My experience at DH2015

From the 25th of September until the 2nd of October I have been volunteering at Digital Heritage 2015 in Granada.  I feel very happy to have made the decision to go, since besides spending a great time there it has opened many new doors.

Granada is a very friendly and beautiful city, host to the World Heritage Sites of Alhambra, Generalife and Albaicín. As part of the congress programme we had the chance to visit some of these sites, as well as to attend a full day cultural visit to Córdoba, Úbeda-Baeza or La Alpujarra, at choice.

Welcome reception at Carmen de los Mártires

Although I had already been to Granada a couple of times, I had never visited Carmen de los Mártires or La Alpujarra before. It has also been my first time at Alhambra by night, which has been another well worth visit. The feeling you get in the moonlight is very different from the one you get during the day. Anyway, Alhambra is a place that never ceases to amaze the visitor, no matter how many times you have been there.

Visit to Alhambra

We spent the second evening walking around Albaicín and topped it up with a nice dinner with tapas. It was funny to discover that some of the attendants had been following us, the volunteers, on our way to the restaurants. "You look like you know where you are going" - they said. So they joined us and we had a really great time. It's very unfortunate that nobody thought of taking a photo all together.

Walking tour in Albaicín

The third day was resting day for some and cultural visit for others. I went to La Alpujarra, since it was the only place among the options available where I had not been yet. This is a region in Sierra Nevada full of vegetation, valleys and beautiful landscapes, along with some very interesting towns that have been built to adapt to slopes.

La Alpujarra

On Thursday there was yet another social event, the Gala dinner. The restaurant was beautifully decorated in Arabian style, belly dancers included, and food was delicious. This was an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

Gala dinner

These occasions have been very interesting and useful to me because, besides the fun, here is where you get to talk to people. Without them I would have had little chance to have a personal talk with anyone outside the staff.

Aside from the social events there was of course a lot of work to do and tons of presentations to attend and projects to try at the exhibition hall. We as volunteers didn't get much sleep during the week, since we had to be at the venue very early every day to prepare everything. But on the other hand I could also attend most of the presentations I was interested on, so it has been a great and profitable experience.

As for the sessions, almost all of the presentations that I attended were related to interactive applications and storytelling. Most of the projects used similar technologies and techniques to create and present the contents and to allow interaction: laser scanning and/or photogrammetry to create the models, web-based or phone/tablet applications, AR, Unity, Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear, Kinect. Although it was interesting to see the different approaches, few projects were truly innovative. The highlights for me would be the following:

• Keys 2 Rome (V-Must): International exhibition taking place in different countries simultaneously. Natural interaction interfaces HoloINT and Admotum.
• Virtex (Visual Dimension): Interaction with exhibits through an interactive 3D replica.
• A SAR-based Interactive Digital Exhibition of Korean Cultural Artifacts (GIST): RTI-based digital artifacts, presented by Yong Yi Lee
• Near light correction for image relighting and 3D shape recovery (Northwestern University, Evanston and ANE Image, Pasadena): Development of a new light estimation algorithm.
• Virtual reconstruction of the Seokguram Grotto (KAIST), presented by Jae-Hong Ahn. 
• Reviving Karanis (UCLA and Alexandria University), presented by Eiman Elgewely.
• Interactive segmentation of rock-art in high-resolution 3D reconstructions (TU Wien and TU Graz), presented by Christian Reinbacher.
• Using a Gaming Engine for Historical Road and Path Research (VIAS), presented by Willem Vletter. 

The tutorial on Monday by Federico Fasce "Developing a Mixed Reality Interactive Application for Cultural Heritage" was also very interesting. He talked about game design and showed us how to create AR and VR applications in Unity.

Developing a mixed reality interactive application tutorial by Federico Fasce

In the exhibition area I personally liked the MeSch project a lot. It consists of a custom device and a web-based application that allows to enrich physical artifacts with digital content in a very easy way, triggering different contents depending on the proximity of the visitor, its age, etc. The device uses a NFC reader, IR sensors, an Arduino Mini, a Raspberry Pi and a projector. Dario Cavada kindly explained how their device was built and how to set-up the different contents, and I was really impressed. You can read more about creating the meSch cases on their blog.

Digital Heritage Expo

MeSch project

I am very grateful to have had the chance to participate in such an event. The whole experience has been very intense and rewarding, from the organizational point of view as well as for the contents and the interpersonal relationships. I am now more aware of what's going on in the field of digital heritage, plus I have met many people and even made some good friends among the other volunteers. So guys, if you are reading this, thank you all for your hard work, your good mood and your friendship! And thanks as well to my flatmate Jae-Hong Ahn, a Korean researcher who happened to book a room in the same flat as me, for being such a friendly and nice companion!

Volunteer team

Finally, to put the icing on the cake, I got a few job opportunities out of this! So I would recommend you all to do something similar if you ever get the chance :-)

DH2015

After the third Unity tutorial I could not continue with the 4th and last one (Roguelike). The reason is that I signed up for a course in development of AR applications for Android that has kept me busy for the whole month of July. I will write a separate post about its contents and what I've learned.

In another turn of events, a few weeks ago I was checking out this year's edition of Digital Heritage. This is an international congress focused on the application of IT to cultural heritage, therefore bringing together professionals and researchers from both fields. The first edition was in Marseille in 2013 and the second edition will be this year in Granada, which is quite fortunate since I live in Spain. There are several workshops and presentations that would be very interesting to attend, specially the ones focusing on interaction in virtual environments and serious games. Networking is also one of the major benefits of going. Therefore I have decided to participate as a volunteer. I sent my application and they have already accepted, so I'm heading to Granada in September :-) I'm sure that it's going to be a very interesting experience no matter what, but hopefully my working shifts will also allow me to attend the events that I'm interested on. So let's hope for the best!

Focusing

After doing some research I have come to the conclusion that I want to be a serious games developer. That is, games whose primary goal is not to entertain, but to serve as a training or a teaching tool, to help marketing, etc. This doesn't mean though that these kind of games cannot be entertaining. In fact I believe that they should be, so they can better achieve their goal (specially if their aim is to be educational).

This being said, my focus of interest is still archaeology and history. The kind of games that I would like to make would use historically rigorous models, real stories and characters, and would be educational. I recall a game that I played during childhood and illustrates quite well what I have in mind. It's called "Versailles 1685" and I remember finding it very interesting at the time. What I liked about it is that it takes place in Versailles palace and you get to walk around its different rooms and areas, view and read about its paintings, meet many historical characters and learn about them and about life in the palace. Here some images of the game:

So now it's easier to know what I need to learn. I searched for job offers in serious games and game development in general, and the key skills that I will need are C++ and Unity 3D. Besides this, most of the offers require professional experience in game development, with at least one published game, and about half of them require to have a master in game development. Therefore I've been considering signing up for one of the two main masters in video game development that exist in Barcelona:

• Video game design and development (UPC)
• Master in creation of video games (UPF)

From the one taught by UPC I like that it's cheaper and as a UPC Alumni Premium member I get an additional discount :-D Also they use game engines, which would be useful to learn (I guess), and the master has for some reason more visibility among companies. The annual event in which students present their works is always full of people.

The one by UPF is more hardcore. They don't use any game engines and instead expect you to implement your own. I see it as a great learning experience. Another good thing about it is that they split the contents into two independent specializations: design and programming. That means that programmers can focus on just programming and skip the modelling and animation part. Finally, the amount of classroom hours is higher.

I was almost convinced by the one at UPF but a conversation with my boyfriend and several other friends who are professional game programmers walked me out of it. In their opinion masters are too expensive for the benefit they provide, and game companies don't care much about the education section after all. Companies value experience and motivation. Since I'm already a developer they believe that I can learn the same or more on my own. So their piece of advice is that I keep my money and start making copies of simple games or join an indie group. I just need to have a few small projects in my portfolio, know the main concepts in game development and be well versed in the language. And if they all agree on that then I guess they're right.

Next stop: becoming an indie game developer.

Back in business

Hello again!

It's been more than one year since my first post and it may look like I have lost all my motivation THAT fast. Fortunately that's not the case, I just didn't have anything to write about in relation to 3D or Virtual Reality (not that I can write much about it today either, but today is a big day). But first things first, what have I been up to this whole year?

After quitting my job in February I had lots of time but no money. I had planned to attend the Italian Virtual Heritage School 2014 in summer, a 10-day long program organized by V-Must (Virtual Museum Transnational Network) in which I would learn the basics of virtual archaeology in a practical way: laser scanning, use of drones, photogrammetry, GIS, 3D modelling and so on. So I decided to look for a temporal job until the school started, and so in March I was already working at a new consulting company. It was more or less the same as my previous job (Java programming) but completely different at the same time. Smaller company, realistic timings for projects (no overtime!), great people (not that there were no great people at my previous job as well, but here every single one of them was awesome!), more innovative (thanks to my project leader!), and a more relaxed environment in general. Another difference is that it wasn't application maintenance, but a whole new project starting from scratch. This allowed me to learn things properly, and for that I am very grateful.

In May I received devastating news. The Italian Virtual Heritage School had been cancelled due to lack of attendants, but it might be postponed until October. There was still a chance. Several months passed and there were no news of the school ever starting, so fearing the worst I started looking for alternatives. The school never took place indeed, but I found an online Master program starting in November that was focused on Virtual Archaeology and Preservation of Cultural Heritage. It seemed to fit my needs and so I decided to sign up, but November came and there were no news again. I started to get really frustrated, like I would never be able to achieve what I wanted. I was being so unlucky! I must confess that the lack of news along with other aspects around this Master made me have serious doubts about it being a serious program, and I was considering giving up. Meanwhile I was still working at my temporal job and was feeling very comfortable and happy with it. I also took a course in Android development in November-December and I am now a certified developer, so I had new worlds to explore. But finally the news came and I knew that the Master would start in January.

January to March 2015 have been very busy. I tried to combine work with the Master, but the workload of my studies was too heavy to continue with both, so very sadly I had to quit my job in March. In April my boyfriend and I had decided to go on a trip to Japan, and we have spent the last 4 weeks there (amazing trip BTW). And I just came back 4 days ago, ready to take over the Master.

The last few days have been quite frustrating once more. I have little info concerning the contents of the Master, as little as just the names of the chapters and the name of the professors in some cases. And with some exceptions, so far the chapters have not been very useful to me while the workload is insane, and I am worried that the whole thing is going to be the same. I feel like I'm wasting my time, since I am above all a developer and I don't really need or want to write academical papers, or fund applications, or job offers (these are some of the activities that I have to deliver). I'm not saying that the Master is useless by itself, it's just not that useful for a person with my profile. So I am considering putting these studies in a second place, follow only those chapters that I consider useful and invest the rest of my time experimenting with new technologies. Learn by doing, that's the best way to go. The worst that could happen is not getting the Master certificate, which I don't care that much about. I believe that knowledge and experience are more valuable than a paper saying that I did this or that, as long as I can prove it somehow.

With these things in mind yesterday I sent an e-mail to my coordinator and I am now awaiting her response. I'm just hoping that she understands my point of view and won't take it in a bad way.

Today is a new day and I've been thinking on the next steps, I need an action plan.

Action Plan

• Get to know the context
• Read about what's out there in terms of software, devices and applications
• Look for people and companies involved in the development of VR applications. Find out which are the desirable skills in a potential employee
• Learn
• Focus my efforts on learning the key skills to be hirable
• Create demos for Android using AR. Maybe also for IOS.
• Find out which applications/engines/frameworks are the most used in the creation of VR/AR applications (e.g. Unity, Unreal Engine) and create demos
• Take whatever courses or workshops are available in relation to VR/AR
• Create a portfolio
• Create a website in which I can publish my demos (or use this blog)
• Look for a job
• Not any job, a job in the field :-)

There is life out there

I used to be a programmer at a multinational consulting firm. Working there had its good things and its bad things, as everything else in life. But basically I had no time. Not for myself, or for my family and friends, or to learn or to be creative. I was some kind of robot living just for the sake of working, always under huge stress and over-timing a lot, and it felt wrong. I wanted to work to live and not the opposite, I wanted to enjoy doing whatever it is I do for a living, because there is nothing like being passionate about what you do and because time is priceless. There had to be another way...

Recently I decided to quit my job, so I could have time to do all of those things I always wanted to do. It's been just one week since I started enjoying my freedom, and I already feel like a new person. I started doing exercise and cooking more. I explored my own neighborhood and stepped into many great undiscovered places. I had time to catch up with a few long lost friends and also to read a bit every day. Also started to sleep more and I am finally feeling well rested. I feel more energetic and happy in general, and this makes me be inspired to start learning and doing other things, being productive.

Looking further back in time, I also used to be a Computer Science student passionate about Computer Graphics. At university I took every subject I could that was related to the field, and I was offered a position to work at BarcelonaVirtual Reality Center. This was my first contact with VR and I found it incredibly interesting. After a few months I had to quit to go on Erasmus and work on my master thesis, but the experience there gave me new ideas for what I wanted to do next. Already abroad I was lucky to find another VR lab and a professor that accepted to be my supervisor. He had some very interesting proposals for a master thesis, and I ended up creating a virtual museum all by myself. I loved it because it had everything that I like: creativity, programming and history. It was a project in which I could bring together my technical and my artistic profiles. I enjoyed doing that a lot, so going back to the present, why not turn something like that into my job?

The last couple of days I have been setting up an office at home. My goal now is to learn everything I need to work in the creation of virtual museums, starting with 3D modelling. Risky as it is, I want to give it a try. Job positions in the field are narrow and there is also a possibility that I won't like it as much as I think now. But I would hate to not even try and growing old with that annoying "what if...?" question always in my mind. Moreover, even if my mission would not be successful, I believe that everything we learn is somehow useful. Besides being a great self-learning experience, there are other fields I like where I could use my newly acquired skills, such as game development or the film industry. So it's a win-win... Or that's what I tell myself :-)

So here I am writing my first post on my first blog ever. This has just been a small introduction about myself for you to understand my background and motivations, but the idea is for this blog to become more technical than personal. My purpose is to keep track of everything I'm doing to achieve my goal, for several reasons:

• To centralize all the knowledge in one place and go back to my notes whenever I need to refresh my memory
• To serve as a resource to help others who are also trying to learn
• To boost my motivation by exposing progress
• To remind myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, when critical times come

And this is all for now. Hope to come back soon with some 3D!