Back to the 3DTV's : the final opinion

I can now properly pass judgement on 3D televisions, because i purchased one just before Christmas ha ha!

Yes it was rather and impulse buy but one that i don't actually regret surprisingly. In a previous blog entry "To 3D or not 3D that is the question" i did slate 3DTVs a bit and yes some of the points i made still stand but i can clarify all those points now.

The first is are 3DTV's as pointless as i first made out, well in fact no... I admit i made a bit of a misjudgement about them but granted it wasnt until i took a chance on buying one that i realised this. You get a far better experience on a 3DTV than you do in a standard cinema. Places like Showcase and the Odeon branches whip out substandard 3D movies ( of which i am talking about those that are not designed to be in 3D) and it generates a negative reception towards films and the 3D technology. It wasn't till i visited the IMAX cinema to watch Toy Story 3 that i realised the potential for 3D in media and especially in the field of video games.

Yes it has a long way to go but the picture quality on the TV's is fantastic and the added feature of being able to turn 2D into 3D is far more effective than that used in normal cinemas which just confirms that to them its all about the dough and not the customers (no surprises there no doubt).

In my last blog i had a crack at the glasses and in part that still stands but to clear up a few things they are not as bad as first perceived. In comparison to normal cinema ones they are quite comfortable, so much so i spent 5 hours and had no troubles what so ever. This doesn't obviously apply to everyone some people do get discomfort around the ears, eye strain and dizziness it depends on the person but that's just hard luck.

The glasses do fit comfortably over normal glasses quite snugly to my surprise but i stick by what i said that the sooner 3D glasses are gone the better mostly due to the expense of them at £59.99 a pop for a non rechargeable pair. Companies are working on 3DTV minus the glasses and in fact have some in production but they are to small in size to take off commercially over here in the UK or in the US.

The final issue they seem to have sussed with 3D telly's is how they are made everything dark before, they have fixed this by attaching light sensors that adjust the glasses tint to the conditions of the room. Sometimes this works great other times its a bit dodgy due to light from the screen, but either way its on the right track.

One major plus i have for 3D is as mentioned before with video games. I was playing COD earlier and couldn't get over how much depth it gave the game it was fantastic and can only get better so there is lots of room for improvement.

So overall it now seems more promising than it previously did...

The First Semester - Brief project reflection

Well end of the first semester and what better time to reflect on the 2 projects we were assigned than now.

The first project being the rooftop, my initial reaction to the brief was quite shocked. 20,000 triangles was a tight budget so realistically i should have gone for a format that was better suited to such a low amount like Wii or psp but nooo i thought 'ah what the hell make it Xbox 360 it will be a nice challenge'... I can tell you know that it really really was.

The first obstacle i hit was the piping as i knew this would take up allot of valuable triangles, so i addressed it by using a Lego style system and creating higher poly ends for the pipes to give the impression that the rest of them were allot rounder than they are. Even with this the sheer amount of piping on the rooftop was to much so i did have to make alterations from the reference just so it would make some sense.



I had other issues and had to try my best to get
the assets the lowest i could and bake the detail on. One of the biggest problems i had was the dam water pumps which you can see in the the picture the left. Other than this everything else was relatively straight forward, sure it all needed to be monitored but for the most part it was a breeze.

This still isn't 100% finished as i need to add some polishing touches such as fixing seams and adding some decals which i have factored into my texture budget but its almost there

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The second project was a choice between doing either a sculpt or a vehicle of your choice. Id already been playing around with Zbrush previously and had made a sculpt of Winston Churchill's head so i was more or less fed up of that sort so i chose to make a vehicle. But that wasn't the only reason! I also knew that it was pretty much to me like kryptonite was to superman! I hated modelling cars and planes it just really was my thing so i thought what better way to improve than by taking a gamble on my grades.

If i struggled id have got a bad grade in what is a very important year, this pushed me to better myself in this area and to succeed i needed to make something that i knew i would enjoy making and at first i chose the Honda Civic because its my favourite car and overall its a bit weird, that was until i seen what Amy was doing and from the moment i seen the Wallace and Gromit bike i thought wow what an awesome idea so with her permission i stole the idea but instead made their car.

Amy had a fantastic book which was really a joke book as it was the Haynes manual for Wallace's inventions but it had everything in it that i needed. The budget was 9000 which i actually thought was bang on to create something really nice yet sensible and enough that i could actually try and do the car justice.

So the car is more or less finished just a few polishing bits, the destroyed one is still in the shop having work done but its not far off i guess here's a screenshot of it in unreal. I plan on putting the hierarchy in it over the next week or so so it will be drivable in time for hand in :-).

All i can say is i have thoroughly enjoyed this project and it picked me up from a bout of depression due to the rooftop ha, so all good. The final count for this was 8999 tris so i used almost every triangle to get the best shape i could.

First Blog of Third Year...

Right so first blog of the year and better late than never..

So i don't know how people are managing so far but I personally think this third year is harder for time than the second year was. Annoyingly this is my own time keeping fail and it seems no sleep is the only answer to my problem.

I must say though the highlight of the year so far has been this guruing experience. Not only does this benefit the first years by giving them knowledge we have gained and from a different point of view than Heathers, but it also gives a nice amount of tutoring experience to us as well. On top of all the it also gives the lecturers a better idea of who's got the passion to proceed onwards to year 2.

As I'm sure most of you have seen it's fairly predictable by now who won't be coming back next year from year 1 these are the students who no matter how much you try to help them either they wont truly embrace it or dismiss the fact they need help to begin with when clearly there work suggests otherwise.

This is a great insight into Heather, Chris's and mikes constant yearly battles to get the best out of the students. From this I feel I have grown rather (not by much but enough) as it has made me take a major look at myself and increased my confidence in my own abilities.

So, looking forward to the rest of my final year and though it won't be easy with what I guess is a rather ambitious project it still will be interesting, stressful and hopefully on the rare occasion enjoyable haha.

SO CA-MORON IS NEW PM

Arg why not Clegg or even Brown again... Sure brown looked like a half melted candle but he knew his stuff and the better choice over this toff any day.

Well i think the picture pretty much speaks for itself really on where i stand in this election business my only regret is leaving it this late to bitch about it. Right so where to start, ok first thing is all you people with brains the size of a small rotten peach you are all fools for voting for this man. Right first part over. Second part has everyone here in the UK that desperate or has the Tory's developed some magical device that makes everyone forget about the crap this country went through during the 80's and 90's because of this bunch of blue morons?

Those believing that they can turn this country round you are all so misinformed the Conservatives will suck all the lower classes dry in an anti robin hood manor. An example Ive been throwing about is this mansion tax that the Tory's are lowering yet they are getting rid of valuable child tax credits which many working mums on low pay rely on it. He wants to cut back police and the fire service as well as the NHS.. how on earth can this benefit us especially where crimes concerned as its at an all time low. its daylight robbery from the poorer communities in this country.

Another bitch is those silly live debates.. for god sake please bring it down to just one of them the people in this country have attention spans that cant be measured by and form of clock in existence. Further more it was more a competition of who was the best lier and its quite obvious who came out top trump in the voters eyes.

I'm hoping that Lib Dem's will be the ying to their yang and balance things out however overall i do predict a fail and cant see this lasting long which will probably lead to another election but meh its win win either Cameron will hang himself or he will turn out to be the best prime minister ever.. i think i know which one it will most likely be and I'm happy to watch the political game of hangman unfold :)

Ooo one last thing all those people who moaned about the fact that eastenders was cancelled because of the news get your prioritys right!! Its probably people like you that and got us into this mess! it gets me so mad im gonna stop now before i go into a frenzy oh but this isnt the last of this!!!

Join me at WARPED OUT ENTERTAINMENT

Summary for the year now lets go grab a beer :)

Yup this is it the end of the year.. well almost!
Its the end of assessments for this uni year and i cant help but feel happy at the progress i have made this year. Yes my work may not be in huge quantity's but theres no denying there has been an improvement especially in visual design.

I have started to enjoy visual design this year especially when it comes to life drawing and location drawing and I'm hoping this will carry on over the summer and into next year when hopefully i will have advanced even further in what is by far my weakest subject.

Well the group project I'm very happy with the results that were produced we all worked extremely hard on the level that was on a very very ambitious scale. Its not been easy for anyone I'm lucky i have experience with game engines which gave me a small advantage, but everyone else in my group had never seen their models in a real 3d game environment and with me being techy this made everything for me that bit more interesting as i put in aspects of what i have learned in the past into this project.

I feel very fortunate to have worked with the people i did as i cant knock the dedication that was given. Without it this project would not have succeeded further more i was quite glad we were all thinking on the same wavelength its a key skill to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.

I really must say that Unreal is much easier to work with than the Renderware engine it is one fantastic piece of kit indeed.This experience has given me a much deeper insight to how engines function and has given me a much clearer vision as to how generous i can be with my triangle counts. It also took me back to the basics and polished off those skills such as simple things like pivot points and organising work in a nice clean manor.

I guess the big question is would i work in a group again next year.. and i have to say yes i would!

Another year another rant

Well it's creeping up closer and closer that dreaded time of year again when everyones blood boils from pressure due to one of the worst human conditions, of course what I am talking about is stress.
 
It's a fail or succeed world that we pitifully exist on and only those with the passion and drive to better themselves constantly will succeed in it.
 
There are those who take the ice road where few will make it across to the green grass while the others drown in their sorrows wishing they had done something with their pathetic lives.

I realised that I was one of those on ice blissfully unaware of how thin it really was! I decided that's not the route for me. So ask yourself is it really the route for you? If so you'll need this number when the ice cracks 020 8700 7007... Wow what a rant

Moan of the week... the Nintendo DSi XL!!!

Wow Nintendo welldone for just pissing off every DSi owner out there! Im pretty sure the scene is pretty similar to that of telling the chub club the annual all you can eat buffet is cancelled.. Yup as they did with several of the gameboy models Nintendo have gone and released a new model of their current DS range. Its completely the same as the old only with a bigger screen. Nintendo really should plan earlier i know think ill wait a good three months before buying anything from Nintendo.. Stupid Nintendo now my friend is stuck squinting because of you barstools granted hes chinese (no offence tom) but still thats no excuse...

On the plus side the screen size does make the DS more desirable still wish they would upgrade the hardware though..

The Nintendo DSi XL is out on 5th March in Europe and probably will be closely followed by DSi XXL in June!

nintendo usage count = 6

To 3D or not 3D that is the question??? (contains mild passionate swearing)

Do you really want to look like this guy the last chicken in the shop?

So they are all saying that 3D TV is the next big thing, there’s always some next big thing.. Why isn’t there any next small or medium things? mehh is the answer because it simply has to be. personally i don’t think 3DTV will save the television and its only a matter of time before some weirdo that exceeds my own wierdness and has some musical talent besides the armpit bagpipes or the butt trumpet to come along and make some stupid song like “PC killed the Television lolz”.

I mean maybe its just me but just from my cinema experience’s with 3d i cannot personally stand wearing those stupid glasses that make everything dark and do fuck all if you have the light on or even off sometimes. Not to mention anything short of 20/20 vision renders these things useless and sure you can get glasses that fit over glasses but ive seen people in the cinema wear them and they look such twats!To the degree you may as well stick a pipe in their mouth and called them Gerald (i don’t see the connection either but go along with it) so wearing contacts is the only way out of that fiasco. Now if they somehow develop a way of getting the same effect without putting on those glasses then ill be impressed but for now all they are doing is putting leeches on a dieing peasant. Stupid Victorians

Further thought how many glasses for these TVs are you expected to own? Just in case any of your chav/redneck/gypsy mates 8 kids want to watch something. I’m afraid you sir will have to settle for blurred TV or send the little shits home via use of slingshot! I know what id choose.

“little shits always coming round h….. ” Stupid inner monologue