Welcome to Milo Online

    After something like ten or maybe seven years of the chalkboard motif, I've decided to totally redesign my site -- mainly because the code for it was so ugly.

    Apart from some stuff in the "About" section, there isn't much to see here, at the moment.  I'm just letting you know.

    You can listen to some of my favorite music while you're waiting for me to fill up this site (assuming you've got Adobe Flash installed in your web browser, of course.)


-- Milo

    Like I wrote on the front page: Not much to see, right now.

    I am kind of in the middle of something, but I'm not in the mood to go on about it just yet.

    So, what would you like to know?


About you.

About your work.

Who made your site?

What's this thing that looks like a tree?

    Wow.  OK, how much time do you have?

    Actually, I'm not quite ready to get into all that.  I'll go on about myself some other time.



OK.

    Primarily, I'm a computer graphics technician for video games.  Basically, what that means is that I develop work pipelines for artists, and serve as a liaison between the art and programming departments of gaming companies.  I act as a technical director and a buffer between left-brained and right-brained personnel.

    From the art department's point of view, I obviate their having to deal with technical issues by (1) explaining complex tasks to them in artisitc terms, (2) creating tools that perform the more mundane parts of their jobs and accelerate the rate at which they can create assets, (3) taking on highly technical graphics-related art tasks myself, and (4) mentoring artists who have yet to grasp technical concepts with which they need to be familiar.

    From the programming department's perspective, I know enough about what they do that I can be trusted to engineer the artists' workflows such that the programmers get graphics that they can use, and in a timely fashion.  (Of course, getting things done on time is largely dependent on good management, which any experienced video game developer will tell you is probably scarcer than one can reasonably expect.)  I'm also the person programmers contact when they have special needs or ad hoc tasks that just can't wait, and that they themselves don't have the time or the artistic skill to perform.


    1991 to 1995
    My experience as a CG tech goes back to the early 90s, when I worked on the first couple of NFL GameDay and NCAA GameBreaker American football video games (which wound up being the best-selling sports titles for Sony's first PlayStation).  In addition to my standard duties of creating environmental graphics (I built and textured most of the stadiums and playing fields) and all of the football helmets, team logos, team fonts, and playbook drawings, I also generated weather effects.  This was all back in my Alias PowerAnimator days.


    1995 to 2002
    My programming skills came into play on my next big project, which was the hit MMORPG EverQuest, on which project I was the sole character modeler, UV mapper, and rigger.  During my seven-year stint on EQ, which spanned development of the original release and the first three expansions, I authored numerous MAXScripts and other tools, which were used by designers and artists alike to populate zones, automatically deform meshes, and other tasks.  My main tools during this period were PowerAnimator and Maya (modeling and scripting), 3D Studio MAX (UV mapping, rigging, and scripting), and the WIL programming language (non-3DS MAX auxiliary tools).  It was during this period that I learned Java, MEL, and MAXScript.


    2002 to 2007
    After EQ, I left Sony Online Entertainment to work as a founding member of Sigil Games Online.  I was the character art techincal guru for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes; I developed the character art pipeline from the ground up (everything from workflows to naming conventions to file organization), and created and maintained a slew of character art tools (and a lot of documentation that few people bothered to read).  I also provided assistance to the coding department in creating tools required of or requested by the character artists.  During this five-year period, I learned C++, and I authored countless MEL scripts and numerous Maya API plug-ins, some of which I posted to HighEnd3D.


    2007 to Present
    I'm currently employed at Red 5 Studios as an art technician, and since late 2007, I've expanded my programming experience to include C# (a simple feat for someone who is already well versed in C++ and Java).


    You can see a fraction of my most recent work in action, here:






    Other (somewhat related) stuff
    Go here to play Rate-A-Chick (as seen in the Java section of the video player, above), which demonstrates assorted graphics, UI, and database functionality in the Java language.  (For guest access, enter a username of "guest" and no password.)  The statistics page is a Java servlet that collates individual rankings.  (You can write to me at milodc2@gmail.com to request your own persistent stats.)

    There's something called a " 1k MEL Competition" going on at HighEnd3D; it's a challenge issued to MEL scripters to create something interesting in Maya using no more than 1024 bytes of MEL code.  My submission is somewhere on the second page (last I knew).



Thanks.

    I did.

    Well, most of it, anyway; I designed it, I created the graphics, and I programmed it.

    The image and video player is Jeroen Wijering's highly versatile and overall brilliant Flash player, which employs Geoff Stearns' SWFObject code.

    The music player is a Last.fm playlist widget that I've stuffed with some of my favorite music.  If you don't like good music, then you can always press the stop button (that's the circle with the square inside).



Thanks.

    It's a drawing of a tree.



Ah.

Yeah, but what does it signify?

    *Shrug*  My wife has a bachelor's degree in psychology.  She asked me to draw a tree, once.  So I drew one.



Whatever.