Scene 2: Shading.

I'm working on the rendering of the second scene of my animation and am thinking of leaving some of the shading underneath the crosshatching. Makes for a much richer look, but also more 3D-ish. The image on the right is yet another render test, composited and all. Obviously he next thing to work on is the sky. Dear reader, what do you think?

Scene 2, Take 2

The animation for scene two is pretty straight forward. The guy basically walks in a straight line, so that's almost done, Especially since I'm re-using the walk cycle from the original test. But the environment needs a bit of work. By now it is already a bit richer, but not quite full enough.

I am getting sucked into the vortex of diminishing return though. Now that I have a faster computer I can do more, add more stuff to the scene and bring rendering times right down to where they were with the old computer... :)

Gee, was my old box slow!

Old CPU
Originally uploaded by Wobbe F. Koning

My new computer is up and running, and now I really no excuse to make great strides towards completing my animation. Suddenly I have real-time animation preview. Rendering is probably about four times faster. And also quite important: when I turn it on, my new computer starts fast and does not need to be rebooted once or twice. How did I ever animate on my recently deceased old computer?

Of course, the only reason that I now have a machine this fast is that I waited so long with replacing my old machine. Had I bought one last year, it would be outdated by now. But I guess the fact that my laptop was considerably faster than my desktop should have been an indication that it was about time to replace the latter.

Computer Brain

I'm reading a curious little book called "the Computed and the Brain", written by John van Neumann (the godfather of he modern computer ?). It was written right before his death in 1957. Half a century ago the modern computer was just moving from vacuum tube to transistors, but it's funny to read that the basic principles didn't change much and that he anticipated many of the developments that came later.

As a mathematician he has a kind of peculiar way of looking at the brain. He states that the location of memory "organs" has not been pinpointed. He does not take a Cartesion view (like "I remember, therefore I was") but deduces the existence of memory in the brain from the fact that no modern calcuating machine can function without it. Very amusing how he almost seems to take the computer as a measure for the brain in stead of the other way around.

Farewell to my Amiga

Even after being put on a ventilator (see image on the right), my computer, a PC called Amiga, still froze a few minutes after every reboot. If it rebooted at all. The usual fix, vacuuming the inside, did no longer suffice. I'm afraid my home-build computer is finally dying. Sob, sob.

The bad new is that my animation is also suspended with the passing of this machine. The good news is that I ordered a new workstation today.

:)