Shawn Olson Creative Arts

Art, Poetry, Photography, Writing and 3D

Delwin and Shawn on Old Baldy
Maow, the cat 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

But Words Will Never Hurt Me

Posted on Jan 6, 2018 | Last Updated Aug 12, 2021

Editorial on negativity and entitlement amongst online communities.

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entitlement, negativity, trolls

A Little About John Dalmas

Posted on Jun 15, 2017 | Last Updated Jun 16, 2017
john, jim, misconjohn dalmas, donald olsonJohn Enjoys a mealdalmas, stanleyjohn, poetry

A short overview of the life of my friend John Dalmas.

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john dalmas

Education in the Digital Age

Posted on Jan 27, 2017 | Last Updated Feb 16, 2017

Essay on education in the modern digital age.

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education, society

Crazy Neighbor

Posted on Aug 9, 2016 | Last Updated Aug 9, 2016
Dana and the Skunkhayden and skunkchild plays with skunkdana carries skunkskunk

A little story about a crazy neighbor.

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neighbors, skunks, pole cat

Selecting a Percentage of a Collection Randomly in MAXScript

Posted on Feb 3, 2016 | Last Updated Feb 5, 2016

Example MAXscript for collecting random subsets of an array based on a percentage.

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maxscript, random, percentage, selection

Wrong Side of Bed

Posted on Dec 31, 2015 | Last Updated Dec 31, 2015
wrong side of bed cartoon

Cartoon about people with negative outlooks.

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negativity, outlook, grouch, cartoon, comic

Barry Childs-Helton

Pictures of a Minstrel-at-Arms
Posted on Nov 10, 2015 | Last Updated Nov 10, 2015

A short profile of Barry Childs-Helton from a fan.

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barry childs-helton, filk, album, wild mercy, the summers behind you

Passion and Humility

Posted on Jun 7, 2015 | Last Updated Jun 7, 2015

Some thoughts on passion and humility.

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Chris Graduates

Posted on Jun 7, 2015 | Last Updated Jun 7, 2015

Photos of Christian Pugh, who graduated in June 2015.

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chris

The Dreaded -1.#IND

Posted on Jun 5, 2015 | Last Updated Jun 5, 2015

A solution for DOT products of two normals that result in -1.#IND when passed to acos().

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maxscript, geometry, trigonometry, -1.#IND
Wall Worm plugins and scripts for 3ds Max