Masters

Ive been looking at going overseas for my masters. After looking awhile, I found Kunstuniversität Linz in Austria. It is the Austrian Univeristy of Art and Design. For a masters degree, they have a few different options. If I wanted to pursue architecture, I have that option, as well as several options in the Computer Visualization field. I have been to Austria and it is a very beautiful country so there is another plus. On top of that I wanted have a smaller class setting than at A&M. At Kunstuniversität Linz the ratio of student to teachers is 5:1. The total number of students in the university is 774. These different things make Kunstuniversität Linz look very appealing. A beautiful place to study, smaller classes, and studying outside of the U.S. make Kunstuniversität Linz my choice for graduate school.

Kunstuniversität Linz

GDC

GDC is the Game Developer Conference. It is held once a year in San Francisco. It started in 1987 and has grown from 20 people to 12,500 people. The conference features speakers on different aspects of game development, how recent games were created, and awards. The most interesting aspect I saw was a few speeches on Indie Games. There was one on how to take your game developing from a hobby to a business. They also give out awards to games bases on peer to peer voting. Overall the conference looks to be a way for every type of game developer to see what is coming next and how to improve their business and skills.

AGCG

The other night, me and a friend decided to drop by the Aggie Computer Graphics club to see what was happening. I was nervous since it was the first time I had gone and most of the members seemed older. That and I have little skill in programming. Once we got there, we found out that two other guys were there for the first time and were sophomores, so I relaxed a little bit. The guy in charge talked to us about the fact that we don't need to know a lot about programing because they would help explain things. After that he gave a little presentation on a few new projects that the club would start. They are starting an open source flash program for campus that looks really interesting. I have no clue on how to really start programming, but I am going to join the club and learn as I go. As far as what I like about the club; it is small and they seems to know everyone, it goes with my major, and I can talk to the older students about problems and they can teach me new things. As far as things I don't like about the club; I have no clue what I am doing(that is more a personal problem), I don't know anyone(another personal problem), and they do not have the best presentation skills(I wasn't expecting them too). Since most of the things I do not like are personal, and can be fixed by spending some time in the club, I am going to join and see what I can learn.

Artfest

For my submission I picked two pictures I had taken. One is of victoria falls and the other is the water in a creek in the rockies. Both of them, I believe, are decent photos. My favorite part of the falls is in the bottom right corner the rocks and river at the bottom of the falls are barely visible through the mist. The water picture I like because of the crisp detail of the water at that instance in time.

Degree Plan

So here is how I plan to waste my life away the next few years. As you can see I rarely have an extreme work load. One of the sophomore is going to be long. When u calculate in that the labs and stuff it will be about 24 hours of work. O fun. Besides that not much exciting is happening as far as my degree goes.

Mind Mapping

To map my mind I first got a really sharp xacto knife. I then removed the top portion of my head, took pictures, sewed it back together, and looked at the pictures. I posted the best one of the group. For some reason it seems that my brain has a love of caffeinated products and sleep. I also noticed that my brain is very white for the most part, but in certain key areas has a wonderful array of colors. Its interesting considering most the pictures of brains seem much more complex and mono colored. I guess I am just that special.

K3D

Over spring break I worked with the program K3Dsurf(k3dsurf.sourceforge.net/). I couldn't really find any tutorials. The ones I found you had to be invited into the forum, so I just messed with it and learned as I went. I am not much of a math person so the calculations where a bit difficult to figure out what was going on. After I made something that I liked I put it in Autodesk Viz and rendered it. When I put it into viz the front layer was always transparent and I couldn't make it stop doing that so the final rendering came out looking funny. I then put my renderings into Photoshop and blended them. K3d surf was a very difficult program to do a really unique model. I spent most of my time trying to figure out what in the world was going on. I would add part of an equation here and there, look at the model, and try to figure out what I just did. Maybe if I was decent at math it would have been easier, but it is not my strongest subject(its right up there with foreign languages).

rendered tower

The building I created and rendered is a very tall building( as you can tell because the man is pretty much a dot). I first designed it in Autodesk Viz, then created an ambient occlusion rendering, followed by a color rendering. I then put both of these in photoshop and blended them. I added a second layer of ambient occlusion because it made it look more realistic(in my opinion). After that I added some green and a few red flowers to my gardens on the top of the building, added a human scale figure, and that is how it got to where it is. I then tried playing with the glass rendering and lights, like Stephanie, but could not get it to work. I talked to her and found out it was because I did not turn the multiplier on the lights up high enough. I finally got it to work. Its not very good but its a start.

Tower

My tower I started working on is a design after several ideas failed. I was also having a problem with the zoom for a while and I don't know why. Anyways, the tower has an open top, maybe for some gardens? besides that it is 500 units tall and has 10X5 unit windows.

Fishy

So I decided to make a fish out of paper. I went to the pet store a few weeks ago and wanted to get a big-eyed goldfish thing but you have to have a 10 gallon tank. Well paper fish don't need a tank, or a bowl for that matter. I built the fish, that we will name Sammy, in TopMod. It took a few tries to get it to work right and it crashed a few times too. Finally I got it how I wanted and got it to work in Pepakura. I then printed it into a PDF and colored it in photoshop.




After cutting it out I glued and taped for a while and Sammy was born! It was so exciting. He then went swimming through some boxes in studio. Sammy is now asleep cause of his long,tiring day.