COMS W4172 (Spring 2013) TA PAGE

A lot of the information on this page comes from the TA pages from previous semesters created by Steve Henderson and Nicolas Dedual.

About

Mengu Sukan

I work in the CGUI lab most of the time. I prefer to only host students during office hours. However, I will try to answer emails as soon as I can. Email: mengu [dot] cs [dot] columbia [dot] edu.

Office Hours

Tues/Thu - 6:00-7:00pm in the CGUI Lab (6LE3 Schapiro)

Phone

Lab: 212.939.7101

UI Design

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics

C#

The official C# reference site
A good set of C# tutorials
A quick reference sheet for C#, another one with more language design stuff
ReSharper (R#) Visual Studio plug-in
- Huge boost to coding productivity and efficiency (like having spell check in a word processor)
- Detects things like dead code, possible null references, instance methods that could be made static, unreferenced fields, un-updated writeable fields, etc. (full feature list)
- Download (Classroom license key available on Courseworks)

3D Math

Tutorials

Riemers XNA Tutorial
Steve Hazen's 3D programming articles (very enlightening with demonstrative videos)

Goblin XNA

Installing the Goblin XNA Development Environment

Click here for Instructions on Installing Goblin XNA, Visual Studio 2010, and all required supporting libraries

Click here for Goblin XNA for Windows Phone Installation Guide

Click here for our guide to the Windows 8 VMware Virtual Machine we provided

Creating a new Project Tutorial

Check out this simple tutorial, which expounds on what's in the user's manual, for creating a new project.

Goblin XNA Discussions

If you're having an issue, chances are that someone else had the exact same problem and the question is already answered on the Goblin XNA Discussions. Please search for an answer there before coming to the office hour.

Goblin XNA Documentation

Click here for information on GoblinXNA Documentation

Links

Goblin XNA Project Page

3D Modeling

3D Model Sources

TurboSquid

Lots of great models, many free

ToyMaker

Provides a list of sites that have free 3D models, many of which are in .3ds, or .max format.
You can convert these to .x if you have access to Maya or 3ds Max, or to an appropriate format converter.

XNA Creators Sample Models

You can also find a couple of nice .fbx models from the XNA creators club website under their samples section
The model files come with the sample code.

3DVIA

Large selection of free models
Models are in a variety for formats (but not fbx or .x) – but you can convert these

Google Sketchup 3D Warehouse

You can open these models in Sketchup then Export as 3DModel, Google Earth model (.kmz)
Change then extension on the google earth model (.kmz) to (.zip)
Open the archive and extract the model file (.dae) under models folder
Convert to .fbx using the Autodesk FBX Converter

3D Model Converters

Autodesk FBX Converter

“Transfer project data from one application to another quickly and easily with the FBX Converter. This utility lets you convert OBJ, DXF™, and 3DS files to and from the FBX format.” - http://autodesk.com/fbx
Note: When running the convert, ensure you choose a FBX format version compatible with your end application. As far as I know, XNA 4.0 can handle the latest format. However, if you are using an older modeling package (e.g., Maya 8.0) then you need to pick an older fbx format (082006 version).

3D Object Converter