Actually, scratch the title. Let’s remake it. Turn it into “Christmas Looming”. Sorry folks, I don’t have a problem with any religions, and I’m not trying to offend anyone, but I’m a Christmas kind of guy, and no one can stop me! Before Christmas comes finals, which will help to explain that lack of… anything, really, on the site for the 2 weeks that surrounds this post. Once again, I’m sorry, but I have little baby grades that want to grow into big strong A’s for me!
In lieu of original verbiage, I found an old article via hackaday that links to a developers site with pictures of November’s Pandora development boards. Just in case someone finds it interesting!
Oh, and for a laugh, watch this video, and watch it clear to the end. I helped my roommate make it on a whim for his English class. Those under the age of 30 have a 40% higher chance of understanding what just happened. If confused, head over to google and do a search for the term displayed at 1:30!
Enough procrastinating for me! Time to study for my Java class!
This is at the top of my list of “programs that no one should go without”. It is far superior to all other free messaging, conference, and teleprescence programs, in every way I can think of. It just is. I can’t really explain it. So instead, I’m asking one (or as many as are willing) of the College-Now students to consider downloading it and setting it up, be it on a laptop, desktop, or preferably a machine with a web cam. Then add me on Skype. My user name is my first and middle name with no spaces.
Then, we’ll do some conferencing, file transfers, and video chatting. Before the day is done, you’ll see why it is just so amazing.
Maybe then we’ll do a follow up on everyone’s impressions. Looking forward to hearing from someone!
Years ago, I remember sitting with my friend Nathan at a lan party of at least sixteen people in the middle of a big ‘Halo’ match, talking about how different video games would be in the future. We envisioned a world where the game is constructed around the player. Where looking left and right would actually entail the movement of our heads, not of the the thumbsticks on the controllers. A world where the actions of a fighting game were actually acted out in a 3D environment, where you could almost feel the bullets flashing overhead, because you could see them as they whizzed overhead and ’struck’ your bedroom wall.
In our mind, a prototypical model of the future of visual media was revolutionary. A white room, with a door that barely had a seam. No windows. Hidden holographic projectors would have locations which were impossible to discern. When the game or movie started, the projectors would kick in and the user would find him or herself surrounded by an entirely different world. The environment of a World War II combat game, the rich green grass and blue skies, as well as the rusting metal and thundering artillery cannons would materialize out of nowhere and surround us as if we had been transported back in time.
This video records holographically, but lacks the ability to display in 3 dimensions. The reporter in the studio was most likely looking at nothing. Give it 5 more years.
I have a proposition for you, College-Now students of Shelby, Ohio. The following video is a snippet of a process that accomplishes a general requirement in some fields of 3D modeling and animation. (Cryptic, huh?) The first person to guess what that process is wins a prize directly related to the video. The video is output from Blender. You can submit your guesses through the IZation Labs contact form. Be sure to include your full name. Have at it!
This is just one of those projects that blows my mind. If you’ve browsed IZationLabs before, you know how appealing computer imaging and CG graphics are to me. Here’s an interesting project that does…. well it just does some mind boggling things, and it does it really well.
This uses algorithms similar to those of motion and camera tracking software packages. By looking at specific points in the video and tracking them from one frame to the next, it can generate a basic 3d model from it. In camera tracking, it uses this information to drive the motion of a digital camera so that you can stick objects on a point and the video and it will stay there. (More about that later.)
It also uses interpolation. Who remembers the slow motion effect from The Matrix? To create that effect, over a hundred photo cameras were set up , all of them focusing on the same spot on a green screen stage. The cameras were then fired sequentially very quickly as the actor made his motions (in this case, the ‘bullet dodge’).
Something to think about. The video we are seeing is the perspective of each camera as it is fired sequentially. After the photos are taken they are stitched together into a video, as if from a moving camera’s perspective. See how it is jittery? Interpolation generates new frames in between each of the actual images that were taken! This results in a video that looks much more smooth, like this:
Gigawatts, actually. Pronounced Gig-uh-wots. So, after reading that and the title, who can guess where I’m going with this? I’ll give you a hint. Guess what I saw in the parking lot the other day?
Click for more detail.
There it is; a Delorean. My favorite car in the world. Someday, I will own one.
And yes, this still ties in with steampunk. Who has seen the third Back to the Future movie? That’s Steampunk.
In my mind it's not "...if I ever own one...". It's "...when I own one..."
Though I don’t get the chance to watch Mythbusters very often, (remember, I have farmervision. 7 channels. That’s it.), I could never pass up the chance to share this video. This is just too awesome.
I spent probably 4 hours working on creating this animation, along with another few hours tweaking the lighting and settings. It was inspired by this tutorial, a very good one to follow once you have the Blender interface down.
I know those of you who have a little Blender experience probably render out all of your animations as a video. “What’s the point of rendering to all those images,” right?
If you are one of those people, let me tell you my experience.
Reasons to render to an Image Sequence:
If you have an animation that is taking a long time, you can pause the render on frame X and then restart it the next night, while you are asleep, from the frame after that.
If something renders wrong in the animation, all you have to do is re-render that single frame that was bad!
It’s really easy to output a movie after the full quality images in your sequence have been rendered. Just go to the sequence editor and push SHIFT and the AKEY. Click Image Sequence, add your images, and render whatever size video you want in minutes instead of hours.
Animations should be output as an image sequence. Many of Blender’s features rely on images, not videos!
If you want more information, contact me personally and I will post a mini tutorial on what I know about rendering, including a way to turn your image sequence into a quality video in less than 5 minutes.
