I’ve been doing a couple of freelance projects lately. The first has been modelling seed pods for Shape of The World.

Shape of The World is an independent game under development here in Vancouver which was Kickstarted last year and is expected to be released later this year. Hollow Tree Games Inc. plans on releasing the game for PC, Mac, PS4, and XBox One; so if you’ve got any or all of those platforms at your disposal, I suggest you give it a go when it’s released. It promises to be a fantastic exploration game where procedurally populated landscapes will unfold you as you immerse yourself in it’s unique embrace.

The second freelance project I’ve been working on is teaching the Houdini 1 course over at VanArts. As you may be aware, once upon a time, I worked over at Side Effects Software Inc. as a product specialist. Part of my role there was coming up with educational material. I’ve always had a belief that illustrating simple step-by-step instructions that provide a specific result is a poor way to teach as it provides but little understanding of the decisions that lead to that specific result. Instead, I prefer to encourage exploration of a wide variety of tools so that students understand that they can tackle a problem from any number of directions.

I had taken a bit of a sabbatical after working on Ender’s Game and quite honestly fell behind in Houdini-land. Working on the seed pods, felt like a great way re-familiarize myself with Houdini. I really enjoy working on effects in the geometry context of Houdini, more-so than simulating. I think it’s fantastic the way that you can access and manipulate data in Houdini, and feel that anyone who wants to use Houdini should spend time in the geometry context pushing points around with the modelling tools. To that end, I decided to get my students to model some seed pods too. Learning the difference between HScript, VOPs, and VEX Snippets; Edits and Transforms; Lines and Curves; Metaballs and Particle Fluid Surfaces; Extrudes and Poly Extrudes; etc., etc., etc., can only help with one’s understanding of Houdini.

If you’re keen to get into Houdini, I’d suggest you do the same. Go on the Googles, find yourself some very simple reference, and get started! Learn how to model! And do it procedurally! Learn how you can parametrize your workflows, and create permutations intelligently rather than by brute force. It’s a fun exercise, and a great place to start.

Here’s a time lapse of me modelling a Soy Pod. It might not be the best way to do it, but it’s an unrehearsed video.

If you enjoyed that one, you might also want to check out the Mahogany Seed that I did late last year in the same style. Be warned that it took a little more fussing at first to figure out the direction I wanted to take, so the first third of the video is me just trying to figure out how to get the model to work procedurally. But that’s part of the charm, I think 🙂

I already know what I’ve been up to for the past six months, so I’m not going to do a re-cap for the imaginary audience. I’m just going to start in on my new format. Blogs are for bitching and logging! No real bitching to be done today, so let’s just do some logging. Going forward, I’m going to try and make regular use of my blog for keeping track of things I’ve learned. It’s mostly for my benefit, but you’re welcome to read it too 🙂

I’m starting to get back into learning Japanese again. I first took a course back in 2004 (I think) and another one in like… 2009. Needless to say, I’m rusty, so I’ve been doing a little bit of research on how to get back into it without doing it formally at a night class. I’m already teaching twice a week and now that I’ve got a kid, I’m reluctant to spend money and go out at night. So I’m going to attempt to do it on the cheap.

I’ve already got a couple of resources to work with. I bought “Human Japanese” a while ago and from what I can tell it’s a good resource. I think I’ll start there. Here’s some of the other resources I’ve come across recently while stoking my Japanese embers.

– Japan uses a different paper size than we use in Canada. Here the standard sheet of paper is simply called “letter”. It’s 8.5″ by 11″. That’s right, I’m Canadian, and yet can’t measure paper in centimeters. At any rate, if you want to prepare a resume on paper that will be printed in Japan, better to make sure that your paper is formatted for A4 size. That’s 8 1/4 by 11 11/16.
– speaking of resumes, here’s How to Write an Effective Cover Letter and a list of some common phrases. Here’s one phrase in particular I expect to be using for quite a while longer: わたしは-にほんごが-まだ-へた-です。
– I mean to check out some of the Learn Japanese Pod content. I’ve tried Japanese Pod 101 and don’t enjoy it.
– I think it’s too lofty of a goal for me to take an equivalency exam this year. I’m way too rusty, and busy to be able to cram enough. But http://www.jlptstudy.net/ seems like a good resource for studying for the exams. N5 is the least fluent, while N1 is the most fluent. This is an official trial exam when the time comes that I feel comfortable reviewing for N5. This appears to be relevant to proficiency exams and teaching material for Japanese teachers…. but… I only know this thanks to google translate. Definitely not ready for this yet.
– When the time comes though, here is the official site for the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test.
– My buddy Matt, who is quite proficient has recommended these books: Japanese Expression Sentence Patterns, Japanese sentence pattern dictionary, Teach Yourself Japanese, along with the above proficiency test resources.
– Pimsleur seems highly recommended on the internet… but… I’m not completely convinced. There seems to be a fair amount of criticism of the actor’s pronunciation.
– r/learnjapanese seems to think that Anki is one of the best tools out there for learning… so I think I’ll give it a shot.
– And tofugu seems to have a great list of resources. I’ve been hearing about the Genki I book it recommends… so maybe I’ll get to that after Human Japanese.
– I find “life hacks” to be rather dubious… and often common sense… but that said, I haven’t learned a language since I learned my native language 🙂 so I could use a few tips. JapanToday.com has their own set of tips. Probably the most likely tip is what injapan.gaijinpot.com states: “not only is there no best method, but it almost doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you do a lot of it”.
– I really want to believe that All Japanese All The Time is a great resource. I’ve seen it recommended almost as though it were a bible… but the organization of the website makes it really difficult for me to read.

So now that I’ve been able to de-clutter my bookmarks bar on my web browser, lets look at what my strategy is.

– I’m going to start with Human Japanese. An hour a day seems doable.
– I’m going to try and play some games in Japanese. I was downloading Fable – The Lost Chapters while writing this post, a game I already own, haven’t played before, and according to Steam I can play in Japanese. This is going to be grueling and time consuming as I don’t know enough Japanese to make it through a game right now.
– This means making heavy use of the flash cards via Anki, I think. Along with constant hunting in a Japanese dictionary.
– I’m going to try and update the blog as I learn stuff to help re-enforce it.

I’ve decided to take the plunge and record another game dev update video. This time with audio. Having free time that aligns pretty much with my son’s nap time, I was very hesitant to record any audio… which made videos no fun. But I’ve got a new mic that lets me talk much more quietly, and Laz sleeps much more regularly, so I’ve now got the confidence to make this regular.

I’ve been busy in the past month updating my files to Unreal 4.8, getting a versioning system in place (I’m using Perforce with OneDrive for versioning and Cloud backup), and of course learning more things in Unreal so that I can actually eventually have something that resembles a game.

You can see it in action here:

Some of the new stuff since the last video include:
-Getting a different mic, suitable for my recording needs
-Porting from UE4.7 to 4.8
-Moving to a persistent level system which includes loading/unloading, persistent bg music, matinee screen fade when changing levels, multiple doorways doable per level
-Quick save prototype that lets your character resume at the same location when loading a game
-NPC that moves to scripted locations
-Inventory / Crafting system prototype based on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ot5udsHFVw

I’ll likely spend a bit of time refining the inventory this week, but hope to only fix some glaring problems before spending time with dialog. The dialog system I’m looking into uses spreadsheets, which I think could be beneficial to add to the inventory system… so it’s not worth polishing too much until I can look into that.

See you soon!

Last time I updated the blog, I had a kid. This has not changed, I still have a kid. What this means is that my spare time has suddenly diminished below what I feel is humanly acceptable. So the only choice I seem to have, is to stop being so damned human.

I’m working on Game Dev once more. Both for my day job, and my night job. During the day, I’m working as a VFX artist in Vancouver once again, but this time on a game project that I’m pretty happy to be a part of! I’ll leave the details vague on that as my website really isn’t intended to be a bragging and or venting place regarding the ole 9-5.

My night time work, however involves A: making sure that my wife gets time to work on her shit (meaning I’m on baby duty), and B: attempting to squeeze in whatever bit of productivity I can when the young’un is asleep. Let me say this: being a parent has taught me time management. While I was able to throw my time onto whatever I wanted in the past (largely resulting in playing video games) I’ve come to realize just how precious a commodity time is. I feel like I’m much more able to just sit and focus now than I could this time last year.

So, hopefully this means you can expect me to once again make some regular noise here as I tinker on a side project. No more travel vlogs for me. Those things were boring even me, so I can’t imagine what kind of torture they must have been for someone *else* to try and watch 🙂

Enough rambling though. As I said, time is precious.

Here’s the playlist I’ve got up on YouTube covering progress on the game I’m now trying to prototype. As of this post going live, I’ve only got two videos. Things I’ve blocked in so far include: Character movement, with a locked 3rd person camera. Being able to move an object around the environment, and a day/night/year system that tracks whether the user is in the northern or southern hemisphere and behaves appropriately for the time of year.

I’ve also got Perforce set up and running to manage file versions though that process isn’t covered in the videos.

I’ve got a new addition to the family!

We had our son earlier this month, and as you can probably tell by the hour at which this blog post has been created, he’s done wonders for our sleep habits. We decided to name him Lazarus Soren Phoenix, mostly because we just like the combination of sounds. We wanted something unique, and something that would stand out a bit. While some cultures feel that a child should inherit the mother’s last name, and other cultures feel that a child should inherit the father’s last name, others still take their names from religion. Back in the day many last names were derived from the town the person hailed from, or what they did for a living. When people moved to new countries, spellings were often altered. With all this lack of convention, we decided that there wasn’t any point in sticking with any one convention in particular and decided to give our son his own last name.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this little guy turns out!

Onesie purchased from: Mami Origami
The background is by: Vecky Graphics ~ 03/23/2012
License: Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Non-Commercial

Back in September, my wife (Andrea K. Haid) started a podcast called The Animation Workout. Andrea’s a 2D animator who graduated from Sheridan College’s final year of the Classical Animation program and has since worked in Ottawa, Vancouver, Toronto, and San Francisco as a character animator for television and video games. She’s got a couple of hours of content up now including interviews with the amazing illustrator – Deanna Marsigliese, and brilliant animator – Joanna Davidovich.

If you’re a fan of podcasts, why not check it out? You can visit her website directly, or subscribe on iTunes if that’s your thing.

Long time no see!

Between preparing for the impending arrival of a newborn child, creating an online Houdini training course for fxphd.com, and even doing some classroom training at Lost Boys Studio in Vancouver, I’ve been pretty busy the past few months! I feel terribly guilty whenever I start trying to do self-promotion… even here on my own site. I haven’t bothered to try talking up my Houdini course very much, but I’m pleased with how it turned out. If you want a practical project that will get you started passing data around through every context of Houdini then you should consider checking out that Force Field project I linked above.

As for the Vlog, I’ve still got a bit of my travel through the UK that I’d like to brag about, so without further ado here’s Vlog #15!

I’d been planning on revisiting the Fairy Pools on my last day during my Scotland Road Trip, but with full memory cards, depleted batteries (both biological and technological) and poor weather, I decided to just head back to Glasgow for a bit of rest before continuing the next day to the far south east of England.

I didn’t stop for photos on the way to Dover since it’s a rather lengthy drive from Glasgow, but there’s a few final photos from the Scotland road trip now visible in the album on Flickr.

After Vlog #13, I camped up by Strathy Point Lighthouse. In my naivety, I had hoped to find some Aurora activity; however this is not something one can expect to see in summer. It was still light out after midnight. Disappointed/relieved, I went to sleep much earlier than expected.

I woke up and continued west toward Durness, stopping in for a bit to explore Smoo Cave. For just £4, you can have a short tour of the cave. Definitely worth a stop in the next time you find yourself at the far north of Scotland.

From Durness, it was time to start the trip back south. I took the A838 south toward Ulapool, making frequent stops along the way to look about. Sometimes, just from my window, sometimes attempting a failed time lapse in the rain, sometimes climbing over a fence to explore a castle with some sheep, and sometimes up the side of a cliff just to see what could be seen.

With my goal for day 4 being to visit Skye, I decided just to find somewhere close-ish to Eilean Donan castle to wild camp for the night. I believe I ended up in a nice secluded spot near Loch Dughaill.

Photos can be found on Flickr.

Day two of my four day trip around Scotland saw me drive from Oban to Thurso. Getting up rather early, I headed to Castle Stalker where I was quite eager to record some time lapse.

Despite being out in a relatively remote location, there was still the occasional person around and I saw several boats coming and going to the castle. Getting to see the location, made famous by Monty Python, was great and I wound up with some images that I feel were worth the trip.

From there I headed to Fort William, where I must confess I hastily ate a Big Mac before continuing west to Glenfinnan Monument.

Glenfinnan itself was nice, but my trip was rather packed with places to be and my schedule didn’t afford me the time I should have had to properly explore and hike.

After Glenfinnan, I continued north to Thurso. I stopped only a couple of times.. either for fuel or photos. I enjoyed the Highlands north of Inverness. It was a relatively nice drive and I stopped in at Dingwall for dinner at… well, I’ve eaten at better restaurants.

Unfortunately I didn’t make as good of time as I’d hoped, and as we were past the Solstice, I hadn’t accounted for the earlier sunset than I had been counting on. I guess it’s important to check for the times on these things 🙂 but this means that I only just caught the sun set, and not from where I had hoped to be. Still, it was beautiful.

Be sure to check out the photos on Flickr!

I decided to make a four day road trip that would take me to some of the sights which were left on my to-do list before my time was up in Scotland. Leaving Glasgow in the early afternoon on a Monday, I made my way south east to Melrose, before heading north west to Oban.

Don’t miss diving up the east side of Loch Lomand, it’s quite beautiful!

I didn’t get many photos this day, but you can check out some of them at my flickr page.