We have entered a new world, and after my first half semester of experience with teaching on-line I found some time to finish a test for the third Vicious Cycles Animation
Grinding Light from Wobbe on Vimeo.
This is actually the second test, the first one I turned in to a new year's message earlier:
With the semester almost over I am about to go into hyperdrive to finish my animation before I start my new job this Fall. Here is a prop I need for the final scene. I could have left it out but that would have compromised the mind-matter bifurcation scattering subtext.
I showed the latest edit test for Scatter Brain Matter to my advanced animation students at Montclair State the other day, and one of them labeled it as very "Meta". So stay tuned!
I showed a Work in Progress video at the latest BYOA and was happy with the response and got some good suggestions. Important things got in the way, but I am working again on the final scene of "Scatter Brain Matter". Here is another test:
Dug up the old javascript files used to create the first of the Multidimensional Eye Virus animations and adapted one for HTML5 canvas. Most of the work was done on the train in and out of the City to teach at PRATT. On a netbook.
Sit back and enjoy!
My animation Seeing Red has just been invited to the Sisak eco film festival in Croatia. Always great to have my work shown!
Meanwhile teaching an extra class at PRATT has stalled my animation project a bit, but I hope to return to it shortly.
First, here is the obligatory line: sorry for not posting recently, have been busy.
Yesterday I pestered Mental Ray a bit, using many things known to slow it down: Global Illumination, Caustics, light radius....
With just a single object on a floor plane and one spotlight, this took over ten minutes to render. And you know what? I and seriously considering adding real depth of field. Oh, and then maybe animate it and add motion blur. While I'm at it, I should then also up the resolution from 720p to 1080p. Still, that will probably not half as bad as the radiosity render a fellow student of mine at ACCAD had running for a couple of weeks before it finally produced a very grainy image.
Why am I messing with GI? I took over a course at PRATT this semester: 3D lighting and rendering.
I updated my animation demo reel:
Animation Demo Reel 2012 from Wobbe on Vimeo.
Now why would I be doing that?:^}
In the month since my last post featuring this Fleshy Blob, I have not been sitting still. In fact, I have flown across the country (paid to be flown to be more precize) to attend SIGGRAPH 2012 where I did not have WiFi in my Hotel and was too busy with meetings and sessions (one of which I organized) to post any updates.
As far as the "Scattered Brain Matter" project is concerned: the Blob model is basically done (with UVs) and I also modeled the thing it will sit on. Fall semester is looming large, progress will be slow but if I just spend at least an hour every day…
I have been wokring in Maya a bit. As I am teaching Advanced Animation this semester, and since all the students want to animate characters, I thought I'd create a test of one myself. I have a project in mind, one of those ballooning animation ideas, which has a similar character in it. Here is an animation / render test:
My plan is to build on this test and combine it with the original idea for EyeBrain, which is a scene that was cut from my Thesis animation "if(!NULL){". Maybe I will even throw in the tree like structures from the recent Maya Experiment! Do I have a title yet? How about "Minding Matter (Dark)" or "Dark Mind(s) Matter". "Never Mind the Dark Matter" maybe?
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.
I have been busy, mostly with teaching and submitting my latest works to festivals. But yesterday I found an hour to try out an idea that had been brewing for a while: a character who is more a cloud than a surface shell. A guy we can look inside. So I filled my SimpleGuy Character I use for classes with a bunch of particles. Here is a first test:
Next I need to try using nParticles. Stay away from writing a Mental Ray shader for it I must!
For my animation classes I am looking into ways to make it less technical and more animation. Rigging is always very time consuming, so I will try and use automated rigging. As a test I took an old mesh and rigged him, using DSN RapidRig Basic.
Rigging took no more than an hour, but there are quite a few weights left to paint. Promissing, huh?
Oh, yeah, the topic this week is lattice deformation…
This semester has been a busy one. With the addition of a course at Pratt to my half time job at Montclair State, I have basically been teaching a full load. Only one more class session to go, and then its finals. Pfew…
I think I have also finished main part of the latest rendition in a series: "Multi Dimensional Eye Virus 3d". I need to add title, credits and (very important!) sound. So it may be 2011 by the time it is completely done.
I have also finally finished reading Spinoza's "The Ethics"
To test the copy stand I have been setting up for our program I put my sketchbook on the stand, resulting in this sequence of the opening scene for ">Hello World"
By Leo Hourvitz, a friend from the SIGGRAPH Systems Managers team, I was alerted to YouTube user VintageCG who posted a plethora of clips from the early days of Computer Graphics. Which of course includes a lot of stuff from my Alma Mater ACCAD, like this 1982 demo reel for Cranston / Csuri productions
Real interesting stuff, amazing at the time, very crude and sometimes cheezy for todays standards. A great bit of history, my student should all see this stuff. Would it be possible to convince them that back then it was really hard to make anything in 3D?
I think it is about time I follow through with my plans to put my own vintage stuff on the WobbleTV YouTube Channel. I will keep y'all posted!
At Montclair State we switched to Maya this semester (from Lightwave) and that meant that I had to update all my lectures and instruction. That did take up most of the time I spent at the computer. But all work and no play make not only Jack a dull boy, so after Thanksgiving, after the Family left, I found an hour or two to play and stumbled across the fact that every single point on a Mesh can be animated individually:
I rendered it using Mental Ray with a shader that is using the distance to the center of the sphere to change appearance a bit. No bones, blend shapes or other deformers, just point animation. Though it may be considered pointless. But that is the point of play, right?
I cannot help but doodle during faculty meetings. One of my colleagues asked if I was paying attention at all. It actually helps me focus, to keep my mind from wandering. You can see these drawing clearly cover the topics of grading and how to objectively measure student performance. Especially is the one with the student working on the tip of the tongue.....
It has been a hectic time since I accepted the position of MetroCAF 2009 chair about two years ago, but a week ago all the hard work culminated in a successful screening of the best students animations from the NYC metropolitan area. A good crowd of about 350 came out on that cold night.
Just in time students of mine from Montclair State University completed the opening animation:
It was created using Lightwave. I did also work on it a bit and took care of the postproduction.
I will be posting images from the event on the NYC ACM SIGGRAPH site soon.
I wanted to re-blog a post on boing-boing about a Disney / Dali cooperation. I saw the Amazing animation on YouTube, and immediately wondered how long that would be up. It contained the full FBI warning and a text overlay that it was a copy not for distribution. And indeed, it has been taken down
Amazing piece, truly surreal, as is the collaboration itself. From the credits I gathered that it was a collaboration with Roy though, not Walt. The animation is kind of crude with a lot of cross fades but the imagery is wonderful. And the story... who needs a story?
My stuff on these pages is published under:
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
