Life in 3D

Tenderloin Field Trip

I’m taking a class called Texture and Lighting I, the point of the class is to (of course) learn how to texture and light computer models so that they look as real as possible. Many a decent video game have been ruined because while the game play might have been fun and the modeling decent, the textures or the lighting, or both, were done badly enough that it affected the players response to the entire game.

For the first part of the class our instructor has given us a model of a street scene that we are going to be making textures for and last session told us to bring our cameras this time because we are going to go on a field trip to take photos to use to create our textures of the street scene. The field trip is that we are going to walk over to the Tenderloin District and walk through there taking reference photos and getting “gritty” shots.

For those of you who are not aware, the Tenderloin district is probably the worst crime area in the entire city. In the last 30 days alone there were over 813 crimes committed there, and this is an area that is only about 8 blocks by 11 blocks. This doesn’t even include homicides that might have happened, that part was disabled on the SFPD website that I looked up the crime stats.

So here is the picture for you – all the students (except for yours truly) in the age range of about 22-25, most of them not even from this country, all walking around in the Tenderloin district snapping photos with some nice digital cameras like a bunch of tourists being artsy because they are looking for things that are ‘Grungy’ and ‘Edgy’ so the street scene that we are doing will have ‘character’. Do you see where this could be headed, or is it just me? I just want to know what kind of person would take his class into an area where assault on a police officer/assault with a deadly weapon is a common theme of any police report for any day of the week.

I think I will just go to class today and when he says “Let’s go” I am just going to say no. I can’t stop him from being stupid but I don’t have to be part of it.

Maybe nothing will happen, and probably nothing will go wrong, but I didn’t survive this long by doing stupid things and relying on ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ to keep me out of trouble. I stayed in one piece by only taking chances when there was a reason to, and getting some ‘gritty photos’ isn’t reason enough for me to walk into a high crime area that I am not familiar with because a guy who has done computer animation his whole life says that he thinks it’s fine.

Yea, this doesn’t look ‘fine’ to me. This is the last 30 days stats from just the Tenderloin. Note that homicides are not included on this chart.

Yea, what a great spot, huh.

**UPDATE**

Yep, I just headed home as we walked out to head over to the Tenderloin.  Teacher wasn’t thrilled, but he did say “Well, you’re an adult so I guess I can’t stop you.”

No, I guess you can’t.

We’re from the Government and we’re here to help…

OK, so everyone is probably aware that student loans for college are all backed by the government (unless you really want to get in even more debt, in which case there are also private loans available too). Well, because the government is involved, there are also some very asinine rules that they apparently set up to make sure that we students are actually going to class before they will give us the money to go to class.

For example, I have started the new semester here in the land of Code Pinko’s and tree huggers but before the semester started I called the financial aid office and asked when I could pick up my check so I could do things like – oh – pay for books, pay rent, buy food. You know, normal stuff that you need money for and that since I was back in school full time that means I can’t work full time to earn money for all those things. Sounds pretty reasonable right? Well, I guess not because even though the semester started at the beginning of the month I was told that student loan money isn’t disbursed until the end of the month, around the 30^th to “Make sure that you are actually attending class and that you don’t waste the money.”

Wow, gee thanks Mr. G-man. I have only had to sign more paperwork for this loan money than when I enlisted in the military saying that yes, I understand I will owe you my soul and my firstborn child but I appreciate you also wanting to be double-plus sure that I was actually ATTENDING class because, you know, I’m only a grad student and I’m not really sure what I want to do with my life yet. That’s how come I got my Bachelor’s Degree (Suma Cum Laude) and then applied to grad school – because I am drifting aimlessly through the world instead of working on a degree that will get me a job doing what I came here for in the first place.

To add to the layers of bullshit, when I mention to the financial aid drone what I needed the money for (i.e. books, food, rent, etc.) his response was “Well, student loans are ONLY supposed to be used for school related items.” Gee, I didn’t know that food or having a place to live wasn’t related to school.

Little asshat pissed me off so much I just gave a long pause and said “OK, since you are obviously just PLAYING at actually working in financial aid, how bout you put someone on the phone who isn’t a total idiot.”

My god how stupid can you be? I know, I am making enemies and there is the old saying of “you get more flies with honey… blah, blah” but I’ve also discovered that if they fear you they will do what you want. So, since they are too dang stupid to do something because they respect me as a student, they now do it because they fear me as the biggest pain in the butt that has ever walking into their office.

Picked up my check yesterday.

Schools Out for Summer!

The last day of school is today and after this I’ll just have work and working out to deal with for about 3.5 months

Or course, I will still be working on Dawn of the Veg over the break because in the fall I have to do my review and that includes having all drawings, turnaround drawings, references and ideas mounted up professionally for display, I also have to have it in book form so the panel can look at it there as well as on two CDs.

Essentially the review is what gives you the green light to go ahead and do your senior thesis project. If the panel doesn’t approve it, you have to go back and do it again until you come up with something that they think is not only a doable project, but cohesive and meets the requirements for graduation. I have all the pieces for my project, now I just have to get them all polished up and ready to show to the world. I think I can do it in three months between work and workouts.

Now, you would think that because of the title to this post I would be rocking to Alice Cooper, but not this time. Right now my mood is more along the lines of Butthole Surfers.

enjoy

Forward motion

Well, progress continues on my computer model of the Camaro.  So close to done and yet so far away.  I decided to post up a render shot of it that I did with final gather.  Unlike the last images I posted, Final Gather takes into account light reflection, bounce, shadows and overall has a much nicer effect as you can see

Still needs wiper blades and the normal mapping on the tires to show some tire tread (normal mapping fakes modeling all those small details, it keeps the file size smaller and the rendering faster)

Course, doing a render like this one takes about 3 minutes for one frame and there are 24 frames per second so you can just imagine how long a 30 second turnaround of the car will take in the end – I’ll probably just start it rendering when I go to bed and pray that it won’t screw up over night.

The P-40′s is close to complete as well and even though for this class we are only supposed to do two models, I have decided to start on a third just because I think I have time to do it.  I haven’t decided if it will be a very large dump truck, a train locomotive, or maybe a tank.  I do know I want it to be a large, heavy vehicle so I can build something that has a very imposing mass to it.

I still have to register for classes so I guess I will do that today or tomorrow.  Should have taken care of it last month, but stuff gets in the way and then I would forget for a while until one morning I wake up and say “Crap, I still have to do this!”

Other than that, I am very happy because now I have a job!!  Borders is opening a store here in Alameda that is about a mile or so from my apartment and I will be working there part time.  No more being unemployed    It’s a good thing.