Boston College in eSports!

Here is a picture of us (Chris & I) representing Boston College in Los Angeles this past weekend for the Heroes of the Dorm tournament. It was a crazy surreal experience and having the ability and chance to represent our school was very fun and memorable. We played Arizona State University for the semi finals, where the winner of the entire tournament would take home $450,000 in scholarship money.

Final Project: Group Statehouse

After destroying the structure we are rebuilding the platform with nether bricks.

All fixed! It is so fast with so many people working on it.

Here we are building the walls of the state house. It is coming along so quick because there are so many people building the house it is great.

Here we are working on the top side of the wall. I also used night vision potion so that it would be easier to see in the night time while buildling.

The front entrance to the building! It is starting to come together slowly.

Here I am helping by putting in glass to form windows.

Here is a view of all our windows from the inside of the building.

The side of the building so far.

Adding detail to all the windows.

Balcony that we created on the second floor.

Working on the top part that goes on the roof. We used smooth sandstone to match the color.

Adding more detail to the roof.

Someone decided to put cats in the inside of the building.

Here is the building from the outside with a creative american flag touch.

Final side view of our completed building. Looks great!

This is a final group project in Minecraft where we replicated the Old Boston State House. It is a final exercise from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

Class 12: How 3D Computer Graphics Work

This was a video regarding the basics of the fundamentals of how 3D computer graphics work. The video broke down into three parts which emphasized vertex points, polygons, and lighting. It further emphasized how 3D graphics are basically made up of shapes and lighting and these two elements specifically. The video also mentions 3D Geometry, vertex points, vertices, vectors, polygons, polygonal meshes, normal, lighting, shading, and texture maps.

The first point that the video mentions is shapes. When vertex points come together to create shapes by connecting them, polygons and triangles are created. The video emphasizes how important triangles are in 3D graphics. In addition, everything in computer graphics are created by these points and vertexes especially in things such as computer games and animations as well.

As said before lighting is a huge part of 3D graphics. Lighting is important because its what makes 2D object and visuals appear to have 3D features. In addition to lighting, normals are required. Lighting normal's in 3D programs are altered depending on the object and adjust automatically thereafter. When the light is behind the object the object will appear to be dark, which changes how the object looks and appears in a 3D space.

This gave me a lot of perspective on 3D graphics that I have never thought or been exposed to before. It was crazy seeing how these small features skew our visual perception of 3D graphics. It is also really cool to see the breakdown of something that we almost take for granted in our highly modernized and technologically advanced age.

WebGL Chrome Experiments the FAIL IN FIREFOX

The book selling app seemed to work slightly worse on FireFox. The quality of the book covers was noticeably blurry, something I didn't experience on Chrome.

You can try it here: http://bookcase.chromeexperiments.com/

Surpringsly this game worked just as smooth on Firefox as it did on Chrome. I felt that this had lots of textures to load and might be more optimal on Chrome but that wasn't the case.

You can try it here: http://lo-th.github.io/3d.city/index.html

Not surprinsgly, the aquarium also ran just as smooth on both browsers. I checked many other games but couldn't find an example of a program not working on FireFox.

You can try it here: http://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html

WebGL Chrome Experiments using Google's Chrome Browser

Here I opened the bookcase chrome experiment.

Clicked on one of the Twilight series books.

This program allowed for you to look and browse through a vary large selection of books. It was pretty cool to see it in a very 3D atmosphere. There are over 10,000 book covers to browse through and there's the option to browse by various subjects as well.

You can try it here: http://bookcase.chromeexperiments.com/

Here is City Builder.

The game gives you a lot of freedom to build whatever you want. It felt a lot like a version of the Sims where you can build your ideal city and choose where to place things such as residential areas, police stations, plants, roads, etc.

You can try it here: http://lo-th.github.io/3d.city/index.html

This was a simulation of an aquarium.

Here is another view of the aquarium. You can also choose how many fish you want in the tank. I thought it was a very simple but cool concept. 

You can try it here: http://webglsamples.org/aquarium/aquarium.html

Final #3: Group 3D Building Project

 

After much effort of being given the wrong coordinates I found my classmates! Here is the start of our building.

 I'm adding some glass to our building. This is very hectic trying to build with this many people.

I made some windows for the house.

The inside of our house.

The fence I built for our house.

Fence is coming out nicely.

Added beds to the second floor of the house.

Changing the floor from stone to white carpet!

Carpet is all finished.

Top of our house. This is pretty cool idea.

 An outer view of our entire house.

Diving board with a pool. We are fancy.

This is a final project where we had to build a house together as a class. It took a lot of time and dedication and emphasized the essence of teamwork and voice communication. It is a final exercise from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Discovering Computer Graphics. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc

CLASS 10: The Education Grid

 

This starts with explaining the history of the Education Grind and how it started at Harvard University in 2007.

This talks about how schools can utilize the immersive education in a safe environment for teachers and students of any age.

This ensures that what the people use and create is truly their own. They have endless possibilities with immersive education and its up to educators to utilize the tools that are openly being provided for them.

Read more at http://theeducationgrid.org/

CLASS 10: COLLABORATIVE CODING IN PlayCanvas

 

The PlayCanvas Website. An open source game engine that can run on your browser.

  

There are some of the tools the program has to offer.

 With the PlayCanvas Engine you can easily connect to other PlayCanvas users to collaboratively run the same program and build a masterpiece. You can run a full level editor in your browser and explore endless possibilities. It gives you the opportunity to work with friends or even work alone in creating something that you yourself and other alongside can enjoy.