It's been forever since I updated this page, for a few reasons. Chief amongst them are an intention to move the site over to a proper blogging framework (probably wordpress) and an increasing reliance on twitter.
At any rate, here I am with an update. I've been working on a few different things and posting them in various places:

A 3d environment to play with x3d
A system for rendering yesterday's new on a 3d object (intended for use in the above)
An animated sculpty texture exporter (Second Life)
A new work samples page, with some stuff not posted elsewhere (ugly for now, will be fixed in the transition to wordpress)

Also, this isn't really a professional development, but it's still an achievement- I've been working on deadlifting and recently made it up to 315lbs- woot!

I've been gone far too long from my site, but with good reason. Between my awesome, awesome, awesome new job at Linden Lab and finishing out my last semester of teaching at the Academy of Art, I've been working 60+ hour weeks every week.

But I'm back, with a fun update- I've set myself up at twitter, thusly allowing me to keep anyone and everyone up to date with what I'm doing.
Notice the spiffy new bar at the bottom of the page that displays my most recent twitter update.

I think this could be the first step towards jumping on the bandwagon and setting up a blog.

While working on the MEL_SL script, I wanted to be able to use actual icons for the prims rather than the typical text-based buttons. While you can certainly use bitmaps in a GUI, that can cause problems if the user doesn't copy the images into the correct place. So what I did instead was to embed the bitmap data directly into the MEL file in such a way that the script creates the bitmaps at startup.

That seemed pretty useful, so I put together a script that allows a user to add bitmap data to an already existing script. If you'd like to take a look, you can: download the script here

I've been doing a lot of work lately on my Maya to Second Life script. The script makes it easier to build objects by recreating Second Life's tool within Maya. At present, I have 7 out of 13 prim (primitive) types implemented, with the rest to follow shortly. For an overview of the process, head here.

It's a bit too late at present for a more thourough writeup, but watch this space for updates and downloads

I've been doing a lot of drawing lately, in order to start assembling art assets for the 2d, PHP-enabled infinite city. All the images are hand drawn in pencil, inked in pen, and then scanned and colored digitally.

Head here to see them for yourself.

I've recently started revisiting some of the ideas from my graduate thesis related to the generation of infinite urban cityscapes via psuedorandom numbers. However, this time I'm implementing a 2d environment using PHP and javascript. As it stands, I'm using PHP (and the GD library) to generate a background image, and javascript to control the motion of a character on screen. Walking far enough to the left or the right will trigger an update, where a new background image is generated based on the player's current position.At present, the image generation is limited to the roughness of the terrain and the position of a single simplified "building". I've been working on the art assets in parallel, though (see above), so it won't be programmer art for long.

To see the current version in action, head here.

I've finally put together a proper page for the webtech II (javascript, PHP/MySQL) class I teach at the Academy of Art.

View the site

Okay, I've been remiss of late in updating my site, mainly due to moving and the associated logistical shakeups. I have been working on a few things, though- which will all be posted in the next few days

I just created a small application in Flash for an online class I'm teaching (introduction to computer graphics for animators). The application lets students experiment with creating 2-bit graphics. Since 2 bits allows for 4 values, one is limited to 4 colors. You can use any four colors that you want, but only 4. The end result is very similar to a GIF with a very small (4-color) pallatte.

Go here to play with it.

I've recently started in on Everything you ever wanted, an interactive 3d peice about conspicuous consumption. It is to take the form of an infinite shopping area where the user/player is forced to endlessly search for various trinkets. All of the products will be procedurally generated, yeilding a never-ending supply of must-have items. So far I have just a roughed-out, bare-bones version of the environment- lots of display racks (sans product), and a cart you can steer around to your heart's content.

Watch a video of the current verison.

Brand-new (and improved) site design. I've been meaning to get to doing this for a long time, and I finally got around to it. If you want to see the former site, go here

So I have the xml-parsing library for MEL to the point where it's ready for it's first release. To find out more, and grab the file, head here

I just started getting back into PHP, and have been playing around with GD. I've implemented a simple tree generator with a rudimentary (slightly randomized) L-system, with the results at right.

To see it in action for yourself, go here.Refresh the page to get a new "tree".

I just wrote a program aimed at making it easier to work with complex textures in Linden Lab's Second Life. Second Life allows for custom textures and per-face application, but determining the settings needed to fit a given portion of an image to a particular face can be tricky.

My program makes that a bit easier by allowing the user to click and drag on a region of the texture, while the script automatically calculates the necessary UV repetition and offset settings.

Click here to download the program.