Exporting Nightmare

Well, I've spent the last hour and a half trying to export something simple like a door from the Google Sketchup Warehouse, but I didn't get much luck. The first annoying annoying part is exporting the textures. These models use materials and textures that are unrecognized by hammer and hl2, so it becomes your responsibility to export those textures/materials into .tga files. Next you need to create a vmt file using notepad that's named after those textures and add texture information to them. Next you need to export your model into an smd and export again but this time with soften edges. This other one is a collision model and is necessary for compilation. Next you need to place these files in a specific folder, create a qc file using notepad with proper compilation instructions, then run studiomdl.exe with the qc file to compile it. I ran into errors along the way with the textures and didn't get the results I wanted. This process is too tedious to deal with and will be much more of a headache to export the kind of models we made this semester in Sketchup.

Video Rant

Animal Rescue

This past Saturday, my girlfriend and I were planning on going to the Fire-Island Lighthouse to attend the annual ghost story telling at the base if the actual lighthouse. As far as design is concerned, light houses are so interesting and beautiful... any way back to the story. So as we are driving we see a dog on the side of the road, the service road to sunrise highway. Cars were whizzing past and almost hit the dog. We stopped and got out and tried to get the dog to come to us to see if it had a collar, it did not.  We checked the surrounding area for people looking for a lost dog, there was no one. No signs no nothing. W decided to take the dog along with us to the lighthouse because we were already on our way. She never pooped/peeped/ or barked once in the car. That night we brought her back to my girlfriends house to get her all cleaned up. It took two baths to clean all the dirt and grime off of her. While washing the dog I noticed that she was infested with fleas. She was in pretty bad shape. I cut her hair and tried to get out as many fleas as i could. The next morning we went to Petco to get her flea medicine and shampoo. Again i bathed her and took care of her. We even bought her a little sweater. Seeing as it was Halloween and my girlfriend and i were being the dead Dorothy and Scare Crow, she was a perfect addition to our costumes, we now had a little Toto. On Monday we took her to the vet top get checked out and scanned to see if she had chip. Not only was she in great health and chip-less, the vet said that she was clearly abandoned and left for dead. Lucky for us we found her. She is now an official member of the family, her name is Minnie and shes the sweetest little puppy ive ever seen. People who mistreat animals need to be shot.

Art Show

So tonight at the University Cafe they had an art exhibit that i decided to go to. It was actually pretty cool i liked how they set it up by having some of the pictures on strings going across the room. I was surprised at how good some of the art was

Concert space

so this is my concert space its very open and i tried to keep cost in mine, i figure it would b at night so i had the only lights b light bulbs hanging on strings to give it a cool glow/star effect i figured it would be in the desert so it would just be vast nothing and open space thats about it

Nice Weekend

Finally finished setting up in west. I had my room reassigned into West and had to move everything from H-quad. Really enjoying it and getting better sleep, should help me with my studies. I've been doing a lot of thinking and self observation lately. I really notice how I take on different personalities and emotions when talking to certain people. I also noticed how much anxiety really controls me. It's also so easy to make excuses when I'm facing fear, but for some reason I make that excuse a truth to me and completely ignore the fact that I'm avoiding it. Social anxiety is such a problem and I'm interested in trying different things to overcome it. Many people say that the only way to conquer fear is to face, and I believe that. I'm trying to get myself out more and trying to meet more people. Sometimes it's a little hard to socialize here though, a lot of people just sit in their rooms with their doors closed. Really get's depressing sometimes, but that's why I need to get out and do something with myself. Didn't mean to ramble on, but it's something I've been thinking seriously about.

Hammer Time

Well, later today I will be testing out importing Sketchup models into hammer. Quite a complicated process which involves many steps, but if done correctly we can actually import our models fully textured. The tutorial seems pretty simple to follow and we will hopefully be able to find a quick way of accomplishing this. Wish I had more time to put work into this and my models, but this week has been pretty hectic. Between midterms, projects, programming assignments, and my new room assignment, I've had no time for anything. I have to move out of my building this weekend and that's going to be an annoying process. Well let's hope for the best and pray that we don't run into errors during the exporting process.

Abstraction

This is my abstrtact stuff

Textures

Here are some textures i put together in windows movie maker

Touch Screens

We were talking about how we can edit the way that children learn.. i think it would be cool if the child's desk was touch screen and the teacher can read w.e. the children right, perhaps it shows up on the board. I know the droid uses heat sensors to have a touch screen. I also found these 2 links that show how to make a touch screen table or touch screen whiteboard for a decent price
http://current.com/technology/90058495_how-to-save-money-and-get-a-cool-interactive-multitouch-display.htm
http://current.com/1tk624c

Small House

this is the start of my house still needs some work but i figured id get on it

greenhouse transparency

the link didn't work before...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gVa6-UYNJ4

greenhouse transparency

textures

here are some textures. i like both hard floor and rugs. rugs are soft and warm but if u have a heated tile the floor can be really warm. Going to try to find some more textures and maybe mix some together.

cable car rooms

I made this four room cable cars like a mini hotel. I added a bedroom with a bath and bunk bed. The other room has a fridge table and stove for eating. there is also a game room and television room for relaxing. The game room has a pool table and pingpong table. I still want to add a couple of things to this but here it is so far.

Textures in Sketchup

cargo room shape

This is the part of my cargo home. I didn't want to make it so simple, so I put them one on top of the other. I just need to find stairs or something cool to go from one room to the other. I also added different shapes of orange going from darker to lighter as it goes higher. 

transparent progress

This is part of my transparency model. I put a polygon on the picture and pulled it out. Then I put all different shapes throughout the model inside. I used the blue/green theme and just played with it. I also used the free lines so that I could make custom lines to make it not as straight edge. Next time I want to make it bigger with more shapes and things inside the bigger polygon.

Theatre sets

In class the professor talked about set designs. He showed us different pictures of various set designs that he had gathered together. The thing about designing a set is that you have to be able to catch the attention of the audience within the first couple seconds, but you also don't want it to take away from the actual performance.  There has to be some equal medium between the two so that the show, play, performance, etc. can amaze the entire audience.  Throughout the course of human history theatres have always been an important part of our culture. There are many possibilities as to why that may have been bu the most import reason is that they amaze us and keep us interested. Think about anything you have done in your life, much like a theatre you asses the situation or whatever it might be. Within the first couple seconds you have an idea of what is going on. That might be one of the reason people stress so much about first impressions because people judge you and asses you when you first meet them and if you don't amaze them and keep them interested they'll want nothing to do with you. Just my thoughts...

dream

Getting ready for bed, I walked into my room with a glass of water, turned on my ipod and set it to sleep in 30 minutes and I told myself that I had to dream about something. Now usually I never ever dream. Once I fall asleep I am put into a very deep sleep until the next morning when my alarm goes off. 

When I drifted to sleep I obviously didn’t dream right away. I was way to tired to think of anything but sleep. Dreams only last a few minutes and feel as though they last until eternity. So when I awoke from a dream that was very real I got so confused. 

I dreamt about going into town and getting a tongue ring. Now I know it seems like its some stupid dream but I looked on Dreammoods.com and sure enough there was something about tongue rings. I felt that pain in the dream and immediately woke up right when the needle was going to go through me. It meant that I had to talk to someone about something very important, and I did. I went days without talking to this person and the dream kept on coming back. Once I did after I got really freaked out I felt like all the wait was off of my shoulders. I went back to sleep hoping I wouldn’t have this dream again. 

When I fell asleep I had a similar dream, not a nightmare, but a dream where they were taking my tongue ring out. This symbolized that I had talked to my friend and everything was going to be okay. I never knew that dreams had such meaning to it. Even when you’re asleep your brain works till no end. I hope I have more of these dreams so that it’ll help me figure out what I have to do with my life. 

transparent

Sunset

I finally finished the short clip of my version of textures of time. I shortened the recorded video from 20 minutes to a minute. The actual "texture" parts are really unsteady and they might hurt your eyes a bit because I was recording the whole thing free hand, apologies.

Created with: Windows Live Movie Maker

Music: Instrumental version of Hoppipolla by Siqur Ros

Textures of Time

Ever since we were assigned to find "evidences" of textures of time, I was thinking what constituted it. I could never fully grasp the idea of time having a texture - after all, time is not something physical. That's what I thought. Time affects everything and it affects us. It is only through the passage of time that we can see changes and movements. So I thought, if it is time we are looking at, why not observe the most basic but fundamental evidence of time? It's something humans have used centuries ago to keep track of time. No, not the sundial but the sun. I wanted to record the movement of the sun when it is most striking and beautiful - the sunset. (I've thought of dawn too but I just wasn't up to the task of waking at 5 or 6 in the morning - who would?)

So yesterday, I watched the sun set on campus. The sky was clear and it wasn't too cold. We chose a spot behind the stadium grounds. I had my camera and my phone to catch the moment. I brought a friend with me to take the pictures with the point-and-shoot camera while I take the video with my iPhone. We started filming at 5:55pm (according to the Web, sunset in Stony Brook would be at 5:58pm). The battery of the point-and-shoot camera ran out after 5 minutes. I had to hold my phone as steady as I could for who knows how long without making so much noise so my phone wouldn't catch it. It definitely wasn't looking good.

After exactly 20 minutes, I stopped recording because my arms were getting numb and I was starting to shake (I should've used a tripod but I wasn't thinking that ahead). But all that wasn't for naught. I knew I caught a really good footage (minus the shakes) when halfway through the filming, I saw the most amazing thing - the atmospheric effect by the setting sun. It was so beautiful I kept on mouthing to my friend (remember I was afraid to make any sounds?) the words, "OMG! That is pretty!"

So yeah, I downloaded the video and the pictures in my computer to post on this blog but an idea came to my mind: rather than just posting the pictures and video, I'll mix 'em together and make a short presentation. 'Til later.

Performance Space

Close-up video of the lines and depth of my performance space.

Transparent Shapes

So for the transparent shapes sketchup project i took a spiral transparent polygon and pushed and pulled all the faces, adding cirlces and rectangles which i then also pushed and pulled. Then i changed the colors and textures on a lot of the faces. The finished product is this massive, obscure see-though mess of shapes.

Pumpkin Blaze

Seeing as Halloween is one of my all time favorite holidays, and fall being my favorite season, i figured I would share with you one of my yearly traditions. If you are a fan of carving pumpkins and decorating for Halloween, then you should definitely check out what im about to tell you about. For the last couple of years my family and i take a little road trip up to Sleepy Hollow NY, yes the town where the legend of the Headless Horseman originated, to attend the annual Pumpkin Blaze. Picture a multi-acre farm, filled with thousands and thousands of professionally carved pumpkins. Im not just talking about silly or spooky faces, im talking about life sized themed carvings sometimes comprising of multiple pumpkins per piece. You walk through the displays, at night of course and can take pictures and videos of the lit up pumpkins; it truly is something you all should go and see for yourself. My favorite piece, being a fan of medieval times and folklore, is a life-sized dragon. This piece is made up of about twenty to thirty pumpkins all carved together to create the masterpiece.  Like i said the event is held every year however tickets sell out very quickly so if you are interested in going next year, do some research and book reserve your tickets as soon as possible.

Textures of Time 5 and 6

Textures of Time 3 and 4

Textures of time 1 and 2

textures

 

Ripped from YouTube, edited in Windows Movie Maker.

Texture/Hammer

So here is my second texture video. I placed my phone on top of an hour glass and recorded it. I increased the speed of the video to show the sand deplete quickly. I wish there was better lighting though… On a side note, I’ve been messing around with Sketchup’s vmf export tool. It really is very picky with what you can export, especially if you import custom models from the 3d Warehouse. Once again I want to explore use smd file types to import models into hammer, but it’s a pretty complex process. I just found a website that gives you a tutorial, so I’m going to have to follow it carefully and hope for the best. If I can successfully compile the model into an mdl file, then we shouldn’t have much issues using hammer to make our models playable in game. It’s a pretty annoying process though and requires many steps. Once we figure it out, it shouldn’t be too hard to do it again.

space videos

Here's the Quicktimes of my room and performance space that I hadn't gotten around to uploading.

the first after the game.

...this is the first.