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!

Thea Render

I just now made my very first rendered image using thea render. I'm pretty excited to finally get my hands on this program. The price for students is insanely cheap. About 100 bucks for me.

I got the program itself which allows you to import models and two plugins which allows you to render from the programs itself. I will definitely keep posting my progress on here. As of now I've only had a bout 20 minutes to play with the program itself so we'll see where this goes! Also update on how the fluffy muffin is doing. We have just been approved for google adsense so thats a step in the right direction!. We are adding a new section as well. Something about surviving life/college. I'll be posting on that a minimum of once a week and the other team mates will be posting as well. AND we are currently in the process of reorganizing and redesigning the entire site and the GUI. Stay tuned!

Ballard Community and Designers Meeting

Friday we had a quick meeting/review with the Ballard Community Council to give them an update on our progress and developing ideas. Here is part of what we showed them. We got some good feedback and direction/voiced concerns over the course of the day so that now we can address them over the next two weeks. Please Click the Picture for Higher Quality Images

I think from here we are moving to a more over-arching theme of Health in the project. Taking the health themes expressed on page 1 and pushing them and calling them out throughout the whole project. Thanks for checking it out!
Until next time!

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!

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!

Fluffy-Muffin has Arrived!

Hello everybody! The fruits of my winter's break labor has finally been revealed! The website my friends and I have created is now live and ready to be critiqued! I really encourage anybody reading this to go take a look. As of now we only have one article and one comic up but we are adding more content 3 days a week. Ultimate goals? Well in my mind one of the ultimate goals is to have the site grow to a place where writers and comic maker's alike can create and post their own content and have it recognized! Or just entertainment...either way I've had a lot of fun and stress, yes stress is good in this case, getting the required elements together along with my teammates. There is still much much more to add and I cant wait to see where this all goes!

Anyways in another front do you think I should include some of the graphics for the web site, in a portfolio page? I am seriously considering it.
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!

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!

What have you been up to?

Alright. Time for an update. There has been alot going on since my last post. Last time I showed you guys what we were learning in computer class here at UW. How long ago that was! Alright so whats new since then?

The Woes and Goes of GIS

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

Composite Maps

We have moved into the beginning stages of our first major individual project of the quarter.