Blog Post #17 A-Wowed

Th. 2/20/2025

I gave a good presentation yesterday! It was both a quality performance, and dense with content. Amanda sent out an announcement the day prior, about “teaching” what we’ve learned each milestone for each presentation. I had some difficulty expressing in depth the mechanics of the Viewfinder mechanic, but I was able to put up a handful of full-screen gifs— without captions— and elaborate on what each demonstrated.

Debug vector slice Channel visualization.

More Trace Channeling.

Slice working too well.

Slice no longer working.

Those gifs^ show the line tracing of the “slices”, which use vectors to cut the environment. I still have 11 minutes left of the final tutorial, and I came across an issue right before I had to start making the presentation— it stopped slicing (even the error-laden full-length slice shown in the last gif)— so I need to go back and fix that. 

Basically, since that tutorial uses a square “lens” it makes four slices using Trace By Line Channels; in alla prima, I’ll need to figure out how to determine the exponentially increased number of slices necessary to align with the refraction trail, and then go from that. 

Also, that tutorial set the effective range of the lens to, like, 1,000 ft. For alla prima, the environment will be wayyy denser, and it’ll be connected to a melee weapon trail, so it should affect a significantly shorter distance. 

Last night and tonight, I’ve been practicing nocturnalism again. I know it’s not the best for me, but I have things to do, and I can’t wake up early enough to get things done during the day. I was kinda wrecked during Studio today— not helped by the fact that I’m still retopologizing Mercutio, which is, I believe, the seventh layer of Hell— so I went home after and slept from like 3pm to 10pm. 

A benefit of all this— aside from the productivity increase— is that I’ll be able to talk with my older sister. She lives in Finland, so the time difference is +7 hours relative to here. I haven’t spoken with her in a while. Hopefully we can speak tonight. 

But yeah, I have a lot of work to do tonight. It’s just before 1am right now. I need to finish the two-week-late Procedural ladder for Ezra, finish the week-late Texturing food assignment, and finish the Viewfinder replication. I did the pizza for the food assignment yesterday (or the night before? It’s hard to talk about non-standard waking hours), using photographs of pizza as the textures, and adding height maps, roughness maps, etc. It turned out really well! So I just need to make the choco taco. 

Oh I should also watch the Procedural lecture that I missed last week.

I also want to start playing Avowed (2025). I want to see if I can finally get into melee in a first-person perspective. Though, I am mostly interested in magic and flintlock pirate weaponry. 

Later.

It is 6:16am. I just showered. Cold, naturally. I worked on my Procedural ladder quite a bit this night, but I’ve run into some issues. Fortunately, I have class today, so I can ask Ezra for help. I just need to turn this assignment in, because the D- grade on Canvas (due to the missing assignment) is stressing me the hell out. 

I played about an hour of Avowed. And boy, I was not disappointed.  I had some trouble in combat— I kept dying due to elongated battles and limited healing, and melee in first-person has always been a bit challenging for me— but the main joy of playing it rested in the beautiful scenery. If Eternal Strands was inspirational for Pareidolia’s swemp biome, Avowed brought that to another level. I loved all of the giant, overgrown plants and fungi. And the art style is so clean, crisp, and realistic. The level design, too, was particularly good. Lots of variation in elevation. 

But yeah, I stayed up all night because I woke up at 10pm. Which I did because I went to sleep at 3pm. Which I did because I stayed up all night before Wednesday to prep for my Seminar presentation. Which went quite well. 

But the issue of primarily staying up late to get work done is not sustainable. I only did that because I woke up in the afternoon Tuesday. But if each class requires around 16 hours of work for each two-week period, I should be able to stay on top of things if I just do around an hour of work each day for each class. That’s just four hours of homework a day— which will be a vast improvement to the crammed 12 hour all nighter sessions that I’ve been relying on. 

And, I think, the reason why I ran into trouble with the Procedural assignment was because I hadn’t worked on it for over a week. So I lost the flow. And I’m still learning Houdini, so that flow is essential. That’s another potential benefit of doing an hour of work for each class every single day. It keeps the momentum going; it keeps me immersed; it keeps me learning. 

I just found this newer tutorial on making a refraction weapon trail in Unreal. It’s only a year old— compared to the others, which are significantly older— so I think it’ll be easier to follow. And it’s only 23 minutes!

Much later.

I worked on my overdue Texturing food assignment for about 45 minutes, but I’ve reached an impasse, so I reached out to the TA for help.

I worked on finishing the Viewfinder replication for 35 minutes, but I still have 10 minutes left— and it’s not functioning as intended. It doesn’t slice the floor, and photos of the floor placed in the sky don’t create new geometry. Also, it does destroy the fire extinguisher, but completely— even if the sky photo is only partially placed on it. So I reached out to a professor for some help. In the tutorial, he’s moved onto bug fixing, but I obviously need someone to look over the mess of blueprints— because it should be working by now, and it’s not.

It’s 9:09pm right now. I have a call with my older sister (who’s in Finland) at 11am, so I want to be in bed by midnight. I had Procedural Modeling class today— I still haven’t watched the demonstration that I missed from last week, which I need to do; it seems important— and I don’t think I’ll have time to work on that class’ assignments tonight. I am going to work on retopologizing Mercutio more, for Studio.

Later.

I have retopologized all of Mercutio except for his head.

I also played 45 minutes more of Avowed. There was an issue with the shaders— everything was shifting technicolor. I restarted my machine and it was fixed. I also decreased the difficulty to Easy. 

I’m unlocking more of the mechanics. And I found an arquebus (a flintlock rifle). Haven’t had a chance to use it yet. I’m going to get ready for bed now.

Tomorrow, I will:

• Texturing: Continue work on finishing the choco taco.

• Seminar: Start the refraction weapon trail replication.

• Studio: Finish retopologizing Mercutio.

• Procedural: Work on the overdue ladder assignment.

• Make lentils and/or rice.

• Talk with my sister.

• Table for our improv show.