David Budd

I have been playing League of Legends for the last two weeks, after seeing a trailer on X-Play about their first season starting with a grand prize of $100,000. That peaked my interest. I wasn’t able to level fast enough to be able to get into the ranked games in time for the drafting, but season 2? I will be there. The game is pretty repetitive but its a test of skill, each game starts your champion at level 1, and you advance (to a max of 18 levels) and try to destroy their base. As your account level increases, you unlock the ability to buy runes (which make your champions stronger) and spend ability points. Their match making is pretty good too. There are two ways to join a game, either with a group, or solo. If you choose to do solo, you are paired with people of roughly equal levels and its a tough game as you compete against a team (of either 3 or 5 people) who are also roughly the same level. You can also do group, which you can invite your friends to (generally better for strategic play) and you are paired with people slightly higher than you. The match making also predicts whether you are going to win or not, based on statistics. If you win against the odds, you get extra experience, helping you level your account faster.

The best thing about the game, is its 100% free. They have weekly rotation for the champions you can choose to play, and as you win games, you gain IP points, which allow you to purchase runes, permanent champions, etc. You can also go to best buy and buy the game for $20, giving you 20 champions unlocked for life, a $10 in game store card, and… the box? Haha, that is pretty much the only perks you get.

Also, you get referral bonuses, so if you are thinking about joining, why not click my link here and try it out. https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c49dc52865cf

Oh and i forgot to tell you my username! It is Marozhina. Add it.

Here is a screenie from my most recent game. 21 Kills, 0 Deaths, 6 Assists.

Popularity: 1% [?]

*sigh of relief*

I think I got to a good finishing point for my final project. Hopefully with this, I will be eligible for a week extension to make all the modifications that I had in my head that didn’t quite make it into final composition.

This was a 3 week individual project, I had to take a couple of 3D models and place them in a room, duplicating a lot of them to create a scene, moving them around, twisting joints, putting crayons where crayons are likely to be, basically set up the entire scene to look like it has been lived in. Then, after I did that, I had to UV unwrap most things and create textures for them. That took most of the time. After textures were made and everything was looking how I wanted, I had to create a light set up for a realistic feel. 1 light had to be natural (from the window) and one had to be from a source outside of the camera’s shot (I did a door!). After all that was done, I had to render out separate occlusion and depth map passes to fiddle with in final composition, and the result from all this… is this image right here.

You can click the image to make it full sized 1080p if you would like.

Now, there are plenty of mistakes in it that I just don’t have time to fix right now, and that is why I am hoping for the week extension. Things like, all those books are the same book. (This child must really like Eragon) I had a lot of other things needing to get done in a certain order over these past 3 weeks, (one of which you’ll get to see soon!) and I had to push this project off until the very last day. Yes, I’m talking about right now. I have been working on this pretty much from start to finish since the moment I got home from work at 10 PM. Not bad for 1 nights worth of work, eh?

With where I started to where I finished here, I am very pleased. Please let me know what you think with a comment on this post. Thanks!

Popularity: 9% [?]

This is the submitted video we made for our project. We had to texture and place every object shown, and then realistically light it. The scene was built in Maya 09-10 and final composition was done in Adobe After Effects CS3.

We had a time frame of 5 weeks to complete the project, with a group consisting of 5 members.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Hey there all my internet visitors! Welcome to my website, I know there isn’t much to see right now but I gotta start posting for that to change. So this first post is just a little introduction of the site and myself in case you don’t know who I am.

My name is David Budd. I am a student at the University of Texas at Dallas, majoring in Arts and Technology for computer animation, planned graduation date is Spring 2012. I am currently a sophomore (about to end that and become a Junior!) and I try to take at least 2 ATEC related courses each semester. Currently I am in the Advanced Lighting and Texturing course, and Animation Studio. Both are very time consuming and I lose lots of sleep because of my procrastination habits, but I enjoy them.

I set this site up so I can showcase all the work I am doing and see my progress as I learn more over the years. Plus, it doubles as a portfolio. Need me to do work? Feel free to contact me!

The site is also going to be a personal blog of whatever might be going on with my life that I care to share. It will be a good way to stay connected with some of my contacts who are doing similar things (They are listed under the affiliates tab to the right). I find it to be a fun little hobby to run and manage websites. I helped a good number of my friends create their own sites as well, I am their web host, and also their tech support. Their problems become my developed skills, it will be useful in the future.

I am going to try and keep this site updated as much as I can, so check back every so often for some new updates. Thanks for visiting!

Popularity: 28% [?]