Wk6 - Bit the Bullet... GoPro!!!

The spycam still hasn't arrived.  Grrr...

So... today I bit the bullet and purchased a GoPro today on my way to work.

Since the base unit was 340... I kinda walked away spending something like $700... woops.

It's awesome though!

GoPro Hero Motorsport Pack

So far, I've only shot bits of the lab and taken it to union court... filmed an interesting thing... the shaddow under the railing so that the shadows of people walk along the wall... I like this... might need to film more of it.

Wk5 - Mandelbox Render (3,800 HD frames, 24 days)

I've been rendering out a version of the Mandelbox in HD since I got Mandelbulber.

 It's been essentially rendering from 4/8 - 28/8...

Here are the 3,800 frames thus far:

Wk5 - Centre-Thru Render B&W

Just testing another idea for displacement maps...

Wk5 - Fly Thru for Displacement Maps

In an effort to generate nice displacement maps, I decided to do a fly-thru from the corner of a black and white mandelbox...



Textures I've played with so far:

Using the particle system, I can see that using such images will work nicely in creating some textured surfaces:

Wk5 - Brilliant Day of Meetings

Yesterday and today have been the best days yet.

It started with the meeting with Kit regarding particles, which was great but it didn't seem too applicable considering the direction I was taking with my "mandelbox-inspired" manually constructed model BUT...

Today I met/chatted with three people which helped me immensely:

1. Martyn - This was great, he helped me see that the work was about the fly-through, about technology and the awe you get.  He also suggested I look at David Haines & Joyce Hinterding's "The Outlands" and "Neo Baroque Aesthetics & Contemporary Entertainment" by Angela Nol.
2. Jack - This chat was invaluable - he made me realise that if I combine my objects with a particle system like Kit has shown me, I may be able to somewhat-generate an environment for my fly-through.
3. Lucien - Using particle generation from an object seems to give a certain amount of order in the randomness... that combined with Displacement and using Level of Detail might just give me what I want.  Mirrors are bad. :)

I have a renewed enthusiasm today.

Wk5 - Spy Cams look cool

So, I've been talking about attaching cameras to things and to do this, I need a small camera and a GoPro looks expensive... for $40, I'm going with a gamble.

This is the one I got... 2MP, MicroSD (with 8GB card) and Lithium rechargable battery!  Amazing.  If it only lasts one fall from a carpark... Win! :-D

Wk4 - Will the pieces come together?

So, using the objects I've created thus far, I've attempted to see what I could construct with them as building blocks... as a proof on concept for the creation of my model/environment.  This is what I've got so far...

I'm thinking at this stage that repetition is important... who knows...

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Wk4 - Maya Learning Curve

So, I've been creating shapes for my manually created object/environment:

My idea is that this will look like it is
 taking in the mist.

The arch is featured a lot within the Mandelbox.

This animates up and down whilst spinning.

I do have a few Maya topics/questions now:

• Camera angle/focal length

• Texture of surfaces

• How to fix a shape, eg. my platform.

• Mist/Fog generation

• Mirrored surface to create infinity?

• Can you have simple animation without keyframes?

Wk4 - Been sick but taking my spoonful of concrete

I've been sick for the past week with the Flu...

I've rescheduled my meeting with Kit for next week.  In any case, I also have a theory presentation to prepare.

In any case, no progress to report for the last week but determined to overcome the lack this week.

Wk3 - Exporing on my own. Lens Flare!

Last week was so frustrating going around in a group so today was brilliant.

The footage I got was so-so but I really enjoyed the afternoon wandering around obtaining it.  I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go out on my own.

My favourite shot was from within a plant next to an external air conditioner... the lens flare amongst the moving leaves was brilliant.  Need more of that.

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Wk2 - Maya Crash Course... Booleans are cool!

So, I had a bit of a crash course this afternoon with Kit regarding Maya and in particular Booleans.  Very nice.

The couple of shapes I've picked out for my constructed model/environment will need such ideas and using one object as a cookie-cutter, so to speak, will make it infinitely more helpful.

Here I'm trying to recreate the basics of a shape that appears in my first render:

On a side note: Kit showed me particles too but we're gonna have a followup lesson on those later.  I really shouldn't have dropped Maya after first year.  :-o

Wk2 - A reply from my new hero

So, it turns out that the reason I can't find a script to create a Mandelbox is because it can't be done.  Check out Duncan Brinsmead's response:

Hi Terrence,

You likely saw a presentation where I showed some mandelbox and mandelbulb renderings. I used a mel expression to create a mandelbrot texture but the 3d stuff was done by coding a custom texture for a Maya fluid node, which is not possible for users. However there is an excellent program for exploring the 3D mandelbox interactively here(source included):
http://www.ms.mff.cuni.cz/~kadlj3am/big/boxplorer/
Also www.fractalforums.com has lots of info on generating these structures.

I don’t think you will have much luck generating a mandelbox with a mel script… it is too much geometry. Not only is it too much geometry for a script, but too much to keep all in memory at once. The more typical way of doing it is through a volume render, which is what I did. I compiled in custom code in my local build of Maya, something users can’t do… and the fluid rendering does not have an open enough api to use for this currently. Basically as the ray is marching forward one evaluates the mandelbox  function at points to determine if they are in or out as well as what the color is. At no point are there any triangles.

At any rate I would post your questions on fractalforums.com. If anyone knows of good resources for this these folks will.

Duncan

Unfortunately, Boxplorer doesn't seem to work anymore but I still can't believe he even replied.  I'm soooo glad he did though.  Now I know for sure that it isn't possible in Maya.

But!  Doesn't mean I can't make something that is inspired by the Mandelbox...  Never give up, never surrender! :)

Wk2 - Mandelbulber & Other Cool 3D Fractals

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Modified Mandelbulb 1

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Wk2 - Red Stop Sign & the 80mm lens of evil.

Today was an interesting exercise for Riley's class... it was difficult running around with two other people when there is one camera... it was disjoined and far from relaxed and everyone had different ways of approaching it... the guy wanted to be more arty and needed a narative.  The girl was good but she dismissed her own suggestions.  After all that, the only thing that was kinda interesting was the red stop sign.

On a side note, some days I hate the 80mm lens, other days, not so much... actually no, I hate it.

Wk2 - Wherefore art thou Mandelbox Script?

I really am having no luck in finding script for a Mandelbox... I'm kinda losing hope.  Other than a few very old programs that can generate a Mandelbox (including some that once worked), I'm coming up empty, particularly on the Maya front.

I've even joined Fractal Forums in the hopes that they might know something... it's taking ages for them to accept my registration though...

On the off chance, I've decided to send the following e-mail to Duncan Brinsmead to see if he can assist:

Hi Duncan,

My name is Terrence Craig, you don't know me.  On the off chance, I was wondering whether you might have some script for the Mandelbox or Mandelbulb for Maya that you could share with me.  For once the internet is failing me.

Just for some background, I'm a third year student doing Digital Media at the Australian National University.  A lecturer of mine (Kit Devine) showed me your Mandelbrot presentation.  I found it very inspiring, particularly when you went into the 3D world of the Mandelbulb and the Mandelbox.

I'm hoping to make such an object for my major project this semester, tweaking the code so that it becomes somewhat unique then add atmosphere, etc and do a fly-through.  I find myself very disappointed though that I cannot find any scripts on the net that will generate such an object.  I can see that there are specialised programs for Windows but I'd prefer to use Maya, on a mac, due to the power and control it would provide.

My background is in programming but my experience with Maya is quite limited to date because my art works haven't required it  I'm not scared of MEL or Python though.

If you could assist in any way, possibly even pointing me to a resource to find such a script to generate those 3D shapes, I'd be extremely appreciative.

Thanks for any assistance you can provide.

Regards, Terrence.