I was intrigued by a tutorial I found on artist Scott Robertson's web site drawthrough.com on how to freehand draw ellpses. I found it extremely educational, and wanted to play around in 3D with what I learned there.
In this simple tutorial I take two images and stitch them together into a continuous nodal point camera pan. To keep things simple, I'm using images from a computer generated scene, but the principles apply just as well to live action.
Although I only recently learned about the "secret" functionality while browsing an art forum, Painter seems to have been playing with the idea of adding a programmer-friendly procedural image creation and manipulation function called ColorTalk to its famously artist-oriented software since version 3.
I decided to take a closer look at ColorTalk as it continues to unofficially exist in Painter IX.
Here, for fun, is a short tutorial on how to turn a 2D photograph into a 3D animation using Maya camera mapping. The move you see is entirely virtual. This technique forms a useful basis for "view-dependent texturing" of foreground objects, as well as for imposing a 3D move on a 2D matte painting background.
UPDATE 4/18/2009: The high res photos are on flickr for you to play with.
Here's a little gallery of images of the bones of the shoulder girdle. I had some trouble gluing the plastic clavicle to the plastic scapula, and I strengthened the joint with a little brass hing mounted 90 degrees to its usual bend axis. In doing so, I lost the little "step-down" from the clavicle to the scapula that artists often point out, but that I seldom see shown in medical diagrams.
UPDATE 3/8/2009
How the scapula actually rotates during arm elevation -- its center(s) of rotation identified.
I see that Benoit Mandelbrot, who coined the term fractal geometry, turns eighty next week.
I was lucky enough to be part of the group at R/Greenberg Associates in New York that helped bring one of Mandelbrot's and Dr. Richard Voss's famous fractal terrains to popular attention by animating a fly-through of it in a 1987 IBM television commercial.
We didn't have a sky, but to keep everything 'fractal,' we interpreted the terrain height field mesh as an image of blue and white color values.
The commercial was popular, and went on to win a number of awards, including a Gold Plaque, Computer Graphics, Chicago International Film Festival; a Gold Award, International Film & TV Festival; a Certificate of Merit, Institutional/Corporate ID, Chicago International Film Festival; and a Gold Award, Computer Graphics, Houston International Film Festival.
Happy Birthday Dr. Mandelbrot.
UPDATE 4/27/2009
Jonathon Coulton sings a nice song about the Mandelbrot Set. My daughter particularly enjoys this fractal zoom set to his music.
UPDATE 7/29/2009
I just came across this - Vol Libre by (Pixar's Chief Scientist) Loren Carpenter, who describes his work as follows:
"I made this film in 1979-80 to accompany a SIGGRAPH paper on how to synthesize fractal geometry with a computer. It is the world's first fractal movie. It utilizes 8-10 different fractal generating algorithms. I used an antialiased version of this software to create the fractal planet in the Genesis Sequence of Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan. These frames were computed on a VAX-11/780 at about 20-40 minutes each."
very cool.
UPDATE 11/13/2009
3D Mandelbub: Some very interesting lit and shaded 3D versions
Yes it's another electoral map.
I've seen blended red, blue, and purple maps, and I've seen maps with surface area altered to reflect population, but I haven't seen any map address the fundamental unfairness of comparing a strong red to a strong blue.
Google "RGB to Luminosity" and you'll see that there is a weighted average that represents the relative strengths of colors in human perception. The common equation for converting RGB to Luminosity according to the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) is:
luminosity = 0.299 x red + 0.587 x green + 0.114 x blue
To put this equation to use in Photoshop, use Image > Mode > Grayscale. Do not use Image > Adjustments > Desaturate -- that is the wrong equation. To see why it's wrong to use "desaturate," check here.
You can see from the maps above that a strong blue has the same luminosity as -- not a strong red -- but a pretty dull red.
It was twenty years ago in the Summer of 1984 that Charlotte and I first met in Providence, Rhode Island. She had just graduated from RISD, and I was home for the summer from Duke. The two of us were working in a sandwich shop called Penguins on Thayer Street across from the Avon movie theater.
I recently saw an exhibit called Return to Elegance in the Lobby of the Arclight Theater in Hollywood. It was the work of local photographer Roger Gania James -- a collection of Hurrell-style Hollywood glamour photos with a vintage 1940's look. As a 20th wedding anniversary gift to me, Charlotte agreed to sit for him. Some of the results are above.
UPDATE 6/1/2005:
You wouldn't know it from Google, but he has a web site. http://www.rogerganiajames.com Thanks to one of the commentors below for finding it.
Here is the contact info he provides: http://rogerganiajames.com/inquiries.html
He's really great.
UPDATE 5/1/2006
Some other California photographers working in a vintage style.
Film Noir Portraiture by Jim Ferreira
UPDATE 8/13/2006
Mark Wangerin has an Amphoto book coming out late in 2007 entitled How To Create Vintage Hollywood Lighting in the Digital Age according to his web site.
UPDATE 10/6/2009
A commenter below makes a recommendation: Gordon Ayers of London
Looks great.
...as far as the Mark Wangerin book goes... I've been looking forward to it, but from what I can see that pleasure remains one for the future.
UPDATE 10/26/2009
Some pretty great deals from Pyramid Films on used movie lighting - Mole Richardson-style fresnel lens hot lights.
The trick to determining the orientation of the upper arm is to locate the condyles of the humerus. The 2 points of the condyles and the "bump" at the end of the ulna form a triangle the shape of which is determined by whether the arm is straight or bent.
