Week One: Creativity, C#, Flash, and Houdini
This is it. Here we are. Week one of Graduate school. I have stuffed my brain as much as possible for the week, and now attempt to regurgitate it on the internet. The title is pretty self-explanatory.
Creativity
What is creativity? Is it a talent? Is it a skill? Is it something that a person can learn? Production with Rick Hall delves into what makes an idea unique. What makes a person creative? His stance primarily is taking a common knowledge concept such as a Detective, and fleshing out qualitative aspects so far that they then relate to something else. If we think of what we expect a type to be and then build on that. We can find qualities that may have previously seemed unrelated and connect them to create a twist on an archetype.
Mind-Mapping
The argument is that the only difference between a creative person and a non-creative person is whether a person is able to quickly utilize this process in their head, or write it on a piece of paper.
I like this way of thinking. I find myself doing this frequently without even realizing it.
C#
Paul Varcholik is teaching Tech Production I. In this class we are starting at the very beginning of scripting in C#. I can even show you how basic we started.
Pretty complicated right? :P As you can imagine here is the output.
Paul is great. I had written in C# before, but there were a lot of aspects I didn’t know about it. For instance, C# is not a native language. Meaning that it is not run natively on the computer. A virtual machine instead processes the code and outputs the result. This has both positives and negatives. The primary positive is that for more novice scripters (like I), you don’t have to worry about coding something that breaks your computer.
Overall, I am very excited about this class. I’ve always been an admirer of machines. If by admiration, you associate ripping apart the home VCR/XBOX/Anything Mechanical and then doing my damndest to rebuild it.
Flash
In a way, this entire blog entry could be entitled Hello World. As the rite of passage in any coding langue Hello World was again made in ActionScript 3.0.
Nothing complicated again, added an Evaluate Method that checked to see if something was true and output “This is True!” if it was. Again super basic, but since we are learning multiple languages simultaneously, I’m glad we are starting from the beginning.
Finally, I am currently in the middle of a weekend long Houdini intensive. If you haven’t heard of Houdini, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s basically designed for creating artist tools in large corporate environments. A lot of CGI companies use it as well as game development studios. It merges a lot of the design tools given to you in programs like Maya with in-engine tools like procedural generation, water FX, particle FX, and more!
Check out my multi colored procedurally generated forest!
This is only one of the awesome things we did this weekend with Houdini. BTW, all of this generates on the fly. If you decide you want 100,000 trees punch the number in, press enter and BOOM. Of course, this is dependent on the processing power of your PC.
Overall, this first week has just been amazing. I am excited to be diving into my first Rapid Prototype next week. Keep an eye out for an update!
