Dang, I''m too slow today. I need to learn how to read, slap myself silly and call me dizzy... or something like that

quote:
...now I''m lucky enough that my company thinks highly enough of me to take a chance, and they''re paying me to explore the uncharted waters of the game industry.

Hey, that''s great. I wish you all the best.

Jerry




my homepage
E-Mail: BlueOrbSoftware@mailcity.com

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Ouch!!!

That''s one expensive book $116 at amazon.com. I will most likely buy it because there are so few CSG books so every little bit helps.


I managed to buy it used at a University bookstore for probably half that. But I did buy it in 1993 or 1994, when it was probably easier to find. I''d check your local University library (if one is nearby) first, before buying it.

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Right now, I''m looking over ACIS website, pretty impressive system. They use OpenGL for shading and interactivity. I will use Direct3D.

We use ACIS here. It is not cheap by any means. We''re talking $$$ similar to Quake II license fees ($100K). And we only have two developer seats, I think, and at most maybe 100 users. Price goes *way* up (think millions of $) if you have tons of users.
Its an ordeal just to get in the door with them.

Have you looked into using metaballs for booleans on solids? The Blender modeling system (available for free at www.blender.nl) is a good way to play with metaballs. The algorithm for implementing metaballs is fairly simple. You don''t get a hard corner between objects being booleaned----its rounded and smoothed. And maybe you can''t have objects that have sharp corners. But they are pretty cool. You can do union and difference booleans pretty easily using the metaball approach.

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
You mentioned that you wanted to change your job. Doing what? A game programmer or something else? Curious minds like to know

Actually, its a fair question (even though I said I did not change my company). Yes, I wanted to go to a game development company. I interviewed with a few---mostly phone interview because I got an offer after my first live interview and before any of the others went live. For 4 years now I''ve been working primarily on this NASA contract (NextGRADE) and it is mostly busy work. Add a dialog here, a menu there, occasionally (when we''re luck) go play with the big SGI system and VR display at Langley, every now and then add a new 3D feature. It isn''t really going anywhere fast, and I was stagnating. I had to get out of that. So I walked in with a resignation letter and they counteroffered with the IR&D that I''m doing now.

quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Oh, I just noticed that angry face on top of your post.

P.S. Is it ok if I shoot you some email sometimes?

I just like to play with the different images!

Sure Jerry, you can email me sometime. Although I don''t have time to just have long conversations by email. Usually, I can''t do more than one of these long answers a day!




Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
email: grhodes@sed.ara.com

quote:
We use ACIS here. It is not cheap by any means. We''re talking $$$ similar to Quake II license fees ($100K). And we only have two developer seats, I think, and at most maybe 100 users. Price goes *way* up (think millions of $) if you have tons of users.

That''s great news for me. It means that there really is a market for CAD systems and that it can be a very profitable one.

quote:
Have you looked into using metaballs for booleans on solids?

To tell you the truth, I haven''t yet but I will in near future. The reason is that I''m just experimenting with solids using non-regularized boolean operators. I write code based on what I read so when looking over Mortenson''s book I thought of implementing his ideas first. I will have to try out blender in near future.

quote:
I had to get out of that. So I walked in with a resignation letter and they counteroffered with the IR&D that I''m doing now.

Well, it seems like it backfired on you I understand how busy you are (aren''t we all) so I will inform you when I get something significant working and will be hoping for anyone''s input. Thank you once again.

Jerry

my homepage
E-Mail: BlueOrbSoftware@mailcity.com

I''m speechless... Well not that much, thanks for all that info guys, I just got this newspaper that says that Database Programmers in Dallas TX get over 120,000 in the first 3 years