Good news for all of you whom are willing in know more about the technical aspect of the computer graphics development.

On the 7th of February 2012, the game design minor of CMD, with the precious collaboration of the Software Engineering Department, will start a 30 hours course on Python for thools development held by Emiel Van Dam, Software Project Manager at Cybermind, a Dutch company which develop high end virtual reality solutions.

The course is suppose to be partially theoretical and partially practical, with a very interesting hands-on session that will lead you trough the development of a 3D assets exporter for Ogre, the famous open source game engine.

The choice of the practical subject doesn't mean that this workshop is merely oriented to the game development, so, do not misjudge it. Simply it allows a constructive journey through several topics, techniques and principle that can give a better overview of the potentiality of this scripting language and the way to master it.

The course will include also basic topic about programing and math, beside the notions of Python. All this aspects, properly combined, will give you the skills necessary to go trough the practical part and develop your own game exporter.

This initiative is dedicated to the CMD students (no matter the minor) and to the Software Engineering students.

The benefit for the first group is to understanding the potential of going beyond the boundaries of the commercial software for the 3D, video and multimedia assets' creation.
With Python, indeed, you can really think out of the box and create your own tools and plugins to automatize processes and customize the pipeline to your actual need;
Just to make you understand the crossover potential of this scripting language consider that Python is fully integrated and supported in Maya, 3D Studio Max, After Effects, Blender, Softimage, Motion Builder and Final Cut.

For the second group the course would be profitable if you are willing to step in the video game development and establish a future collaboration with the students of the Game Design Minor in order to take part actively to the technical development of the CMD projects and start to create your own portfolio. Also it is a good chance to understand what is the job of the the Tools Engineer and put the foundation for a career in this direction.

This course represent a trade-union between the technical development and the assets/animations creation since any 3D artist/animator need to know how the world of the engineers look like and all the engineers needs to know how the assets' creation pipeline works, in order to integrate properly the media in the final game build.

For the CMD students there are 10 seats available. We have been very glad to see that the pre-enrollment list reached the number of 30 but now is the moment to decide who is really interested.
Because the limited amount of seats it is important that the people whom will sign up for this course will attend it until the end.
For this reason, please sign up only if you really want are really confident to attend this workshop.

You can subscribe at: http://www.cmd-leeuwarden.nl/subscriptions/1265

So... just to summarize

• What: Python for Tools Development.
• Why:
  • For CMD: understand. and master what happen behind the hood and use the knowledge to customize and bend to your needs the software and tools that you use.
  • For Software Engineering: step in the game development playing a key role such as tools engineer.
  • For both the groups: understand more the each others' world, being able to analyze with the right perspective problems and collaborate in finding solutions.
  Where: at NHL – classroom D 1. 017
• When: Every Tuesday on weekly base from the 7th February until the 29th May. From 09:30 to 11:30.
• Who: Emiel Van Dam, Guest Lecturer from Cybermind.
• How: 120 Minutes of Lesson with both Theoretical and Hands-On sessions. The whole course will last 15 lessons.

Course Synopsis and Contents

• programming concepts
• programming paradigms
• basic math (cross, dot products, vectors and matrices)
• introduction to Python and IDE (IDLE in this case)

• File formats
• basic math (cont.)
• debugging concepts and tools
• software patterns

• 3rd party software
• basic math (cont.)
• Jargon and communication with artists and programmers
• Intro to C++

Temporary Bibliography

3D Math Primer for graphics and game development
ISBN: 1-55622-911-9
Mathematics Bundle I-III by 3dBuzz.com