IZation Labs

Sleep comes easier for me now that I’ve started up my most recent caffeine ban, but that won’t stop me from adding a few newish photos

I’m finally starting to generate some images and content that I feel I can be proud of. Things that aren’t exactly out of this world, but are also good enough to not get comments like ‘Dude. Is that supposed to be a car or a bird?”

I honestly believe in using whatever tools best suit you. Much of what you see here is generated in Blender, unless I mention otherwise. I’m just a Blenderhead, through and through. I’ve a professor who knowingly joked that if I thought I could get away with it, I would do all of my modeling in Blender and just import it as a .obj into 3ds Max for the 3ds based Studio 1 class in which I’m currently enrolled. The class erupted into laughter, myself included, mostly because we all know that he is perfectly correct.

The two new uploads for the evening have got a few weeks on them now, but they include a textured football and football helmet. These were given to us as models and we were to texture them in 3ds Max. Enjoy!

-Lace

Finals are looming, with the first final projects due next week. I’ve been busy working away in 3ds Max, Inventor, Blender, and Final Cut, but I’ve neglected my posting ‘duties’ in the process. Apologies!

This year I was asked to be part of an Undergraduate Symposium along with a fellow classmate of mine, Gary Tatrow. The Symposium was to focus on something I was already getting into in my independent study. The goal was to create a quality sports graphic using the equipment we had on hand to demonstrate what students in the SAG program at Eastern Michigan University are capable of, as well as to start the process of developing the workflow required to create our sports team’s graphics in house.

The following video shows a breakdown of the different components and how they were laid together. All in all it was a very interesting experience, one that I would be happy to do again next year.

-Lace

Finals are winding down and Christmas season can finally become the focal point of this student’s attention. It’s been a long few months, but that’s one more semester down and three more to go. I’ve finished two decently large projects for school this semester, including a semi real rendering and animation of the PK380 sidearm and a short (three minute) film about a robot who has to save the day. The former can be viewed in this post. The latter I think I’ll clean up a bit more before I release it to the world.

Hey, you Buckeye Central students. I’ll be seeing you soon! In case I don’t post again before the day arrives, Merry Christmas!

-Lace

There’s an extremely well written book, one of my personal favorites, entitled “Prey“. The author, Michael Crichton, passed away not too long ago, but he is the well known author of books such as The Terminal Man, Congo, Timeline, Airframe, and Jurassic Park. His book Prey focuses on nanotechnology and evolution, which, since reading the book, has strongly drawn my attention.

In Blender, the particle physics system lets you simulate and control the movement of many small agents in a physics system. You can make them react to gravity, you can make them explode like sparks off of the end of a gun, or even use them to simulate smoke and fire.

In this instance, I made use of Boids. The boids system is similar to the kind of system referenced in Prey, the agents in the simulation are given a predator/prey relationship. The predators will attack and ‘eat’ the prey. The basics of creating such a system can be found here. After much tweaking and rendering, here is one of the video results of the predator prey interactions.

One last thing. Things had become out of control on the forums, and in the process of resetting it, users and posts were lost. We’ve basically started over, so if you had an account you WILL have to re-register. A clean slate is what was needed though, so here’s hoping things go smoother the second time around.

Cheers!

Lace

Today’s post is a double whammy. Not only did I find a nice old animation of water falling into a ceramic bowl that I have never posted on IZL, but I decided to post it without going through Youtube, Vimeo, or any external hosting site! Great thanks go out to the mac-dev.net for creating such a nicely little flash video player plugin for WordPress! So here it is, in all it’s glory. The first totally independent IZationLabs video.

–Lace

I’ve mentioned Shapeways before, and I finally decided that it might be time to give them a shot. For a quick recap, they are a 3D printing company that caters to… relatively poor artists. Which means that their prices are much more manageable than most. The only homemade model I had on hand to send in was the king model from the (still) unfinished chess animation that I made, as seen here in the bottom right hand of the picture.

My part is scheduled to arrived today (April 6th), so expect a photo update soon!

Here’s the next model I plan to have printed, assuming I ever decide I want to add enough detail to make it worthwhile. I sketched the concept one night when I didn’t have any early classes and the caffeine was strong within me, and it has been developing ever sense. It’s my current ‘pet’ project. I’m hoping to use it to learn mechanical rigging and animation as well.

I know there are plenty of Star Wars fans out there. I’m not big on Star Wars, (just the special effects involved), but yes, I DO know it looks like an ‘ATAT’. That’s not what I was going for, but hey, it is what it is.

–Lace