An engineering blog for engineers working in Audiovisuals, Telecommunications, Electronics, ICT, Computer Engineering, Multimedia and Telematics.

30 August 2010 | Posted by Redacción Ingeniería

MCDEM master students at ETC

Several MCDEM students attended a “Rapid Prototyping Summer Program” on Entertainment Technology and Serious Games during the past month of July (9th-24th). This program was delivered by the ETC (the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA) on the basis of a joint collaboration between them and La Salle-URL. It included seminars (the PANDA engine, Improvisation as a content generation tool, Computer Graphics, Storytelling, Indirect Control, User Testing and Aesthetics on Interaction, etc.), visits (Schell Games) and workshops. The seminars were taught by important professionals such as Brenda Harger, Salvador Barrera, Chris Klug, Jesse Schell, Mike Christel and Drew Davidson. All of them are senior members of the ETC faculty board, coming from different fields such as the Videogame Industry, the Human Computer Interaction research field and the Fine Arts, among others. The students were placed in two different teams that produced polished prototypes in less than a week. Both the teams included different skills (producer, programmers, artists) for the delivery of real-time interaction pieces based on Computer Graphics, Motion Tracking and Computer Vision, as their core technological disciplines. The two projects, “Patch Wall” and “Angry Neighbor”, ended up being fully workable, as seen in the following pictures. The students enjoyed a wonderful experience. They were excited, highly motivated and they became true believers of the ETC formula. That is bringing artists and engineers together (left + right brains!) to make them share and learn on how to work closely. They also enjoyed social activities and visits to different interesting places such as Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning, the Mount Washington, the CMU Campus, the Squirrel Hill and Shadyside neighborhoods plus the Niagara Falls and a wonderful winery within the Canadian borders. The ETC itself is an unique jewel that everybody should see, at least once in their lifes. It was all great! Thanks to the ETC for this wonderful program.

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