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My Online portfolio
Friday 18th April 2014
So back in 2009, during the high school days, one of the requirements for my multimedia class was to construct an online portfolio, in Adobe flash of all things! Now, 5 years later, I have decided to remaster it using newer emerging web technologies such as HTML5 and JavaScript.
Looking back now, I feel its content was a little bit cringe worthy, but it does highlight how creative I can be, plus it's nice to occasionally look back and see how far I've come.
Back in 2012, I was lucky enough to intern at a small tertiary educational institute where I was tasked with creating online interactive experiences and activities for students to participate in, which gave me a grate insight into the build process for online media.
Fast forward a year from that now, and I've built a brand-new online portfolio using nothing but HTML5, CSS3 and the jQuery JavaScript framework.
As part of that interactive experience, I wanted to capture a snapshot of my progress as a 3D modeler, so I built an online model viewer with the help of the Three.js library available on GitHub.
It uses WebGL technology on the back end, a relatively new paradigm, whereas Three.js provides a quick and easy to use framework, implementing it was relatively straightforward, although about 300 lines of code in and I discovered that there is a bug with the Trackball Controls in Three.js, (and my initial code actually worked perfectly after I re-implemented it and called the controls.reset(); method).
Today I also discovered JavaScript doesn't natively support GET and POST variable methods without the use of a framework or implemented function, fortunately, there is a pretty straightforward snippet that does this, (See here).
I've plopped the code and viewer up on GitHub, as SourceForge makes it explicitly clear in there TOS not to host a massive MMO, and I feel even this simple model viewer will chew-up too much bandwidth. (Thank you SourceForge for allowing me a place on the internet)
Another thing is, well, after 5 years, after I started on this model, I have finally put a texture on my tripod. ??
I made this model as part of a War of the Worlds mod, Jeff Wayne style.
But I actually, often, and openly think about the possibility of doing a PS1 remake of the War of the World's game,
(This is what I want to remake, here and here)
I've even tried to remake the original box shot from the PlayStation one game.
Do you remember how unfair that game was though?
This model, the fighting machine, tripod was from a 2009 project, I often get asked what happened with that?
I made a few assets for the project, a Handling machine, Cannons, Big Ben, Thunder Child, some 1800's street assets and buildings; all finished but were never released because the project was put on hold.A post-mortem on the project, the graphics I was making were in the same vein as the quake 1 style at best (quite primitive and low polygon style); everybody in our team wanted a call of duty style game, the expectations were set way too high for us to be able to deliver.
There was no need to go with UDK, CryEngine; IOquake3, or even Irrlicht would have been enough.
That's the reason why it failed.
Ironically the low polygon count for the assets I created for this project makes them ideal for the WebGL platform; so, who knows, you might see something more interesting from me soon...
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