Posted on February 14, 2000

• I hope you all are having a wonderful Valentine’s Day (if you celebrate that sort of thing). Since last week I’ve been up to my eyes in “Deep Paint 3D”, trying to figure out how to texture my Lightwave objects and then have that same texture work in World Builder. Not as simple as it may sound. My efforts in this area should lead to improved versions of the Pagoda and Neptune’s Garden soon.

  For now, however, I have my first “tester” image to show you. It’s called, originally enough, “Sentinels 2000” and it is available in the Pickle Jar and on the New Images page.

  I’ve also honored a some of your requests. You can now download a “shipless” version of “Ships Passing”, and I’ve made my “CD Cover” available as a wallpaper. Both of these images are available (for now) in the Pickle Jar. Enjoy!

Posted on February 9, 2000

• Added two final versions of my first water test. Most of you seemed to like the second one that I posted, which is essentially the same as the first accept for a few thin clouds. I, on the other hand, agreed with the minority that sun shining from the center of the image made it too bright to look at. As one member put it “I have to wear shades to look at it”.

  Of course, the cool thing about the Pickle Jar is that you are free to chose whichever version you want. The fourth revision is sort of a comprimise between the 2 and 3rd in that I toned down the haze somewhat and brightened the sun. The fifth version is a “noon” shot and is available in the Pickle Jar. I just wanted to see what the scene would look like brightly lit. Both versions are on the New Images page and in the Picklejar.

Posted on February 8, 2000

• I know, sometimes I don’t know when to leave well enough alone. One of the things, though, that bothered me about my last post was that lacked any sort of “atmosphere”. Lightwave, of course, was never designed to be “world building” software. Most of the images you’ll see done with it are either simple still life renders (one object) or are interior scenes. Well, I wanted to add clouds to the sky in “Two Ships Passing” but I just couldn’t find a good way of doing it. The water/haze plugin I used to create that nifty ocean environment is very picky about what objects can cast/receive shadows and reflections. I doesn’t allow you to add clouds to the sky (like in Bryce for example), so you need to use another plugin for that. The problem is, plugins don’t always get along with each other. I think I managed to find a happy medium though.

  Anyway, many crashes and failed attempts later, I’ve posted two new versions of my “Ships”. The version I am happiest with is posted on my New Images page, and all three are available in the Pickle Jar. I’ve love to hear your ideas on which one you like best

  I’ve also added another animation featuring the new ocean environment and you are welcome to download it. It’s a 480 x 360 animation and is [an error occurred while processing this directive] to download. Hope you like!

• Some of you have written asking how you can use the animations on your destkop. Right now the only way I can think of is by downloading a screensaver which will your animation files full screen. There is a nice free one available for downloading at http://www.stanford.edu/~bfcarter/aviss/index.html

Posted on February 5, 2000

• Thanks everyone for your feedback regarding “In Bloom”. Most of you thought as Jessie did, that the version marked #2 was better than the rest. Actually, I felt the same, but I guess I didn’t want to admit it. You see, version 2 was the first one I did (put together in about 3 hours), and then I went back and added various things to make versions 1 and 3. I should have left it alone I guess. Oh well. All three versions are still up for display in the Pickle Jar, so you can take your pick. I will be posting version 2 in my permanent 2000 collection (when I’ve put a few more complete projects together).

• My second “water test” is now up for your review. This one employs “Digital Nature Tools” from Dynamic-Realities (which came in the mail on Wednesday). I wanted something in the upper half of the image, so I whipped up a “flying oceanliner” in Lightwave. The wallpaper is called “Two Ships Passing” and you can view it on the new images page or in the Pickle Jar.

  If you like the “static” version, check out these two animations I created of the scene. The first is a 320 x 240 movie showing the two ships passing by each other. ([an error occurred while processing this directive] AVI) The second clip is at 480 x 360 and it shows one ship doing a sort of turnabout. ([an error occurred while processing this directive] AVI) Both animations are 8 seconds in duration. There is also a smaller (320 x 240) clip with just the water and waves. ([an error occurred while processing this directive] AVI)

  I’ve also added a 480 x 360 flythrough of “To Be”. ([an error occurred while processing this directive] AVI)

  Hope you like! If you have comments I’d love to hear them.

Posted on February 3, 2000

• Sorry I’ve been out of touch the last few days. Don’t take that to mean that I’ve just been sitting around though. I’ve been keeping myself rather busy in my continuing quest to learn Lightwave, while waiting for my Deep Paint software to arrive so I can properly texture my creations. It arrived yesterday and I’ve only just now started working with it. It looks pretty straight-forward though, so I also managed to set up ScreamerNet on my home network (Lightwave’s “render farm” software). Much to my chagrin, it doesn’t look like ScreamerNet will do much for rendering single frames (like my wallpapers), but you should see it crank through animations. I hope to have some cool stuff to show on you that front soon.

  Of course, I know animations aren’t why you signed up as a member, so I went back to World Builder yesterday with the goal of creating a pleasant floral image (Valentine’s Day is coming up). There are three minor variations on this image now available in the Pickle Jar. I chose one of them for the New Images page, but the choice was completely arbitrary. If you like this image, then I would really like to hear which of the three you prefer, because I can’t decide.

  For those of you not interested in flowers, I’ve updated “To Be”. If you don’t like the additions, you can always find the first edition in the Pickle Jar.

  Speaking of which… I’ve also posted three early versions of the “Chamber” design that later became the background for “To Be”. The whole thing really grew out of me wanting to design a “Fire Pot” which would actually spew fire (using Particle Storm and Hypervoxels). You can see my first attempt in the Pickle Jar in an image called “Blue Fire”. I decided after that to try out orange fire, and that lead to the image I’ll informally call “First Chamber”. I added “Mr. Zard” for scale. Good thing too, because I can claim that it is his magic causing the firepots to levitate slightly off of the floor 🙂 I may do another render of this image with every firmly grounded….

  What’s coming up? Look for “final” versions of “Pagoda” and “Neptune’s Garden”, for some new space imagery and an updated “Conjunction”. Look for a few more “double-wide” wallpapers, and finally, look for some prints to be available before too long. I also plan to start annotating my images and create more intuitive indexing system for my search engine (search by subject, date, colors, software used, etc). I have a lot of other ideas too. Stay tuned!

• A significant anniversary passed a couple of days ago and but I was too busy to notice. One year ago February 1st was my first day without a “real job”. It seemed like a very risky proposition at the time and I keenly remember the butterflies in my stomach as I tendered my resignation at the old job. Without going into specifics, I can safely say that it was the best decision I ever made. Thank you all for making my dream a reality!