Let's Do a Show !
Used to be, putting on a show was fairly easy - a garage, some old chairs & blankets, maybe a monkey…..
Nowadays, if you don't have a robo-cyborg chick threatening to destroy the planet, nobody gives a crap and rightfully so. But Photoshop, Maya, Lightwave, Media Composer all cost an arm and a leg.
Well, you're still going to need a small render farm & hours & hours of work & learning but you can do it all in Blender for free. This exercise shows off what the software, that runs on Lin/Mac/Win, can accomplish. Obviously, talent & skill are required and this kinda proves that but talent's free at least, sort of...Tears of Steel

The Third Dimension

Back in 1972, Ed Catmull was at the University of Utah with other notable slackers, Fred Parke, James H. Clark, John Warnock and Alan Kay, when he cooked up this. I think I am going to draw polygons all over myself this Halloween. Anyway, these nerds seem to have done OK.
For more on the history of this clip NerdPlusArt.

3D !!

YouTube has a 3D function. I don't know how good it is. This was made with a 3D animation program, Strata 3D. I don't know if stuff is too close, if the cameras are placed well…..
Basically you take 2 videos, upload 'em, pop the left & right videos into place & YouTube does the moshing. It syncs them up using the soundtrack. If you have an animation with no sound it freaks out but there is a manual sync to avoid that.
And don't tell me you don't have the goofy glasses - you know you do.

Ever want to try your hand at CGI? You think social media is a time waster?
The Strata company has reintroduced it's stripped down version of it's flagship 3D software for a mere 99¢. This also includes 2 weeks of online training material. The stripped down version ain't gonna have you making the next Barbie blockbuster but buildings & extruded type aren't a far fetch.
You have seen it here whilst I was doodling,
concocting innovative bridge design,
found new ways to reduce costs & increase efficiency at city hall
and find bold new ways to display illegible type. Unfortunately the animation engine is not included in the package.
Still, well worth the cool 99¢.
And the guy who writes the tutorials actually knows what he is doing!

City Ruins Bundle HALF OFF !!

City Ruins Bundle
DAZ 3D is offering Stonemason's product line for Poser at half off. This includes the City Ruins Bundle, The Warehouse, The Streets of NYC-Townhouse Row, Jungle Ruins, Urban Sprawl and more!!
Everything you need for your post-apocalypse urban Poser scenes.
Go here.
BIC is not affiliated with DAZ, Stonemason or SmithMicro.

Why Does This Woman Have No Nose ?

She can dance. She has super slicing powers. She lives in an enchanted world rich in giant vegetables. She can fly. But she ain't got a nose.


Why ?
Are all the inhabitants of that strange and enchanted world noseless ?
I'm certainly ok with the whole 3 finger thing & distorted eyes & all - but no nose?
Dunno if this is the Tostitos/Fritos guys or some mad fetish of the Laika guys, but it's just disturbing. The real people in these companies ad work all seem to have noses. Did they just run out of polygons? Is it considered attractive?


Dunno if it works any better on guys..
You can see the disturbing ad here.

The Sun-Maid Girl Goes 3D !

The Sun Maid was created around 1915 & has graced the boxes of raisins that were in kids lunch boxes for generations. The Sun Maid, the Land-o-Lakes indian butter chick & the Chiquita lady were all early crushes. Betty Crocker & Aunt Jemima never quite did it for me. Mrs. Butterworth never even made it into our household. Peter Pansy? nevermind....
Anyway, all these characters are updated over the years, Chiquita has even used real women (ugh..) for their trademark. Sun Maid has decided to go the 3D animation route to promote the healthiness of old dried up grapes. The company has enlisted Synthespians for the animation chores. The new Sun Maid animations look a lot like Mainstram's -er- Rainmaker's Barbie movies.
It appears the new 3D chick is for TV advertising only as she is not on the box, so I don't think this thing is a "replacement". However people are in an uproar. Feminazis are up in arms because her breasts are more pronounced. I'll worry about that when Lara Croft starts hawkin' prunes.
As long as she keeps wearing the goofy red hat, she's ok by me.
You can see the :15 ad here.
Why the Sun-Maid clowns don't want this thing spread virally is beyond me.

PS: For cheap animated holiday viewing, don't miss Barbie in A Christmas Carol. (Hope the Sun Maid will start doing feature films!)

OG'd
What the Fuck is this shit ?
WCPO has changed their graphics. I would like to say it is a "retro" look as the garish gold 3D shit was very popular at one time, but nowadays it just looks pathetic. I am reminded of the satirical take on black exploitation movies, I'm Gonna get Ya Sucka! where the guy died of "overgolding". I was going to compare this to the graphics at The Onion where they go over the top on purpose, but even they have toned it down! Hell, Fox News isn't as crazy as this anymore.
Awhile ago, I posted that WCPO was laying off graphics folks & parent, Scripps, was consolidating graphics in Tampa. I am hopeful the decision to use this graphic theme was not made in Cincinnati. I have seen the work of area designers & have been privileged to work with a few. This area is teeming with talent. Apparently, Tampa is not. Or the head of Scripps just gave his teenage nephew with a warez copy of 3D Max a job.....
Beyond the garish hideousness is the impracticality & just doofynessness of the design.

In the 4-up / Hollywood squares kinda graphic, the announcers seem painfully aware that they look like douchebags.




The graphics dwarf the talent, they need to get the talent's head bigger. The title bar thingie is raised higher than need be to accomodate scrolling ticker crap. Don't see why they can't slide it down when there's nothing there. With all the other crap moving around, it wouldn't be any more distracting.




What the hell is this? Some 3D debris that was still flying around from the previous animation ? Just more flying shit. Digital monkey house design.....




The field photographers need to rethink how they are shooting & frame everything higher. Dunno if they can glob the new graphics into their viewfinder. Maybe stick some tape on it ?




the photographers need to rethink their canvas & maybe the talent should get a little bigger & move over to the side then frame the news scene to the side of the announcer. This would also move the title thingie away from the speaker's chin.
If the folks at WCPO want my help, I would be more than happy to oblige.

3D For the Interwebs ?
I have heard the promise since about 1990. At the 09 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco The Khronos Group announced their intent to develop a set of open APIs for development of 3D graphics for the internet. They said the action was in response to a request from Mozilla and that Google had expressed interest as well.
The Khronos Group lists about every computer/graphics/media/network type company in the world (except for Adobe & Microsoft, of course) as some kind of member of he organization. This includes that of the Safari browser developer, Apple.
Khronos has handled the development of SGI's OpenGL, created in 1992, since 2006. SGI, of course originally made the VRML viewer, Cosmo Player - got nowhere with it, handed it off to Computer Associates (for some reason) where it continued to go nowhere.
Probably the most successful attempt at web 3D is the perfectly awful Second Life. While there may be a practical application for 3D in your surfing experience, it won't be attractive with a slow delivery of lame graphics and overly complex controls. People like telephones & TVs. Computers and internet speeds have improved vastly since 1992 but the horsepower needed for lush graphics and complex worlds ain't really there. Add to that that most people just lazily use M$oft's Internet Explorer and M$oft will likely never adopt any kind of standard graphic format when they can make their own and use their monopoly status to flood the market with their product. Unlike any other browser in the world, M$oft has dragged it's heels in supporting PNG and, AFAIK, IE is the only browser in the world to have no support for SVG.
Good graphics are crucial to the success of web 3D and that means artists need good tools to create those graphics. Adobe pretty much has the market cornered on that and with their Flash products they really have no reason to support anything that comes out of Khronos. Even if they did, their track record with SVG and Atmosphere doesn't instill a lot of confidence.
Somehow, I think this will just wind up another pipe dream.

Been animating it out last week or so. Watched 2 3D movies, Appleseed Ex Machina ans Barbie in The Princess and The Pauper and a mangafied Batman called Batman Gotham Knights.
Gotham Knights is the Batman Franchise attempt at the Matrix franchise's Animatrix. It comes up lacking. 2 of the six stories were ok. The art resembled the Spawn cartoons from some years ago. It was nothing too impressive. Probably had a crap budget.
I always liked the Barbie movies made by Mainframe. They are fairly low budget. The Barbie character lends itself to crappy 3D because she is a crappy doll. This particular movie, unlike the others, was a musical.
Appleseed Ex Machina had a fairly dumb storyline and the typical manga angst-ridden characters and all, but, man, there was some really purdy rendering in that sucker.
I would recommend any of 'em for anyone who is interested in that kind of crap.
How's that for going out on a limb ?

YouTube trailers:

Barbie in The Princess and the Pauper

Appleseed Ex Machina

Gotham Knight