More Cross Hatching

Taught my last class of the semester today, so hopefully there will be some time to work on projects. I also need to write an article and will be visiting friends and family around the Holidays, so I cannot promise too much progress in the animation department, but it should be more than during this past fall semester. That flew by: did work quite a bit on a presentation that will be given at SIGGRAPH Asia this week, and spend time on home improvement (installed some new windows) and "gardening" (cleaning up the mess after an early ice storm devastated the tree in our backyard). Here is another look development test:

I created one using projected textures earlier. That technique worked but I was not quite happy with the end result and the amount of manual labor involved. There was no need to properly UV the objects but hand drawing several cross hatch textures was kind of involved. This new test uses a single cross hath pattern, distorted by (a rendered image of) the object normals (and the After Effects filter "Turbulent Displace"). I think I like this better.

Repeat Offender?

I though this guy really wanted to be on video. The first time I released him after being caught under our porch, I forgot to bring my camera. So it was back the very next day, walking straight into the same trap. The second time I released it in the park nearby, the battery of my camera was dead. The next morning I found our friendly neighborhood skunk back in the trap. So I released it in a bigger park further from home. And brought the recharged camera.

Turns out there are more than one. This morning there was one in the trap again today. Probably the same one I caught the second time. Videotaped (VideoSD-ed?) this one's release as well and it has distinctly different markings.

Home

Last week, while at least one computer was rendering most of the time, I finally found time for one of the other reoccurring summer activities: home improvement. After banishing the groundhogs from our back yard it seemed that they tried to create new dwellings under our porch. I have replaced one of the rotten lattices, three more to go. A severe cold kept me from doing much this weekend, but I should be able to make the other ones next week. Of the next and biggest one the frame is already build and painted.