BRENDAN LUU'S ACTIVITY SHEET

39 - Brendan on Mar 14, 2017

I've been busy with finals lately but today I had some free time a decided play with TouchDesigner. This was my first time setting the program up and I used live video from my webcam to do some cool feedback effects. After using TD for a few hours, I can already tell how powerful this program is.

38 - Brendan on Mar 2, 2017

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This week in VR club, we were joined by distinguished alumni Girish Balakrishnan for a live Q & A. Girish recently won an Oscar for his work on The Jungle Book. One thing I related to was when he talked about his time in the accelerated masters program (i'm considering it as well). "The masters program gave me more time to figure out what I wanted to do, and it gave me a thesis that I could go to a company and say hey, this is my research, this is what i'm good at."

37 - Brendan on Feb 20, 2017

Today, I got the chance the check out NeosVR - a multiplayer VR world building engine. The potential for this tool is insane. Building VR apps on a 2D screen and viewing them in an HMD no longer makes any sense. Built in VR for VR - the way it should be.

36 - Brendan on Feb 16, 2017

Everyone tonight was blown away by dear angelica. Our three HMD/one room setup worked out nicely with all systems centered in the middle facing out.

35 - Brendan on Feb 15, 2017

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Tomorrow, Drexel VR is hosting a Dear Angelica screening. I'm hype for it because I love seeing people's reactions after trying good VR. We'll also be setting up two, possibly three, full VR systems in the same room so that should be interest to pull off. Also my intramural basketball team played well toand won by mercy rule *splash*

34 - Brendan on Feb 14, 2017

I found a cool VR project on Twitter to- the developers of 'Normal Keyboard' open sourced their project. I downloaded their Unity files and dissected how they made it - its very well thought out. One thing that stood out to me was the way the letters floated above the actual key to create a 3D parallax effect - to me this made the keys look more tangible. Props to NormalVR for creating a delightful VR interface. I also created a design pattern guide for my 2D UI class.

33 - Brendan on Feb 13, 2017

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Today, I applied to be a student volunteer at SIGGRAPH's 2017 conference. I hope I get accepted because it would be such a great opportunity to represent Drexel at the conference and meet huge players in the VR/AR industry (hoping to land some interviews for my 2018 co-op). I also created the html/css of my 'PHILLY SLANGER' project

32 - Brendan on Feb 10, 2017

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I added my top 9 favorite music videos to a new section my website. I used a flexbox layout for the titles of the videos so that they would be resposnive on all screen sizes. Visit the section with the link in my navigation. As you can see by the image above, I need to update the site with mobile media queries.

31 - Brendan on Feb 9, 2017

For tonight's DUVR meeting we did a tutorial on how to track a physical object in a VR experience. The meeting went well and we even had members work with each other to recreate the tutorial after I showed them what to do. Visit the uploaded tutorial.

30 - Brendan on Feb 8, 2017

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I updated my site with a "viewport" metatag so that it would recongize mobile display sizes. This allows my site to display full width on mobile devices. Shouts out to my brother Ryan for the tip.

29 - Brendan on Feb 7, 2017

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Here is my High Snobiety logo redesign and style tile. I wanted to compliment the saturated imagery that the site has by making a bold, graphic logotype.

28 - Brendan on Feb 6, 2017

Today, I added a two column responsive layout to my activity sheet. I also created a draft UI for my 'Which Philly Slang Are You?' javascript project.

27 - Brendan on Jan 27, 2017

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Today, I created some high fidelity wireframes for my Highsnobiety redesign. My focus was to display quality imagery rather than showcasing a large quantity of posts. (click image to view full UI^)

26 - Brendan on Jan 26, 2017

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I played around with some different colorways for the F00dteam logo and opted for a "tasty pink." If anyone has feedback on it, please let me know++

25 - Brendan on Jan 25, 2017

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After the critique in my Animation 2 class, I updated my robot with more detail all around the body. I added fidelity to the camera in the bot's head, put snacks inside it's body, and made the joints better prepared for rigging.

24 - Brendan on Jan 24, 2017

Today, I revisited another animation I started a month ago. I am trying to export the Maya MASH network to a .fbx file but I'm pretty sure it won't work with the MASH nodes I am using. Tough luck, I even talked to people in Maya's forum about it and no one has an answer.

I also visited a few apartments in University City that I'll potentially move into next year. The apartments I saw were nice but a bit pricey - my friends and I are leaning towards getting a house.

23 - Brendan on Jan 23, 2017

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I began modeling my 'Venbo' robot today. I'm creating the bones of the robot in a way that will be easy to rig for animation. I'm going to add joints, controllers, and IK later on to have full control of the character.

WEEKEND 3 - Brendan on Jan 21-22, 2017

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This is the logo mark for F00dTeam.

F00dTeam is an AR/VR software company providing fun and engaging activities for people to enjoy together. Our first product will be DanceFl00r - A VR social club for listening to music and dancing with people around the world.

The logomark is cake because it reminds me of coming together with people and enjoying life.

20 - Brendan on Jan 20, 2017

The past two days, I've been slacking on my activity sheet.. but I haven't stopped grinding.. so I'm updating them a late.

I worked with my bro Tyler Roach to get networking done for my vr dancefl00r. This means we connected an Oculus Rift and HTC Vive together over a server so that two people could be in the same vr r00m. We used Photon Networking with Unity and it worked! There are definitly bugs we have to iron out (lag and scaling issues). Our next objective is to add voicechat.

19 - Brendan on Jan 19, 2017

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After getting feedback from my animation class, I rethought my robot story and came up with 'Venbo.'

"Night shot at an isolated train crossing - Car is stuck-puttering in the middle of the train tracks. Vending machine robot looks over from the side of the road like "What a stupid car." Looks away but but glances back and sees the train's lights approaching the car. Vending bot uses hydraulic legs to stand up and wobble over to push car out of the train tracks. Pushes the car off the tracks but falls on it's chest and gets ROCKed by the train. Snacks fly everywhere. Car drives away safely"

18 - Brendan on Jan 18, 2017

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As I woke from my sleep deprived slumber, I picked up the book 'How We Learn' as per recommendation from my friend Zack. Going through the beginning of the book, one thing stood out to me. The author, Benedict Carey, explains that quite possibly, my ad-hoc, jumbled approach to learning in college may be helping me after all. The book is intriguing thus far.

17 - Brendan on Jan 17, 2017

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So I pulled an all-nighter toprocrastinating/working on my UI design homework. My assignment is to redesign a news website - I choose Highsnobiety. Some wireframes I created are above.

Dick Hayne briefly stopped by the MoCap Lab to visit a small number of VR club members. The visit lasted less than two minutes but he was 100% impressed by our groups drive and ambition. I need to sleep zzz

WEEKEND 2 - Brendan on Jan 14-16, 2017

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This weekend I prepared for Dick Hayne's visit to the digital media dept. A few other students are going to be there when he visits and I worked with them to get their demo vr applications ready. Updates on how the meeting goes tomorrow.

I also worked on a model sheet for my character animation class, ball'd a lot, and partied with my boy Sean Bailey. Good weekend / week to come!

13 - Brendan on Jan 13, 2017

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Today, Sean Bailey and I Skyped with serial entreprenuer Julie LeMoine. She has been creating immersive training content for the past 30 years and she gave us insight about how VR/AR can be used outside of entertainment. We are going to use her as a source in our talk on 'VR in education' that we'll be presenting at Drexel Nerd Night.

I also worked with Nick J to refine our presentation for Dick Hayne. Time to enjoy the weekend.

12 - Brendan on Jan 12, 2017

The first VR club of the term was tonight, we had a lot of nice faces show up. ---- I spent a few hours moving chairs and shooting my own photogrammetry photos in the AJ Drexel Gallery.

11 - Brendan on Jan 11, 2017

A video posted by Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) on

Tonight I went to my first 76er's game with Robin, Nando, Aslan and Aaron. They won on a buzzer beater (‾⌣‾)

10 - Brendan on Jan 10, 2017

My first scripting and art history classes were today. I have good teachers, they seem very passionate about helping their students LEARN swag. I'm very happy to be a student at Drexel. Everything feels right -- classes, friends, Philly -- all good. Drexel's attitude toward innovation is proper. Keep grinding dude

For my presentation with Urban Outfitters' CEO (Dick Hayne) next week, my advisor Nick Jushchyshyn tasked me with modelling a photoreal version of Main Building's gallery. He provided reference photos for me that I threw at Agisoft's Photoscan photogrammetry software. At first, the results were abysmal. After learning more about the program, I was able to remove/mask photos that aren't ideal for photogrammetry. My final result is above^

9 - Brendan on Jan 9, 2017

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ToI met with the Child Life Staff at St. Chris and learned more about their efforts to bring VR to children undergoing burn dressing changes - similar to the research with SnowWorld VR. They want to adapt my Superhero Flight game to an experience that a child can wear for 10-20 min while their burns are being tended to. Their team is working on a proposal with Drexel's IRB so we can bring this to real patients. I'm excited to move forward with their research team.

WEEKEND 1 - Brendan on Jan 7-8, 2017

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This weekend I prepared my Superhero flight VR experience for St. Christopher's Children's Hospital. I configured an Android development environment on my computer and built the game to my phone.

I'm meeting with their research team tomorrow to discuss ways we can adapt the game to fit their research. I'm excited the start classes this week. My classes should be fun👌

6 - Brendan on Jan 6, 2017

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I finished all the domesticated things I had to do around my apt, balled, and worked on a FB cover photo for DUVR's first winter term meeting. The premise of the meeting is 'How to Get Involved.' I'll most likely revisit the graphic to make it better.

5 - Brendan on Jan 5, 2017

After shooting a series of 360 photos around URBN Center, I worked on a simple VR scene transition where a person can go inside a photosphere.

I'm proud of how it turned out because I got to explore the super useful VR Toolkit and used a clever technique to render the photosphere texture (reversing the normals of the sphere in Maya and applying the photo texture to the inside).

I also learned about and began using Unity Collaborate, "a simple way for small teams to save, share, and sync their Unity project. It’s cloud hosted and easy to use so the entire team can contribute to the Project, regardless of location or role." Perfect for version control and working between computers. HYPE!

4 - Brendan on Jan 4, 2017

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Today, I got to try zSpace during a meeting they had at Drexel. Their AR learn experience seems a bit behind Microsoft's Holographic technology but I liked the fact that they focused on creating a shared learning experience. Immersive content is significatly better when experienced with other people.

I also decided to scrap the Rhino file that I was trying to export to Maya because the area of the URBN Center that it was created for has very complex detail looking upwards. I'm going to use the main lobby instead.

I'm beginning to realize all of the things I don't know about 3D animation and game development. EveryI learn more.

3 - Brendan on Jan 3, 2017

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I'm attempting to create an architectural walk through of Drexel's URBN Center. My friend from Drexel's architecture program gave me a Rhino file of part of the building that she created so I spent time figuring out how I'm going to export the model to bring into Unity.

I decided that the best plan is to export it to Maya and texture it so that I can add VR walkthrough functionality in Unity. I plan to do the texturing tomorrow. No easy task. I hope I can do it.

2 - Brendan on Jan 2, 2017

There's a research team at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children that wants to adapt my SupermanVR experience to help them move forward with a study on virtual reality usage during burn dressing changes. The idea is that VR will distract the patient from pain and the snowy environment will make them feel cooler.

Today, I updated my project to Unity 5.5, created a snowy particle system and changed the environment to a low-poly winter environment I found in the Asset Store.

I'm going to demo my app to the research team sometime this month.

1 - Brendan on Jan 1, 2017

Starting this year, I'm publishing an activity sheet to share daily life progress. Each activity will be accompanied by a photo or video.

Today, along with starting my activity sheet, I share a project I've recently started inspired by my love of music, dancing, and going out. The goal of this is to create a social VR dance club.

So far I have a Unity scene with body tracking IK and spatial audio speakers. Fun!