**Warning** People who get motion sickness might not like the flying camera effect.
This is a 3D fractal movie sequence I created that has some mind-bending visuals. Fractal geometry has a near infinite resolution and is self-similar. This is my first attempt at creating a high definition fly-though movie of a volumetric three-dimensional fractal. It took a little practice to keep the camera from clipping any sidewalls as it navigates through the geometry!
It took about 6 hours to render the high definition sequence on my 8 core Mac-Pro computer. This equates to 154 GHz hours worth of rendering time.
I used the cool open source software program "Mandelbulber". The scene consists of a fractal Hybrid formula using a Menger Sponge overlaid with a Kaleidoscopic IFS. I would like to thank Jason Fletcher for recommending I explore Mandelbulber.
Having red node icons in the Hypershade is usually caused when you don't have the required rendering engine enabled.
Sometimes in Maya you may notice the Hypershade render node icons turn a red colour. This is usually caused when you add a mental ray material to your scene while renderer is still set to Maya Software.
The red colour on the node icon means that the current render node is not supported by the active rendering engine. This means that the red coloured node will not be displayed in the final rendered image.
For the last 9 years I have always used a dual monitor setup with Mac OS X. I have often wondered how Mac OS X would handle more monitors, especially with features like display mirroring and with 3D graphics programs. Recently I had the chance to try this out when I added a 2nd graphics card to my Mac Pro computer. Since I already have two LCD monitors connected to my Mac I added two old CRT monitors to my system to be able to do a quad display experiment.
Recently I compiled several existing mental ray shaders for Linux 64-bit. I thought they might be useful for others so I am posting them. These shaders can also be used when rendering with mental cloud direct on Amazon EC2.
Cubic Map Environment Lens Shader
The cubemap_lens shader renders a cubic environment map. Cubemaps are useful for creating panoramas and for creating cubic simulated reflections in real-time applications. cubemap_lens_Linux_64-bit.zip
latlong_lens Environment Lens Shader
The latlong_lens shader renders an equirectangular / spherical environment map. latlong maps are useful for creating panoramas and for creating simulated reflections in realtime applications. latlong_lens_Linux_64-bit.zip
The Dome AFL shader renders your scene as if it was viewed through a fisheye camera lens. The Dome_AFL shader creates an accurate fisheye lens distortion. domeAFL_Linux_64-bit.zip
JS_fisheye Lens Shader
The JS_fisheye shader renders your scene as if it was viewed through a simulated fisheye camera lens. The DomeAFL shader creates a more accurate fisheye lens distortion. JS_fisheye_Linux_64-bit.zip
JS_panoramic Environment Lens Shader
The JS_panoramic shader is similar to the latlong_lens shader. It renders a panoramic environment map. The latlong_lens shader is a better choice for creating spherical images for use with Maya's IBL feature. JS_panoramic_Linux_64-bit.zip
La Maison 2D Motion Vector Pass Shader
lm2DMV is a motion vector shader that renders render motion vectors that are compatible with the Reelsmart Smoothkit or ReelSmart Motion Blur plugins. This allows you to apply motion blur to your renders as a 2D process in your compositing package. lm2dmv_Linux_64-bit.zip
For the last few days the weather has been excellent for aerial photography. I have been getting up early with my brother and we have been exploring the coastline around West Dover, East Dover and Peggy's Cove with a Multiplex Easystar model airplane. The plane is flown using a tiny analog video camera and a 900 MHz video link. The vertical format aerial photos are recorded using a Canon Powershot SD780IS camera with the CHDK firmware and my Countdown Intervalometer script. Over the course of the average flight the plane will fly for 25 minutes and take about 600 photos.
It is amazing how far into the water you can see from a vertical format aerial photo. In some of the shoreline photos you can see almost 30 feet into the water.
I have had great success stitching the photos using the free program Microsoft ICE to create aerial mosaic images.
Also, it has been a lot of fun creating stereo pairs from the aerial images and viewing them as 3D anaglyph images. The distance the plane moves between taking two photos causes enough parallax for creating real stereoscopic 3D images.
If you want a closer view on any of the images below, click on them for an enlarged version.
This is a time-lapse of shadows passing under an apple tree. It was filmed in West Dover, Nova Scotia over the course of a day. To create the time-lapse 1400 frames were captured, with a 15 second interval between photos, over a 10 hour period. A TC80-N3 intervalometer was used to control a Canon EOS D60 DSLR camera. The song is “What is Love” by Van Syla.
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