Taniith’s Relto

Yes, I know I just totally ripped off the title of a really great JoCo song… hey, he releases them on the Creative Commons license anyway!

This is something that I have thought about from time to time. There is an episode of Star Trek (TNG) where the Enterprise finds a small ship adrift in space (well, that happens all the time, but bear with me). Essentially, the ship has a bunch of people who were crygenically frozen around our time against their will by familly members and the like. I don’t quite remember why, but I assume it was for a better reason than to get rid of them. Anyway, these people wake up in the 24th century with no idea what they are doing there, and with everyone they know having died hundreds of years in the past. Now, I have asked myself what I would do in this situation many times. Honestly, since I first thought about this, the answer has changed considerably. I’d like to think that I might be able to move on and take full advantage of the amazing new world I have arrived in, but somehow I feel like I would end up locking myself in a holodeck attempting to recreate parts of my old life…. particularly certain people.

Now that I think about it, in Voyager didn’t they managed to make the holo-doctor be able to walk out of sickbay/the holodeck? I guess I could always do that with some people and things, but it still seems like it would suck. Now, thousands of years in the past with the Ancients, hmm. I could have fun there, and I could even get replicator versions of people made by having them do the hand-in-the-head thing ;p. Ooo, and I could put something out in space that would come back in about five minutes (current time, not 5 minutes after I sent it) that would jazz up my current day life! *looks at watch….*

Sorry, I got a little off topic there. So, how do you think you might react to suddenly waking up a few hundred years in the future?

-K

So, some of you may remember that my last poast was about how easy it is to recreate an Ancient drone attack in Maya. If you don’t remember, then either you are kinda stupid or you didn’t read it yet…. either way it should be right bellow this one.

Well, today I was bored before class started, so I went back into the help files and tried to find my answer. Well you know what? Making the particles take on any shape you can create is even easier than making the particles! I even managed to make the drones change direction based on thier acceleration, so they actually look like they are shooting up and then spiraling around. Pictures to follow when I bother to render them (I apparently saved them to the local drive on my computer, and then we went to another room for the Photoshop class and I couldn’t get the rendered images. Gotta re-render them on my workstation now)… maybe a movie too!

edit: I have 4 rendered images ready for viewing. I also have a smalle (33 second) quicktime video of it in action. It’s about 17 megs (Stupid Apple with their stupid Quicktime making huge files) and unfortunately it is only 320×240 pixels… small, but it gets the point across. The model needs a lot of work, and I want to make more streams of drones doing other interesting things, so there wasn’t really a good reason to spend more than the 3 hours this took to make a full out 640×480 or 720×486 render. Please right click> ‘Save Target As’ or whatever your browser does. Not that I don’t have bandwidth, but it is a good habit ;p. You can get the file here.

-T

You know ever since I startedworking in 3D, I have found that a lot of special effects look fake to me. I will go to a movie with someone, and while they are staring in amazement at the effects, I will be noting to myself that it looks really fake and how they could have done a much better job. Apparently, the other people watching the movie tend not to notice these things, but rather they think it all looks amazing. The more I learn, the more things I notice that take me out of the immersion. Today was no exception.

Today (day 4…. “the only day 4 of this class” as my teacher called it) we were playing around with dynamics in Maya. Now, anyone who has seen my film withthe spaceships (the ‘bunny movie’ as some call it) may remember that my ship shot off a lighting gun thing; this is a type of dynamics. Fog, smoke, fire, lightning, having things respond to gravity and each other… all dynamics. One of the most basic things in dynamics (not that they are simple in any sense) are particles. Essentially, you make an emitter, and it emits a series of particles at a rate you set, with ‘lifespans’ that you set and other parameters that, you guessed it, you set. I know from what I’ve been told in the past that it is possible to make these particles take on the shape of whatever you want them to look like. Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to do this yet, but I can only assume that it will be covered once we get to one of the dynamics parts of the course (week 1 is an overview of everything).

So Andrew (my teacher… great guy) was showing off particles by showing how to make a water fountain-esque stream of particles. I was bored by the simplicity of this, so I started playing with some other settings and fun things that effect the paticles (effectors? ;p). Now, there are some scenes that I see in my mind and remember as being amazing. For instance, at the end of Stargate SG-1’s season 7, they show O’neill firing off a gigantic stream of Ancient drones from the base in Antartica… they swarm out of the ground in a tight bundle that spreads out from their origin (emitter anyone?), and then they swirl around their target while streams of them dig through Anubis’ ships. Well, I did that in about a minute (minus the ships and the camera footage). What I mean to say is that I was playing around, and I ended up with something that looked just like the actions of the drones. All I need to know is how to make them look like drones, and I could very VERY easily make a short including Ancient drones swarming whatever I want! Hell, it would be fun! The thing is, now that amazing scene (and any other scenes involving a drone swarm) is ruined for me. Any time I see it now, I will just notice that a bunch of glowing drone-shaped particles moving in an easy pattern.

That’s the thing about 3D… sometimes the most spectacular effect is really easy, while something that you do to make the scene look normal or that doesn’t really show up that much takes a really long time. It is really kind of a pain, but it is fun at the same time. That’s why I love doing it! ;p

-T

Google is down! At least for me. We have internet access to all sites (or so it seems) except those related to Google. Google.com, Gmail, Blogger…. I can’t get any of them to load. Is this just me, or are the rest of you suffering problems? O_o

This doesn’t boad well for existense.

-K

I got my boxed set of The Weird Al Show in the mail today.

And my teacher (the one who used to work at EA… just finished teaching the gaming course) likes my beard…. funny story really

But I’m too tired b/c…. yeah, tired. Ooh, a shiny thing!

-T

“Now the circle is complete and the tree has begun to grow again. The path is now open, and so the symbol of the Journey must change. Now the beginning is tied to the end. Now you can go where you wish.”

Well, its been about 2 weeks since I first dyed my beard, so I spent today ‘re-greening’ as I called it. No bleach, but the green faded a lot from its old color and some places had reverted back to the bleached brown color. So now it looks really good again, especially when accented by the stained skin (which will be gone in the morning if last time is any indication).

Well, we’ve had no milk the past 4-5 days, so I had to go get some just now. Ended up getting some Frosted Mini-Wheats to replace my old Apple Jacks ;p. I don’t like the idea of eating this stuff for breakfast, but I don’t think I’m going to have a half hour to cook kinishes every morning anymore :’(. Its really too bad, as I’ve gotten used to getting up and eating kinishes while watching World Craziest Police Videos. What? O_o

So, I went to the super market to get this stuff. When I got to the checkout lines, I saw that Flo (really nice person who works there) was at one of the two open registers, so I naturally went to her. She looked up from scanning something, saw me, and said “What do you think you’re doing?!” “Shopping?” I replied. Turns out she meant the green beard. I think this is by far the best reaction I have gotten to this experiment ;p. I’m very happy I decided to go to the super market instead of Store 24.

Oh, and I just noticed several poasts in my drafts area that I thought I had already poasted… I guess I’m going to have to finish those and poast them soon. So much for that crazy idea I had to write 5 in one day and keep them saved up for when I was too tired to write…. I blame a certain friend of mine who wouldn’t leave me alone that day. And no, I don’t mean Esher or Kiirel ;p

-T