Spectacular Sunsets

Such wonderful colours! And to finish off, I present, the "fireball cloud".

Light and Shade @ Sunset

Last week the weather was really nice - somewhat unseasonably so for this time of the year. Here are some shots I took after a day of intensive hacking earlier in the week.

 

Macro Fun

It's been unseasonably nice and warm over the past few days (22.4 deg C yesterday, in the middle of winter). With a few flu-like illness scares and nose bleeds too, it was about time that I took a few days off from all the projects that have been keeping me busy for the past while. That's not to say that the past month of dedicated project time has been hard-slog; rather, compared to the madness of a few weeks back, the slower pace of research vs courses/classes was quite a godsend that didn't last long enough!). Anyways, some pics from around the house (as usual).

King of the Stack

Paper Jams

Just my luck: while trying to print off some stuff this morning, I ended up with a bit of a problematic paper jam...

Somehow, a sheet of A4 paper had become crumpled/folded in the printer, with one corner of it sticking out like an origami flame or napkin (as seen above), and the other end wedged firmly underneath the print head (as seen after opening the lid). Unfortunately, things weren't a lot better from the print tray - a narrow < 1 inch slit 2-3 inches deep - where a mere 1-2 cm of paper was still visible.

Chromatic Aberation - Enough is Enough

It's a funny situation: many if not most photographers wish it would go away, with some going to expensive (quite literally) extents to avoid/minimise its effects. And yet, we as CG artists are all too trigger-happy to apply it liberally, adding into nearly every comp, and boosting the intensity until its effects are smeared across the screen for the world to see. Enough is enough!

If you've ever had to sit through more than a few multi-hour long presentations with a bad-quality/uncalibrated projector that's giving 2-5 cm color-fringe shifts (yellow/blue or red/green in opposite directions on one or more axes), eyeballed a batch of photos (*) only to notice that they're blighted with severe fringing in the worst/most noticeable places, then perhaps you'd think twice before trying to apply this effect next time. At the very least, if you must have it, keep it down to 1-2 pixels max. Please.

Ara's Tale

Three years in the making, Martin Lubich has finally released his short film "Ara's Tale" - an impressive solo effort, especially for a project done during spare time and in Blender nonetheless :)

• http://www.loramel.net/ - Author's (Production) Blog
• http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?162804-Ara-s-Tale-short-film-wip  - WIP Thread
• http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?260296-Ara-s-Tale-a-short-film - Released!

Overall, a beautiful film. Kudos to the sound and music team too for their great work, which takes this to the next level indeed.

Driving Cycles Materials

It has come to my attention that in recent weeks that many of you out there have been trying to assign drivers to properties of Cycles materials, with a few bug reports appearing in the tracker in as many days. Yesterday, I took a short break from some of my other projects to try and find a fix for these problems, so now:

A live version of the image above can be found on BlendSwap (link will be added when available), and Pasteall. This blend is based on Bicycle (low Poly) by Brandon Farley, originally released under (CC-BY)

GSoC12 - Bullet Integration Video

Sergej has just posted a video demonstrating the current features of the Bullet Integration project and how to use them. Check it out below :)




Blender GSoC 2012 - Bullet Integration Progress Video 1 from Sergej Reich on Vimeo.