UCI Flashback
My friend Chad bugged me to publish a paper I wrote for my Biomorphic computing class from my Masters program at UCI. It was the first class I took that morphed the worlds of arts, computers, and engineering into one subject, and stretched my imagination to levels I had not experienced since my undergrad philosophy course.
While there classes in the Masters program I enjoyed, that one was a singularly amazing experience. It was taught by Bill Tomlinson, formerly of the MIT media lab. The whole class was filled with theory and programming challenges on replicating life-like behavior in software systems. One week we would learn flocking theory and how birds and fish seem to instinctually flock, and the next week we had to implement it in a virtual world. I'll put up the code for that later. It certainly wasn't the best implementation in the class, but from a personal perspective, still a hugely rewarding experience. For now, I'll just link to the a paper I wrote titled Perceptual Narrowing: Enhancing Realism in Autonomous Character Interactions. It is about the very human emotion of panic and chocking and outlines a way to implement it for the Virtual Raft Project.
I must point out that I was novice in the field of experts, so I approached this class a sprinter trying to better his personal best rather than get the gold medal. So Chad, I hope you enjoy reading the paper as much as I loved researching and writing it.
Ok, enough of reminiscing, back to my current pursuit.
Quote of the Day
I would like to thank flocks. herds. and schools for existing; nature is the ultimate source of inspiration for computer graphics and animation.
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