A week ago I introduced myself in a Danish Internet forum dedicated to game 
development. (Why I didn't do it long ago is somewhat of a mystery to me.) I 
just wrote a little paragraph about myself, linked to selected projects on 
my website and mentioned in passing that I planned to write my master thesis 
about inverse kinematics in the Ogre rendering engine, and that I'd like to 
collaborate with a game company on this but didn't know how to go about it.

Within 24 hours I got a very warm welcome, an encouragement from one company 
to send an application for a job, an invitation to come visit another 
company, and best of all, one company wrote me an email and showed great 
interest in collaborating with me on my master thesis, precisely on the 
subject of inverse kinematics.

The last part is the really interesting one. The company is behind an 
advanced game authoring platform and engine called Unity that is to 
spectacular 3D what Macromedia Director could have been if they had taken 3D 
seriously. Really, check out their demos at http://unity3d.com and watch 
impressive 3D graphics from right within your browser! (It requires a 
plug-in, but it only takes a moment to install.)

The plan is that I implement inverse kinematics (and a walking system, I 
hope) in their engine instead of in the open source Ogre engine. Since this 
gives me a chance to get a foot in the industry, this is very exciting. 
Besides that, making advanced technology that is very easy for others to use 
is very attractive to me, which I couldn't have done to nearly the same 
extend with Ogre.

I'm going to visit them at their offices in Copenhagen on Monday. It's a 
four hour ride which they offered to pay first thing in the mail they wrote. 
I've never thought of myself as very good at networking, so this sudden 
interest is all very new. :D I hope it goes well.

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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"Rune" <aut### [at] runevisioncom> wrote in message 
news:474df100$1@news.povray.org...

     Hey Rune, well done! Nice feeling, eh?  ;)

>
> The plan is that I implement inverse kinematics (and a walking system, I 
> hope) in their engine instead of in the open source Ogre engine. Since 
> this gives me a chance to get a foot in the industry, this is very 
> exciting. Besides that, making advanced technology that is very easy for 
> others to use is very attractive to me, which I couldn't have done to 
> nearly the same extend with Ogre.

    Hmm, I didn't do the download thing, but I can tell from the images that 
the editor is 'very' similar to SandBox2 from Crytek apart from the 
graphics.

     How come they haven't implemented IK yet? Or, they have, but they want 
you to improve it?


>
> I'm going to visit them at their offices in Copenhagen on Monday. It's a 
> four hour ride which they offered to pay first thing in the mail they 
> wrote. I've never thought of myself as very good at networking, so this 
> sudden interest is all very new. :D I hope it goes well.

      Yes, good luck Rune!  :)

      And as for the networking thing, the only thing I can say is to listen 
to them carefully as I'm sure you already know.

      ~Steve~



>
> Rune
> -- 
> http://runevision.com
>

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Wow, congratulations Rune!  Good luck on the visit.  I hope all goes well for you.

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St. wrote:
>     Hey Rune, well done! Nice feeling, eh?  ;)

Yes, indeed. :)

>    Hmm, I didn't do the download thing, but I can tell from the images 
> that the editor is 'very' similar to SandBox2 from Crytek apart from the 
> graphics.
>
>     How come they haven't implemented IK yet? Or, they have, but they want 
> you to improve it?

No, they haven't at all, although the user can implement it himself through 
scripting by manipulating the bone transforms directly.

Although their product is great, they're still a relatively new company and 
they're very sparse on resources - they don't even have the editor available 
for Windows yet - only Mac! But they're working on it. It's less than two 
months since they released Unity 2.0, which was a huge improvement over the 
previous version.

So basically, they don't have the resources to do everything at once, and 
since there's also many ways one can go about implementing IK, it's probably 
a good candidate for a feature where some student work and research is 
useful.

>      And as for the networking thing, the only thing I can say is to 
> listen to them carefully as I'm sure you already know.

Yeah, thanks. :) Fortunately that part comes naturally to me.

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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Well done, certainly sounds very exciting.  Just goes to show that you never 
know what might happen wherever you go!

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"Rune" <aut### [at] runevisioncom> wrote:
> A week ago
[snip]

Nice one Rune! I hope that things work out for you. Will your degree be a Master
of Science or M$? :)


Stephen

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Rune wrote:
> Within 24 hours I got a very warm welcome, an encouragement from one company 

Congrats, and good luck!  Don't talk too much! :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

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"Stephen" wrote:
> Nice one Rune! I hope that things work out for you.

Thank you. :)

> Will your degree be a Master of Science or M$? :)

No, actually not. It will be a Master of Information Studies and Multimedia 
with specialization in Games Programming. I did study computer science for 
one year before I decided it wasn't for me, and begun at information studies 
instead. Basically, the approach to programming in my education is less 
hardcore than in computer science, while being more cross discipline 
oriented instead. More info on the path I took here: 
http://runevision.com/welcome/aboutme/#29

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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"Kyle" wrote:
> Wow, congratulations Rune!  Good luck on the visit.  I hope all goes well 
> for you.

Thanks. :)

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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"scott" wrote:
> Well done, certainly sounds very exciting.  Just goes to show that
> you never know what might happen wherever you go!

Indeed. :)

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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