panda3d and a road-runner

What I do at work now is pretty cool…I take the code from the developers, work some magic on it, and turn it into the stuff that our customers can download and play. It’s a pretty cool gig, but I really want to write my own code, help build the game, etc., so I’ve decided to learn Panda3D, our 3d graphics engine.

I took the first steps last night by downloading and installing the pre-compiled Win-32 binaries. I was able to get the tutorials working. Now I have the long road ahead of designing and coding some sort of 3D game or movie to prove that I have what it takes to do this for a living. Since I’m not overly fond of RPG’s, I think I’m going to make a first-person style shooter game.

I don’t really know what I’m doing yet…I downloaded a couple free models from a website and was able to load them in panda, but the proportions were all wrong and I didn’t invest the time to figure out what I was doing wrong.

Anyways, if I can pull this off, it will be pretty cool. Even if I can’t pull it off, I’ll learn something about how 3D games work, which will give me a better insight into what I’m doing here at the VR Studio.

All that aside, I saw a road-runner for the first time (not the car or cartoon, but the actual bird). We were in the car headed to Laura’s grandmother’s house in Barstow when I noticed him running around the middle of the street. I asked Laura to grab my camera (she was sitting in the back seat and the camera was in the trunk of her Explorer) and I slowly pulled over to the side of the road. I quickly zoomed in on him and snapped a picture. It turned out pretty good. I might crop it a bit and have a 4”x6” print printed up.