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Mod Breakdown:
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+985 / +779 |
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Karma Level:
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+ 40
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| Signed up: |
4 years ago (12/09/04) |
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Last signed in:
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3 hours ago |
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Total time online:
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38d 20h 47m |
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Is now a Fortune Hunter
So I won! I took 1st place actually! However, grand prize came with a t-shirt, lanyard, and bag. I already have those, so I forfeited them to 2nd place. I did get my Fortune Hunter Edition though. It is really awesome!
I'd like to thank anyone who voted for me... I couldn't have done it without the support!
If anyone wants to know anything about the Fortune Hunter Edition, I'd be happy to answer them and post any pictures you guys want of it.
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Please Help!
Everyone, please go to Kotaku and vote for Rated-G! I just need to make it into the top 5 finalists to win! Join the site if you have to, or log in via facebook!
Thank you all!
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Funerals, Fortunes, and Food...
Some of you may have seen it in the news: Samantha Michelle Nance, 20 year old art student, murdered in her apartment...
She was one of my closest friends here at my school. Her roommate and I were the ones who found her in her bed, facedown covered in blood. That was on September 11th... Odd, why does that day seem to have such terrible sorrow attached to it?
We still don't know exactly what happened to her, who did it, whether or not it was a suicide... which is seeming more and more unlikely as each day passes. We have one decent suspect, but the police are focusing on her boyfriend and room mate, both of which we as friends know are innocent.
It has been a hard week, trying to stay motivated with finals starting tomorrow, going to the funeral, going to the burial, and attending the memorial service. She was a sweet girl, innocent, she loved animals... she would find bugs in her home and take them outside to be free. She loved gummi bears and pickles.... she used to chew on her finger nails in nervousness and we would always tell her to stop, which would make her laugh and she would take her nails out of her mouth for another 10 minutes or so.
It's hard to think that she's gone, it's hard to feel like this is all real... at least it was, until the funeral, when I signed her casket... her sister told me what she was buried in, one of her cosplays from some Shin Megami Tensei game that she really loved. As my paint marker made contact with her casket all I could think was. "Oh my GOD.... she's in there.... right now..." At the end of the service as the pallbearers moved her to be taken to the burial site I wanted to yell for them to stop.... Didn't they know that if they moved her... she'd never come back? I've grown to accept that she is in fact gone physically... but the great memories we've made with her have definitely stayed with us.
Her grandfather told a story at the funeral, about two hunters out in the wilderness, they find a small cabin high up in the mountains. A small boy lives by himself in there and he says he is moving tomorrow, higher into the mountain where there is a spring that never runs dry, and the view is even greater. He said that Shelley has not left us, she has moved further up that mountain...
You have moved higher up on the mountain Shelley, but I can't climb any higher just yet. I haven't taken in the view at this level, I still have things to do. I want to do something for you before I can join you up there. But someday I will join you, and see what I've been missing.
It isn't fair what happened to her... and the hardest part about trying to cope with all of this is that we are just waiting for answers... I have so much more I'd like to say, but a lot of it has already been said... and I have trouble gathering my thoughts. Also, I don't know that many of you knew her... so this all probably seems pointless.... I guess I just needed to vent a little.
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On a lighter note, I've been playing the Uncharted 2 Multiplayer Demo, it's amazing. I can see myself spending hours on the multiplayer once the final game is out.
Graphics are awesome, controls are tight, it's high marks all around. I like the ranking system and the way you level up your characters.... lord I can't wait for this game. I wish I could win the Fortune Hunter edition... if anyone would like to help me win that, I would love you forever.... and possibly send some money your way.
And also, go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The movie is hilarious, the animation in awesome... the lighting is... the whole movie is great. It was really a surprise.... mind you it probably seemed extra hilarious because I saw it right after the memorial service for my friend. But I know that either way it was still a very funny movie, a lot of the jokes worked on levels that worked for both adults and children. It was a very lighthearted film, and a good way to cheer the lot of us up.
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Skinning and Rigging Notes W4
Reaction Manager, Add Master, select object, apply transform rotation Y. Add slave,
Create, Systems, Biped.
Make sure in FIGURE mode...
Copy/Paste
Create Collection.
Copy Posture, Paste Posture opposite for arms and legs.
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Material & Lighting Notes W2
Scanline uses radiosity, mental ray uses ray trace.
Skylight is an invisible dome of lights. No matter how it's places, it envelopes entire scene. Infinite amount of lights on it.
Light Tracer is an assortment of controls in sacnline to adjust skylight. In Mental Ray, exposure control is used instead.
Angle of Incidence is the angle at which the light hits a surface.
I wish I was at Comic Con.... at least I got to watch Watchmen last night... I love that movie, expecially after seeing the Director's Cut... much better.
Raytrace shadow can be sued as well... simulates what sunlight does.
Bias moves shadows along surface it's being cast on.
Skylights are awesome. Bow down to them.... or something.
Eh.... I got distracted for the latter part of the class. Starving...
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Skinning & Rigging Notes W2
Layers... are important. Use three sheets of paper icon in top right of MAX to manage layers.
Bone tools allow you to create bones. Under animation>Bone Tools. Create bones in orthographic view, never perspective.
Oh man... I want to go home and watch Watchmen... I've watched a bit of it since I bought it but I've had to run errands all day... that blu-ray has amazing sound quality. The Director's Cut is the definitive way to watch the movie...
Edge loops look like spiderwebs... good way to keep quads going in model.
Bone Tools: Remove: removes bones, refine: adds bones, change root: allows you to select a new parent for bone structure.
Use Layer Manager to freeze mesh when making bones... makes things a lot easier.
BREAK TIME!
Now the program is being a little butthole... and freezing everything I create... but we're making bones in a foot... I guess I'll follow the tutorial later. Nevermind it's working now... I wish I could take a quarter off and get a job for a little bit, just to get some extra cash.
Break Time...
Adding an extra joint in the knee makes the movement more realistic.
Create a target for swivel angle. To prevent sliding, change parent to IK Goal.
Oh well... class is over! YAY WATCHMEN TIME!!! And food... that would be good too.
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Material & Lighting Notes W1
Notes will be in Italics.
Animating is the most heavily scrutinized job to go into out of college. Anyone off the street can look at a piece of animation and see the errors in it. Not true with modeling, someone can model an alien, no one knows what an alien looks like, except maybe the people that live under the overpass.
We will not be creating a demo tape anymore, we will be making a website to show off our portfolio online.
We will play around with lights, and learn to make textures from photoshop, photo reference, hand painted textures, etc.
Eh... I think the teacher got sidetracked talking about schedules. I wish Summer had been a little longer! I can't wait for Watchmen next week! I think he's back on now... Nevermind.... Kim wants the Sims 3.... me too... I always end up playing the lame console versions that are extremely limited.... Ok NOW he's talking about the course....
Rendering Engines:
Default Scanline Renderer: basic renderer since program inception. Less control, scans 1 horizontal row of pictures at a time, averages them together and figures out a solution to render them, takes pixels from extreme left and right and averages them together, next row does the same thing without referencing the previous row. Very innefficient.
Mental Ray: Used to be plug-in, used to cost $10,000 alone, but Autodesk bought it and put it into their programs. One of the better rendereing engines. (V-Ray, Brazil, and the granddaddy; Renderman, Pixar's proprietary engine.) Renders in "buckets", little squares of similar pixels to average together, more efficient way of averaging data and providing an accurate render. Can use pixel sampling, adjust to determine the quality and amount of time required for output. Comes with it's own set of lights and materials. Scanline lights and materials may be used also.
Something about F-22's..... and killing people.... and how safe out country is what with the war on terror being over and stuff...
Bump map is a fake way of showing surface topography.
Specular shows areas where cast light will react more to surface of model.
Normal map is a bump map on steroids, light will react to the surface topography unlike a bump map.
Ambient Occlusion map shows surfaces where light is not able to hit.
Diffuse/Color map.... ah whatever...
So... Anyone played Ghostbusters? Pretty fun game! ... I'm playing through it on the hardest difficulty right now... But it's awesome, especially if you like the movies!
I'm liking where this season of RVB is going... Everyone slowly coming back together, and Wash isn't gone, so that's cool!
I wish 3ds MAX was compatible with Mac.... I have every program I need for school on my Macbook Pro EXCEPT for that one... It would be nice to be able to do ALL of my homework in the comfort of my own home...
My girlfriend is sitting next to me on deviantart, I must be the only person in the animation department at this school that is not a member of that site. This is the only social networking site that I'm a member of... I like this community a lot.
I guess back to class?
Shift-W to get rid of steering wheel in MAX. That annoying little bastard....
Render Preset: change to "mental.ray.no.gi" hit load.
Sampling quality: 1:16 Never set minimum to same as maxium. Min must always be one number value lower than Max. Higher you go, better the quality, longer the time to render. For final, use Mitchell filter, otherwise use box.
Lights:
Standard: "stupid" lights.
Photometric: Based on real world lighting power/strength, use lights based on watts of real light bulbs, mostly used in architecture.
Systems has two lights, sunlight, and daylight. Don't use sunlight, daylight is better. Daylight can show a picture of the sun in the sky. Creates environmental sky.
Light lister: Lighting technician's workspace. All lights show on this screen. Allows to change settings of lights on the fly.
BREAK TIME!!
BACK TO CLASS!!
GI: Global Illumination. Ray tracing and radiosity are two froms of GI.
Specular highlight, areas of surface where light is strongly reflected. Creates wet look seen often in video games.
Direct light is anything that kicks out a light source.
Indirect light is anything that reflects light.
It's easy to place lights, it takes a lot more effort to fix the settings, tweak them to get what you want.
Customize: Unit Setup, 1 Generic Unit=1 Inch
Eh.... we did a demonstration the rest of class. Not much notes to be taken...
Homework: 3-point lighting, 1 key light, main light, strongest, casts main shadows. Comes from upper right. 1 fill light, fill area key light can't get to casts shadow. 3rd light, back light, behind psych wall, up high, brightens scene. Play around with this. 3 Target spotlights. Close off hot spots to .5, use 1 falloff. White color. Mess with position, multiplier, and shadows. Use shadow map.
YAY I CAN EAT NOW!
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Skinning & Rigging Notes W1
I don't want to waste paper, and since I don't have as many watchers as I used to, I doubt anyone will care if I take my class notes here. Notes will be in italics.
Thankfully, animators aren't riggers, we're required to know how to make basic rigs, but it's not specifically our job.
A BAD rig has joints in the wrong places, a bad rig may break the character model, a bad rig does not accommodate the level of flexibility required for animation.
A GOOD rig has maximum flexibility, and minimal counter animation (ex. when animating hips, head turns to match hip animation, requiring animator to animate the head staying still.)
I would like to go home now and hang out with my girlfriend; Kim...
She's pretty awesome.... and she likes to play video games. I actually got her into Red vs. Blue, which is a first for me.
She's just great... she's cute, and funny, she's smart, sexy, and she has her geeky moments, which is cool. We have a lot of common ground, but not so much it's creepy. She's 3 years older than me, but it's not a big deal. I'm really enjoying the breathing room that comes with a college relationship, you don't have parents breathing down your back 24-7... Shit, I got sidetracked.... back to class.
We're looking at monkeys...
A child can only have one parent, but a parent can have as many children as you want.
A child can move freely as it wishes, a parent can also move freely, but it's children will follow.
Children inherit translation, rotation, and scale from their parents, unless constraints are applied.
FK= Forward Kinematics, IK= Inverse Kinematics
Break time!
Back from break!
Sweet! I have 600 dollars coming to me from the school! I am totally buying the Sims 3 and Watchmen when that comes out on Blu-ray next week. That director's cut of Watchmen is awesome!
Anyways.... pivot points must be in the right place, if a joint moves in a place it's not supposed to, it must be fixed.
Skinning is... fuck... I lost concentration. But it looks neat.
I need a new cell phone. I've had mine for a long time, I've never dropped it, and yet, my screen flickers and shuts off now and then, my keys are cracked, it won't vibrate, it shuts off on it's own once in a while, it doesn't recognize my sim card randomly, and just a few weeks ago the reciever stopped working. I think I may finally get an iPhone... I could use the GPS. My parents both have iPhones, and I know they don't use 90% of the settings on theirs... I know I would make good use of one.
HOLY SHIT WE GOT OUT OF CLASS EARLY! AWESOMENESS!
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