Re: OT: (sort-of) getting in to game dev

[Tim Thorburn]

As others have said, he should decide what about games he really wants 
to do first.  I'd suggest you point him to some free/open source tools - 
Blender, Unity3D, etc. These programs will often have a vast amount of 
tutorials or user forums available to assist in the learning curve.  
Have him start with those and see what he can come up with - no, he 
won't be making Final Fantasy his first try, but he might at least get a 
basic matching game working first.


If that makes his brain melt, maybe get him to try some game editors, or 
join a modding community.  Games like Torchlight II, The WItcher 2, etc 
are under $20 I believe and come with the same tools the game makers 
used to build the levels.  After he builds a few, and assuming his brain 
hasn't melted, have him put a few of his levels out for the larger 
community to play with and critique.  If the critique makes him roll up 
into a ball sobbing, this is a good sign he should re-think his career 
options.


After a month or so of trying each he's come up with absolutely nothing, 
again, time to re-think his career options.  Don't expect a fully 
working game in this time, unless its purely been copied from a 
tutorial; but it will at least open his eyes to see how much work is 
really involved, and how little glamor there is.


I too would caution against a too narrowly focused school.  I've had 
friends attend Full Sail, and while almost all raved about how amazing 
the program was, it seems that most studios would bring them on board as 
an unpaid intern to complete one small aspect of a game and then move on 
to the next years batch.  If he likes coding, suggest a computer science 
program where his skills can be used for any number of tasks, not just 
games.  If it's the art work he likes, then I'm sure you can offer him a 
variety of suggestions on where to go next.


If there are any game studios in your area, it might be an idea for him 
to contact one and see if he can arrange a tour or speak with someone 
there.  It was definitely an eye opener for me while attending 
University in Toronto to be able to go see two completely different 
animation studios.  The first we saw looked like the animation studio on 
every single behind the scenes DVD you've ever seen; the second had 
about 30ppl crammed into a tiny attic apartment converted to studio 
complete with render farms to make it 40 degrees inside in the dead of 
winter.


Today he also has the option to self publish any games he creates.  For 
a one-time fee of $25 he can begin selling Android games almost 
immediately, or for $99/yr he can sell games on iOS (though be prepared 
for many, many arbitrary rejections from Apple).  I'm not sure how 
things are on the Xbox side of the world, but Sony has been making a 
number of pushes to get Indie game developers on PSN.  Nintendo and Sony 
have both made commitments to bring Unity support to their consoles - 
can't say for sure, but I imagine Microsoft would have something similar 
as well.


Again, none of this will make him rich or have typical 8hr days, unless 
he's incredibly talented and incredibly lucky.  As long as he 
understands that clearly and still has passion for it - let him loose 
and see what he comes up with.



On 6/17/2013 7:42 AM, Paul Griswold wrote:

Hi guys,

My daughter's boyfriend has expressed an interest in getting into game 
development.  He's just a teenager, so he really doesn't have much of 
a focus yet other than "I want to get into games".


But I told my daughter I'd get some recommendations on things like 
what he should study, good colleges for careers in games, different 
job descriptions, good entry-level positions, etc.


So, I'd love to hear what you guys have to say.  Any advice at all 
would be great.



Thanks,

Paul

Re: Octane render

[Tim Thorburn]

Not to derail, but these are fairly common in Australian and Canadian 
schools (moreso Australia) - http://smarttech.com/smartboard  
Chalkboards were phased out in most Canadian schools in the mid-90s in 
favor of dry erase white boards.  This seems to be the next step in 
evolution.


On 2/16/2013 12:39 PM, Gene Crucean wrote:
What do you guys all say we keep these at the same resolution and 
camera angle? :)


Btw, LCD's? Really? Maybe in Japan, or umm the Samsung factory's 
internal school. In America we have chalkboards with the occasional 
projector. Not 200" LCD's. That seems crazy to me. Can someone post 
links to pics of actual setup's like that?



On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 8:21 AM, Octavian Ureche > wrote:


That was an lcd? Damn, i thought it was a blackboard of sorts and
gave it a greenish tint to make it more interesting.
Figures, when u grow up in eastern europe, and you see a
classroom...an lcd in front of it is the last thing that crosses
your mind. :)

On Feb 16, 2013 6:04 PM, "Alok Gandhi" mailto:alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Looks very nice. The light shades seems wierdly transparent
though and the LCD are too green, maybe you changed the
colour. But I like the more contrast.

Sent from my iPhone

On 2013-02-16, at 10:51 AM, Octavian Ureche mailto:okt...@gmail.com>> wrote:


Hey guys,

Here's my take on it with vray in xsi on an i7-3770 at 3.5
ghz (in low priority mode cuz i had work to do in the meantime).
Single dome light with an hdri as color texture, 32 light
samples.
Materials are just vray standards with 32 samples for the
glossy reflections & no interpolation (it's faster, but i
think it is not as accurate).
Adaptive dmc with lighcache and irradiance map (glossy rays
computed from lightcache - faster), and 3 gi bounces (yeah, i
was lazy).
10-15 min setup time. Still noisy, but i wanted to keep it in
the 10 mins range, just to see how it might hold up agains
the other players.
Render is 720p resolution.

Cheers,
Octav






--
Gene Crucean - Emmy winning - Oscar nominated CG Supervisor / iOS-OSX 
Developer / Filmmaker / Photographer

** *Freelance for hire* **
www.genecrucean.com 

~~ Please use my website's contact form on www.genecrucean.com 
 for any personal emails. Thanks. I may 
not get them at this address. ~~

Re: This is why I HATE Autodesk....

[Tim Thorburn]

On 2/8/2013 11:50 AM, Eric Thivierge wrote:
Also any company still working off fax machines these days to receive 
these signed documents are oblivious to the fact that there is no reason 
for it to need to be faxed. Scanners people, their the latest and 
greatest technology!


That companies still use fax machines is incredible to me.  In no way to 
defend Autodesk here, but I've had to send faxes into Apple to 
setup/make changes to an iOS developer account.  I actually had to dig 
out an ancient laptop still running Windows 2000 that had a fax/modem 
built into it in order to send this magical "fax".


Would be awesome if someone pointed out to these technology companies 
the fact that scanners, PDF's, and these tablet things that let people 
"write" their signature on exist.  But hey, the ranting of companies 
demanding "subscriptions" for their software is another topic, and it's 
Friday.  Less anger.

Re: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

[Tim Thorburn]

You can try out the RTM version now and see if it works for you, and the 
software you use. 
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/jj554510.aspx  This will get 
you a 90 day evaluation copy of Windows 8 Enterprise, unfortunately, 
there's no option to purchase a serial number after Win8 launches to 
continue using; but as a trial it's fairly good.


I installed this last nite as a VM on Win7 to play with the final code.  
I have to say, after just a few minutes of playing around I began to 
hate it much less than I did during either the developer or consumer 
preview releases.  Not entirely sure I'll upgrade on day one, but from 
what I read the upgrade price tag will be $40 - cheap enough to pick up 
and not worry about really.


Impressions after a few hours of playing on a VM - Win8 seems snappier 
than Win7, of course this is very likely due to the fact that it's a 
fresh Win8 install, compared to an existing Win7 install running 
av/firewall, backup software, etc in the background.  The Start screen 
compared to Start button will take some getting used to - not sure 
that's the best approach for a desktop atm.  In that vein, full screen 
Metro-style (or whatever it's supposed to be called now) also feel out 
of place on a desktop; some, like the weather app are pretty looking - 
but I'm the user that has many windows open at a time, in Desktop that's 
fine and normal as it is now, however in the Start Screen you need to 
move your mouse to the top left of the screen to see what's running so 
you can either close it, or switch back to it.  Of course, you can also 
just click on a tile, if the program is already running, you'll be 
brought back to the screen you "tabbed out" on.


My prediction is that Win8 won't be overly well received by business or 
pro-users for some time after release, if at all. Business/corporate 
likely won't even consider their next Windows upgrade until Win9.  Home 
enthusiasts may pick up the upgrade for $40 just because it's relatively 
inexpensive.  Tablets like the Surface will probably do quite well for 
those who wish to run their usual software on a tablet (provided they 
use the Intel version; the ARM version will only run Metro-style apps 
and be more like an iPad than a traditional computer).  Odds are Win7 
will become the next XP, until such time as people "get used" to a start 
screen over a start button, or Microsoft allows people to go back to a 
more traditional UI.


As for the Windows vs Mac vs Linux thing ... it's a holy war. None are 
perfect, they all suck in their own special way, down off your high 
horse of superiority, and Coke is always better than Pepsi.  There, I 
said it, now we begin the beverage wars!


On 8/21/2012 7:33 AM, Szabolcs Matefy wrote:


So, the question is if I move to Windows 8, Softimage will perform well?

*From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Martin 
Chatterjee

*Sent:* Tuesday, August 21, 2012 1:06 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
*Subject:* Re: OT: Windows 8 - anyone?

Dan,

cool - have you actually done any production work on this install?

Does opening/saving/merging scenes work for you? And can you 
read/write icecaches?


I personally haven't spent any time trying to get it to work because 
I've read all these reports about these show stopper type problems 
regarding Softimage on Ubuntu...


Cheers, Martin


--
   Martin Chatterjee

[ Freelance Technical Director ]
[ http://www.chatterjee.de  ]

[ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ]



On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Dan Yargici > wrote:


I've made Soft work on 12.04, but if you were to now ask me how 
the bottom line is that if you go through all the Linux related posts 
on Stephen's blog you'll get it running totally fine in the end.


As an aside, I have to say that I love Gnome Shell (just called Gnome 
now in 12.04).  Unity sucks utter balls IMO but Gnome Shell feels 
quite nice.


DAN

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Stefan Andersson > wrote:


Maybe I spoke too soon :) I felt a bit lost, so I'm back into Linux 
now. Trying a bit newer distro (Ubuntu 12.04). I know it can't run 
Softimage, but I don't use Softimage at home that much anyhow.
It was a nice try, but it felt there were too many gremlins under the 
hood that I had no idea of what they were up to.
Too many reboots and too many processes that started working for no 
apparent reason, and popups, my god it felt like using firefox 
without a adblocker. But besides that it was a better experience that 
my last attempt which was with Vista.


I'm back home now. Hell did not freeze over, it's still warm and cozy.

regards
stefan



On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Andreas Bystrom 
mailto:andreas.byst...@gmail.com>> wrote:


". So... I've installed Windows7 on my workstation at home. And so far 
I'm really impressed with the speed and