The Overdue Post

For no apparent reason, most of my friends (save one) have gotten back into updating their blogs with surprising regularity since summer started, leaving me in the dust a bit, as I kinda dropped off the online planet for the last couple weeks. Time to play catch-up. This one will be long, so I'll break it into sections.

Where The Hell I Was the Last 2 Weeks

Nowhere really. I just kinda did nothing for most of it. There were a couple points of interest though. Last weekend I tagged along with my old Scout Troop to visit the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station. Obviously, we couldn't tour the plant itself, but we did get to watch a presentation on how it works that was simultaneously dumbed-down, yet still over the head of anyone who hadn't taken AP Physics. We also got to see the "simulator" rooms where they train people to operate the plant. It was all very interesting.

Other Diversions (Games)

I also seem to have inexplicably gotten back into the PS2 my brother and I share. While getting him something for his birthday at EB, I spotted a used copy of the PS2 port of Splinter Cell for $3.99, which I immediately snagged for myself. Pretty fun game, even if the parking garage level is driving me nuts. (the lightning gets rid of my wonderful shadows! Nowhere to hiiiiiide!) I also have a strange desire to finally play Final Fantasy VII, but used copies seem to have become collector's items lately (at least on eBay). Plus I need to find my PS1 memory card. I also would like to try out God of War (which I saw at college, and it looked great), Ico (which gets so many "unknown masterpiece" reviews it's silly), and possibly Kingdom Hearts (I just need to know why my future roommate was sooooo obsessed with the sequel). Why the sudden console interest? No idea.

My Final Lightwave Project

I came home on the 6th, but the last project for my 3D class wasn't technically due until Thursday the next week, via e-mail. The assignment was to make 3 images that "show the passage of time." My plan for that project was to do a "Star Wars"-ish scene, as sort of a proof-of-concept for my upcoming fan film (more on that in a future post). The 3 images would be like storyboard frames (or, optimistically, DVD frame-captures) of a sequence where a ship lands. When I left SU, things were looking good, as the ship itself was pretty much modeled (though not textured).


However, once home, procrastination reared its ugly head. Due to multiple entirely-avoidable distractions, I ended up doing the rest of my work on the project the day it was due (at 6pm). For this reason I am, shall we say, less than happy with the final results. The ship still isn't textured, and the surrounding world was made in a few hours. The lighting sucks, and the torrential rainstorm (which would have obscured some other flaws) was abandoned when I couldn't get rain to not look terrible in the time I had.

Meh, here's the results anyway. My brother thinks the first shot looks like a cutscene from Jedi Knight.




Yeah... overly dark, simple, bleh. I didn't even have time to use a good quality level of anti-aliasing like I did on the test render. Maybe someday I'll revisit these, but they were apparently good enough for the class, as seen in the next section...

Grades

Everyone else is posting them, so here we go...

Filmmaking: Cinematic Modes -- A
Introduction to 3D -- A
Intro to the Theatre -- A
Adv Acting (Drama Minors) -- A
Writing Studio 2: Critical Research -- A

So yeah. There you have it.

Next Year's Schedule

SU doesn't have a nifty calendar view like some of you (at least, not a publicly-viewable one), but here are my classes for Fall 2006, with the obligatory commentary:

Acting For Directing, T/Th 3:30-5:20 pm
We basically get credit for being the actors in the same directing class that we will be taking a semester or two down the road. Word on the street is that this helps with building a good rapport with the professor. Whatever.

Survey of Theatre History, Mon 6:30-8:40 pm
Another required drama course. At least this one has the same cool teacher we had for our last 2 theater classes.

Basic Social Ballroom Dance, Wed 7:15-8;45 pm (1 credit)
Hey, it's different! Funny story - some guys thought this is a good way to "meet girls". However, it looks increasingly like I already know like 50-75% of the girls in this class. Not that that's a bad thing.

Cinematic Modes of Production, T/Th 6-8 pm
I finally get a production class!!! Yes, the film majors finally get to make movies. Only bad news - although working with actually film is a very good thing to learn, it's expensive as hell. I mean, they charge by the foot for this stuff. Some sophomores I talked to quoted a couple grand for film/developing. Not friendly. I really need a job.

Film Scriptwriting, Wed 2:15-5:05 pm
Again, hooray for more hands-on classes related to my major. And this one isn't even expensive!

U.S. Crime and Society, M/W 12:45-2:05 pm
It's a history class. I needed an elective, and a couple friends and I decided this might be fun.

Piano/Non Music Majors, T/Th 11:55-12:50 pm (2 credits)
I've always wanted to try this. Thanks to some clever talking by a friend of mine, we get to combine these 2 credits with the 1 credit from Ballroom to count as a normal 3-credit elective.

More to Come...

It's currently time for dinner, so I'll finish this post later tonight. Finishing this was interrupted by a last-minute-ish Firefly/Serenity marathon at a friend's house. I'll cover what's left over in another post.

I Feel Special

"CAR 232 - Introduction to 3D Computer Art," the computer art class I've learning Lightwave in, is being offered during the summer session here at S.U. this year. To make people aware of this, the people in charge have been putting flyers all over the Shaffer art building.

One of my renders is on that flyer.

I didn't even know they were doing this, so it kinda took me by surprise when I first saw it. I'm not even in that major, yet they put my work on the flyer advertising the class. That make me feel mildly special.

...and wonder if I was in the right major. :-/

Even More Lightwave

Earlier this week I finished the landscape image I posted a work-in-progress of in my last Lightwave post. Here's how it turned out:It didn't turn out exactly how I'd originally intended, but overall I like the results. The SasLite grass with the sunset lighting hitting it came out particularly well.

Lengthy Lightwave Update

It's been a while since I posted about what I've been doing in my 3D Computer Art class, and with the end of the semester fast approaching, I think it's time for a little catch-up. After my last post, we did a few more fairly simple modeling assignments that I really don't find worth uploading pics of. After that, we moved into rendered images, and things got a little more interesting.

Assignment 3-4 (don't ask)
This had a really weird prompt - we had to create a "self-representation" that combined items that had some importance to us, creating a bizzare creature/character/person that represented our interests. Uh... riiiiiight. We then had to create a simple setting out of additional objects, place the character into that setting, and produce a final rendered output.

After a few false starts (I really hate out-there "artsy" prompts like this), I eventually created this image:


In case you can't tell, the objects included are: video camera, book (on back), keyboard, laptop, LEGOs, pencil (art), light bulb (creativity)... and the hand I made earlier in the semester because I didn't know what to put for the guy's left hand. The hardest part of this project was getting the skelton to work. This was the first character I'd made from a solid mesh, with controlling "bones" inside that would deform the mesh in a "natural" way. Problem was: bones are stupid, and don't know what parts of the body they should affect. I would move the right arm, and half of the right side of the torso would come with it! This project also took waaaay to long to render, as I foolishly modeled the actual raised "LEGO" text on the blocks. I only did it once, then copy/pasted the rest, but the final result added up to a lot of polygons.

Assignment 5
This was a lot of fun. We were supposed to create a scene in which every object was the default "light gray" color. Everything interesting had to be done with geometry, bump maps, and lighting. Since the 3 final renders were to be in black and white, we were told to create 3 distinct, interesting lighting setups. I made a castle/mansion-y interior with a fireplace and whatnot. My first render was a somewhat boring overview of the room lit from various places:


My second render got a bit more interesting, and I played with the volumetric effects Lightwave has (about 1000x more flexible and better-looking than TrueSpace's):


Finally, I decided to try a fairly radical angle with dramatic lighting from the fireplace (turn your head to the left if you don't see it immediatly):


I really enjoyed this assignment, although in retrospect theyre are a lot of things I would have done a little differently, and I never had time to do some of the cool things I planned (chandeliers and such).

Assignment 6 (current project)
We pretty much jsut started this one, so I'm nowhere near finished yet. We're supposed to "...recreate a past environment, room, or space that you associate with." This environment doesn't have to depict a real place, but the final image should "tell a story." The depiction can be abstract, surreal, impressionistic, emotional, or realistic. (Obviously, I chose realism - I want to do CG for my movies, not "explore the human condition" or somesuch) Yeah, this is another wacky "artsy" assignment, but it's vague enough that I can do just about anything and justify it. I chose to depict a landcape scene, with the story being someone who is camping. (for Halapy: I'm basically re-arranging parts of the land around the lake at Heritage, with a few "artistic liscence" additions of my own).

I still have a long way to go, but as of tonight I've made a lot of progress on the grassy hill where the campsite will be (using Lightwave's SasLite hair plugin to make the grass), a pretty decent tree, and a broken-down stone wall. (Why is there a stone wall on this hill? - Because it looks cool there.) Anyway, here's my W.I.P. shot:


Obviously, everything beyond the hill in the foreground is still at a very rough stage. At one point, I tried covering the entire terrain with the simulated grass, but I ran into an internal limit with the SasLite plugin (they have to give you some incentive to pay money for the full version of "Sasquatch"). In light of this, I'm now using the SasLite grass just for the hill, and will find a simple grassy texture map for the rest of the land, since it's too far away to tell the difference anyway.

I also still need to do the water properly, clone that tree about a million times, and add the campfire. All of this while trying to finish my final Writing 205 project, and catching up on play reviews for my two drama classes. This next week should prove interesting...