C++ Game Project

12:36AM

Right now, our course group is working on a C++ text based game, and we are all excited about what we can accomplish. My group is working on a story based horror game, and are currently having difficulties getting what we want out of our program. Bryan's group is developing a game called The Fast and the Furious Food Factions. Sounds cool.

Just went for dinner at Vil'age for my SIGGRAPH meeting. We were discussing about our presentations regarding our trip next week. Heard that its on Wednesday at 10AM.

So tired ♪

National Day

Returned from the US Yesterday. Too tired to blog. Got com skills and C++ test tomorrow. Will update soon on details about trip ♪

More SIGGRAPH goodness!

Tuesday, 1 August 2006
At SIGGRAPH, I attended talks on computer graphics. Here are some notes that I have taken from them. If you have trouble understanding, feel free to send me an E-mail or use the tagboard.

8:30am-5:30pm
The Art of Storytelling
Room 205

The making of 458 nm, a short film

· Made during first 5 months at Filmacademie
· Uses strong images presenting a dark mood
· Audience plays important role

· STORYBOARD
1. Snails moving toward each other
2. Look like they are fighting
3. Make out
4. Bird eats them

Bird
· Chose bird to be dark and dirty, and constructed the mechanics of bird legs
· Leg is highly undetailed due to fact that only head is shown in the movie

Snail
· Inside of snail hard to develop due to mechanical movement
· Used reference images for snail
· Technique
· Structures inside snails include repeating arms that grow smaller to the back
· They designed the snail’s sex organs, but soon realised that their modeling was not needed. This was to avoid making a porno.
· Initial sketches were not very detailed because it would be hard for modeler to create

· Pipeline rigging and animation
o Used Softimage XSI
o Model shade and rig single elements
o Collect elements in database
o Build mainspine construction
o Connect elements of the mainspine
o Used constraints

Thursday, 3 August 2006


Sigh, the last day of SIGGRAPH. Collected more freebies. Here’s another cool talk I attended. Leaving tomorrow for New York.

1:45- 3:30: Wow! I cant believe my eyes: Innovation and Illusion

· Morphovision

· The presenter is Takashi fukaya from NHK Japan
o http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/morphovision
· co-presenters are Toshio Iwai, Yuko Yamanouchi

· Morphovision is a 3D image display system that can change the shape of sold objects in real time.
o Thus generating a new 3d image, using the afterimage of human vision
o Solid 3d images which can be seen in various angles and change shape in real time.
o No need for special glasses

· Exhibit shows a model of a house which rotates and changes shape
· It uses a DLP projector, projection image, polygon mirror, scanning light, rotating table, and a symmetrical object which rotates at a high speed
· Projection image contrast is high, black image must not be too bright
· The polygon mirror has 12 faces and rotates at 100rpm
· The model is durable, has a symmetrical shape and rotates at 600rpm
· As light hits model with pattern, model is seen to be distorted due to aftereffect of human eye.
· Morphovision only requires simple construction.
o See morphovision booth


Livepic
· Presented by Makoto Katsura and masa inkage
o makoto@makoto.to
· Livepic is a drawing system and interactive display
o Literally breathes life into a drawing
o It uses our breath to drawà direct interaction
o After drawing on screen using a stylus, they can breathe on it to make their drawing move and animate.
o The user can change background of drawing using a card
o Drawings interact with each other with 2 dimensional physics
o Instead of interacting with other devices, there is direct interaction.
o An extension of the conventional drawing experience
o Redesign relationship between canvas and user
o Stimulate creativity and sensibility in childhood, drawings suddenly move
o For play and communication
· Related work includes:
o Thermopainter, daisuke iwai, kosuke sato, 2005
o I/O brush by kimiko ryokai and Stefan
· The inspiration for the interactive display includes:
o Dimension book
o KrHronos projector

· How it works:
o The led brush uses webcam behind screen to detect its position
o Breath is detected by infrared thermography, direction of breath is calculated, and drawing will move if breath is blowing in its direction
· Future possibilities
o Use more physical actions to move the drawing, like punching and hitting a ball
o AIR/BREATH HOCKEY!!!!!!!!!!!


A view oriented interface for block based modeling
· Presenters are Jun fujiki and Taketoshi ushiama from Kyushu university
· “Incompatible Block” is a program for block based modeling
o Relative to the user’s view, blocks are stacked on the same plane
o User can increase number of blocks by creating shadow
o A person can draw directly on the blocks in any view.
o When block shadow is created, block is considered to be floating
o When ending program, shape collapses
· This program was designed to solve the common problems of 3d modeling
o Like the difficulty in determining the true 3d position of an object in perspective view
· On the floor due to intersection of vectors
· When touching other blocks, block position in true 3d space is changed
· NOTE: PERSON IS SNORING BEHIND ME
· http://Tserve01.aid.design.kyushu-u.ac.jp/~fujiki/applications_e.html

Cubee: THINKING INSIDE THE BOX
· The presenter is Ian staveness and Florian Vogt from the University of British Columbia

· Motivated by artisyth project

· Cubee is a system where 3d objects displayed on the surface of a box using an LCD screen can be viewed in any angle
o box can be shaken to see physical reaction
o Only one person can view it at a time
o Sensors track the user’s head position and cube positionà runs to simulation engine and renders in real time
o Enclosed display space with 5 sides and full walk around
o Other real time simulations include fluid and deformable bodies
· Related displays
o Cubby 1997
o Static
o Media3 inami et all
o These use different tracking and mechanics

SIGGRAPH Day 2

At SIGGRAPH, I attended talks on computer graphics. Here are some notes that I have taken from them. If you have trouble understanding, feel free to send me an E-mail or use the tagboard.


In the morning, there was computational Photography which I attended with Russell and Wu Shan. It was pretty boring, with a lot of technical details and stuff. Later, I decided to view the galleries and exhibits.

Art Gallery
The art gallery consisted of works of digital art done by 3D computer artists and painters. It was awesome; there were so many cool displays on the walls. I can’t show you many pictures of them, but I will do my best to describe them in detail.
One example is the

Emerging Technologies
This is the exhibition on new technology. It was very interesting, because of the mind blowing interactive displays and demonstrations.
One demonstration showed how water could be manipulated using electricity. Water was seen flowing from a fountain, and if a person moved his hand near the falling body of water, it would retract. This is because there is a small electric current flowing through the water, which would move through the air, and through the person’s body to the earth. Thus, depending on the closeness of the person’s hand to the water, the water would react and move.
Another demonstration I was impressed with had objects, like blocks and tablets, placed on a lit platform which sensed the movement of the sensors attached to the object. The objects were displayed in 3D on a computer screen, and if you moved the objects on the platform, the objects displayed in the 3D environment would move as well.
Also, there was a display of an unconventional DJ turntable. It used tablets on a platform in the view of a motion sensing camera. Depending on how you moved the tablets, you could adjust the volume of various sound elements like bass and glitches, and change the track to mix. To me, it was one of the few exhibits I wished I could have for my own, and was a serious eye opener on how music artists could change the way they create their content.

Boston

29th July
12:30pm (NY time)

I am sitting on board the Acela express to Boston, and I just cannot wait for SIGGRAPH. This morning, we took a stroll through central park for breakfast at McDonald’s, where the hashbrowns are better than those in Singapore. In central park, there are trees which break the morning sunlight into threads of gold, people who take a refreshing jog and dogs which roll and play on the grass. We only managed to walk through the entrance and make a quick circle back, but the time there was worthwhile. We went back to the hotel to pack our bags, and check out. Eugene calculated that if we took the subway and bought individual tickets, it would be more expensive than a shared taxi ride. So to much delight, we hitched a ride in authentic NYC yellow taxis.
We arrived at Pennsylvania train station. It was a simple building, with nothing about it that would distinguish it from being an everyday office complex. Inside, people shuffled about, rushing to get their tickets and stared at the screens displaying train schedule information. We collected our tickets from the counter, and sat around for about one and a half hours to wait for the 1200 train.
We were not assigned seats on the train, so due to the initial mad rush to get on board, there were only single seats available, separating us onto different cars. Sarah is sitting diagonally across from me, resting her forehead in the palm of her hand and writing her journal in her notebook. Oh wait, she’s actually sketching :P This has been a tiring journey for all of us, and may things get better and better for the rest of the trip.


12:50pm

Arrived at Stamford station. Waiting for people to get off.

5:00pm

Got to Hotel Doubletree in Boston. Cool Roomz. XD Later collected registration pass in Boston convention center. LOTS of heavy books on maths.

30 July

11AM (NY time)

Now listening to talk on introduction to OpenGl programming. Tough to understand.

The City So Nice They Named It Twice! New York! New York!

UPDATE FOR 27TH JULY
Yesterday, we landed in New York with a beautiful red sky in the evening. We were still thinking about how Mun How would be able to meet up with us, but he should be ok. We were so excited about seeing our hotel (partly because we were exhausted :P) and rode a bus to the Holiday In on 57th street.

NYC taxi

Our room. Lazily Blogging at the moment:P

We dropped off our belongings in our hotel rooms. I am sharing a room with Russel, Gabriel and Conghu. We then had lunch at the wonderful restaurant called the Eatery. Ate extra large burgers, wich cost about S$11, but no matter. They still tasted good.

we then had a looong walk to Penn station, because we were not sure about where to go for the Subway. It was a bit scary entering the subway. Lots of shady characters and dark areas.

We pulled though and strolled ovet to the School of Visual Arts. Lots of cool stuff there. It is consists of many different buildings in spread around an area of Manhattan. There are many different courses available to students which are related to Visual arts, like film, photography, animation, computer arts, graphic design, illustration, and fashion, and it is the student's decision to choose which discipline to specialise in. The student can mix and match different

subjects, creating a unique subject combination for the 4 years course. I received a DVD containing the students works, and ill try uploading in the future.

We then rode the subway to the Pratt Institute of Art, where statues were seen in the campus gardens and squirrels climbed each tree. It was quite interesting, and while we waited, we watched student's 3D movies on a video screen. Cool stuff.

After the tour, we wearily rode the subway (again) and struggled to get back to the hotel. Fell asleep straight away.

For more photos, check out My Flickr Photos

28TH JULY

We visited Comcast centre, which is a cable company competing against other cable companies like DirectTV. It was pretty cool, seeing all the hardware and learning how Comcast buys and distributes TV programs. Also, we saw how they made ads for their commercials. The person who made the ad we saw for Comcast was a Korean guy, who had a Megas XLR figurine on his desk. His brother drew pretty well, and made him framed sketches as gifts. Our tour guide was Eugene’s sister, so it was a lucky and convenient experience.
Later, we visited New York University. Saw what they did for their media labs.
We went shopping and I bought some old Charles Dickens novels. I believed they were printed in 1866, but I am not sure. Maybe ill check on eBay :P

5:38PM

We got on the china airlines flight at 2:55. I came early at 12, just as Mr. Eugene wong, our teacher advised.
It is so cool! At first, most of us were seated in front, because we checked in early. However, they shifted us to the back to redistribute the plane load. Now., i'm seated at the back in the aisle row with 3 empty seats next to me!!! Beauty sleep, Hoooo!~

Will land in Taipei airport.

10:13pm

At airport terminal, sitting at cafe. nothing to do but try to connect to wireless net with my laptop. Special thanks to conghu for his network card!


27 July 2006

4:38PM Singapore Time

I am now on board the Delta airways flight to New York. We had difficulties boarding our flight due to one of our team members, namely Mun How, being held back for interview with US customs. Sadly, we had to leave without him. Delta Airways is cool!!! There is cable TV for each passenger, and I am now watching the Adult Swim programme on Cartoon Network XD. Interesting cartoons, like The Boondocks (a satire full of swearing about racism against African Americans) and Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig. There are other channels, like Discovery and History, and CD albums to listen to. Gabriel and Tristan are sleeping, and pretty much everyone is exhausted from our journey. We will arrive in New York at around 7:30PM Singapore time.