Shawn Olson Creative Arts

Art, Poetry, Photography, Writing and 3D

Last hike on Old Baldy
liquid 6teen
yellow jacket wasp photo

Greetings Earthling. Welcome to my creative portal. My name is Shawn Olson. I'm a creative jack-of-all trades who has years of experience in 3ds Max, game development, web development, journalism, photography, graphics and parenting. You may know me as a technical artist for Black Mesa or as the developer of Wall Worm if you came here as a game developer. I now also work on USD workflows and capabilities in 3ds Max and Maya at Autodesk. All opinions here are my own.

If you need help with any of these things, then I'm your guy:

  • Problem Solving
  • 3D Environments
  • 3D Assets
  • 3ds Max pipelines
  • Game Design
  • Documentation
  • Journalistic Coverage
  • Application Education
  • Web Application Development

If you must know more about me, feel free to read A Short Biography. But more importantly, enjoy the various photos, poems, editorials and scripts across the site.

I always enjoy feedback from visitors. Feel free to send me an email with any comments, ideas, praise, criticism or corrections. Of course you can always interact with me on the Wall Worm forums or other 3D forums where I haunt.

Latest Articles

Later Dude

Posted on Feb 1, 2015 | Last Updated Feb 1, 2015

Cringe Bassist Ryan Butcher has died.

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butch

Good Times or Better Stories

Posted on Dec 7, 2014 | Last Updated Dec 7, 2014

Random stories about some funny events in my life. Some became funny after the fact.

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My Wife Likes it Hot

Posted on Dec 7, 2014 | Last Updated Dec 31, 2019

A little story about when my wife made things a little too hot.

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Copy and Paste Object Properties in 3ds Max

Posted on Nov 19, 2014 | Last Updated Nov 19, 2014

MAXScript for copying properties from one object to multiple other objects.

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maxscript, copy, paste, property

Autodesk Moving to Rental-Only for Software

How a company made for artists is pushing a policy that promotes more starving artists instead of thriving artists
Posted on Oct 13, 2014 | Last Updated Oct 13, 2014

Autodesk is now making plans to stop selling perpetual licenses and move all future business to a rental-only model.

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software, sales, consumer, license, perpetual, rental

Leopard Frog

Posted on Aug 26, 2014 | Last Updated Aug 26, 2014
Leopard Frog in WaterLeopard Frog PhotoLeopard Frog PhotoLeopard Frog in FountainLeopard Frog PhotoMating Leopard Frogs.leopard frog basking

Photos of the Leopard Frog in Ohio.

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leopard frog, amphibian, ohio

Moments with Ethan

Posted on Jun 2, 2014 | Last Updated Jun 2, 2014

Photos of my son Ethan Olson over the last few years.

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ethan olson, photos

Dealing with Readblock Character Limit in MAXScript

Posted on May 29, 2014 | Last Updated May 29, 2014

MAXScript function to circumvent the limitations in MemStream.ReadBlock() that has a character limit of 5120 characters.

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maxscript, MemStream.ReadBlock(), readblock, unknown system exception

2013 in Review

Posted on Feb 26, 2014 | Last Updated Jan 16, 2023

Newsletter about 2013, including various losses in our family and other news.

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2013, loss, death, dad, dog, opportunities

Perplexing Things

Posted on Feb 6, 2014 | Last Updated Jun 23, 2014

Essays on perplexing and amazing aspects of reality that are often unintuitive.

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statistics, nature, mind, math, perplex
Wall Worm plugins and scripts for 3ds Max