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!

11th Hour Changes

I got some critiques before I submitted my homework, so I made some subtle changes. I added some blinks to General Lee's character when he mentions that he doesn't have his glasses, adding more character to him, as well as making him tap the map as to where he thinks a good place for the forces to be. I made General Longstreet flex his hand behind his back just to animate him more. And when Longstreet says the name of the town, "Gettysburg", I tried to make him look non-challant about it as at this point in history it is just another town.

Anyway, I got a 94.6 on the project which gave me an 89.5 for the class, so I am very happy. Here is what the professor ahd to say about it:

Great job David! A very entertaining scene, and your final pass gets two thumbs up from me :-) The incremental changes you made to the overall scene add to the quality of the movie (it's usually the subtle details which will really make a difference in the end). The lip-synching has improved, and even though it could still be more accurate (with the phonemes) it does a good job of conveying what the characters are saying. Expressions are quite solid as well. Adding eyebrows and eyelids to General Longstreet definitely solidified his contribution to the conversation. Before he was more of a distraction due to his expression. The characters do seem a tad stiff with their body motions, but that can probably be attributed to the current scene. I think the scene is quite strong!

YAY!

You can see the FINAL final here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUzpzVwsNew

Final Project: Term 11

So here it is. I am turning this in for my final project this term. I do not have to turn it in for a few more days (Sunday), so give me your thoughts and opinions on it, things like lip synching and facial expressions and such. Be HONEST! (I am having problems uploading video, so I am trying to use YOUTUBE)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAAk9wgQtM8

Schnikeys!

It has been two and a half months since I last posted! Yikes! Well, a ot has been going on since then, so let me clue you in.

So, term 10 ended with me getting 2 As and 1 B (the B being in my core class, Texture Mapping for Games). I have learned quite a bit about game engines, and they are really REALLY cool. The first thing I learned is how the engine can be used for things other than games, such as a virtual walk-through for a house. It made me think of an idea of modeling a house before and after a fire as a training tool for insurance agents. Well, guess what? They are currently working on that at State Farm. I spent an afternoon with the project leader of this program. She is anot a modeller, but everything passes through her. The modelling itself is done through an external company in Dublin called CANDO. Well, there are still other jobs in the Creative Services Department that look interesting, so I will wait and see what pops up. I could be a shoo-in for one particular job if I could teach myself a programing language called ActionScript2, which is an older version of the software that is currently available. The problem is that this doesn't hold my interest like modeling books do. I tend to be able to read only 2-3 pages on the ActionScript book and fall asleep ... LITERALLY! Modeling books I can read until I am ready to fall asleep and have to make myself stay awake.

So anyway ...

It is a new term that is almost over, and I currently have 2 As and a B again. And once again I have a B in my core class, Animation for Games. I had a massive meltdown in week 5, when my first project was due. It was 5 animations that I had to do over the course of 5 weeks, then export them from one program and then import them into another. With the project due on Sunday at Midnight, I got up early Saturday morning to do the final steps, exporting and importing. Well, my animations would not export. All 5 of them had the same model, and it was the model itself that was giving me issues, so it wasn't that the files were corrupt or anything so I could go back to previous saves. I was in panic mode when I went to work at 1:30. Fortunately it was the holiday weekend, and we were dead at work, and I got to leave 5 hours early. I spent most of the night trying to save what I could, and came up with nothing. I got up early the next day and cranked out 5 animations using a different model that I had tested and knew would export properly. By 6:00 in the evening, I had them all done, exported and imported, and I had verified that I had all of the correct files and file types all associated with animations all nicely compressed and uploaded to my professor. I even had a note explaining to him what had happened. I had checked at least 4 times for what I needed, so imagine my surprise when I saw my grade listed for the first project was an "F". It turns out that I had totally missed that there was a written portion to go along the animations, and I hadn't done it. With this "F" the best that I could get in the class would be a "C" and that was harsh for me to take. Meredith suggested that I go ahead and do the written portion anyway and submit it just so that I didn't leave anything incomplete and to show the professor that at least I could do it ... so I did. Well, the professor appreciated the effort and said that he wasn't here to fail me and understood the pressure of what happened, so he gave me full credit for it, and I ended up with a "B" for the project. YAY!!!

The current project that I am working on is animating a clip from the movie "Gettysburg", which happens to be one of my all time favorites. I am currently at what is called the "First Pass" stage where I have the basic movents and camera shots all set up, and then I will get to the lip synching this week. Hope you all like it!

Well this is cool ...

I just discovered a link on one of my pages for school that shows my past grades. I know that I have listed them all as I got them, but there is just something that feels good about seeing them all in one place. So far I have 21 As and 4 Bs. How cool is that?

Anyway, that class I am taking this term are going well. Meredith is helping me through my Humanities class as I think I would have had a hard time reading Persuasion by myself. It seems way too much like my Art History class (with maybe a twist of lemon), though, which really bums me out. My Intro to Psych is going really well also and got to interview my sister-in-law who is also an INtro to Psych professor, and ended up getting a 100% on that paper, which happens to be one of the two biggest point scoring pieces in the class! Thank you Suzanne! My Texture Mapping for Games is still at an A right now, but I have don't my character yet. Just like in modeling, I am very comfortable with objects, be it modeling or texturing. Now I hit a character, I feel nervous. So ... I will keep you all informed on that.

Well ... Meredith and I did something huge theother day and we went out and bought our first car together. Her 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer was getting on her nerves, and she was tired of driving a stick, so ... we headed out at noon and got home at 8:30 with a 2010 Hyundai Tuscon. The color is called Iris, and it changes colors in the light. Really wierd. It does not have cruise control, which is ok, or a sun roof, which is something Mere really wanted, but is ok with, but it does come with satelite radio which is something she really really loves. She keeps telling me that it will be OUR car, and I roll my eyes at her and say "Ok, Babe ... you get up and go to work before me. Which car are you gonan take? The new one our my Taurus?" She responds with an "Ok, but you will drive it sometimes right?" Yeah, sure thing, Babe. I wonder if I even get to select one of the presets on the XM Radio? :-P

Mind Boggling

So, I am finishing up week 2 of classes this term, and once again I am really enjoying my core class, but the other two are just mind boggling for me. My into to Psych feels like it is over my head (no pun intended), and for humanities, I am being forced to read "Persuasion" by Jane Austin. I cannot believe that people used to talk the way they did in this book. And the way that people behaved back then! ARRRGGGHHHHHH! I will also ahve to watcha movie called "Much Ado About Nothing," but thankfully Meredith loves this movie and said she will watch it with me. She is also reading "Persuasion" with me so that she can help me out. Aint she awesome?

For my core class, 3D Textures for games, I am being really challanged, and this is AWESOME! For my first week I had to take 2 pictures and recreate them using layers. The first layer would be the basic shape of the item, then shadows and highlighted areas, then color, then texture. I did ok on the firest picture, which was to be something weathered and beaten up, but did really well on something with a reflective surface. I feel that I did a really good job on that, and the professor even complimented me on taking on a tougher subject then most people chose. This week we had to take the picture supplied and replicate it to the best of our ability, mimicing the texture and the lighting/shadows. This was really tough. As I didn't have any Styrofoam to take a picture of and found nothing good on the web to use as a picture, I had to mimic it in Photoshop. I am anxious to see what kind of grade I get on that.

Anyway ...

Hope to see my brother and his family here in the next few weeks. Take care everyone!

I know, I know , I know ...

It's been a while. My last post was ... well ...a long time ago. Right before this last term started, I believe. Truth to tell, it was a really boring term. Although I had a core class called Game Design Process, I really wanted something with modeling. Hence I started teh gothic cathedral project, but that fell through. The project had been translated, and some of the instructions were unclear. It as a cut and dry process of "Do A, then B, then C" with no explainations of why to do it, and when the translations came through, certain things were lsot, and I had to figure out what exactly they meant. Sometimes that meant giong a day or two and getting to a point that something I had done day back was wrong and starting over at certain points (thankfully I had multiple backups). I finally just gave up because of frustration when I found out that I am getting a new modeling class this term. But more on that later.

This last term I had three classes, and these were my final grades:

Ethical and Critical Thinking: 930/930 (100%)
Game Design Process: 1994/2300 (86.7%)
Communication Skills: 1256/1360 (92.35%)

Not too shabby, I think. That B in Game Deisgn bothers me a little, but I can get over it, I think. My next term has classes in Humanities, Intro to Psych, and Texture Mapping for Games. I am very excited about that last one as I will be using the Unreal Engine, which is the first game engine I will get to use. Very excited indeed.

Anyway .... will post more later.

Love you all!

100th post

Who knew? This is actually my 100th post! I am half way through my schooling and I have made 100 notations about my journey. I am very pleased that no only have I stuck with it and have gotten good grades, but I have enjoyed it! I definately would like to thank all of my family and friends who have been very supportive this past year and a half, and know that you will be there for the next 18 months as well.

So ...

This term is already proving to be as slow as I feared it would be. To keep sharp on my modeling skills, I purchased a tutorial on building a gothic church. I am really enoying working with interiors. If I cannot get into a game company, then I would like to get into something that lets me model interiors. So anyway, this tutorial is very poorly written. It gives you step one, then goes to step 4 and you need to figure out steps 2 and 3. As my wife has pointed out, this is actually then a very good tutorial as it is making me look things up and try things out. I spent 12 hours getting up to one point only to have to start completely over.

Well ... here is what I have so far ...

And here is to the next 18 months!

Yah-HOO!

The end of the term has come and gone, and I got 3 A's! In Intro to Physical science I had been at a B for the entire term, but brought myself up to an A- by getting a high A on my final exam. I also received solid A's in both my Human Relations class as well as my Intermediate 3D class. For my 3D class, this is what my professor had to say:

Hello David, It was a pleasure to have you in class this term. You seem to have a real knack for texturing and lighting...this might be your strength. The character is a good piece but the anatomy is too stylized. You might consider modeling and more proportional character for advanced 3-D. This would make for a better portfolio piece. Do keep this one as part of your portfolio but it would be difficult to add and a rig until you gain enough skill.

And here is what my final looked like.

He said it was "stylized", but in the class he also said that he wanted soemthing "cartoony". I think I would have tried to go more realistic had he not said that. Anyway, for a first attempt at making a character, I am happy with it. But as he said, I am doing great with lighting and textures (see the video below), and I really enjoy that aspect - making the virtual seem real. I am enjoying this so much, that I really won'tcare if I get into the game industry ... just as long as I can get a job modeling.

Anyhoo ... I am off for a week and half, and then back to the grind. I will continue to model and will post new things as I ge tthem done.

On one final note, I would also like to thank Professor Clever for all of his assistance over the past few terms. There have been nights that he and I have been up until the wee hours chatting about this and that, and he has pointed me in the right direction when I was lost. I know that I have not been happy with him at times and that I have complained about things that he had said, but ... any teacher that will spend that much time with me at those hours is a saint in my book. I seriously wish I had more teachers like him.

For Mom and Mike ...

The way things ought to have been ...

Now that I have my new system, I went back and placed things back to the way they were before. Things are a bit sharper, the video is longer, and I now have my beautiful sunbeam back (woo-hoo!). Please note a few things with the sunbeam. First off, as we move through the beam, you can see different rays of light as it is being divided up by the breaks in the stained glass window. Also, a couple of times you will be able to see the different colors of light shining down on the pews below. One other thing to note is that when I do the fly-by on the pews near the end, you can see some of the detail of the oak leafs that I had beveled in the sides.

Much more gooder, I would say!

On a lesser note, I have received my class list for next term ...

Ethical and Critical Thinking (groan)
Communication Skills (yawn)
Game Design Process (WOOHOO!) -- this class will take me through game engines to show me how everything all comes together. This one shoud be exciting.

I do not have any modeling classes, but that will be something that I will be doing in my free time.

Tomorrow I have my Canada Licensing exam for work, and I am anxious to get that over and done with. We had 1 week of classes for it at work, and it is the second time I had to take the class because it has now been discovered that a few of us had been given the wrong exam. Although I do not really want to be placed in the Canada Queue as our rates in Canada are pretty high so our binds rates are really low there, I still want to pass to show that I can. The only thing that I can see that might be problematic is that I have a cold right now, so I need to have a good nights rest the night before.

Anyhoo ... let me all know what you think of the new video and effects.

Thanks again, Mom and Mike!

Yay for me!!!

I got my grade back for my Art Deco Church. I got a 95%! W00T!!! He loved it but he said that some of the camera movement was jerky (which it was because I used angles insted of curves) and he felt that I needed to use more complex models. I am ok with that ... I still got a whopping 95! WoW!

Anyhoo ...I am now working on my character, and boy is that different. I am afraid that I might get something a lot lower than a 95 on him. It is much more complex than an object as you have preconceptions on how a character should look. If I told 10 people to envision a car, you would get 10 different pictures. Now ask them to envision Sonic the hedgehog, well, there is only one Sonic the Hedgehog. Even though I am making a unique character it is still trying to conform to my own imagination. Not very easy.

Well ... back to the grind.

Take care all.

And the verdict is in ...

So, I just got a new compurer and have been in the process of moving files over and such. I have just taken a break to try and rerender my project just to see how fast my new system is. Well, what took 26-27 hours to render on my old system now takes ... only 9 hours!!!! YAY!!! So ... once I have the time to put my old project back to the way it was before, I plan on doing so and getting it rendered.

Thank you Mom and Mike!

*sigh* Well, here it is ...

Herei s my first project forthis term for my Intermediate 3D Art class. I *sigh* because it is not as good as I wanted. I actualyl had it looking like something straight from a movie, with sharp crisp colors and detail, but ... when I went to go render my walk through (rendering being where I make a picture of each of the 600 steps it would take to walk around my church), the program crashed due to not enough memory (ram). The first thing I though was that the last item I had placed in my scene was what crashed it. It was some very nice atmospheric lighting coming down from the stained glass window up in the balcony, with shaded lights flowing down with it, but I decided to do some tweaking first to see if I could keep things together. Well ... I went to go renderit and it said it would take over 80 hours to render ... ACK!!! Well ... I decided that for the sake of a great project, I would let it go. I watched it render the first shot, and it went through, so I went to bed (did I mention it was 3 a.m.?). WHen I got up, I was very disappointed to find that it had crashed again ... on shot 2!!!. Arggggghhhh! 8hrs wasted! So ... I made a few more tweaks, this time taking out the beautiful atmospheric light I had, and it said it would render in about 70 hours. Not too bad ... but this time it crashed on shot 8! GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRR! Soooooo ... I had to tweak it even MORE, and finally ended up with this ... the colors are bland and washed out, and where it looked like a movie, it now looks like a video game.

The issue was that I have an older computer. Don't get me wrong ... it was great when I got it 3 years ago ... but computers become obselete in 2 years it seems. I have a Dell computer with an Athalon 2 processor, 225 gb hard drive, 256 mb video card, and 3 gigs of ram upgradable to 6. So ... as I really REALLY need a new computer to get my school work done, and get it done in a manner that is great and amazing ... my wife and I decided to get me a new computer. But (and there is ALWAYS a but ...) we do not get our bonuses until later on this month and at the end of May). Thankfully, my parents are loaning us the money (THANK YOU SO VERY VERY MUCH) so that I can get me a new computer. I will be ordering an ASUS system that has an Athalon 7 processor, 9 gigs of ram upgradable to 24 gigs, a 1 tb hard drive, and a video card that has 856mb. This is awesome, but (ANOTHER but ...) the down side is that I need to order all new software again, because my software will only load onto one system :-(. This will be a long process and I hope to have everything up to spec and ready to go by the time my next term starts.

Once I get my new system and everything up to snuff ... the very first thing that I will do is get everything back up to the way it was before I started tweaking and put that beautiful light back ... and I will then render it and dedicate it to Mom and Mike for their help with this. For the time being, I hope that you enjoy what I have here.

I love you all and I thank you immensely for all of your support!

So many changes ....

Well, I have gone back and looked at the starting blocks that I had laid for my church, and looked at a ton of screen shots that I had taken to where I have gotten myself to now, and I must say that modeling is not easy, especially if you are easily distracted by pretty colors and exciting designs. I have made so many changes to the walls, to the pews, to the textures, to the stylings, to the models, it just is not funny! I have found that if I make one change to the smallest of details, it can easily lead to me changing a whole lot more! It reminds me of a comis strip of Cathy I once saw ehre she bought some new placemats for her dining room, and then she needed new plates to match, and then new silverware, then a new table cloth, then a new table ... that is how it was with this. Well ... I now have some minor stuff to do, and then I can animate a walkthrough of it. Just adding 2 more doors, a few more pews, and the final lighting. WoW!

I'm sorry, Professor ... the program ate my homework.

ACCCKKKKK! When I went to bed last night, I had saved everything that I had worked on all day, and was very proud of what I had done. I had basically done steps 1 2 3 4 5 and had saved each step along the way. When I got up this morning, it was like I only had steps 1 2 and 5. WTH?!?!? It will take me about 2hrs to reconstruct what I had. Well, I at least have screenshots of what I had done. Enjoy!

*pew* *pew* *pew*

One of our cats, Pickles, like to sit in boxes whenever she can find one open. We always say that she isin her "spaceship" shooting down invaders and we often make "*pew* *pew* *pew*" noises when we see doing it.

Anyway, I wanted to post a close-up of the side of one of the pews I am working on so that you can see better the detail that I put on it. So, here it is!

Term 8

Well, here it is, term 8. Halfway through this term will mark the official halfway point of my college education. The term has started of great, and so far in the first two weeks I have 100% in two of my classes (intermediate 3d art and human resources). The third (science), I think I might be too old for. The first experiment was rolling a marble down a ramp off of the kitchen table and marking where it made its initial impact. Crawling around on the floor and chasing that dang marble made my knees ache. Thankfully I had Pickles (my cat) to help chase the marble down. Unfortunately, she felt it needed to be batted around some more before giving it back to me.

So, for my core class, Intermediate 3d art, I have to model an building for my first project, and then a character of my choosing for the second. So, for the first project, I am modeling a church, using the art deco church that we have here in Bloomington as a model. My mentor at State Farm, Erwin, said that he will take a look at it when I am done but before I turn it in to give me some feed back, so I am excited about that. I am still laying things out, and will then need to go back and texture everything, and then put in realistic lighting as well. Here are some screen shots that I have so far.

Anyway ... I am more comfortable using the programs that I am learning as I found a great website that I have purchased some tutorials for. School is all well and good, but it seems that at times I am only getting just enough information to by and that I need to do a lot of research on my own. Oh well. I am still proud of the work that I am producing. I feel that once I am done with this church, it might be my first real portfolio piece.