Work Work

14 April (Tuesday)
A.M. Murase-san talked about "Copyright and Legal Issues" in Japan.
P.M. Kawashima-san had business at the University, so Matsuura-san would be taking over for Tues and Weds this and the coming week. Matsuura-san is a Visual Director at PA, and his specialty is background modeling. No surprise his is teaching us "BG Modeling and Animation".

After is brief lesson on the basics of BG modeling, he set upon us the task of modeling the Shin-minamiguchi (new south exit) of Shibuya station, or some locale of our choice. There were some target specifications we had to adhere to:

• Less than 60,000 triangles
• Maximum size for 1 polygon: 5m
• Textures in TGA format
• color & normal map: 24-bit 512x512 x 12
• transparency: 8-bit 512x512 x 6, 1-bit 512x512 x 6

For the rest of the lesson we proceeded to survey the area, took photos for reference, then headed back to the office to start modeling. We worked until late evening, and it was raining when we headed for dinner at Yayoiken, again ^^;

Homework is beginning to pile up, and I have been sleeping at around 3-5am for the past few days. Part of the reason is that Maya is not my best tool of choice. Another reason, which I am painfully reminded of, is that graphics development work for games is bound to hit roadblocks as one tries more complex things that does not export smoothly to the target platform. A lot of time is spent "fixing bugs" with the Maya scene and resolving technical issues so the data can output onto the PS3.

Happily, Matsuura-san managed to ask a production staff to resolve the transparency problem we have had since day one. As one becomes more of a manager, one loses touch with the ground skills, it seems.

No time to sleep again tonight. Work work.