My name is Oliver Baker, I am a student at the University of Texas at Dallas, and I am currently studying Computer Science and Arts and Technology there.

I'm going to try and expand my social media presence to tumblr, which (as far as I understand at this point) has two purposes, like most social mediums: consuming and producing. It takes a similar approach to consuming (I usually call it lurking) as Twitter and Google+, where you can follow anyone who is posting publicly to follow their content, and they don't have to add you to view their content. The producing side of things seems to be more like a Blogger style of straight-forward blogging versus the micro blogging you see on Twitter. I'm a bit dubious though, as I already use Google+ Communities to consume - which allows people who I'm not following, but who are in my areas of interest to be seen by me. Time will tell!

The weather right now is gorgeous. In Texas, we get about nine months of heat, punctuated by random cold and storm fronts on a monthly basis. The other three months are cold. Unless they aren't. These winter months are punctuated by some rather nice days, and of course the annoyingly brief storm fronts. This past week has been absolutely perfect though. Partly cloudy, ~75 degrees F, and decidedly not bi-polar.

The buzz surrounding Daft Punk's new [title not yet announced] album has been growing steadily for the past month, and I have to say, I am right there with them. I can not wait for this album. The only song that has been heard has been "Get Lucky" which has been teased several times, and still hasn't been heard in its entirety. There have been a couple of videos interviewing collaborators  of which there is a long list, including Julian Cassablancas, who I'm most excited for. Here is the most of "Get Lucky" that we've heard so far:

Update Archive

What I'm working on - How I'm doing it - Who I'm doing it with

I'm going to try and expand my social media presence to tumblr, which (as far as I understand at this point) has two purposes, like most social mediums: consuming and producing. It takes a similar approach to consuming (I usually call it lurking) as Twitter and Google+, where you can follow anyone who is posting publicly to follow their content, and they don't have to add you to view their content. The producing side of things seems to be more like a Blogger style of straight-forward blogging versus the micro blogging you see on Twitter. I'm a bit dubious though, as I already use Google+ Communities to consume - which allows people who I'm not following, but who are in my areas of interest to be seen by me. Time will tell!

The weather right now is gorgeous. In Texas, we get about nine months of heat, punctuated by random cold and storm fronts on a monthly basis. The other three months are cold. Unless they aren't. These winter months are punctuated by some rather nice days, and of course the annoyingly brief storm fronts. This past week has been absolutely perfect though. Partly cloudy, ~75 degrees F, and decidedly not bi-polar.

The buzz surrounding Daft Punk's new [title not yet announced] album has been growing steadily for the past month, and I have to say, I am right there with them. I can not wait for this album. The only song that has been heard has been "Get Lucky" which has been teased several times, and still hasn't been heard in its entirety. There have been a couple of videos interviewing collaborators  of which there is a long list, including Julian Cassablancas, who I'm most excited for. Here is the most of "Get Lucky" that we've heard so far:

This was a big week for Google! The company has recently come under fire for abandoning their popular Google Reader service, but they regained the love of the internet during their annual April Fools fun, as well as announced a new city for their Google Fiber venture - Austin, Texas!! (Yes, I live here, be jealous)

April Fools

April first is a big day for many companies now, including Wikipedia, who publish factual yet seemingly impossible stories to their massive archive. Google created several pranks, including "Gmail Blue" which is also a dig at Microsoft's new "Windows Blue", which is the codename for their new version of Windows 8.

Read more on AndroidPolice: Android Police 2013 April Fools Coverage

I'm really excited about this one. Google's now infamous "Fiber" project, which brings ultra-high speed fiber optic internet and syndicated television at incredibly low prices is branching out to Austin, Texas! The slightly more expensive of the two packages comes with a "free" Nexus 7 to be used as a remote! (though it will probably be one of the new Nexus 7s that will be announced at Google I/O this year)

Read more at their website: About Google Fiber

New Battlefield 4 gameplay:

What an amazing prologue. As far as differences between Battlefield 3 and 4, the environments don't look that much better, though they are definitely more ambitious. (BF3 had a lot of desert scenes and interiors, this has a lot of mixed/overgrown environments)

I think BF3 was more of a technical marvel, while BF4 seems to have more effort put into story telling, characters, and game play - which I am really really happy about.

 The most important aspect I saw in this video was the presence of squad-based gameplay, and while previous battlefield games had some kind of squad-based mechanics, it seems like BF4 is doing right. (*Finally*)

I wasn't really sure if I was going to love the idea of a new Battlefield game so soon after BF3, and I'm not convinced this warranted an entirely new number (what's wrong with Battlefield 3: Charlie Company, or something), but I have to admit I'm really looking forward to this. 

I'm also glad I didn't buy the Premium Edition of BF3. Now I can save it for BF4. :-)

Ingress SITREPs

Ingress has started a series of YouTube pseudo-news reports that include a round-up of what major story developments have taken place, highlights of their "XM Anomaly" battles, and "sitreps" from agents in the field. Players can upload their "sitreps" to YouTube, and send the URL and other information to Niantic Labs to hopefully be cut into the next episode. The first episode heavily focuses on the Austin, TX "XM Anomaly" that was held during SXSW this year, which I attended! (I'm just out of frame for almost every shot they showed, but you can see my photos and videos on my Google+ page)

      

Hello World! I just added two websites to my Web Designs project: Cooked-with-Love - a recipe database used by my friends and family, and Mission Man!, the website that controls the live-action game played right here on the UTD campus!

I also noticed that my resume was out of date, and updated it with correct information, and slimmed it down immensely. It's also now in PDF form. If you would like a Word version, feel free to email me. I'll put a link up here for a .doc version soon!

So what are you waiting for?? Check it out! :-)

As I mentioned with my previous post, I've undertaken a one year daily drawing challenge - and as promised - I've posted the best ones from the week here and on my Google+ Profile! I haven't yet found a good flatbed scanner that makes quality scans, so for now, I'm photographing my drawings. (which personally I like)

I recently read an article on LifeHacker.com about a Seinfeld-inspired daily task motivational tool that really caught my attention. Essentially, it involves buying (or making) a large, full year calendar and putting it on a wall or door you (or in my case, my roommates) will see often. Then you set a daily goal - in Seinfeld's case, it was "write at least one joke" - this will be something you would normally procrastinate doing (say, having to write 1,000 jokes just before a comedy show) or something you need practice in, that you "never have time for".

Then everyday, you do it; you write at least one joke, and then you mark off that day with a big, satisfying 'X'. You have to do it every day. EVERY DAY. This may seem like something that would easily get pushed aside, but the idea is that you push yourself to do the first week - while you're still really excited about it - and then when you're on the eighth day, you look at the seven others and are driven to not "break the chain". After a month of red Xs, the potential disappointment you'd feel of missing one day is enough to get you through another month. The drive towards success is exponential, and once you've gotten past the first week, (I'm hoping) the drive to continue the chain will be enough to carry you through the year.

I may make more than one calendar if the first one is successful, but for this one, I'm going to make my daily goal to "Draw at least one _______" where every month I assign a different subject - be it a character, an environment, a weapon, et cetera. I have some drawing skills, but I think I would greatly benefit from practice, especially in character sketching. Every week I'll post the my three favorite drawings to OliverBaker.org and publicly on my Google+ Profile! This will make me publicly accountable for my deadlines. Stay tuned to see my first drawings!

Hello all, I've updated my portfolio with a project I worked on at intific last summer! I was tasked with converting a millions-of-polygons tank model they purchased to work in their engine. That meant fixing the severely messed up normals, baking a normal and AO map, retopoligizing the tank (essentially re-modelling it) to a more practical level of triangles. Then I made levels of details, textures, and collision volumes. Voila! A tank is [re]born!

I included a few reference photos, but I used around 100 when I was working on it.

Check it out! :-)

I started on a walk cycle today, but the mesh skinning wasn't holding up to the poses, so I've since worked on it, and rendered a test.

This is the very first render of the short to make it to the internet, so enjoy this first look at The Adventures of Snuggle Bunny and Honey Bear!

For my current animation project, I'm animating a (goofy) fat bear and a cute bunny. So one of my main priorities is showing the weight of the bear. (which should only add to the goofiness)

Obviously then, squash and stretch is my friend. As the belly rises, it stretches, as it hits to it's lowest point in the stride, it squashes. But when should those high/low points be? The walk cycle itself bounces in anticipation of the belly; as the body begins to fall, the belly is still rising. It's the ultimate exercise in anticipation and overshoot. Initially I thought I could add more realism by using Blender's Soft Body physics on the belly - which is tempting since this is supposed to be a more Big Buck Bunny style of semi-photo realistic cartoon animation - but I think it might take a lot of tweaking to get the right mix of "fat bouncing gut" and "gelatinous mass".

If this project were purely photo-realistic, I would say that when the bear is walking slowly, it should be a large undulating bouncing movement in the belly, and when he runs, well, we've all seen the slow motion clips of larger people running. It does look like a gelatinous mass. Here is a slow motion video of a larger woman walking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkPxs7TAvJU - Notice how her belly subtly giggles. (though it would be more obvious if she were wearing lighter colored clothing)

But watch Disney's Jungle Book, Robin Hood, or Yogi Bear, and their belly's animate much more simply. Perhaps though this is because there is a distinction between animating a chubby animal and an obese one. If you really wanted to exaggerate the weight of a fat animal or person, you'd have them stomp dramatically like a sumo wrestler and giggle everything. Here's a clip of the Jungle Book's "Bear Necessities" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ogQ0uge06o

So for this project I think I'll start with a bone or vertex shape group for the belly animation, and then experiment with soft body animation to get more subtle giggles that I can't animate myself. (without weeks of careful giggling)

For more reference, here are some videos of bears destroying campsites. Yogi Bear never looked scarier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CARM1-ZQYb4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdqRb4Cfn-4

Hi all, this isn't an ATEC related post, but I found a massive collection of mostly good wallpapers on reddit today. I tend to get a lot of inspiration from wallpapers. They're generally either abstract and use the entire rainbow, use interesting design techniques, or are beautiful photographs/paintings. Here's a link to the imgur page that they posted, and to the zip file of all 1000 wallpapers.

Reddit Post

This is about the third or fourth iteration of the website, and with this version, the most important changes are to the update system, and to the general look of the site! The portfolio system is also much more robust and easier to update.

Because of I'm taking the Arts and Technology Topics in Animation course this semester, I'll be posting interesting videos, links, and show progress of the digital short I'm creating.

For this week's interesting update, here's a video from the EndlessReference YouTube channel! It's a channel filled with slow motion (frontal and profile view) videos of commonly used animations; i.e. walking, rolling, kicking, staggering drunk, et cetera. They also have different body types, like heavy-set male, athletic male, athletic female, et cetera. Check it out!

EndlessReference YouTube Channel

Well now that I have my website up and running, I'll be putting up more and more content onto my portfolio! My current project is technically still a secret, but I might put up some sneak peeks none-the-less. ;-) I've just started the animatic process, and soon I'll be roughing out the animations.

Stay tuned for more updates! I'll be making one every week for the ATEC "Topics in Animation" class, and possibly more than that!

Nightmares of a 6 Year-old Girl

Nightmares is an HTML5/Canvas game I've been writing for a few months, with the goal of making it compatible with desktop and mobile browsers.

Screenshot Archive

Screenshots of progress so far, that show the process of how the game has been developed.

Meet Your Goals

The Meet Your Goals app is a project I've been working on that works as a motivational tool.

Screenshot Archive

These are various stages of the app, and of the logo for the app. The screenshots are from a working apk file running on my Nexus 4. The app logos were created entirely in GIMP, without any 3D tools used.

Intific - Art Intern

I interned at intific in Austin for the last two summers, where I converted assets from their library of purchaced assets into assets they could use in engine. This required modelling, retopologizing, texturing, normal and ambient occlusion baking, and Levels of Detail.

PRIME - Osama Bin Ladin Compound

For intific's PRIME project, I was tasked with re-creating the Osama Bin Ladin Compound in Abbottabad where he was killed. The most challenging part of this asset was the sheer lack of reference photos on the internet, as it had only been a few weeks after "Operation Geronimo". It took a lot of digging and research to accurately re-create the compound.

Abrams M1A1

The M1A1 tank project - intific had bought this asset in a package of high resolution meshes, and needed it retopologized and textured for use in the intific "RealWorld Engine". It served as a chance for me to try a huge multitude of tools, including Z-brush, 3D-Coat, 3ds Max, and Blender. In working on it I used about a hundred reference photos.

TuBaGames.net - Sole Artist

TuBaGames.net is a free-to-play video games site that my father and I made, and currently contains a library of games (though only 1 live, 1 finished but not released, and 2 in developement)

Barfight!

"Barfight!" was the first TuBaGames game to be made, and it was originally meant to serve as the lobby - so when you finish playing a game of Ships of Steel, you could return to the Saloon to discuss the game, organize a new game, or take out your frustrations using a bottle and chair. Obviously a violent premise, but given a lighter side by introducing it as the set of a western film, where all the cowboys are stunt men, et cetera.

HamperBall!

HamperBall was originally a game made for my girlfriend, by my father and I in the span of only 1 week (from concept to delivery) and was written in DirectX. We then decided to convert it to WebGL to run on the TuBaGames website. The setting is an entire recreation of the University of Texas at Dallas campus, with gameplay similar to that of Katamari Demachi.

Ships of Steel - Men of Iron

Ships of Steel is the most recent "TuBaGame", and features ships that can furl and unfurl their sails, and with wind that can blow sails and palm trees. (which actually effects gameplay). It is meant to be a realistic sailing/piracy real time strategy game.

Personal artwork, animations, and miscellaneous stuff

Here is a miscellaneous collection of art and other projects I've done in my spare time, that aren't part of a larger project or contracted.

Realworld House

This project was a request from intific's Art Director (2010) to show that I can model realistic assets. I took nearly a hundred reference photos and photos for textures. It is normal mapped and low poly to be used in a game engine.

Lemur of Lima

Lemur of Lima is a game I worked on with my father while I was in high school, though development stalled and eventually stopped when the search for a suitable physics engine failed, and attempts at writing our own took too much time/effort. It was designed to be an adventure game - similar to the more recent "Uncharted" series.

Websites designed using CSS3, HTML5, JavaScript, and PHP

I am an avid website designer as well as artist. My (pending) degrees are in Computer Science as well as Arts and Technology , and I like to use the web as a platform for programming projects that yeild results quickly, and that I can share with the world.

Mission Man! Live-action game

Mission Man! is a live-action game that is played at the University of Texas at Dallas, and was designed by myself and a few friends. Similar to Humans vs. Zombies, it uses a website to keep track of objectives and surviving memebers. It was designed for mobile devices, uses QR codes to send information from the real world to the server, and sends information via SMS text messages to the players to update those who are not actively viewing the website.

Public Health Club @ UTD Website

Public Health Club is a student organization at the University of Texas at Dallas. I was contracted by them to create a website for them. Using the "contenteditable" attribute in HTML5, I allowed the club's webmaster to change the website as much as they want, with rich content.

Cooked-with-Love Recipe Database

Cooked-with-Love is a personal website, where my friends and family can share their recipes with each other.

TubaGames.net design

TuBaGames.net is the online video game library created by my father and I. It features switchable themes, in-game chat, and other HTML5/CSS3 features.

Conceptual Elevation Website Design

This is a non functioning concept design of a website for "Elevation Online" - an web-based version of my board-game "Elevation".

School Projects

During my years at University, I have worked on numerous projects, including my blog at TheThrillOfFear.blogspot.com.

The Thrill of Fear (Blog)

This project was for my Information and Usability course, in which we were to create a blog, on which we were to post twice a week, including at least one InfoGraphic, interview, and podcast over the 10 weeks. I chose to use it as an opportunity to do research for the Nightmares of 8-year Old Girl game I am developing, which is a survival/psychological horror game. In the blog I aimed to quantify what makes a horror game or movie good, what makes it scary, and what factors influence the quality/scariness of the game or movie.

Traditional Art

Though I was brought up on tools like GIMP and AC3D (pre-blender open-source modelling tool) I always played with traditional media - but have only recently tried to hone the craft.

Airbrushing

Airbrushing is, in my opinion, immensely better than other painting techniques like acrylics, as you have independent control of value, saturation, and opacity. You can even blend colors by layering colors, which makes the media the amount of control that is most comparable to digital painting.

Acrylics

I took some time to try explore acrylics, but having to mix each color before putting it on the page is quite frustrating, as is the lack of opacity control.

Pencil Sketches

These are a collection of some of my pencil sketches, mostly portraits.