How to distribute wealth amongst the citizens in an economy is the most important question in economics. In a sense, that’s really all that economics is about. If you get this question right, you can maximise prosperity and personal freedoms. Get it wrong, and you have crime, poverty and war.

The coming decades are going to completely break our current method of wealth distribution.

The labour-for-wealth exchange is disappearing, and along with it, our ability to survive. If we don’t transition smoothly into a post-labour society, the Occupation in Wall Street is going to spill into main street.

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Having spent nearly two years out of the AAA game development world, I’m excited and eager to get back into a dynamic studio environment.

Capcom Vancouver (previously Blue Castle Games) make great games, with an emphasis on fun (Dead Rising 2). Perhaps more importantly, for me, they put a lot of emphasis on having great technology (including a custom game engine) and a top-notch toolset to support it. I’ve never seen such a large and talented crew of programmers on any game project. It’s quite the spectacle.

On a more personal note, I’ve taken a bit of a new career path. For the first time in my career, I’m a full-on programmer. I will still be straddling the art side of things to the extent that I have to in order to understand their needs; but my day-to-day work will be to create content-creation toolsets.

Making tools used to make art. Awesome.

So I just finished Deus Ex 3 about an hour ago. I’ve been ruminating on the experience and felt compelled to share my thoughts on this important game.

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I did an interview on gaming website ctrl2crouch.com. Check it out!

RibbonMeshGen.py

A python script for Maya

Download RibbonMesh.py

Description

Create a ‘ribbon’ shaped mesh that follows the contours of an arbitrary input curve.

Features

Create a ribbon mesh from a curve.

• No flipping! Uses Parrallel Transport algorithm to create a smooth ribbon regardless of how much the curve’s normal flips along it’s length.
• Auto-generates UVs too!
• Same tool used in my videogame, BEEP to generate terrain shapes.

To Use

1. Download and place .py file in Maya python script directory.
2. Execute: “RibbonMeshGen()” from the Maya python command line. This brings up the UI.
3. Draw a curve in the front camera (must be smooth curve, not linear!).
4. Select curve, then press ‘ Load Curve’ button in UI.
5. Adjust ‘Sections’ slider to control the number of division along the length of the curve.
6. Adjust ‘Width’ slider to control the width of resulting mesh.
7. Close the UI and you’ve got yourself a ribbon mesh, ready to use!

Contributions

This is GPL, open source software. Download and use however you want, contributions/patches are welcome and will be credited in the code.

Known Issues

Script will generate a 2d-orthographic mesh at this time (projected into the XY plane). A 3d-version would not be hard to implement. I just needed it to work this way because the levels in BEEP were arranged horizontally along the XY plane. Let me know if you would find a 3d version useful and I will try to find time to create one.

After almost a year of serious neglect, I’ve re-booted kiaran.net and turned it into a proper blog. My hope is to populate this space with a collection of articles relating to my interests (mainly, character rigging and graphics programming).

In addition to the musings, my top priority is to package and distribute many of my scripts and plugins (for Maya) through this site. I have developed a lot of tools in my spare time over the years, and I’d like to do a better job of sharing them.

The online community has given me so much, I hope kiaran.net can be a collective ‘thank you’ to everyone who has helped me throughout my career by volunteering their time and talent through open-source initiatives and online tutorials.

It’s time to give back…