CAGD Blog

 MADT 307 - Course Review Over the course of this class, I feel as though I have learned a lot of new information. I keep up with technology a lot, being a Game Development major, but a lot of the history stuck out. There were also quite a few brand new pieces of information that I did not know about, which honestly surprised me. The very first blog post I made was about video games and their development. As this is what I'm studying, I highly doubted there would be anything new for me to learn, but it turns out I was wrong. I had always assumed that the Atari was the very first console created, but it turned out the Magnavox Odyssey had come before and was the actual trendsetter in home gaming. There were also several other consoles that had come out at different times than I had thought, and this really threw off my grasp of the trends that video game consoles started. For example, I believed for the longest time that the Nintendo 64 had started the 3D gaming trend, but it was ac...

 Ethics in Artificial Intelligence Both Google and Anthropic have a sort of "PR" statement about how they will use their AI models. Both explain how they care so much about people's safety, and that their top priority is to remain ethical, while still being innovative. My only issue with this is the lack of solid proof that anything is being done to uphold these standards. There is no real way for the public to know whether or not Google and Anthropic are even making an attempt to keep their chatbots ethical, and it is hard to believe that there is any rock-solid way for them to do it in the first place. Just about a year and a half ago, I remember hearing about Google's chatbot Gemini telling a user to end their own life, and with as little as a four-word search, several articles were talking about the incident. According to CBS, the message read, "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You a...

Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux - AR Self-Guided Tour - Sprint 4 My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on an AR self-guided tour for the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux. Our team just finished our fourth sprint, and this one went a lot smoother than the previous ones. I was able to get a good amount of work completed, and I’m very happy with how all of it turned out. Once again this sprint, the texturing gave me more trouble than any other part of the process, but it was just because it was more time-consuming than the modeling process. The experience that I had from the last sprint helped a bit, but with how different each asset was, each texture was essentially a completely different texture using entirely different layers. This was much different from the process when making assets for a video game, as a lot of the time, the textures are all themed similarly and have a lot of layers in common. These models also have a lot more small, exact details ...

 Chico of the Future - IoT The Internet of Things has become more and more prominent as time goes on, and it seems as though now, you can find a version of almost anything you can think of that has internet access. In a lot of ways, I think this can be helpful, but it can also feel a bit useless at times. As far as Chico becoming a smart city, I don't think it is an amazing idea due to the smaller scale of the city, but there are a lot of aspects that could be helpful, especially while college is in session.  One of the biggest examples of a positive impact for the Chico area would be the idea of smart parking. Parking is a constant issue almost anywhere near the CSU - Chico campus, and having smart parking in garages as well as on the street would make the daily lives of many Chico residents much easier. The amount of time and headaches saved would be a huge positive, and after learning about this being a possibility, it seems almost assuredly worth the time and money it woul...

The Abbey of Our Lady of New Claivaux - AR Self-Guided Tour - Sprint 3 My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D artist on an AR self-guided tour for the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux. Our team just finished up our third sprint, which went a bit better than our last one for sure. With the spring break out of the way, we ended up having a full-length sprint, which means we got a lot more work done as a full team. For my work this sprint, I was able to finish six cards in total, which was slightly under my goal, but a few of the cards were a bit heavier than the others. The work I completed was the model and UV of the music book, the model and UV of the smokey stone, and the textures for the smokey stone and restored stone. The music book model was a bit more difficult than I had anticipated, but most of the cards were not too difficult and were more trial and error than anything. This was especially true when I started texturing, because getting the color of the st...

 AR Self-Guided Tour - Sprint 2      My name is Kyle Ramser, and I am currently working as a 3D Artist on an AR self-guided tour being developed for The Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux. We just finished our second sprint, and as a 3D Artist, the process has not been very different from my usual experiences in game development, apart from a few key differences. However, the few differences that there are have made the experience a bit more difficult than making video game assets.      As for the work that I completed during sprint two, I was able to complete the models and UVs for the sacred stone and the refurbished, or “restored” stones. This included high-poly models and normal stamps, mostly to be used on the sacred stone to show damage and stone mason marks. I feel as though I could have for sure done more this sprint, but with the spring break being dead in the center of the sprint, and with some unfortunate personal events occurring during the...

 Inclusivity in the Gaming Space and How It Has Advanced in Recent Years     As a game design major myself, this is a topic I am extremely familiar with and all around completely fascinated by. For some people, using a controller or a mouse and keyboard with the controls the game designers intended is near or completely impossible. Whether it be issues with the use of fingers for trigger, button, or stick inputs, sometimes disabilities can completely stop a player from being able to play the game as intended. That is why I am amazed and proud of the wide variety of control changes that more modern games can make to adapt to different players' needs, allowing essentially anyone to play games, no matter what issues they have with using common controls.     I actually have a great personal example of this through the experiences of one of my close friends. One of my friends has a deformity in both of his hands, which makes it difficult to use the triggers, sticks, ...

 The Digital Divide      In this day and age, the digital divide can be detrimental to those without access to high-speed internet or any devices. With how necessary the internet is in the modern age for things as important as jobs and school, not having a computer, phone, or access to the internet can make it extremely difficult to maintain a job or do well in school. Putting public WiFi in places like libraries and giving students access to laptops and tablets is helpful, but the problem of not having access to these at home still remains.            I think one of the only ways to close the digital divide, or to at least make it better, is for WiFi and digital devices to become cheaper, which they have been over the years as technologies improve. Now, even the slower speeds of the internet that are on the relatively cheaper side are much faster than the top-of-the-line Wi-Fi in previous years. The only issue with this is that it ...

The Music Industry - The Future of Listening I truly believe that the entirety of music will be switching to streaming. With how quickly streaming has advanced, and how much music is now streamed compared to other sources, I believe that eventually everyone will be transferring to streaming for its ease of access and its improving audio quality. Even now, according to the IFPI Global Music Report, 69 percent of music listeners are using streaming services, which I think will only grow with time. Additionally, I believe that it is possible that at some point in the somewhat near future, cars will remove both AM and FM radio, and will adopt an Apple play style smart screen for all streaming. This is obviously not a guarantee as people have been upset at the removal of AM radio in cars, but with how popular and used music streaming has been, I feel as though Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming software will be built into cars. With how easy to use Apple and Android Car Play are, I f...

APA Sources for Kickstart Gottfried, J., & Park, E. (2025, November 20). Americans' Social Media Use 2025 . Pew Research Center. Retrieved February 20, 2026, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/ This article from Pew Research seems like a very useful collection of information about social media use amongst Americans in 2025. This can be easily used to influence choices from our group, as we can see what forms of media are working, as well as what forms are not working anymore. An immediate example from this article is the fall off of Twitter, now known as X, which is only receiving 21 percent of people who say they use it. Health Benefits of Social Media Use in Adolescents and Young Adults . (2025, August 15). PMC. Retrieved February 20, 2026, from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12356748/ This could be an extremely interesting article to pull from, especially when thinking about the broader effects of social media. For ...

 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...