2012 First Update

First of all, happy new year! Year 2012 has gone a bit too far for me to start my first post this year after a long hiatus again.

Drastic change has occurred to my life recently due to my third year second semester's Industrial Attachment program. CNY 5th day I got to come back to Singapore and started working. FYI, I am currently attached to my scholarship company, in a construction site called Vacanza@East in Bedok. It is a resort condominium, in the mid of construction phase. I have been in easy condition so far as I am still adapting to the site environment and no real practical job is being assigned to me. I am to be an assistant site engineer. Regarding the job scope and experience, I will talk about it when I get into the real work.

The only major problem of this Industrial Attachment program to me is transportation and living problem. NTU is too far away from Bedok. West and East of Singapore. It costs me 1 hour and a half to reach the destination. It is tiring and distressing, not a kind of living I like. Thus, I decided to move out and got a nice room in Marine Parade. The place is more convenient for me to get to work and is so much more vibrant than NTU in Jurong West. Lots of place to explore, especially food. Across an underpass, there is East Coast Park. However, it is a lonely world for me here. I have got no friend in East Coast of Singapore. About 6 months for me to endure, but hopefully it will end up 6 months for my to enjoy. =)

Entrance to my working place.

Inside the site office.

That is all for my update today. Looking forward to more learning experience.

My Work 19

Here I publish my latest design. It is more conventional and not that unique because I am still learning to include more detailed elements, especially the interior parts. However, the program runs slow when all the things are placed together. I have done 28 houses for my own and hopefully each is getting better. 

It is called The Facade, because the front part of this house is rather simple and minimal and promotes privacy. The only visible area is a large tinted window situated right above main entrance. The front part of the entrance consists of facades of interchanging materials that make up the vertical lines. 

The house occupies an area of 20m x 15m. It consists of a living hall and a kitchen on the ground floor, and a family hall and 2 bedrooms on the first floor. A garden is situated behind.

You can get the model if you have Google SketchUp - http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=25c9c2561ba5902b49951e9dcb4ca9c4

Some sectional views

Below are images after rendering by Kerkythea. I would say the effects are excellent given that the software is free and I am still new to it. 

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Site Survey

Once I finished my examination, I continue my days with research. I was guided and assisted by a Phd student and a Geospatial lab assistant. We went to several areas near Singapore town to do laser scanning of a total of 5 trees. The purpose is to scan the trees and make them to 3D models. It was rather fun as this was my first time doing site survey off-campus. The equipment that we used is Leica Scanstation. It is one of the very few being purchased and available for use in whole Singapore. Due to its expensive cost (if I am not mistaken, it costs more than 200k) and lack of knowledge of what it can achieve, not many people knows its existence. I was rather honored to be able to have access to this equipment and acquired full assistant from the lab technician. 

However, I am still doubtful in my next step in this research. Next, I shall get the scanning data and start manipulating and processing data to make it a full 3D models. It is a cumbersome process as I need to learn up the program quickly and finish it by next week. Hope everything goes smoothly. Then, the very next step is to analyze the tree models to test its structural stability, by inputting other datas like density, stiffness, wind speed, etc.  

After the whole morning and afternoon doing the survery, I spent my remaining day designing a new house. Below is a preview. I will publish it in the next post much later as I need to touch up more in the landscape and interior design.

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Post-exam update

My exam has gone to an end. The next exam of my life will be exactly one year later. My performance in the exam is horrible, but something keeps reminding me about "what is more important than just examination?".  I have turned to 21st year old, lots of things have changed.

My last few weeks have been eventful and fruitful. Though I had my 21st birthday as an extremely normal day, it at least was'nt a bad day. Not to say, the next day had my 4th examination paper. 

My coursemates celebrated for me a few day earlier. Macaroon replaced a typical birthday cake. It is however colourful and tasty, and marked the liveliness of my life. 

A few days later, we went for post-exam outing. I would say it was a food outing. Non-stop eating somehow outruns the supposed post-exam/shopping outing. 

The outing was initially ruined by a sad news when I got my Macbook to service centre and enquired about my wi-fi problem. The upgrade to Lion OS "co-incidentally" spoilt my wi-fi hardware (as told by the down-to-par service provider). I was unsastified with their service. Whether or not it was the upgrade that caused the problem, I do not regret upgrading to Lion OS because I liked the new system and user-interface. Yes, Apple does'nt disappoint me. But what dissappoints me is their service provider in Singapore. They did not give the best advice (they only reluctantly answerred my problem when I asked), and what is worse is that the repair could cost me more than S$500! Forget it. I don't need wi-fi for my Macbook for a living. 

Ok, enough for that. So my friends and I started eating-spree immediately after that. We tried cheese popcorns, creamy puffs, durian pancakes, bbq stick, beehoon crab (I just accompanied them since I am vegetarian) and etc. Then, we reached Marina Bay Sands by taking a taxi. We were asked upon by the funny taxi driver, "Are you gambler?". LOL. Marina Bay Sands is not just casino!  But yea, we did pay a visit to the casino, since it was my first time entering a casino. A great feeling when the security checked my student pass and let me in though I am already legitimate to enter. We strolled around without playing anything, with a cup in hand, taking free drinks. Ah, I could feel the pressure inside the casino. 

We then took our second dinner of the day in Pizzeria Mozza (an italian restaurant starred by Michelin). The environment is quite disappointed, it seems packed and noisy. Anyway, the pizza is awesone! Crispy, crunchy yet spongy and chewy bread boosted my appepite even though I was actually not hungry. The tomate sauce and creamy cheese were sweet and salty to an absolutely right amount. Trust me, I am a pizza lover and I could claim that this is the best pizza I have even taken. Definitely will go back and take a bite again!

Oh wait, we hadn't finished our day. We then moved on to taste some dessert and tea in TWG Tea Salon and Boutique. There are more than a few hundreds kinds tea! 

So I took a photo of myself through a reflection of tea pot, using my iPhone 4S. Oh yea, you might see me updating my blog using my new iPad2 in the future too, especially during my heptic internship next year as iPad will prove to be convenient for me to online. Not forget to express my thanks to my parents and brother for getting me the iPad. =)

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Google Model Your Town Competition

Feel like taking part in this competition so much, "2012 Google Model Your Town Competition". It is an online competition organized by Google. It is about using its flagship's programs Google SketchUp and Google Earth to model our own town. 


For me, if I take part, I will model part of my Melaka town. Most of the iconic building in Melaka will have to be 3D modeled and uploaded to Google Earth. This is so interesting but I guess my skill is still limited. Therefore, I wanted to find a team to participate. Perhaps, due to time constraint, I think I will choose to partipate in 2013 instead. 


To find a team in my hometown and among my friends is not an easy task. None of my friends seem to have regularly used Google SketchUp. But if you (who read this) can prove me wrong, please leave a comment here! I really hope there is someone who is interested in this program and could share his skill with me. Anyway, even if you don't use the program but somehow interested with it, especially the competition, I am really willing to teach you the basic skill of the simple yet powerful program. Don't worry, we have more than 1 year time to learn and master. In fact, I still have a lot to learn along the way too. 

Click here to see more details about the competition, and also here for the official page. Below is the video from one of the link, showing the winner team from last year.

What really excites me is the award, seriously. You see:

The winning individual/team will receive:

• USD $25,000 for the town's public school district or an individual school (or international equivalent, at Google’s discretion).
• A visit from a Google team, along with a dinner in the winners' honor.
• A video profile of the winning team and their town, to be featured on YouTube.
• A virtual tour of the winning town that will be added to the Google Earth website.
• International publicity in the form of blog posts, tweets and other media additional coverage on Google websites.

We could make Melaka famous! =)

Anyway, I still have doubt if I have the time to take up the competition, but let's make it as my aim or as a motivation for me to further sharpen my skill.







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My Work 18

Privacy is a must-have characteristic of a house. Modern Japanese home has been emphasizing on simplicity and privacy in its design. Many of them are truly sensational and worth to look for. Undoubtedly, my this new design is inspired by Japanese. Typical Japanese house is commonly quite small in size, therefore I also limit my design to smaller floor area.

Here are some examples of the Japanese home from Dezeen website : 

1. http://www.dezeen.com/2010/06/07/house-of-resonance-by-formkouichi-kimura-architects/
2. http://www.dezeen.com/2011/10/19/house-folded-by-alphaville/
3. http://www.dezeen.com/2010/02/25/himeji-observatory-house-by-kino-architects/
4. http://www.dezeen.com/2010/07/28/shimouma-house-by-kazuya-saito-architects/

I named it The Solaer@8 because from the plan view the shape of sun (solar) could be seen. The shape draws out the central courtyard for the entire house, both ground level and first level. The courtyard serves as the main natural daylight lighting (from sun) and ventilation area. Also, due to privacy concern, there is no other window present in this house other than the courtyard area. 

The house is surrounded by a few volumes at each level, ground and first level, with some volumes being cut off to allow more sunlight in.

The 2 images below are section views from top. The first one is first level, which should have bedrooms (I do not include furniture and details). Whereas, the second one is the ground level. Each volume serves different function, such as hall, guest room, kitchen, etc. The centre courtyard also serves as dining area. 

Some interior images: (not forget to pass my credit to furniture designed by others provided in Google Warehouse)

This is done in Kerkythea rendering program. 

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Free softwares that shouldn't be overlooked

I am going to introduce some free/open-source softwares that currently reserving places in my desktop menu bar. "Open-source" literally means that the softwares are free of charge to users, allowing public to modify, improve and further develop the program, in some way, while maintaining integrity of the original developer. 

There are a lot of open-source softwares available, with variety of functions and features. However, I am going to introduce only a few that related to design:

Remember, they are totally free, yet most of them could produce results that are comparable to commercial softwares which normally sold more than few hundreds or even thousands dollar. 

1) Google SketchUp - http://sketchup.google.com/  

(3D modeling, able to share some similarities with Autodesk AutoCAD, 3ds Max)

2) Inkscape - http://inkscape.org/

(vector graphics design, similar to Adobe Illustrator)

3) GIMP -  http://www.gimp.org/

(image-editting, similar to Adobe Photoshop)

4) Blender - http://www.blender.org/

(3D modeling, animation, rendering, similar to Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, etc )

5) Kerkythea - http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/

(rendering and photo-realistic effect, similar to VRay, Indigo) I will show the feature later

These 5 softwares are compatible with all platforms - Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

For the time being, I managed to learn up Google SketchUp and use it more frequently. I am currently venturing into Kerkythea and planning to learn Blender in near future. 

So, Google SketchUp is a powerful tool that means a lot to me. Needless to say, I have been using this program for some times and I can confidently claim that I am at least an intermediate user now. There is actually a "full version" for this - SketchUp Pro, which features even more functions. But i think SketchUp under the flagship of Google is sufficient for non-industry users. The current SketchUp version 8 offers some add-on new features. Users can work closely with Google Earth and Building Maker.

I personally like SketchUp the most due to its simplicity. We can easily manipulate our designs/model by downloading additional third-party plugins. There are lots of powerful features from SketchUp. It is impossible for me to say it all out now. By the way, if any of my friends is interested to learn up this program from me, I am willing to tutor.

Below are some images I designed for my school club tasks. What I want to show is that the program not only creates models/buildings (like what I have been doing), I also use it to design posters, logo and other kinds of designs as well. I do not use other image-editing software.

Below is an image showing the model I created in SketchUp, afterwards I rendered it in Kerkythea. This was only my very first attempt using this program. I shall talk about this program in future when I am able to master it.

I really think these free open-source softwares are excellent and worth to share. For a layman and hobbyist like me, I don't have to purchase other costly commercial softwares.


A big credit to the open-source softwares' developers.

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Simple Rendering

My very first attempt using a new free open-source rendering program called, Kerkythea. It is a powerful model rendering program linked closely to SketchUp. I am still a beginner, and what I did is just a simple interior model above, resembling my room.

Still new to it, hope I can explore further this program and make my SketchUp models more interesting. =)





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