End of my 12th term

Well, my 12th of 15 terms has ended. I will be graduating at the end of July of 2011 as long as nothing unforseen happens. This term I had classes in Earth Science, Creative Writing, and Level/Environment Design. I got B's in the first two classes, and I am still waiting for my grade back on my core class. The professor was absent most of the class. I am still missing grades from a few weeks ago.

This term was interesting for a few different reasons. First off, I think I enjoyed my Creative Writing class more than my core class. I came up with some pretty good stories and poems that I surprised myself. I have a few more ideas that I might jot down, so who knows what I might do with that. My core class was ... different. The professor, as I said, was absent most of the term. We went weeks without seeing him at the beginning of class, and he wrote us all an email apologizing saying that his personal life was having issues. He was back in class up until Thanksgiving, and then we've seen to have lost him again. Then, there was one week where I had issues exporting/importing my work from 3dsMax into the Unreal Development Kit. I followed the instructions given to me to the letter, and it just was not working. Even Meredith (who had never used either program before) sat down and tried the step-by-step instructions had the same issue. I wrote my professor as this was the first time in 2 1/2 years that I was actually going to be late turing in my homework, and I kept working on it. It was Wednesday, 3 days later, that I tried the exact same thing that I had been trying, and it decided to work. I HATE THAT! I have no clue what was wrong and how to fix it should it ever happen again! ARRRGGGHHH!!!! You can see screenshots of what I did at www.frankenstein13.com in the new Unreal Development Kit section I put up. The interior scene with the crane was all done by me, the modeling and textures and everything. The exterior, the models were provided to me by the tool itself, and I just laid everything out.

So, anyway ...

My next term I have Political Science (more like World Government), Career Management, and Special Effects for Games (WOOHOO!!!!!!!). I have already completed the first exercise in my core class book: creating a flaming ball o' fire. It is the first time that I have ever created a partical system, which is a major part of 3dsMax. Think of trying to animate a snow storm. The hard way would be to model and animate each snow flake. 3dsMax has tools inside of it that take care of it for you. I used a partical system to be the flames of the fire and the wind blowing the particals around.

Anyhoo ...

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year ... and a special shout out to my niece who will be having her birthday tomorrow!

Happy Birthday Sarah! Uncle David loves you!