Elly Williams’ Weblog

Quite a few people have sent me this link (or similar) along with comments like “look, isn’t this great - you’ll never have to build a model again”

Now I’m not denying that it’s cool, or that it has its uses - product manufacture, prototyping and the like ? but I?m not sure I can see it being used for architectural models. Not just yet anyway.

For a start there are a lot of technophobes and technocynics in and around the construction industry. There are also a lot of control freaks. Add the two together and you get people who know exactly what they want, how they want it and aren?t going to trust a machine to give them that. There are also a large number of architecture students who are quite happy to get model making experience (and staying up all night working experience) for very little more than the cost of the materials ? which is generally less than $100.

And just as CAD programmes (AutoCAD, AutoSketch, Microstation, VectorWorks, 3DStudio etc not to mention all the engineering ones that do all your calcs. for you) have changed how buildings are designed and built I think the use of this technology would too. Imagine if you had to design your buildings so that they could be printed in 3D? everything has to be supported from the bottom or the sides (or the top or sides if you print upside down I suppose.) So you can have ceiling fittings or furniture ? but not both. Stairs and balconies are probably quite hard to model too. And heaven forbid if want a model that comes to pieces so that you can look inside it. Very soon, you have to put as much design effort into building the model as you would into the building the real thing. And it?s not worth the time or the money.

I just made my first submission to deviantART.

Well, it keeps the boredom at bay.

I meant to write this about a week ago when I was sent the link, but I’m being hideously disorganized since finishing my degree (woohoo!!!) and so have only just gotten around to it.

Anyway, this article discusses the relationship between how realistic an artificial human is and how attracted we are to it. The basic concept is that as a robot or animation becomes more realistic we get more attracted to it (a microwave compared to R2-D2 or C3P0 perhaps.) However there is a point where the gap between the robot/animation and a real person is so small that the eye focuses on what’s not there. This discrepancy is known as “Uncanny Valley” and facial expressions are generally the hardest thing to get (convincingly) right.

Given that the face has more independant moving parts to it in a smaller space than any other part of the body the complexity of getting an expression right is fairly straightforward. And given that many of these elements aren’t actually that independant at all and each reflects slightly differently on another, you have yet another layer of difficulty. Also given the range of expressions that can be created by really tiny movements and it’s hardly suprising that it’s apparenlty so easy to “just miss” an expression. And there are, of course, other factors.

So, what next?

Do we keep pushing for the potentially unreachable lifelike proto-human, and put up with the Uncanny Valley for a bit longer or do we opt for stylized graphics?

I don’t have time to write a proper piece at the moment so here’s a few links that Meri sent me during the week.

Mouse and friend - Two handed input particularly for drafting and graphics. (also on Slashdot)
I for one would love more detail on how this works… or even what it looks like, the only images of it have peoples hands in the way…

Game industry facing creativity crisis“The video game industry is facing a hardening of the creative arteries as aging gamers’ tastes increasingly shift toward sequels and games based on movies…..With more and more titles chasing the success of their predecessors …. the industry is faced with a question more serious than rhetorical: What’s new?”

Gaming prowess in your pocket: The move towards handheld consoles.

First look at PSP software … and some interesting spec details:

Meri sent me this link earlier in the week and I’ve only just looked at it (having spent the last week without internet)

Anyway, what it’s all about is Blender, which I hadn’t previously been aware of. The pitch is

Blender is the first and only fully integrated 3D graphics creation suite allowing modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, realtime interactive 3D and game creation and playback with cross-platform compatibility - all in one tidy, easily and free downloadable package!

…. and they’ve just added a raytracing to its list of features

Overall I think this is a really exciting project - and means I’m slightly more likely to start running Linux…… but seeing as most of the industry expects Max or Maya the chances still aren’t good.

While looking at this article about what the PS3 may or may not look like I discovered a site I hadn’t previously been aware of….

GamesIndustry.biz is a site full of anything anyone could want to know about what’s going on in the games industry (note, this isn’t a site for people who just play games… more of an overview of what the games companies are up to). Anyway, I spent lots of time looking through that today and getting scared by looking at some of the job descriptions & requirements…..I think I need to work on my character modelling some….oh, and get hold of a copy of Maya

Figured I should blog this before I lose it:-

Wolf Pack Loads of 3D studio stills and meshes from Star Trek, Star Wars and B5….wow!!

I’m planning on setting up a gallery/portfolio for my 3D studio stuff - but until I do here’s a few of the things I’ve been working on recently. We’re meant to be designing a swimming pool.

I was looking for 3D studio tutorials yesterday and was quite amazed at how useless this one is.

This tutorial from Computer Arts Magazine claims to teach transferable skills for material editing….

Unfortunately it follows the annoyingly common step-by-step approach which carefully guides the tutee through each individual step without telling them why they are doing what they are doing. This means that unless you already know what “Set[ing] the Specular Level, Glossiness and Anisotropy to 40, 55 and 0″ does to your material… you aren’t going to learn - at least not from this tutorial.

Now, I know this tutorial (and the whole site it’s on) are old and un-updated that doesn’t change my point - a tutorial that doesn’t teach you anything really isn’t much use - especially for something like material editing where you could just download the materials anyway from somewhere like this.

This is something a lot of coding and scripting tutorials seem to have gotten around, like these Javascript Tutorials,which tell you what each part of the code you’ve just written does, but there appear to be very few good modelling tutorials out there… fine if you just want to play… less so if you want to do something very specific

Am currently in deadline hell - hence lack of posting… anyway, these are a couple of sites I’m having to visit quite a lot at the moment coz I’m doing lots of 3D modelling.

3D Cafe. Useful for bits of 3D models - I’m using it for plants and trees at the moment coz I don’t have time to make them myself. They’ve also got a load of tutorials for pretty much everything…

Texture Library. They have pretty much any texture you want… great for image mapping and stuff.

Right - back to the grindstone….

It appears that while the makers of computer games are opting for a more “hand drawn” aesthetic, Disney, the pioneers of the full length feature cartoon are opting for computer generated characters (Link from Boing Boing)

It’s hardly suprising that computer generated characters are going to be far more commonplace (especially now there are Oscar and MTV award categories for them) but that doesn’t mean hand drawn doesn’t have a place in the industry and it would be a pity to see them go.

Incidentally here is Gollum’s MTV Award Acceptance Speech(Quicktime). It’s highly amusing. Apparently there’s a Yoda one out there somewhere too but I haven’t seen it and can’t seem to find it.

Continuing on the theme of computer graphics, here’s a link Shevek sent me. The Internet RayTracing Competition. Shiny….. I need enough time to do this sort of thing……

While looking throught The Register today I found this rather worrying article.

Miss Digital World…. a beauty pagent for “computer-generated e-Babes”. Needless to say, I wasn’t quite sure if this was a wind up or not, so tried to find out more information.

Not to much avail. The official site isn’t working yet.

There’s a bit of a discussion on Slashdot and some bits and pieces on MSNBC and yahoo but they appear to be straight-from-press-release.

I’m not quite sure what I think of this.

On the one hand - as someone who wishes they had the time/ energy/ full-version-of-relevant-software-package&suitable-machine-to-run-it-on to create a computer model in that much detail I’ll be genuinely interested to see what comes out of the competition.

On the other hand - it might all be a bit sick and degrading really. There’s already too much pressure from Hollywood/Beauty Magazines (if you need proof have a look at the sort of things they can do with Photoshop - thanks to Simon for the link) etc for girls to tall and thin with the right sized bits in the right places - and “perfect” girls who don’t have to eat/sleep/reapply their makeup in the morning possibly aren’t going to help the matter much.