web exercise 5 ish

I've worked with HDR images some before, so I was already familiar with debevec's page. There are definitely some interesting things he has posted concerned with image based lighting. The natural light probes specifically interest me (the glass spheres in the woods environment look amazing).

The matchmoving stuff... I won't lie, doesn't terribly interest me. I can certainly appreciate the amount of effort coming up with these workflows to accomplish it and the software to do it is a feat of programming if you ask me. But as far as being something I would ever have any real interest in doing... it's not really there. Making the backgrounds for things to be composited into sure, but then there's so much to specialize into in this sort of field, one wouldn't expect to be interested in everything.

Web Exercise 3

I definitely need to get my hands on more videos like these. I learned something from every single one of those lessons and plan to go into Maya right after this post to start first copying the scenes they use as best I can then trying to apply it to the lightsaber renders. I had used all of those things before obviously, but I never played with many of those settings much less known the subtle differences they make. So yeah... doing that nowish.

Web exercise 2

Most of that article concerning the evolution of digital compositing software didn't really do much for me other than realizing that I have a copy of Autodesk Combustion and that was one that it mentioned toward the end. I'll have to install and play with that at some point in the semester (assuming I ever get this stupid lightsaber looking real enough).
Those camera's are pretty wicked, but being someone who will never film anything (hell, I don't even own a digital camera for simple snapshots), it didn't mean much to me either.
That video about Cloverfield, however, was amazing. Some of those shots where the monster is destroying a building and they show the model they made in Maya, how detailed it was, and just watching it crumble like that... that would take sooo long... I have a hard time seeing myself ever able to make something like that... I really need to step up what I try to make. Also getting my hands on some training dvds from gnomon would probably be a great place to start since I learn much better when I am shown step by step visualy rather than just reading it. Anyway... totally amazing what people can make, I want to be able to do that.

Web exercises 1

How all these special effects shots are composited, more specifically, just how many different images are used in such composites, is not something I ever really thought about. I guess I kind of assumed for a long time that computers could just stick the shot plates and the digital elements together without much effort. But I suppose it makes sense that it is a compilation of massive numbers of layers.
The camera aspect of things is still one thing that I tend to not give as much credit as I should. I know when working in Maya, camera settings (and light settings as well) I tend to neglect which I really need to work on... that's off topic though.
Those two Melies shorts are hilarious. You can plainly see when things flicker to a doll instead of the actual actor, but considering what he had to work with compared to today, that's pretty cool.

Homework 3 (Python Image Viewer)

First off, I must give credit as I found a base program that was essentially what we were doing for this program which I then altered to view multiple images rather than just bring up one. It was originally created by Kevin Harris, I guess as a teaching implement. So thank you Kevin. It didn't take long to figure out how it worked. It uses the Pygame package of Python and was really not hard to alter so that the user can switch between the 9 images that I chose to program it for. It can't just take any old image we want nor can it dynamically change the screen size depending on the individual image, but considering I hadn't ever used Python until this, I'll settle. Here is the code:

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Name: pyg_image.py
# Author: Kevin Harris (Modified by Derek Wilson)
# Last Modified: 9/10/08
# Description: This Python/Pygame script demonstrates how to load and
# display an image file. Altered to switch between multiple
# images using the number keys.
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------

import pygame
from pygame.locals import *

def main():
pygame.init()

screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (500,500) )

background = pygame.Surface( screen.get_size() )

background.fill( (0,0,0) )

image = pygame.image.load( "pygame_powered.bmp" )
# image = pygame.image.load( "Devil.jpg" )

imagePosition = image.get_rect()

imagePosition.bottom = 250
imagePosition.left = 120

screen.blit( background, (0,0) )
screen.blit( image, imagePosition )

pygame.display.flip()

while 1:
pygame.event.pump()

keyinput = pygame.key.get_pressed()

if keyinput[K_ESCAPE] or pygame.event.peek(QUIT):
break

if keyinput[K_1]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (620,877) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Devil.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_2]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (520,700) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Dragonfly.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_3]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (1148,887) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Forest.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_4]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (558,561) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Forest Spirit.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_5]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (662,936) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Ga Man.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_6]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (574,838) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Hellsing.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_7]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (498,709) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Ice Dragon.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_8]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (716,947) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Morgan_le_Fay.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_9]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (898,787) )
image = pygame.image.load( "Oak Dragon.jpg" )
imagePosition.top = 0
imagePosition.left = 0

if keyinput[K_0]:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode( (500,500) )
image = pygame.image.load( "pygame_powered.bmp" )
imagePosition.bottom = 250
imagePosition.left = 120

screen.blit( background, (0,0) )
screen.blit( image, imagePosition )

pygame.display.flip()

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

First Assignment

Well, hopefully this particular blog will suffice. Never really had much interest in making one so it wont likely get fancy. Here is the image of the first composition we did. Lightsaber was added rather sloppily, but I hadn't used photoshop in a while. I like how the ones done with perspective in Maya worked out, wish I had thought of that. Anyway, here it is: