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Monday, September 17, 2007

Do you believe in...


Not a long post today, but just wanted to log the feelings
I think a lot of us felt today as we kicked off
the start of something magical.

Magical, not in the way we teach (although
I'd like to think the students think the experience is magical),
but in the way it will change
the way media arts education is taught from here on out.
When something as groundbreaking and impactful
as Flashpoint comes to a field as important
and fast-paced as the media arts,
the effect upon the way it's taught from this
point forward will change as if it was done
with a snap of the fingers, leaving no doubt
in anyone's mind that it is the best way to teach this.

I felt the awe and wonder in some of my students that I recognized
as feelings I felt when I first started working in the industry (but
NEVER felt when I was in school). I am so happy that they are
able to have that experience even before they enter the fields of
their choice. It's that excitement, that sense of wonder, of, yes, MAGIC,
that will have to carry them through the hard 2 years that lay ahead of them.

I have no doubt that it will be enough. More than enough.
The way I felt today, and the looks I saw on their faces,
were proof positive that this journey
we are teaching them how to take,
will be one that they will
never forget and will serve them
for the rest of their professional lives.

Congrats to our students on their first day!

All of us at Flashpoint are so excited to be helping to teach them to be
the artists they want to be, and in doing so, they are helping us to be
the type of teachers we want to be
(and the type we always wished we would have had).

10 comments:

cubedude89 said...

So I see you started off the school year very nicely. I can feel that Flashpoint is going to be such a great place. Wish I could of attended today.
I already cant wait for more posts on what you guys are upto there.

For now its time for me to learn the basics of XSI's rigging/animation system so i can finally get working animations in half life 2.
Maya + Animation + Half Life 2 just does not mix at all haha. :(

Good luck to you and your students, I wish you a successful school year.

cubedude89 said...

Hey Mr. H
I need your expertise.
Ive searched on xsi help and online but cannot find how to delete a bone in xsi. Ive tried just selecting it and pressing delete or backspace. ive also tried bringing up the explorer and selecting the bone and pressing "F" to find it in the explorer window and trying to delete it from there but still didn't work.

please help. :)

Thank you so much.

Perry Harovas said...

Well, two things.

Are you trying to delete a bone
that is part of a chain of a lot
of bones, or are you trying to
delete ALL the bones in a chain?

If its deleting one bone, leaving
the others alone, you have to
select the one bone, and separate
it from the bone chain by selecting
SKELETON > BREAK CHAIN AT BONE

If you want to delete the whole
chain, right click on any bone,
and hit the delete button.

Hope that helps.

Perry

cubedude89 said...

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Right click and delete.

Im having one of thoes "It couldnt be that easy!!!" moments.

It worked. Thank you sooooooooo much

I owe you one. :)

cubedude89 said...

im so happy now. :)

Perry Harovas said...

Great! Glad to help, Dennis.

Good luck with everything. Sorry it
has been so hard to get in touch with
me, but we have been really busy with
making sure everything goes fine
with the opening of Flashpoint.

Good luck with your mod.

Perry

cubedude89 said...

I totally understand. I cant even imagine how busy you guys must be.

The problem now with the sniper is exporting it to smd. Instead of a single mesh and painting bone weights I just seperated the parts of the sniper and enveloped a bone to it. But now the smd exporter will only export one piece and not all the pieces. So either I have to find out a way to get the exporter to spit out everything or i have to combine all the pieces and re-rig it and paint the weights.

cubedude89 said...

I DID IT!!!!! Finally after working with half life 2 for 2 years i finally got a fully working animation into HL2! Im so happy! This time its not a false alarm i actually tested it ingame and have done it now multiple times to make sure its not a fluke haha! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

All I had to do was do a merge of all the mesh and there was a button to transfer the animation data so it wasnt lost during the merge Wooooo

cubedude89 said...

I don't mean to gloat but Guess who will be the first person to release a fully working custom Vehicle in a Half Life 2 Mod! Yes Me! WOOO! That was 3 months of hard work! and now its paying off! :)

Enough about me! How was your first week teaching at flashpoint? Im so curious :)

cubedude89 said...

www.balticforever.com/cubedude89/truck_sniper_test.rar

video if you wanna see the truck and sniper in action. :) (the level is not part of the official mod its just a fun map i threw together to test stuff)