
- unity 6: the game
- you: pick the best variant and sign off

and the rule that saves the project... most bugs live between the tools, not inside them

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@Dimillian I also use 6.1 sol for similar work. Curious. For you, what prompts are you using for refinement? Are you referring to lighting, shaders, texture, etc? Are you specific about it or “just make better”? :)

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

@TonyyRickk Thanks! 🙏 trying to not get too photo realistic and give the game a more painterly feel.

[Craig Bloom @CraigABloom]

The cave is starting to feel alive.

Latest pass on my Rust/Bevy indie adventure: drifting dust and atmospheric haze, dry-to-wet rock transitions, reflections, subtle lens flares, and a much-improved waterfall.

Reworked the lighting around the lantern and daylight, keeping the painterly feel.

Built with @BevyEngine, character assets via @MeshyAI, music via @suno.

Next: voice, SFX, and actual gameplay. Hundreds of iterations and counting.