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!