Day 61 - Jetskiing and Kayaking!

Today we took the day off to do some watersports at the marina del rey. I guess third time is the charm. This time edmund didn't go. So it's me, bing yuan and danial ng. We rented the wet suits at main street and headed down to the marina del rey where we rented the jet ski for an hour and then kayaked for an hour. Jet skiing cost me about 150ish as it includes the skii itself, fuel and whatever other charges.

Jet skiing is awesome. It's different from bicycle as you don't wear a helmet but you are going at speeds that are like 30-40mph with the wind in your face. it's just awesome. And the waves in the sea give it the bumps. We rode from the marina del rey to the santa monica pier and back. We still had more time, we went the other way to the marina del mar. It's such an awesome experience. It is also the first time i'm jet skiing so it was so fun.

We went back to the marina and rented kayaks and rowed inside the marina. The marina itself has a couple wild life which are residents of the marina. They include otters and seals. Will post photos of them. By the time we got back was about 4 so we didn't go to the office. oh well.

Day 60 - Disney Studios!

Today side effects took us to disney studios. to be more precise, the "Roy E. Disney Animation Studio" at burbank. Funnily enough, burbank is also where our files are stored.... it's the nickname of the server.

Anyways, The place is really big and they have been breaking down walls, literally, making people interact more at the office. They also have an internship programme, that is quite competitive. They showed us clips and snippets of their new movie tangled. It is basically a retelling of the rupunzel's story. It was quite a challenge for them to do the hair as the hair is practically an extension of her, almost like another limb. there are scenes where she literrally open doors with it. It was quite interesting.

Sadly today is mckendree's and ben's last day at side effects as they head off to an externship at motion theory. So the office will be quieter for over two weeks or more. Aliza bought ice-cream, brownies and cookies for us to have a little going away party for them. Also, it's susan's last day at the office, so the guys had a little party for her as well. Personally, i do not know who susan is....haha.

Well, ziggy got back to me after we returned from disney. He showed me briefly how he did the particle system before leaving. He didn't have much time to explain it to me as he left early, and also, he won't be in tommorow as he is moving house out of marina del rey. So i guess i'm left alone to solve issues.

Basically ziggy reworked my particle system and gave me more control to tweak it to perfection. the particle system achieved all the things that i wanted from the begining, which is like woah. He did something that took me weeks, in just 2 days. Which is amazing to me. i guess that's what experience does.

I reintergrated his particle system into my current work, and shifted the cameras to bring the full effect in. I started a render to see how it looks like with the new particle system. Will check it out tommorow or something.

Day 59 - Review with Franklin

Today, my head kept on banging. But i went on anyway. I showed franklin a rendered copy of my work which i prepared overnight. It was in .pic format as he had previously requested. He liked the new model for the building and it looked better, but he noticed a jump cut that wasn't good. Ziggy looked at my shot and decided that the particle system i built using the follow SOP wasn't good enough. according to ziggy the follow sop, he says wasn't good as it's uncontrollable. I built the particle system with the help of jonnathan as he says the follow sop is the most ideal. But it turned out not to be. As the follow sop forces the particles to behave wierdly and there is no control.

The rebuilt particle system ziggy says would work using an attractor and run along a curve. He showed me how to do it. But it wasn't finished yet. I left immediately after as i had a head pounding. I was reworking the building and fixing building location as the starting had some issues and retweaking the building pathway. I guess i have to do that tommorow.

Day 58 - Render!

Today, i asked emily for help with copy stamping of my building. One thing while playing with the variable, i noticed that when i upped the value of the number of paper in the building, to about 100 there was little to no performance change. the only difference is the time in render. The original value was 10, but now i set it to 100-1000 it became alot more detailed, and it didn't affect much. Though, on render, it took about 1 min previously to render, now it takes 5. The time increase is noticable, but yeah.... it looks better. I guess i'll show franklin a rendered view tommorow.

I also tweaked the camera abit and solved some minor issues.

Day 57 - Work again!

Days like these are very depressing, it's the day after you comeback from such excitement and fun, and then you immedietely gota start work. But oh well.

Ah if i forgot to mention, on friday before we left for magic mountain, i had started a render so i could look at it on monday. It looked quite alright. The cheats and hacks i did actually arn't so bad, and i'm starting to feel proud of my own work. Haha. Previously i was kinda nervous, if this is kinda noteworthy work, but it's turning out nicer than i imagined.

Today, we found out that nathan would be around to help us for a couple of days, so i could ask him some stuff on how he did his paper project. Aliza sprung a surprise check on us, and a surprise class on us. She wanted Nathan to teach us how to do layering from houdini and then bringing it to nuke. Jon suggested using one of our work as a template for the class. So nathan went around. Edmund's, bing yuan's and daniel's were all liquid, wei thai's is complex l-systems, so he choose mine. Which kinda made things easier on me, so i have something to reference to directly :D. haha.

I explained to him some of the stuff i did, and he went to prepare something, in the mean time, i did some fixes, on the official one in the drive, then after he chose mine, i switched to the one on my drive, and then when he finished with the class, i had a third one, so now i have 3 files with 3 different content changes, and i need to pull them together. I guess i'll do that tommorow. Everybody wants to go back and i am feeling tired....

Oh i forgot to mention, over the last couple of weeks i've been bugging aliza to bug garage games to give us a copy of torque 3d engine. Last week, torque finally responded and gave side effects a licence. As side effects is missing the softwares needed for a game development pipeline, i asked if i could install the copy of torque onto my laptop, today after explaining to aliza why i want to install it on my laptop, she agreed and i got a copy of the engine here. weehee... haha. But she would rather me concentrate on my project for the time being, which i am. But i have something to toy around with while i'm at the apartment and maybe when i'm back in singapore....

Day 56 - Magic Mountain Day 2

as magic mountain we realised yesterday, was a rollercoaster park, there kinda is no point to bring a camera. as we always have to leave it in a locker, and locker costs 1USD, and we have to always change locker at every ride, we probably spent close to 10 dollars yesterday on nothing but the lockers. so we decided to leave the stuff at the hotel when we check out, and head to the park.

Since we cleared all the coasters yesterday, thanks to the flashpass, i must admit it is not as crowded as yesterday today, it being a sunday and all, but anyways, we started off with wet rides this time, at the roaring rapids. then the jetstream then the log jammer. I have to say, the most we i got was from the log jammer and the roaring rapids.

after all of that we decided to cool off with rollercoasters again, we decided to start with tatsu, but it brokedown, so we didn't bother to wait, we took the goliath and scream, then we took the batman again, then terminator salvation, then the riddlers revenge, and then lastly for the day the tatsu again.

we then left the park at 7, as daniels friend had arrived, and we went back to the hotel, picked up our stuff and headed for dinner with them, then heading back to santa monica. and that ends our day.

Day 55 - Magic Mountain Day 1

We reached the hotel by car yesterday. Not bad, it was quite far, about 40 mins drive from santa monica. We checked in to a motel, called rodeway inn. To be honest it is quite crappy, but since were here only for two days and we just needed a place to bunk, it's okay.

Magic mountain is quite a place. almost 90% of the rides here in this theme park is nothing but rollercoasters. Almost every roller coaster has a loop-the- loop and not just one, usually more than just one, unlike disneyland's california screaming.

We got the platinum flash pass at 99$USD a day thinking it came with admission...it didn't. Admission was 40$USD. The woman behind the guest relations counter was quite apologetic, but not like we had a choice. So we got the tickets and went it. We collected the fast-pass, which is like a large tamagochi. The platinum fast pass which we took allowed us to cut the queue like at disneyland and have no wait time. So we can just go straight to the front of the line. The gold fast pass will cut 50% wait time, but there is still wait time. The normal does not cut wait time, but allows you to book a spot and come back when it is your turn, just as if you have been standing in line. The platinum fast pass which we had also allowed us to re-ride the coaster a second time without getting off. This does not include rides that have very high ridership and rides with only one train.

To be honest before the briefing, which we have to go through before getting the fastpass, i didn't know the fastpass is a pager type device, not a card or something like at disneyland. The queue for the coasters here is quite crazy. It's about 1 1/2 hour to 3 hours for a single ride at peak hours. To kinda show you what the rides are like, i've attached links to how the rollercoaster is like from youtube.

We took the X2 first, it is the highlight of the park, in hindsight, we shouldn't have, but anyways, we did by paying 15$ per person at the counter to make a booking. We took the next available slot and immedietely ran to the X2. And by god, the X2 was the most frightening rollercoaster i have ever taken. It's a rollercoaster that swings you in 5 directions and has several loops, it is also going at over 100mph and have you going inverse as it climbed the track. It has flamethrowers, music, lights, etc. It was amazing! lol. I guess in hind sight we shouldn't have taken the most thrilling ride of the park as the first ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVVGHK7Yi7I


Next we took the viper http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1izstI-vCyg video speaks for itself.

then the revolution, the first looping rollercoaster in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrC5WUQczp4

then the tatsu, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eKfNi2T24

then the goldrush, which was quite mild, but it is history... the first rollercoaster built at six flags. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01RHAxIBgyw&feature=related

then the riddler's revenge, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrsvkjhSwEQ, which i must add, is a standing coaster.

then terminator salvation, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrgV2DtwtIw

then we took scream, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-XRAFqjgsc.

goliath, which has a 255 foot drop into a 120 foot tunnel at 85MPH, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTtxFRLIfsA

then colossus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1C0jv2xe9A.

you know, i've never taken so many coaster consecutively in my life before.

then we took the batman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blbHTWZmQeo

before calling a cab and heading back to the hotel.

Day 54 - Work & Onwards to Magic Mountain!

Today, we went ot the office, and the first thing i did was check the render. it looked.... rubbish. lol. There was too much space in between each grid and they were set to render at 2 million grids, and when i rendered it, it took 40 hours to render. So, i guess it would be better to do without. So i chucked that idea aside. And looked at another way to solve my problems. I decided to cheat it by stretching the building to be longer, so it looks like were high up, and it kinda covers up the floor, so there is no need for the floor.

I tried to copy stamp the buildings to give different heights, but that didn't work right, as the buildings were instanced and instances reads from a point object. So i did the next best thing, i put a mountain sop onto the point cloud and tada, varied heights! I know, it's a very half baked technique, but it did solve my problem. Jonathan told me to figure out a way to use copy stamping with instancing, but after talking to Nathan, copy stamping and instancing just don't work together.

The rest of the guys have left the office and i'm left working ot-ing. I was also finding a way to randomize the rotation of the buildings, which i managed to do, will need to figure out for my instancing. I couldn't find a way, so i'll try again on monday.

I discussed with nathan his paper project which he did, abit but i dunno, i think i'll chat with him proper on monday or something. Anyways, That's pretty much all i had time to do today.

Were going to six flags, magic mountain today! Daniel's friend is coming to pick us up later and bring us to the hotel. Can't wait!

Day 53 - Rest!

We decided to take the day off to catch up on some shuteye, catch up on doing reports and other stuffs. Nothing much happened today, and i didn't want to touch work.

Day 52 - Review!

Today, franklin came down as usual and saw the progress, and i shared with him everything i did thus far, he thought some more height in the distance would look better, and that more details in the buildings would be good, since the camera comes really close up to the building, I should look into more higher detailed shaders or textures. Some of the cameras he suggest fixing them as they do not feel continuous.

I started by messing around with the floor somemore after he left. He had suggested why not use the high quality model floor repeatedly, if i wanted a good look that i like at the expense of render time. So i messed around with that idea. I also test rendered a scene with my floor system but on a mountain sop. I'll leave it over night to render and i'll check it back tommorow.

Well that ends today.

Day 42 - Photos

Day 51 - Dailies & Creative Explosion!

Today, I tried to fix the texture on the floor but ended up with something more crap than i thought it would be. So i ditched that. Instead tried to improve render time, as i wait for franklin's opinions and direction tommorow on some of the aesthetic problems i face. Some of which is the repetitiveness of the scene, and also how the floor looks so wierd. I'll probably have to do something about that. I reduced render time, by half by just caching my huge copy network and particle system. So instead of requiring houdini to recalculate each time, it's just reading from file. I use the ROP Export tool instead of the file tool. Apparently according to ben it gives more control. And also i can just do a one button render instead of needing to resimulate it manually by pressing play.

I then split my render down into 4 parts each turning some elements on and off to reduce render time and spreading the load over several computers. Its quite a challenge i think. But it worked, kinda. We'll find out tommorow.

Anyways, what i then did was have my dailies with jonnathan. Jonnathan think's my work is generally done, It just needs polish and he asked me to improve on it aesthetically. I mentioned that i probably need to retime alot of it to give the starting more time for the viewer to absorb in. He advises me that i should make my city more lively and more like a city instead of making it so robotically static. He mentioned paper clouds, paper mountains, even a paper river, with maybe paper boats?

I'll probably discuss this with franklin tommorow, since the last time we discussed he wasn't happy with me adding new things and etc.

Day 50 - Work again!

Aww, leaving disneyland was quite sad. I wanted to stay longer, but oh well. Back to the office as usual, and I continued working on what i left off. Getting the textures working and the modelled buildings in. The first thing i tried was porting in the prototype stacks of paper i made, but as I built the city non procedurally with the edit nodes, it totally screwed up the models. So i had to create a walk around. What i did was, get the points that my buildings are set, then cache them out.

I then used the points to reference and copy the buildings to. I then resized the buildings to match the size the boxes it previously was and realigned the buildings to the boxes. This gave the right locations which the points are at.

This walk around is abit long winded and to be frank unneeded if the whole project was approached procedurally from the start, but oh well. Lesson learnt.

I then used this method to turn the scene to become semi procedural. I tweaked the flight path. I rendered an image and realised something, that my scene is quite plain.... But there isn't much time to look into that now, i'll do that tommorow. gota go, it's late and the guys wants to catch Jackass 3D.....

Day 49 - Trip back to Santa Monica

We were supposed to head back at 8pm, but i rescheduled in the morning for the bus to pick us up at 1 as the hotel wants the room back by 1pm. So we didn't have time to go to disney downtown. So we grabed breakfast/lunch and waited for the bus. We arrived back at santa monica at around 4ish, where we stayed at the apartment for the rest of the day.

Day 48 - Disneyland Adventure Park!

after waking up at 10, we left the hotel and headed to california adventure where we started off with fast pass to california screaming, then headed to twilight zone tower of terror, then rode california screaming, then took another fast pass for it again before heading to GRR grizzly river rafting Co. where we got really wet and saw a couple of nice fat people and one not so fat person. Then taking california screaming after we were wet. After getting mildly dry, we went to soaring over california. where we caught the pixar parade at the sunshine plaza before we went back to the twilight tower of terror. We went back to the hotel and put our stuff down, then headed to disneyland, where we caught elecTRONica then shopping we caught another disney parade then had dinner before the fireworks. Then we took the bobsleigh again with bing yuan, then ng left back to the hotel. We each got a photo taken at fantasy land, then bought the pictures, and headed to the pieace the resistance, the monorail. Then we headed back to the hotel.

Wow that was a really long paragraph and sentence. Well yes, that's the brief gist of it all. I'm quite tired, so i'm going to turn in. Nights.

Day 47 - Disneyland! Disneyland! Anahiem!

Today, we left early at about 6am and headed to Lux Bus's pickup point at Holiday Inn, Santa Monica. We then waited there, and the Bus finally arrived at around 7.30am. The ride took roughly an hour and a half, as the bus picks up other people from other hotels and brings them to the Lux Bus Terminal at anahiem. We paid at the office, then left for the hotel at the Castle Inn, which was right opposite disneyland and disneyland adventure park.

We upgraded to a larger family suite and there is where we stayed for 2 nights. The first day when we arrived, we immedietely went to disneyland. Was really zombieing the first day as we woke up really early. For the first day, we went to disneyland first. It is there that we took the jungle cruise first then, we got wet at Splash Mountain we went to the Indiana Jones coaster ride, then Mark Twain Riverboat, Haunted House. After that, by was really tired. We took the fast pass for the buzz lightyear ride, which was a shooter ride, not before stopping at autopia then heading back to the hotel. I picked up the room keys, put my stuff and we left by at the hotel to sleep/recover.

We then noticed people coming in with haloween costumes, we then got tickets for the halloween event, and continued walking around. We continued with the buzz lightyear Astro Blasters. then we went to finding nemo, submarine voyage, we caught the haloween fireworks spectacular then continuing to matahorn bobsleds, then the big thunder ranch, then space mountain, pirates of the carribean ride. And that was where i gave up. I was too tired and headed back to the hotel while both edmund and daniel continued to the bobslead ride again.

Gosh i just realised that was alot of rides in a day. Anyways, here's to california adventure park tommorow!

Day 46 - Work!

Today, after what franklin told me, which wasn't much, i worked on fixing the cameras. I also looked into the floor, i rendered a top down shot of the paper floor and turned it into a texture and plastered it on several grids. The grids are then aligned under the instanced buildings to simulate a floor. However, this cheat, i learned does not give the effect i am looking for. So i have to find another way to solve the problem.

I asked john to help me, as another one of franklin's requirements was to ensure the plane stayed on the stack, fold then take off. This was achived by holding down the value the animation plays through an expression, then playing it when it reaches a certain point. It took awhile to implement. After that I set a computer to render from frame 100> so that i could see how the ending now looks like and we left.

So, now i can see how the render goes. By now it's already close to 7. So i'm leaving. Both edmund and bing yuan have left. So i guess it's time to go...and pack for disneyland tommorow! Yay!

Day 45 - Review & Farmers Market

Today, we decided to wake up early and headed to the farmers market which is near the office and picked up some apples, apple juice and berries and then went back to the office for the review with franklin.

Guess what, i forgot to set the camera when i rendered, so it rendered to the wrong camera. So i had to re-render it within 2 hours. Surprisingly spread out over several computers it rendered really quick. When he arrived at 12.30pm i showed him my render, and he wanted the camera changed abit again. He also wanted the buildings to be modelled.

Well it originally is, what happened was it was modelled at a non commercial edition of houdini, and it couldn't be opened or imported in to a commercial version of houdini, so i had to send it back to toronto to get it converted. Franklin asked if i could not redo it, but frankly i couldn't remember how i did it... so yeah.

After all of that we then went down to the pier and had the hot spicy seafood soup.

Day 44 - Render! Render!

Today, i decided i gota meet the requirements set by franklin, so i went through the checklist and decided to screw ben's advice to make a texture and put it on a mountain sop, instead i just reinstance at another point. That way, i don't need to do extra work. I'll just reuse what i have done already.

I then worked on the camera abit as he advised and we then left for lunch with jonnathan at the sushi store nearby that is 50% off after 3pm.

When we got back, I took 5 computers and rendered my scene for tommorow's presentation to franklin. and that ends the day.

Day 43 - Ross again & Fish!

Today, we decided to take a rest, but i wanted to go down to ross to get a new bag. The bag i brought was my old primary school bag, which i found out this morning, could not fit my laptop, since i'm bringing it to the office. I bought a targus at less than 20$. Which is fairly good price. We went to a fish bbq nearby then walked back home. IT was about a couple miles away so yeah.

Day 42 - Mdm Toussads

Today we went to Madam Toussad's Wax museum. It is a museum that is grander than the other 2 wax museums we went previously. and today's date is 10/10/10. so they made the price 10$ for that day only, normally it's 15$. We took the same tour bus back down there and went to it, it was bigger and way more interesting than the other wax museum. I bought some souvineers. We then took the cab back at about 9pm. And that's how we ended the day.

Day 41 - Gun range...Bigger Guns..and a pea shooter

Today we went down to the gun range again. I love the smell of gunpowder in the morning. lol. This time we went to shoot way bigger guns and a pea shooter. lol. We started the day of with a .19mm beretta which shoots a .35 calibre round. The same thing we shot the last time we came. It's all good, we wanted to warm up. Then a small cool looking gun caught my eye...


it's the ruger mkIII, it shoots a rifle .22 calibre round. It's a peashooter, with very low recoil, and there is little to no sound when shot. It's almost as if it's a silenced gun. Note that it is also the same gun that snake used in metal gear solid. a box of 25 is quite cheap too, at 5$ for 100 rounds

anyways moving on, we upgraded to something bigger, the benelli (mk2?)12 gauge shotgun. which packs a whallop in recoil.


then we upgraded to a rifle, the AR-22,



which shoots the same round the ruger shot, a small arms .22 calibre rifle round, only difference is, that the rifle can shoot about 120 of them with one cartridge. However this specific rifle keeps on giving us jams, as it's probably not oiled or maintained. Hightech rifles should usually be cleaned and maintained often. Except of course for the AK-47, which sadly the range didn't have. The range only holds American made guns.

after all is done and the rest of the group left, i came back in and shot another 25 rounds of shotgun, and practically tore a hole through the targets. I could hear the instructor next to me tell his student, "that is why no one wants to get shot by a shotgun". if you think about it, if you get shot by a rifle, there is a chance you might or might not live. but with a shotgun, you're quite certain to be a goner.

anyways, we then took the cab back home after the day is said and done, and then we ended the day with a movie called shaun of the dead, an R movie which i didn't know about!.....anyways we watched it, it was a really good british 2004 movie, then went to bed.

Day 40 - More Work?!

Today, i did the floor and decided instead of copy stamping, which would show up in view port and lag the computer entirely, i would use the instancing. Instancing is like copy stamping but instead of making copying the points x number of times, the instance would reference it and copy it multiple times.

I tried to render a frame, but a frame render costs about 5mins of time for one fucking frame. So i asked ben, if there is a way to optimise this. He then asked why am i doing this, i should just make a texture and put it on top of a mountain grid. that gets the same effect and is cheaper. Then i asked myself, why didn't i do that......lol. I figure that one out on the weekend.

On the side note, the buildings are still quite squarish. I need to try and import in the models.... hopefully in time. Oh and thank goodness that sesi is a canadian company, long weekend to look forward to! on monday, it's canada's national day, thus we get a day off. So long weekend yay!

anyways, it's 3.30ish, everyone's tired, were leaving early.....ciao.

Day 35 - Photos