Technical Artist Deep Dive - Phu Le

Phu Le, Nova’s Technical Artist.

UT Dallas’ autonomous vehicle project is underway! This Fall, 15 undergraduate students have come together to continue the process of creating a fully functional self-driving vehicle, entirely from scratch. This is no small feat, and has the Nova team working on an enormous array of issues around the clock in order to make this dream a reality. Nova’s aim this year is Demo 2: an ambitious project with an aim to have the project’s vehicle, Hail Bopp (a retrofitted Polaris Gem) safely complete an entirely autonomous loop around the streets surrounding the perimeter of UT Dallas alongside the traffic, skateboarders, and Tobors UTD students are familiar with.

Before Nova’s testbed vehicle, Hail Bopp, can make its way to the streets of UTD, each member of the team will have to sort their way through an array of problems. Nearly all of these problems will be solved through simulations in virtual environments. Every scenario needs to be tested thousands of times before Hail Bopp can make its way out of the garage on its own. However, in order to test the vehicle, we need a digital environment to test it in…

This week, we will be taking a deep-dive on Phu Le, Nova’s Technical Artist. A sophomore in Computer Science, Phu has spent years learning graphic design and 3D modeling…entirely on his own. Through Youtube, online tutorials, and an enormous amount of practice, Phu has honed his skills to the point that he can fly through Blender and Photoshop with no issue. These skills were good enough that Phu has already spent time interning for a professional photography firm as a graphic designer. A member of the Student Game Developer Association on campus, Phu has a great deal of experience and talent in regards to environment and object design, animation, and 3D modeling.

Images from Phu’s previous work in 3D modeling and game design.

For Nova, Phu has been tasked with creating a 3D, detailed render of Hail Bopp from top-to-bottom. Polaris, the manufacturer of the Gem vehicle used as the basis of the project, does not have any scan or model of the vehicle available, leaving it up to Phu to create them for us from scratch! This model will be used in all future simulations for the entirety of the project, and will allow the Nova team to approximate their simulations against reality. In addition, Phu will also be in charge of environment design for these virtual environments as well, with some of them being the streets, buildings, and trees around our campus. In fact, Phu plans on modeling the entirety of UT Dallas in the future! He has also in charge of designing Nova’s logos and marketing materials.

These extremely detailed environments make it possible for the developers to stress-test, challenge, and generally put Hail Bopp through hell without putting anyone (or the vehicle!) in harms way. This process is very similar to how Tesla uses their own in-house environment to test their vehicles before production. Since Phu can change these environments at will, the team can put the vehicle through any situation they can possibly think of. His work is incredibly important to ensuring that by Demo 2, Hail Bopp will be able to face all sorts of situations and can navigate any environment it may encounter while navigating UTD.

Phu’s work makes it possible for the rest of the team to simulate their designs in environments very similar to what we will face in Demo 2. In future updates, keep an eye out for his renders in Nova’s testing simulations!