Friday, July 13, 2007

Faith Based Physics

The Quick Study in this months issue of Physics Today is called "The Case for extra dimensions". I find it intriguing to read that "But perhaps the most compelling reasons to believe in extra dimensions are ...." Interesting how the frustration of scientist to find a solution for cetrain problems they have with their standard model and the weakness of gravitational forces makes them sort of religious, hanging on to strings of hope. A little later in the article the author does state that "Even if scientist believe extra dimensions might exist in Nature, we don't have blind faith". Let's hope for them their faith is not shattered along with the colliding particles in the new and really huge "Large Hadron Collider" (at CERN, nice Quicktime VR's are linked at BoingBoing). Lets also hope that the theoretical possibility of the creation of a black hole that will suck up the earth does not materialize (or should I say "immaterialize"?)


The theoretical existence of such hidden dimensions were a source of inspiration for my Multi Dimensional Eye Virus Series. Maybe my next project should be about branes. As the quick study explains: "You can think of branes as extended objects that do not necessarily extend in all the dimensions of the higher-dimensional space". In computer graphics terms: an Illustrator file imported in a 3D animation package.


But wait, didn't I have another animation to finish? True enough, and I did just finish the composite of scene 1 an 2 (anyone working in digital media knows that here isn't such a thing as a final version, one can always keep improving, but at some point one just has to say "it is done"). I actually spent most my time this week creating animation DVD's for the international center at SIGGRAPH 2007. Anyway, I will be working full time at Mechanism again the next two weeks, and hope to play with Blender and Python while commuting.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Global Warming Train

We saw this add in a waiting room the other day. Since today is the day of the Live Earth concerts, here it is:



Thursday, July 5, 2007

Flower (test)

A flower is going to play an important part in my animation. Here is a test


Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Free Software

If you arrived at this post thinking you might get pointers to places where you can download software for free, I'm sorry to disappoint you. NOT :)


A post on the system managers mailing list of ACM SIGGRAPH about possibly forming a Free Software SIG (Special Interest group) got me thinking again about Open Source. On gnu.org it is made clear that the 'Free' in 'Free Software' should be interpreted as referring to 'Freedom' and not just without monetary charge ("'free' as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'.."). And therefore it has to be open source, since only that gives you the freedom to see its inner workings and alter it.


One of the main reasons why I'm interested in free software is its relation to democracy. We want our media to be free, since that is a prerequisite for the functioning of democracy (Freedom of Speech only works if there are also means by which dissident voices can make themselves heard). Now that the most media outlets have turned digital the means by which the information is distributed has to be free as well. Monopolies in media land are bad for free speech. Proprietary file formats and closed software controlling the flow of news are too. And as for DRM....


A monopoly in the mobile phone business sounds a bit scary as well. Anybody think the iPhone will actually give Apple / AT&T too strong a hold on that market? I'm pretty sure they get a huge chunk of the +$400 segment simply by creating it. :) Anyway, I was interesting to find out through an article in the New York Times that "Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., plans to sell this summer the Razr 2, the successor to its once-popular Razr upgraded with a Linux operating system and full-scale Web browser." I hope they will make it open source, like this one!


Related post: > ANTITRUST <

More render passes.

I found out I needed to render the character's face as a separate pass, so here it is:





Yes, it will look different after it is composited in. Unfortunately Google Video didn't do what I thought it would do and choose it's own still to display. Oh well...