Re: OT: (sort-of) getting in to game dev
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
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 okt...@gmail.com mailto:okt...@gmail.com 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 alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com 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 okt...@gmail.com 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 Vray_Classroom.jpg -- Gene Crucean - Emmy winning - Oscar nominated CG Supervisor / iOS-OSX Developer / Filmmaker / Photographer ** *Freelance for hire* ** www.genecrucean.com http://www.genecrucean.com ~~ Please use my website's contact form on www.genecrucean.com http://www.genecrucean.com/ for any personal emails. Thanks. I may not get them at this address. ~~
Re: This is why I HATE Autodesk....
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?
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 http://www.chatterjee.de/ ] [ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ] On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Dan Yargici danyarg...@gmail.com mailto:danyarg...@gmail.com 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 sander...@gmail.com mailto:sander...@gmail.com 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 andreas.byst...@gmail.com mailto:andreas.byst...@gmail.com wrote: . So... I've installed Windows7 on my workstation at
