pings from the void » teaching

Processing vs. Unity

Matt Ditton — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:39:23 +0000

Recently I’ve been using Unity3D. And I’m impressed. I’ve been working in game engines for about a decade and I’ve never encountered one that is so easy to use. It’s got basically everything you need, integrated with any package you’d want to use, and you can get a license for $200. That is amazing.

Because I’m also teaching it I’ve been putting together a bit of reference material about it. The first one is a Processing vs. Unity document. It covers some of the syntax differences between UnityScript (a Mono run version of JavaScript) and Processing (well it’s Java under the hood). and here it is..

Processing_vs_Unity

GCAP 2008 – And now my talk

Matt Ditton — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:05:26 +0000

Some wonderful people posted the entire talk on you tube. That’s brilliant I was told no one got it. So here it is…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (this is the one with the pretty examples!!)

Part 4 (more pretty things here)

Part 5

GCAP 2008 – Slides from my talk

Matt Ditton — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:11:09 +0000

On Friday I gave a talk at GCAP. The topic was on teaching artists to program and how this can benefit the whole team. It was a chance to show off some of the experiences I’ve had through the year while teaching processing.

It’s also got a few tips on how to write code for other artists in your team to use. The whole thing went over well, and as promised here are the slides from the talk. If I’m really lucky maybe I can get a recording of it.

the link to the doc

One down thirteen to go

Matt Ditton — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:47:20 +0000

Week 01 of 1109GFS is in the can. Thank you to all the awesome students who came along. I had a great time. See you same place, same time, next week.

remember
[cce lang="java"]
problem = pebkac;
lol(u);
[/cce]
mattD

1109GFS and trying to explain (art == data)

Matt Ditton — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:51:23 +0000

This is the last weekend before I start teaching at QCA. This year between working full time making games, I’ll be teaching two classes called 1109GFS and 1112GFS. They have been titled something like “Programming for Artists 1 & 2″ but I prefer to call them 1109 and 1112.

The formal structure of the class will be teaching processing to students of the games design degree. But the subtext of whole thing is to try to show that you can view art as a form of data. It’s a different approach and one that takes understanding before you can appreciate all the ramifications of what that approach means. Consequently when I talk about this idea at work they smile politely and nod. There is a lot of scratching and shaking of heads, and it mostly finishes with everyone agreeing that I’m on to something, we just can’t put a good finger on it.

First class is on Tuesday night. Wish me luck.