Small task to test expected methods.

Atm i am working on modelling a bit of the uni that we can test certain methodologies out on. Ihave at first took a picture of the area and then measured the area.

As you can see it is a very angular section; but this is perfect for what we need. I am at the moment waiting for a projector and laptop to use for the process. And i will post the results...

A Few Thoughts on the' Stereo -Typical', and hopefully how we can avoid it...

I have been keeping an eye on Mapping projects and what content peoplle are using; and this has lead me to think that maybe a couple of tweeks could be made to ours without changing it too much. The shot i am worried about is the water shot, where the water pours out through the window. See it in sooo many. Im going to change it. But we will keep the water; and the fish; god how i love fish....   sorry bout that; now, the content of the water and how it is interpreted as water is the thing that we can get creative with. What im thinking is some really pretty dancing caustics; playing on  the underwater geometry; also highly visible in the water, on the kelp and the fish.
This is an example of what i am on about. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VCD6cRfRis

On the subject of being a bit  different i have been playing around with the idea of portable architecture; pre mapped which can be used as a portable exibit. Watch this space...

Lumatcech Collective....

Well we had to be called something. The problem was that i wanted to enter us into a mapping festival in swizerland; and we had to have a name. So thats it; Lumatech Collective.


The team is taking shape now with my recruiting going well and some great talent coming on board. The visualisation/storyboard team Kat and Charlie are near the end of that task and then i can put the images on a timeline and start to think about the music. In respect of the music i have discovered a way of changing the pitch over a long period using a program called Propeller head Reason. The rest of the composition will be done by Nathan; who if things go well will be offered a peranent place on the collective. This pitch shift will be to signify the speeding up of time from days to a year. Over 300x! The animatic will tell us a lot regarding this transition; as it will the other transformations and the length of the whole production. I have also highlighted this method to Jakson one of my class-mates; as i believe it will be of some use to him.

I am still on the case to make the data from the scan available to my team for the Christmas break. This will give my ‘post team’ something to think about over this break. Also i have got to approach the media crew about borrowing a projector for the break so i can look into the lighting, well the shadows anyway....

found this site...

How to project onto..

3D data.

I have been informed that the 3d  data is on the way but atm i have some screen shots of the house to show the gather.

These show the area scanned and where the best density of information has come from. The black areas have no data. When we get the 3d data back we can start modelling the building with the knowledge that we are going to be spot on.
I have also put in for a grant to the Arts Council to pay for the projector hire; this hopefully will alieviate that worry.
  Flocking.

I have been looking into some mel script to do with behaviours of multiple objects and found some quite user friendly script. Hopefully soon i can show you some of my experimental work employing a script called hurd 2.0. this allows objects to behave like fish/birds etc.

Progress report...

Firstly; let me appologise for the lack of blogging over the last couple of weeks.
Done.
And now news on what has been developing on the 'Projected History' project. The good news is that it has the green light to go into full production. I also have had some of my fellow group members show an interest in the project; namely Oddne and Kat. This is great news.

On the developments in the technical side of things; i have been looking into what skills will be required for the animation and have compiled a list. I am going to need 3D modellers; fluid dynamics; paint effects; particle effects and behaviours, lighting, rigging and animators for the production. On the pre-production side of things i have a story-board drawn up in 'rough' to give an idea to the production staff what i am looking for; a mood board and some colour key is also en-route.

Looking at the post production i will need to do a lot of compositing as each scene is going to be made separately from the same reference and composited afterwards. We can not do any after-effects work until the film is laid down on a timeline.

Talking of timeline i am still waiting for an offer of some music from the music dept; if this does not materialise soon i will do it myself.

I have been talking to Georg about the positioning of the camera for the reference; and he has introduced me to a way of 'baking' the scene off and re-rendering it from the point of view of the projector. Basically you tell the software where the projector is going to be and the computer renders it from that view. This has given me more time to concentrate on the content,

I have experimented with some boxes.

As you can see i have just given them a powder coat of white paint. This was good for my demo in Falmouth; but i had to be careful to set up the projecor exactly the same as i had  it set up at home; also this highlighted the need for some kind of rig/clamp device to make sure the projector does not move from the render spot. Sorry not many pictures as yet; but i have been working on the techniques i am going to need to pull this off. All of which i want to gain a firm grasp of.

Dissertation stuff...

Totally worlds apart from what i am doing for my FMP (discuss, lol), is my dissertation subject. It addresses the content of digital animation and if the way that it is being used and viewed actually renders western cultural imperialism impotent. By this i mean does the nature of a more visual; multi-faceted media producing west make taking on Westernisation and western ideals less appealing.

 So far in my research i have found that there is a strong stance against violence in digital content by some of the more traditional 'first point of contact' producers (Disney); but there are other agendas at work which i will reveal at a later date....



Named the Project...

Projected History. I don't like it that much either. But it will give us a chance to involve some well documented historical architectural styles in the animation; and give some idea to the 'panel' what to expect.

As this is going to be at night i have had to simulate some of the effects on a photo of the building. Also simulated the type of ambient light we might have to deal with and a spotlight simulation to show the actual building because i realised the image looked rather dark. In reality i hope that the night we do the performance the ambient light will be a lot less than this. I know this is more of an 'oh' shot rather than a 'wow' shot; but to get the finished result without first going through the practicalities of working out if it is possible would not have been possible; let alone accurate. At least i know this is realistic.