alright so i think im going insane.

yesterday morning, on the way to work, i suddenly had this smile in my head. this beautifully shy, flirtatious smile. a young woman with short red hair, dressed in a nice button down blouse, listening to music and glancing shyly at me. quickly. diverting her gaze any time i tried to greet it. and in between each glance a smile. the most genuinely happy smile i have ever seen. until at last i get both. a peak. a smile.

and in my mind this shy woman is perfect. she is a kind of beautiful i've never seen before. not like i would have described even 3 days ago. her nose. ears. hair. all different. but all perfect.

this image fades in and out like a dream. but when its clear. when we're in the middle of diverted glances. its clear. like i've seen her before. like i've lived this.

and since yesterday i cant leave her alone. i replay this scene constantly. back to back to back. with no pauses.

this is starting to get a little ridiculous. 2 full days of her. and i see no sign of it stopping. actually, i dont want it to stop. she is absolutely perfect. and i enjoy every second of her presence. i smile just like her now. constantly. just happy that she is too.

i need to find out who this shy woman is.

I pulled out my copy of the source engine a couple weeks ago, just to play around, and man is this amazing!

i hear people saying that UE3 is where it's at (just bought a copy to play around with soon) but the source engine is definitely solid. it has it's flaws, and getting the right scale on a custom model can be kinda tricky, but now that i have the work flow done, its a blast!

I'm recreating my apartment right now, basically to improve my low poly realism modeling and texturing, and i have to say, so far its coming along brilliantly! ill post some pics probably next week sometime. and hopefully i can get a working build for you to download and play through (right now i'm not sure how to pack levels for other people...)

basically, the only flaw i've noticed with it, is dynamic lighting/shadows of custom props. the lighting tends to be all or nothing, and they only seem to self shadow (ie, don't cast shadows on the floor) but for the most part, and with some careful planning i've eliminated all but a few of the really noticeable spots.

like i said, give me another week or so to add some polish! stay tuned!!

apparently i don't like writing journal entries since the last one was over a year ago

i started recreating my apt in hl2 though, i guess that's the new news. last week sometime, i decided: "you know what, I want to be a level designer" opened up steam and got to work. it's all coming back to me pretty quickly. i had the layout of my apt done within the hour, remembered how to create custom textures by that evening, and had my first models (the stools) in and working by the next day. Now i just need to sit down and pound it out!

the thing i love about it though, is that it makes modeling almost tangible. after i spend a bunch of time putting together a model, i dont just end up with a pretty picture, i can play with it (you don't wanna know how long i spent throwing my stools into the pictures hanging on the wall) and then when you get bored, you can just make another toy! hours of fun!

but the texturing was taking too long, so I did end up buying a camera today. hopefully this will speed up my search-on-google-images-for-something-close-then-clone-stamp-it-until-i-decide-i-should-just-create-it-from-scratch texture making process.

hopefully when it's finished ill find a place to post it so everyone can trash my apt

for those of you who were wondering, i've got a much more reliable hard drive now i also back it up regularly. so i should never lose hundreds of hours of work again (knock on wood)

and to celebrate, i re-did my first open-source model, the mazda rx8. actually i did the mazda 6 this time, but still. i finished this one too! ok it doesnt have tire treads or an engine, but i think the rest is there. more than the first mazda atleast. i also fixed the glass i didnt fake it this time!

hmm, i also did a couple digital paintings for a while there. i'd like to get back into blender and some modeling though, so i guess thats whats next.

not sure what the next model will be...i have some ideas, but they might be more than i can finish...we'll see.

till next time

-ryan

so my hard drive crashed the other day. so i lost all my work...

i guess it didn't crash so much, as i made a really stupid mistake (i just switched to linux, so i'm still getting the lay of the land...)

it's also the second time in the last 2 months, the first time i deleted something very important to basic system functions...and this last time i ran fsck with the wrong settings...

so the moral of the story: always back up your stuff...which i didnt do. so i'm going out to get an external hard drive...maybe the next time i erase all my things, i can put them all back!

-ryan