A little pathfinding tool for one of my class

This is a simple pathfinding app written for an AI class in Devry University

Blender walk cycle animation

One of the class that I’m currently taking at DeVry is Visual and Audio. For the week 3 assignment, I’ve made a simple character with a walk cycle animation. Don’t mind the low resolution. I think the shading makes it not too noticeable anyway. These are just basic things I’m refreshing my mind on. So much to learn, and so much to do on the actual programming/animation for my games. ^^

A place to catalog your treasured media… Librarything, Shelfari, Reader2, and GuruLib.

I love books, software, movies, and so on, but it’s not exactly the easiest to find others who have interests in the same media and talk about them. GuruLib and some other services, allow you to share/index your media, and creates a network around them.

Catalog your books online! (Including Test) « Kimbooktu.com

If our house burns down, I will always have a list of the books we owned. This is why I urge you to catalog your books online if you own a lot of them or if are a serious collector. Cataloging your books is not only very important and reassuring; it is also a lot of fun!

The review by kimbooktu from October 18, 2007 is a great review, over several of the notable services available for us to index our media. I end up choosing gurulib over the others.

Just as a note though, Amazon bought Shelfari just now. So Shelfari might be a very good option as well.

~ Sylvia ~ ^_^

Blender 2.47 to download!

Blender 2.47 is now on release quality, based on the SVN build… It’s mostly just bug fixes, but it’s still exciting.
I have optimized builds from the trunk and the apricot branch uploaded at http://www.graphicall.org/ . Feel free to grab it. ^^

p.s. I have been going through the essential blender, which is a pretty good book.

Psychological perspectives on personalities?

I’m taking basic psychology class this session, and on this week we’re covering personality. Based on my book There are at least four theories of personalities, which includes The Big Five, The Freudian Theory, .

The Big Five/Five Factor Models (Reservation, Relaxation/handle stress well, Tendency to find fault, Nervousness, and Active imagination), is mainly useful for assessing and choosing friends, workers, partner, and understanding ourselves. By using broad personality dimensions as guidelines, it makes it easier for us to know where our own personality stand. It let us choose people that compliments us or let us culture general traits that are beneficial to us.

The Freudian Theory (Sigmund Freud) introduced reason (ego), desire (id), and conscience (superego). The Freudian theory also covers thinking about why the psyche develop a certain way in the childhood, the impact of this psyche development and how the ego uses defense mechanisms to defend itself. I would say that Freudian theory, in general, is concerned about how things developed, the past, how to encourage healthy behaviors, and understanding defense mechanisms. The Freudian theory has mostly been abandoned due to its emphasis on sexuality, and used as the basis of Neo-Freudian Theory.

The Jungian Theory (Carl Jung) add to The Freudian Theory, our needs to have a role model (archetype), and a more positive view. Human always looks for role model as our basis in development or some form of structure (concept/prototypes) of how people really act. Carl Jung split the archetypes into several factors, that we might be closest to. It is useful in learning about our general emotions, others general emotions, and let us reflect if our archetype is what we want to be like.

The Humanistic Theory (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers), the basis of Eupsychian Management, is a very positive and forward looking theory. It adds Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Self-Esteem, and Self-Actualization) to the mix, and is used in one of the most popular management system, because of its results in generating motivation and productivity. The basis of humanistic theory is believing that everyone wants to do well, respecting them, treating them well, and ensuring that there’s no obstacles for growth. By generating a positive feedback loop, rather than creating a negative and unproductive environment, we could create a self-regulating and efficient workplace.

So, they have completely different use in my perspective. They are for assessment, understanding development, emotion, and for generating motivation and productivity. The humanistic theory is very useful for the present and the future of an established psyche. An excellent leader, in my opinion, should have eupsychian management from the humanistic theory as a foundation in their life, but they should not ignore the other psychological theories.

References:

Roze, M., & Fenty, T. (2008). Psychology for Life and Work (2008 ed.), Personality (Ch 6. p179-187). Devry University Press.

C++ Guide: Function Templates 1 – Creating generic function to print the value, type, and size of a passed parameter.

When we work with C++ functions, sometimes we want to create generic functions that can operate on several distinct data types. For example, a print function, we don’t need to create separate functions (function overloading) to output the passed data (which could range from integers to strings). Template is a wonderful feature that allows us to do this easily, in a compact way.

Here’s a basic example of using C++ function template instead of overloading.

#include <iostream>
#include <string> // For string
#include <typeinfo> // To get type
using namespace std;

template <class T>
void print(T i) {
cout << “********************************************” << endl;
cout << “The passed data value is ” << i << endl;
cout << “The passed data type is ” << typeid(i).name() << endl;
cout << “The passed data size is ” << sizeof(i) << endl;
cout << “********************************************” << endl;
}

int main() {
print(10);
print(10.10);
print(“ten”);
print(static_cast<string>(“ten”));
system(“pause”); //Only for windows
}

The result of typeid is up to what compiler we use. In Visual C++, the used data types are defined in typeinfo as shown in the following result:

********************************************
The passed data value is 10
The passed data type is int
The passed data size is 4
********************************************
********************************************
The passed data value is 10.1
The passed data type is double
The passed data size is 8
********************************************
********************************************
The passed data value is ten
The passed data type is char const *
The passed data size is 4
********************************************
********************************************
The passed data value is ten
The passed data type is class std::basic_string<char,struct std::char_traits<cha
r>,class std::allocator<char> >
The passed data size is 32
********************************************
Press any key to continue . . .

With regular function overloading, we would have had to do it using three separate functions.

We’ve just covered how to use static_casting, function template, and typeid::name().

Bye bye, and have a good day! ^_^

Fun Days of Compiling an Optimized Blender 3D Build

I’ve been having fun compiling blender and its branches, for the last few days. Most of it were spent optimizing, and setting things up for automated builds in the future.

Compiling blender could be a pretty simple task, with minimal problems, thanks to those who worked on scons and mingw/visual c++ 2008. I spent some time testing several configurations, and used the benchmark file from http://www.eofw.org/bench/ to compare the speed of several optimizations. I use Visual Studio 2008 Express to compile them, by the way.

It seems that optimized mingw compile, with fast math, O3, and so on result in 1 minute 41 seconds, while it is 3 times larger compared to Visual C++ 2008 binary. Visual C++ 2008 optimized build with fast-math, only take 1 minute 35 seconds. Without fast-math, Visual C++ 2008 optimized build take 2 minutes to render the scene, about as long as the default blender release (v2.46).

All these builds, unless noted, use SSE2, LAA, OpenMP. and fastmath.

Release:
- 2.46 release (2:00.92)

SVN Trunk (svn15877)
- vc2008 compiled without fastmath (2:04.83)
- Mingw compiled and optimized for c2d, with SSE3, no LAA, no OpenMP (1:45)
- Mingw compiled and optimized for i686, with SSE3, no LAA, no OpenMP (1:41)

Apricot Branch (svn 15877)
VC2008 compiled:
- 02:05.09 No OpenMP, no fastmath
- 02:06.71 no fastmath
- 01:30.37 with openmp, and fastmath

As a bonus, 2.47 branch resulted in 2 minutes and 4 seconds of rendering time.

Naturally, right now my favorite release is the apricot branch (due to the new features) built and optimized using VC2008.

Do remember that using a non-official build carry any kind of risks, and the builders cannot be held accountable. If you understand that, get my latest build at http://www.graphicall.org/builds/. I’m Sylph over there.

More Blender Fun

I’ve been playing more with blender, using the noob to pro tutorial, and various other resources. Blender is getting pretty good, with their support of cloth, bezier curves, soft body, sculpting, and blender game engine. I might try to make a game like starfox64 with the blender game engine. I’ll see. I do notice that blender seem to render their animation slower than 3dsmax, though. But it might be just my memory (I was learning 3dsmax a while back), and different settings.

Guess who this is. He’s not wearing his trademark color, but I was just playing around with modeling and ignoring the texturing. I won’t use the character since I don’t need to get sued anyway. I was following Jonathan Williamson’s tutorial from http://www.montagestudio.org for this. ^_^

It’s fun, thanks to crazypsycho for getting me involved further than I have been with blender. Although, I still want to master XSI once I get pretty good with blender. ^^

I’m currently trying to compile the latest build (2.50) with mingw/scons, as it have a new particle system. I still need to learn particles, hairs, retopo, cloth and various other things. Maybe I need to focus on learning how to draw anime character first, so I could easily create characters for my game. My current focus, other than school, is on Blender, C#/WPF Forms, and C++/wxWidgets… with the side focus on digital keyboard, self-improvement, writing, and drawing. ^^

Bezier Curves in Blender

I have been learning Blender 3D modeling software in the last few weeks. While I would prefer to learn XSI, Blender has been surprisingly agile and powerful for a free 3d modeling software.

Following the tutorial at http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Curves/B%C3%A9zier, I made the following 3d model.

The main difference is that I added extrusion and bevel to the filled bezier curves, added a material with gold base color, and added a golden cloud texture.

Couldn’t wait until I start working on 3d models of characters and texturing.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

~ C. Archie Danielson

Vexille (2007) – Review

I have just watched Vexille, and found it to be a quite enjoyable movie.

The plot revolves around Daito Industry, a corporation in Japan, which became the biggest manufacturer of robotic parts in the world, and their increasing research in AI. When that was banned by the UN, they proceeded to force Japan to execute a high-tech national-isolation policy, blocking every surveillance and transmission from and to the outside world. After various suspicious activities and the increasing demands by the Japanese, the American decided to infiltrate Japan. They sent a small hit squad from SWORD, with the goal to transmit a signal to allow decryption of the surveillance blockade.

Most of the infiltration units became casualties and the first transmission failed to complete. A second transmission managed to get through and showed that Japan has become a barren land, with no human left…. just androids… Thankfully they found help from within as well, but will it be enough to do what is necessary to stop Daito Industry, when they holds technological supremacy? It became even worse, as the president of the US told the SWORD organization to stop their operation, right after they lose their satellite observation again…

How did that happen? Who is the person behind all this? and What will happen next?

The premise isn’t the most original, but its rather intriguing and thought-provoking.. and the art designs are done quite well. If you like Appleseed, you will probably enjoy it. The music, the various characters, and the plot development are done pretty well and interesting.

If I have to give it a rating, I will give it an 7.8/10. I rather like it. ^^

Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
~ Alan M. Eddison