Warning: Long Post

Hello friends! How's life so far? My life has been so crazy these past few days. Here are some of the details, and we'll go through them later. Last July 13, I was asked by a friend if I can edit/create a video. Of course I can, we can. Since we have a crew that was formed from our Human 1 Class. We had a LOT of exams. My false teeth are kinda loose, much more!

Let's begin with the video thing. I started video editing in high school. This was the first video I ever edited (Click here). I got into editing when I came across a compositing software called FX Home VisionLab Studio. It had some pretty good effect presets. (as you can see in the video) All I did in the video was drag-and-drop. Then I saw the 'light saber' effect in the program, and I immediately planned a shoot. This was the outcome. (Click here, Facebook link) Post production (editing) took two days because I had to keyframe everything. Haha. And there were no sounds because my old desktop had no compatible audio drivers. :(

Anyway, from accepting the video editing, I learned a lot. When she was stating how she would like the opening sequence, I already knew I was going to use a 3D program, since I (think) cannot do that using a compositing program. The opening sequence was a gate, in which you have to enter the correct password to get into a building. Here's a snapshot of what I came up with.

Picture was slightly edited. I added the sky in the background.

This is my second 3D work and the first that I built my self. The first one was this Transformers Title Animation, but I was guided by a tutorial on maxafter.com. I modeled the gate and the walls since I couldn't find one online that I like. They were modeled in Google Sketch Up since I do now know yet how to model in 3DS Max. I have some experiences with Sketch Up, and when you get used to a program, it's kinda hard to migrate into another. When I was in high school, I rough modeled our school building. It was just an estimate because I did not have any references and it was mostly from my memory.

Originally, I thought of downloading free models of buildings and putting in into the scene. But in those 2 days of painful searching, I couldn't find the one that I like, and if I did, I had to texture it. And as of the moment, I can only do simple texturing. And then it happened. I cheated my way through those buildings. Now what I did was to download pictures of buildings from the internet and slapped them onto the boxes, corrected the UVW Map then voila! Building things. Same is true with the monitor on the wall. Neat huh? I also suck at lighting that's why I didn't use any light on the scene. Just the default lighting. Renderer was mental Ray, then rendered a separate ambient occlusion map. And that was it. Although in the photo above, I was unable to put the ambient occlusion. Oops, well it's just a preview anyway.

Another thing I enjoyed doing was constructing the log on screen. Here's what it looks like,

Assembled Log On screen with altered FBI Logo. 

If you look closely, you'll notice the Internal Knowledge on National Security is actually an abbreviated IKNS. LOL. I just had the urge to put it there, because I can. haha.

Moving on, on July 17 and 24 (both Wednesdays), we had exams on two subjects, Math 40 (Differential Equations) and Mechanics 101 (Statics of Rigid Bodies)... almost one after the other! (9-10am and 11-12pm, respectively) Whew! The crazy thing is, during our exam in Mech 101, I nodded to a classmate and the instructor classified it as cheating. I got 60/100 in that exam, which should've passed. But then, our exam papers were signed because of the act, so I got a -100%. Yes, that's true. NEGATIVE 100! Haha. Even if I got 60, the percentage is sill -100%. (._. All I could do was sigh. I didn't complain because I admit that I 'cheated', in a way of nodding. *Sigh. And that was one reason I was not able to post here. I cannot get that thought out of my mind. I feel bad about my self every time I think of it. And it's the first that it happened

But, fortunately, in the next exam, the teacher almost gave it away. It was fairly easy, you could get 100 if you understood the process. I was very very very happy, because I got 100! While my classmates were not happy of their already passed score, I was very contented. Even though I got zero. (The negative 100 and 100 just cancels out, so in two exams, I got zero) Tears almost fell from the corner of my eye when I received my paper. And then, I sighed again. But not the same sigh I sighed the week before, it was a sigh of relief. Math 40, on the other hand, was so-so. I was satisfied with my passing score. And it was in those exams I felt good about solving problems in Math. You know that feeling? When you solved a problem and you got the correct answer? It's awesome!

In other subjects, in our Socio 1 class, a Rock-Paper-Scissors game was held between two groups competing to get the "Movies" Report, the loser will report on "Dances". The RPS game was so intense that in the first round, my opponent won, the next round, it was draw. And after several rounds, the game was still a draw! (Both parties handed down the same weapon, a Rock) The referee decided to ban the Rock for the next round. To the spectators surprise, both parties handed down the same weapon yet again! The Scissor! Everyone burst out laughing. Then the referee decided to end the match and do a toss coin instead. Unfortunately, we lost. So next week, we're going to report about Dances, the evolution of dance to be specific.

Just this afternoon, I discovered something about Media Player Classic. The player that comes with the K-Lite Codec Packs. If you put a video file and an audio file in the same directory, and if they have the same file name, e.g. Video1.mp4 and Video1.mp3, the player will play both of the files! Can anyone confirm this? It worked for me.

Whew! Sorry for the long post! I just gotta get them out of my system. Thanks a lot if you read my posts! :) If there are any areas to be improved, please tell me.