I MOVED MY BLOG on www.lucaderiu.com/blog

Hi, things are moving well and I moved my blog on

www.lucaderiu.com/blog

Follow me there for any new update on videogame development, software design, 3d CGI and rendering.
See you there ;)

State teacher in Finland

Looks like yesterday that we started the videogame course here at Sataedu. Sounds like a common sentence but it's true, time passed so fast and I loved so much the time spent here in this amazing Country.

Who follows this blog knows that I'm in love with Finland, sounds irrational, but in reality there are so many tangible reasons:

Food

Our ex-prime minister mr. Berlusconi was totally wrong when he said that food here is crap. Actually I find it delicious...of course porrige is not in our tradition and looks like overcooked risotto (well...it is) but the taste is not bad. Now porrige is not national food, but was just an example. Here meat is very tasty and also is cheese. Juices and ciders are so many that you don't know which one you should buy and sweets...one girl some time ago told me "Finland is the promised land of sweets", actually she was right...and she was also sweet ;p

People

One of the best aspect of this Country that makes the experience absolutely unique are citizens. They are clean and loyally righteous (of course I'm not so naive to think that all of them are like this, I'm talking about my experience of whom I meet).

What surprised me are the extremes; think about climate and sauna: freezing and boiling. This is an aspect that you can find here quite often in folk's personality. They are not talkative but if you spend enought time with some they tell you all about their life. They are friendly but you also know that if you don't behave properly a punch would hit your face.

During day people are clean and respectous of environment and during night everything happens around. During week days they are on time (and with on time i mean "on time!") and the laziness arrive in the weekends. They are quite consumists, lot of bright advertisings and then on weekends everything is closed (sometime even bars).

State

If you think finland is perfect place because taxes are low you are a fool, I also was. Here taxes are very high but in the same time you feel that you are investing in something that works.

I mean, with taxes you feel that you are contributing in something named "State". Again, I'm not so naive to think that here corruption doesn't exists and politicians are nice people.


(mr. Stubb no offense intended, just a recent viral video on the web)

But still things works, even if somebody is stealing money from State, here stuff works.

Can you imagine? bus in time, public grass cutted, efficient road cleaning, economical support and contribution for investments and business, State services and websites working, public worker in office during work time. it sounds crazy that all these things are working so well...actually it sounds fucking crazy that in Italy they don't work and taxes are even higher.

"We are many and they are less" I heard people saying, bullshit I think. If we are many contributor things should work better no? maybe we are many "burglars" you mean? ok, this changes the sentence then.

By the way, fuck my thoughts! here things works, food is great, people are averagely good and friendly, everybody speaks english, you can find support for everything, cold weather forges soul, landscapes are very meditative, public instruction works and for me is a pleasure being a part of it as State teacher!

Finland? 10/10

Videogame Development course in Finland

I want to update the blog since long time and i think this experience I'm having in Finland can be a right reason.

Recently I got in touch with SATAEDU vocational school, a series of faculties joined together in Satakunta region in western Finland. The request of the school is to prepare students to videogame development techniques, and for me is a real honor to be in charge in such a role, expecially in one of the best Countries for videogames (Remedy, Rovio, Supercell and so many others).

So that's it, I took a ticket at the end of July to come here for interview, I got confirmed and the 25th of August I started.

The experience is not simple at all, many people consider my stay in Finland like a sort of holiday, but alarm rings very early in the morning and days are quite heavy and long.

Actually I'm doing lectures every day between 6 and 8 hours per day. Topics covers 3D, 2D, textures, UV mapping, shading, lighting, scene setup, Unity and development.

Students are various in terms of age and background, some are really cool in 3D, animation and gaming while others require a bigger effort from me to be supported in all the steps...but I'm doing my best. The goal is to produce something really cool that can help students to find a proper employment in this business and in the same time proof the quality of SATAEDU instruction.

During this period I'm also working on a 3D animation containing fire and imrpoving a new plugin I'm writing for Unity, capable to render Global Illumination light in realtime.

Actually the result is quite rought and aproximated but it works with an impressive framerate. I'm experiencing some problems in color absorption/reflection but I'm optimistic on the final version ;)

Last month's summary

In the last few months I had no time to update this blog and I think it will be discontinued (or moved on my personal web-domain).

Latest project included the end of courses at NABA and SPD. The year was pretty long but, as always, full of satisfactions. NABA’s course was at the 7th edition and in my opinion is now time to update the program. I started this series of lectures in October 2007 and even if I did some corrections and modifiations during the time, I think now the core of the course should be redesigned.

SPD gave me great satisfactions (while with Domus Academy the experience was a little different) regarding 3D lectures. What I love of SPD is that I’m considered in the planning aspect of the course. Logically there is an academic office that take decisions, but I think is very good that they asks us (teachers and professionists) what we think about some new implementations, like software update, schedules, planning and so on. This make SPD very professional in the approach.
Anyway in november my new edition of Autodesk 3ds Max, V-Ray (and other surprises :)) should start again on NABA, Domus Academy and SPD.

For the second semester there is possibility that other schools would insert my program in lectures regarding CG subjects. This is a “maybe” but I’m also discussing with two new schools outside Italy’s border and I hope to repeat the amazing experience I got time ago as visiting professor at Helsinki’s Metropolia University of Applied Sciences.

According to lectures, me, Andrea Peduzzi, Filippo Zanoli and Donald Cortese did a deep workshop in another school in Como. I’m glad to work with them in VideogamesLab project: we do basic but functional workshops on game development. Our main goal is not to “create” game developers (it would be too ambitious, expecially in short periods like workshops). Our goal is to show an approach to game development business both to students and teachers.
About videogame development lectures I’m also partecipating with the brand new Spicchi team in a series of basic lessons on game development as business path. Courses are open to everybody but designed for parents that desire to understand more about this possible path for their childs.

In this period I’m preparing my new speech for ViewConference 2014. In 2010 and 2011 I spoke about videogame development and realtime technologies using 3ds Max and Unreal. Last year I spoke about 3ds Max, V-Ray (thanks to Chaos Group for believing in my knowledge), 3D Printing (with Massimo Temporelli) and Augmented Reality with Unity 3D.
This year I plan to surprise you with a practical approach to virtual reality both for presentation and entertainment. For the occasion I bought an Oculus Rift 2 (inspired by Luca Roncella taht made me try his one). So get ready to be inserted in a 3d environment :), I’ll wait you at ViewConference 2014!

About PlaySys works we never stop and year after year we are more stable on the market. Even if there were some difficulties in publishing department (because of the ending of two magazines like Professional Photoshop and Fotografia Facile) we still continue with Digital Camera. Also 3D renderings for architecture and design are proceeding properly and our information platform (3DArchitettura) got renewed recently. Render Academy by the way is proceeding slowly but I hope it would be ready in september with a lot of surprises.

Still with PlaySys we are updating our games like Kitty Scratch 2, Augmented Cat, we developed a new simple one named Grayville and we are in the pre-production phase for a new one, with better story this time, I promise :)
In the meanwhile during august I want to speed-develop a platform; it will be a solo project and the challange is very appealing!

PLAYSYS

KITTY SCRATCH 2

STEEL HERO

GRAYVILLE

Last but not least, I released my last music solo project on iTunes and Spotify. Project name is Nihilistista and the album is named Eclipse. This project started about two years ago and I’m very satisfacted of the result, recording guitar, bass, drum and mastering together in the album. My working projets are taking time from my music, in the past I would never expect this would happen (expecially when, 18 years ago, I was playing drums 2 hours per day). I promise myself that one day I’ll get back in music with a band or something like that…hopefully I would keep my word ;)

Well, that’s all I think. There are many other stuff happening in the between but I can’t write them all and this is still not my memoirs :D
It’s just a quick summary of what happened in this silent period and I’ll do my best to keep this blog updated somehow.

Professional Photoshop - Rivista chiusa

Ebbene sì, dopo due anni di doppiaggi l’avventura con Professional Photoshop è terminata. Purtroppo precedentemente alla chiusura i doppiaggi erano stati dimezzati dall’editore che, alla fine, ha deciso di terminare la pubblicazione. Sempre nel periodo finale delle pubblicazioni avevo sentito voci che parlavano di lamentele legate agli abbonamenti e alla reperibilità dei numeri. Sulla pagina ufficiale di facebook ho trovato con grande dispiacere alcune di queste lamentele ed è un gran peccato: la rivista era buona, i progetti talvolta interessanti e comunque efficaci per l’apprendimento delle funzionalità del programma…non capisco come abbia fatto a sfasciarsi così il progetto.
Per quanto mi riguarda ci ho messo tutto l’impegno e spero che la mia parte di lavoro nel mettere la voce su tutti i quasi 500 video abbia fatto piacere ai lettori e li abbia aiutati nel comprendere meglio i vari passaggi.

Prosegue invece la mia collaborazione con Digital Camera, che come rivista sembra più stabile e in cui alla fine si parla degli stessi argomenti, ma con un taglio più rivolto alla post produzione di scatti fotografici rispetto alle produzioni basate interamente su composizioni ed illustrazioni.

…peccato