Playing with Thea

Today I have been playing around with Thea Render a bit. Here is one of the Example Models I applied some material to and rendered. This could turn out to be really fun!

This image is composed of three textures. One for the floor, one for the Thea logo, and one for the white tiling. Other elements is that the entire model is surrounded by a box with a light emitting surface made to look like a window so you see that reflection on the surface. Time to go play more! Until next time~

Final Project

Here is the final layout for the Ballard Neighborhood Design Studio. I think it turned out fairly well. Some of the most valuable feedback was the disconnect in ideas between the greenways and the intersection.

On Wednesday we are doing an open house to the community in Ballard. Wish us luck!

Camera Posts in Rhino 4

Hi guys. Today I am going to be doing a quick tutorial on making rhino camera shots. Its quick and dirty. I am Helping out a friend tomorrow on this subject and just wanted to make sure I can still do it so here we go.

First I've set up a basic land form that you may want to camera shot different angles of.

This first thing you want to do is make some "camera posts". Now usually if you want a specific view you are trying to get a view of a human at your site. So I've made my camera posts 5.5 feet tall and put them at several corners of the landscape. You can put these posts anywhere you wish. Its easiest to put them at corners, edges, intersections, etc because then you can snap the end of your line to one of those objects, just make sure your snaps aren't disabled at the bottom of your screen.

This is the landscape in perspective view after the posts have been added. Also when you are drawing your post lines make sure you are holding shift on the vertical scale so that your posts are strait. make sure you draw them in them first in the top view then finishing them in the front or right view to ensure that you aren't flying off into space.

So now you want to first double click the perspective title in the perspective viewport. Then right click that and hover over "set camera" then on the next menu click "set camera and target". Then with click the top of the post you wish to be the source of your first view. Then with the second click on where you want the view to be looking. You will probably get something like this. pretty narrow viewport.

So here I wanted to get a slightly more panoramic view so double click the perspective title again to go back to your four viewport screen. Then in top view click release then click and drag slowly the edge point of the camera box to widen the view. If you cannot see your camera outline thus are not able to manipulate it right hit F6 or right click the perspective title >>> set camera >>> show camera. now you should have a more desirable view.

Now to save your view you want to click and hold the little car icon at the top of your screen. and click the grey car with the floppy disc icon next to it. The command bar is going to request a name but be sure that when you name your view you DO NOT include any spaces in the title. You pressing space bar will end the titling and start new commands. Once your view is saved you can always access/manage it by pressing and holdign the red car again but this time clicking on the grey car with the pointing finger above it. Click the title of the view you want and your set! These views will exist regardless of what new modeling is added or old modeling is manipulated, You can even delete or hide your camera posts for rendering. Hope this helps!

Until next time!

I Love Hexagons!

I heard some quote or something the other day about how you should never say that you don't have enough time in life to do this or do that, because you have the exact same amount of hours in a day that the great doers of the world had/have. Then the quote went on to name some great accomplishing people, Einstein, Mozart...etc etc. And it kind of struck me. Its true? The more i thought about it and discussed it with a couple people. Yea that the quote is a little bit generalized, but nonetheless it has kind of given me some fresh encouragement that I'm not sure is correct.

My biggest issue in life I think is that I want to do so many different things. Sometimes I get frustrated with the whole path of things that you have to finish one thing before you can start another. I have to finish this degree before I can start another. I have to make money in this profession before I start another. But are those people who were great, did they always stick with one thing. What if you have several passions? How do you choose which to pursue. I guess my question is can I pursue all of them????

I dont think it's indecision as much as...indecision.. whatever.

Back to Ballard. This last week are putting together some design refinements for another presentation to the Ballard Community council on the 24th of February. JJust been putting together some basic graphics to show them which will go through another round of work before our final on march 9th.

In other news, I finally met with my professional mentor! She was great and encouraged me to apply to more internships. It was great to meet with somebody that is fairly recently out of a Landscape Architecture program and so is very familiar with the current Landscape Educational experience and had some great advice! and im not just saying this in case you read this! :D Anyways.

This is what we are working on the Ballard Project. Some rough graphics. Click the images for Larger, more clear views.

and next I am trying to come up with some ideas for an overlying portfolio theme thing... here is something i threw together today.

I love hexagons.
Until Next Time!

LID Enhanced Greenways and Stops as Destinations

Hey guys, today we met with community members of Ballard and bounced some ideas off them on the future of Ballard around a series of Rapid Ride Stops. It was a good experience and it always helps to work with real people to get a sense of real world concerns. I have found myself concerned more and more with the financial side of projects. I was telling my partner today, I dont see a beautiful canopy spread across the intersection, all I see is a giant $ falling crushing the entire project from reality. What I am interested in is rooting out community support and community groups that are already established and working with them to make some of the project cheap, and thus more likely to happen. Because in the end what does it always come down to? Will power and money? Mostly money. Here is a couple photos I took while working in the studio on Sunday for the Monday meeting.
I should mention those green corridors being sketched out are planned to be Low Impact Developement (LID) enhanced greenways, meaning that they share the road with the little vehicular traffic that exists there.

Next we move into the digital stage and further look into funding and areas that we can possible do some rezoning....touchy.
Until next time! :D

10,000 Views! A New Day.

Hi everyone! Today my blog hit the 10,000 view mark. It's pretty funny, more people come the more you post...and spam your facebook status. Anyways today I'm just going to give a quick update about the NEW quarter so far, some NEW books i'm getting in, and a NEW view on high organization!

So far this quarter I've had a few lectures, just introductions into hydrology and site engineering, site restoration, and two quick studio sessions on neighborhood design. For the site restoration class we are going through a series of different natural ecosystem types and looking at the best ways to go about restoring them from man made disturbances. Unfortunately this has yet to yield any good pictures...Anyways, what I'm finding really interesting about the class is towards the middle of the quarter we are going to start a real life restoration project as a class at Ballard in Seattle. I have no idea how we are breaking up the assignment class-wise yet but it is going to be a new experience for sure. I will keep you guys updated as we go.

Books

So to compliment all these new classes I've purchased some books that are recommended and one that I've been wanting for a while. That book is Mastering Autocad 2012. I feel pretty confident in my basic autocad skills but in terms of advanced use, I am nowhere near where I want to be.

The other books I am still waiting for in the mail are Site Engineering for Landscape Architects,by Steven Strom, Kurt Nathan and Jake Wolandand and also Soil Design Protocols by Timothy A. Craul and Phillip J. Craul. At first I bought these bad boys at the local University bookstore and they seemed rather interesting at first glance. But of course they were a good 50 dollars cheaper on Amazon so I returned them. I'll let you know how they turn out!

Other News

In other news the Fluffy-Muffin website is coming along nicely. We have fixed a few bugs like getting the images not to flicker when you hover over them. We have also been able to get the links to the Facebook Page and the Tumblr and the Twitter all set up so that's good. The biggest thing we are having issues with now is getting enough content up for google to be able to accept our site as legit so we can get advertising up.... hopefully that will happen sooner than later.

Well Until Next time when I have more pictures to show!

Not this Time

Have you ever had a failure in one area that made you work harder, faster, and with more motivation in all areas? That is what I feel like right now. I was unable to procure the internship at the firm I was applying to and I completely understand all the reasons for that. Reaction? Work hard and get it next time, or the next one, whatever the case.

Alright so what is on today's agenda? First thing is, as most of you probably know already, we are launching fluffy-muffin.com on the Jan 1st. Hold your breath! Every day it is coming together more and more, When we launch it's going to be a rough polish meaning that not everything is exactly how we want it, annnd since we are not really being paid in any way it's most likely not going to get to the perfect point any time soon. BUT! Amazing none the less. So here are a couple more images that I didn't post last time of more sneak peaks at some of the functioning parts of the website. Also not to perfection YET.!

Alright! So now I'm off to work on that stuff some more, and my portfolio, and! a ASLA submission.
Until next time!

Working from the Sunny State

So yesterday I submitted my final model for my Rhino modeling class and here are a few pictures of it. A couple things I definitely could have done better if I summed up the motivation was variate the fern rotation and scale a bit more, definitely should have done a better job on marsh grass. Somethings I still need to figure out is how to make face-me objects, for those of you who don't know what that is, it is just an image that turns and always faces you as you are orbiting the model, I don't think it does so well with shadows though. If you didn't see the earlier version you can check out a picture here. Anyways I may continue to work on this model for a piece of portfolio as it is not quite up to standards as of yet. Take a look at some of the pictures below! AND if you would like to support me take a look (and by take a look I mean click) some of the advertisers on my page!

Other news. So I had my telephone interview with the firm I mentioned previously and it seemed to go ok. I don't know if I'll be selected but the interviewer and I seemed to hit it off well. I hope to get the position but I am ok with not getting it too. If I don't I'll find something somewhere else soon! I'll keep you guys updated. Also on another front, my partner and I have decided to submit to the ASLA awards the Orcas St. Housing Project later in the New Year. I hope to be more thoroughly involved in the submission process and I think it's going to be a good experience winning or not. Some things to be aware of if you find yourself in a similar position is the 50 dollar fee to become a student member of ASLA and the Entree Fee for the project itself! You can look at some of the PRE REVISED graphics in my earlier post here. Until next time!

Final Submission

So today me and my partner put together some pages of 11 x 17 to submit to our professor for grading. These pages will also be given to the city of Redmond to show and consider at future meetings concerning the park system. Hopefully its helpful. Comments are welcome! Until next time~

On other notes, so far California has been great. Pretty cold down here. Tomorrow I have that phone interview. I actually looked at the land8 lounge blog for some tips on what types of questions to expect and what types of questions to ask, but they all seemed geared more towards professionals seeking jobs, not a student looking for an internship. I'll let you know how it goes! Wish me luck!

The morning after

Well the quarter is over! The above picture is the aftermath of my studio desk and it was well worth it. Our presentation to the redmond arts commission was somewhat of a disappointment due to the attendence of only a single guest. Better than no guests I suppose. It was a stark difference to the review on Wednesday to professionals  professors and students. Overall I think the quarter went fairly well and I think I was taught more this quarter than the previous three combined. It's been great.

So in other news, I now have a phone interview scheduled with a firm here in Seattle who is looking for a winter quarter intern! I am pretty excited to get the opportunity to talk to them in a form other than a resume or cover letter. Wish me luck! 

Right now I am on a train on my way to California for the week where I shall finish my final rhino model and prepare for the interview!! Pictures to come as I go.

Until next time!

Tips and Tricks learned from yesterday's presentation

Relief, oh sweet relief. I feel so calm like the above picture I took in Taiwan this summer. A huge burden lifted off the shoulders. You know the feeling? So today we presented our work of the last few weeks to a panel of professors and professionals. I'd say it went fairly well but there are a couple of things learned that I definitely want to share with you. First of all, presenting digitally is a whole different ball game than presenting on plots. For most of our presentations we decided to use a site called prezi, a flash presentation site that has some cool features. Using the site you can zoom in and out of graphics, hide graphics within other graphics and reveal and a load of other things. However it can all be a bit overwhelming. There was one group that decided to go classic and plot out their boards rather than use digital and graphically I think there's was the best. I am now seeing why boards are the prefer medium for reviews like this. It is really easy to go back and look at specific graphics and remember specific talking points when all the graphics are right there in front of you at the end. In a power point or prezi format you must cycle through the images until you find the one the reviewer wants to talk about. This ended up being the dilemma for most of the presentations. However the traditional board had its imitations too. I dont think that the perspective views were as successful as they couild have been in a digital format. That being said I have come to be convinced that the best way is to have a plotted board/s up on display but simultaneously have the digital format for the main presentation. Then during reviews the reviewers can refer back to the printed boards. The other option is to set up 2 projectors each with a "plotted" board displayed on a prezi or a simple PDF and zoom in and out of those. I think for my next presentation I am going to try doing this on a prezi. Last tip, when working with prezi be very careful about the size of the images and types of images you upload. Uploading 2 flash documents has made our presentation essentially unopenable on the prezi website due to lack of memory. BEWAREEEE it could happen to you!!
Until next time!

Lets keep each other company shall we?

Would you like an update throughout the long night? I think you would :D More posts to come tonight most likely! Until next time! Update!

Arts in the Parks

An accident turned out somewhat interesting looking! Needed a break from procrastinating :D have fun in reviews! done with photoshop cs5 Until next time...
Real Estate Web Site Hosting

Under the Bridge

Here we have an in progress view of a portion of the site we are working on. We're exploring the possibility of Microsoft Hardware Kinect being implemented into public spaces (it has quite a bit already) to make parks digitally interactive with very little maintenance cost. This also will allow for changing of software from time to time to re-engage the public over and over again. Have to add textures now!~ Until next time :D

Late Nights Have Come

Late nights have come! Just want to wish everybody a good finals week. Here at the UW Landscape Architecture Department we are presenting to professionals and professors on Wednesday afternoon, then on Thursday we are presenting to the Redmond City arts department! Apparently our designs matter this quarter! After that we are installing a children's fence/ play equipment we design-built on Saturday! Pictures to come :D Until next time!

The difficulty of applying to Internships

So as you may or may not know, I recently quit my job at Radioshack to free up some time to apply to some internships.

Tree[D] and Arbaro

Supposed to be learning about flamingo nxt renderer today

Productivity

Have you ever been sitting at your desk with mountains of work piling up around you?

RHINO 4.0!

Hey guys, if you dont know what this is, then go buy the student edition of RHINO 4.0!

The Woes and Goes of GIS

So we've started using GIS for composite mapping now and it is FUN.