Visualisation Period Research: Renaissance

When my group started this project, I was given the task of researching furniture. Now, as fun and joyess as that seems at first, I actually found it a bit boring - not that I didn't like what I saw, but I really didn't get into it. So I started to look at the overall history and style of Renaissance.

First I started by watching a documentary my dad told me about called Travels With Vasari (rapidshare links) presented by the incredibly knowledgable and enthusiastic Andrew Graham-Dixon, who I've seen on the Culture Show many times before.

This was a two-part documentary following Georgio Vasari's life as one of the first renaissance artists. AG-D would often refer to a book; a bible for artists called The Lives of the Artists, which Vasari wrote as an account for other Renaissance artists at the time. The book contains many stories and anecdotes about life in Italy at a time just after the Gothic period. I have started to read through it as I ordered it through from Clifton to Boots library and am finding it much more interesting than simply researching furniture... which in hindsight, doesn't make a lot of sense because I don't think Renaissance was really famous for it's furniture!


Music: Chet Baker - Time After Time

Best gig this year so far!...

Last night at The Arts Organisation 3 amazing bands played. This was:
Bilge Pump
LORDS
and
Zun Zun Egui

I had seen Bilge Pump before, but so long ago that I forgot what they sounded like. They were very good; Led Zeppelin-esque drums with spazzy loud guitar riffs!

LORDS are local so i've seen them a few times now, I don't think it was their best performance but the were still very good. Guitar duo with hints of Kyuss and modern blues.

ZunZunEgui were a band i've not heard of before, so I really didn't know what to expect. Their songs were a mix of looped rock (but without the loop pedals!) and tribal rhythms and singing - a sort of Battles vs Fela Kuti. It was such a good mix that i've never heard before. Everyone was dancing and I want to see them again! Great band!

Great night!

Music: Nitin Sawhney - Acquired Dreams

I just bought a painting...

Actually it's a print/copy, but painting sounds cooler :). It's by Steven Pearson. Great condition! I found it in Tats on Mansfield Road and got it down from £15 to £10. It's very big and has a nice white painted wooden frame.


Music: Captain Beefheart - Woe-Is-Uh-Me-Bop

Daylight System: Night to Day Transition

I have worked through instructions from Simon Wallet and Jeff Patton to get this very cool effect.

25fps .avi


30fps .flv


I am really impressed with mental ray. It is so much faster than the standard render engine in Max 2009 so I will be continually using it where possible.


Music: Spiderbait - Detective

9 - A new Tim Burton movie

He's moving into the magical realm of CG, so I'm intrigued about this and look forward to watching it. I like that he has still made it to look like he's used stop motion though. Comes out 9-9-09, but in England that means 9-9-09 so don't get that one confused!




Music: Donovan - Wear Your Love Like Heaven

Short Interview: Animation

I found a very short but nice interview that George Maestri gave in 1997, just as he started working on South Park. I knew about George Maestri from his tutorial videos for lynda.com. He gives great tutorials and he is someone I may be including in my SPP2 essay so I thought I'd find out more about him. I didn't know he worked on Rocko's Modern Life or South Park and both are some of my favorite cartoons...

Check out the interview here!

Music: Grateful Dead - Fire On The Mountain

Good news for the next 3ds Max (2010)

"Great news, at least some, that came from the Autodesk aquisition of Softimage is that it plans to include CAT in the upcoming 3ds Max version (3ds Max 2010), which I consider being fantastic!

CAT will finally mean a lot of time and effort saved when dealing with character rigging, setup and animation. The layering system is fantastic as is the rig itself. I don’t know how far will Autodesk push the interoperability of the rig and MotionBuilder or Biped for example, but knowing Autodesk, that’ll most likely be up to us, the end users and TDs. I’m planning to base my complete character pipeline around CAT, of course, only under the single condition that CAT works the way it should! and tie everything up to MotionBuilder rigs, possibly Biped (but probably not as I don’t use Biped at all), and other modules and areas of 3ds Max. The next step will be interoperability with Maya, which’ll allow me to utilize Maya’s fantastic cMuscle and nCloth.

I have the tools pre-planned here mostly on paper. The overall pipeline will be revolved around XML and MySQL, as much open source as it gets. So the core, proprietary components that are CAT and other pieces will have to work perfectly in order for me to go into this venture. But the fact that every seat of 3ds Max 2010 will have CAT is a very solid and good foundation. I like this idea, it’ll definitely save me tons of work and time, which is crucial. It’s the one and only new feature I’m actually very excited about.

But, if all fails and Autodesk (again) proves itself incompetent, arogant and stupid, there’s always a fantastic solution from Kees Rijnen as he announced his amazing Puppetshop to be available for commercial use for free! He’s awesome!

In the mean time, get to know CAT and learn it in and out as that’s gonna become the one and primary solution for complex character animation work in the near future. I believe it, you should too! ;)"

Links
Lookas Duber's Blog
Post: Can't wait for Max's new kitty
CAT
Kees Rijnen: Puppetshop