CAGD Blog

 Kickstart Start - AI I am personally fascinated by artificial intelligence purely because of the speed at which it has been progressing in recent years. It has such a wide array of uses, and is getting so much better at what it does so unbelievably rapidly. This does not by any means mean that I like AI and think it is a great thing; in fact, I think it is out of control at the moment and is already causing and will continue to cause huge issues. Being someone who works in technology, though, it is impossible for me to look away from, and I find myself reading articles and staying up to date on a lot of the advancements of AI, and weighing out the positives and negatives of each breakthrough. I will say that I believe there are good uses for AI as long as it is supported by other sources, such as information gathering with information supported by other articles or websites, basic health diagnosis that can give doctors a basic idea of where to start on an issue, or even recommen...

 Video Games Through History Shown above are a few of the most popular arcade cabinets: Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig-Dug, and Donkey Kong. While not technically a "console," the arcade cabinet was the original way to play video games. The first cabinet, Computer Space , based on Spacewar!,  was released in 1971, but the most commonly known "original cabinet" was PONG , which was released in November 1972. This was everyone's first impression of commercial video games, and this is where the history of video games truly begins. Link to Betson Enterprises' Arcade Cabinet History , a well-known arcade cabinet company. Shown above is the Atari 2600. Though the Magnavox Odyssey was technically the first home console in 1972, and the Atari Home Pong was released in 1975, the Atari 2600 was the first truly popular gaming console. This was the first popular product for at-home gaming, and really started the medium of consoles as we know them today, with interchangeable c...

P.I.N. Point - Sprint 6 My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as the 3D Artist on the game P.I.N. Point. P.I.N. Point is a fast paced assassin shooter that takes place in a cyberpunk city, where you use your futuristic gadgets and sniper to take down your targets as fast as possible. Our team just finished up our sixth sprint, which is our second to last sprint, and it was a very rocky one for me unfortunately. Two huge glaring issues happened during the process that ended up using up more time than I was willing to lose, and caused me to have a lower number of cards by the end than usual, which is never a good thing. For the work I was able to finish, though, I ended up being very happy with what I have. The first major issue that occurred during the sprint was that our producer disappeared for a bit. During the latter half of the sprint, none of the group members were able to get into contact with our producer, which raised a huge issue for me since I had just run out of...

KickBack - Sprint 6  My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on the game KickBack. KickBack is a 3D platforming shooter set in a dream world, where you are tasked with collecting bits of magic called cloobits, as well as battling against an evil wizard’s robot minions. Our team just completed our sixth sprint, and for me personally, it had a rocky end. Regardless of this, though, I was still able to finish almost all of my cards. During the first two-thirds of the sprint, I had no issues at all and was able to finish my work progressively throughout the sprint. I was able to finish 12 cards throughout this time, which included the textures for my stop sign, stop light, and billboard that I had made in the previous sprint, as well as the models and UV maps for some new models. These included a yield sign, a bench, a standing umbrella, and a trash can, all themed to look as though they belonged on a beach. Most of these models were relatively easy, with the ...

P.I.N. Point - Sprint 5 My name is Kyle Ramser and I am currently working as a 3D artist on a game called P.I.N. Point. P.I.N. Point is a fast paced assassin shooter, where time is money and the faster you take out your target, the more money you earn. We just finished our fifth sprint, and the game is coming along pretty nicely. Our programmers have completed our movement system, which has made the gameplay feel closer to how our designer imagined it, and more of my art is being implemented, which is making the game look a lot more complete. This sprint went very well overall, and it is clear now that we have hit our stride as a group and have the process down at this point, after a rough start in the first few sprints. Starting with the negatives, I had to redo the buildings again this sprint, which used up a bit of my time. It didn’t take too long, but it always feels like a waste to redo something that was already completed, so it was not a big deal but definitely not a positive. O...

P.I.N. Point - Sprint 4 My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on the game P.I.N. Point. P.I.N. Point is a fast-paced assassin shooter game where you are tasked with taking out a target using your sniper and gadgets, and the faster you take him out, the higher the profit. We just finished up our fourth sprint, which went a lot better than the first three. We were much better prepared and knew exactly what needed to be put in the game, as well as the priorities for each card. One example of the 15 NPC textures Hat texture There were some small hiccups during this process, but far fewer than the previous sprints for this project. One of the major ones was that our team was not sure how to go about texturing the NPC characters. We needed to have between 12 and 24 different variations on the NPC textures, but adding this many texture maps for color, normals, and metal/roughness would very quickly bloat the size of the game, which our group is trying to avoid. As...