32.Swings and Orbits

Context. While the other scene with the lava lamp and globe is rather a pedestal for the two objects, I want the space scene to really set the tone and give it a wow factor. So with my HD sun I crated a new scene and made a little solar system using spheres and setting them on motion paths around the sun. I then gave them planetary lighting that would follow them around ensuing that one side facing the sun was always lit. 

above is an image of the sun heating up as i caught it off guard, reminded me more of Saturn or a giant maltreaser in space.

above is a render of the sun and the planet, im really happy with thins and things its super effective especially when the planet comes in front.

I then wanted to make a galaxy background myself, so i look up a few tutorials and found this one to be the best 

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/17852-nebula-background/

Here is a snippet of the texture, i want to make a really long one so there are less seams in the scene. its maybe something to look into later about trying to make it seamless. 

So adding a massive sphere as a back ground and giving it the galaxy texture really gave the scene a galactic feeling. 

I tried pushing the sun out to try get the best scale of the planets to the sun, without spoiling the nice shadows that cross its surface. 

Above is the initial video of just the planets and sun

And here they are with the galaxy background, but i think the sun is still animating too fast so I slowed it down and ended up with the video below, which i am very happy with. 

Now just to get the metaphor dynamics in!

31. Terraforming

since last time i have mostly been working on the metaphor dynamics applying what i learned from making the lava lamp to firstly improve on its appearance, and secondly to create more cohesive connection between the signifier of the lava lamp and the abstraction of the metaphor. 

Below are renders of an iteration where im purely aiming to get a good shader for the particles, changing the inputs of the sub surface shader.  

this one is too bright and it eclipses the particles in light, taking down the BSS weighting should solve this. 

I tried mixing in different shades of colours in the back and from BSS inputs, there are also diffuse inputs so its quite dynamic in what effects you can get

I really like this one as it is rather bright on ons side and darker on the other, getting across that planetary lighting that i want.

I then diced to apply it to some of the other iterations of the metaphor mesh i had to see if it swayed which one worked better on a visual level

Maya freaked out at one part and had ghost particles coming in along with showing.

Getting some interesting and nice visuals, not quite what i am looking for but the experimentation lets me see what can be done in different combinations for future projects. 

Here is the base colour of the subsuface scattering applied to some early continental meshes

I think i am onto something here, its a bit too bold but i want it to match in with the colours of the lava lamp, however  it looks solid and if i can get this animating and moving like continents then its one step closer to my goal

here is is animating just with field attraction on. They are too similar and i have no control over how they move, but, i do like the bridging and colour changes that are happening. The key here is control so I think my next steps will be finding a way to pul and push them to where i want them to be. 

30.Beneath the sub surface

I decided to go back into the lava lamp file and start again with the shader. It seem the more I experiment the more knowledge im gaining about its fine tuning of the output effects.

Here is a base layer again, not looking very inspirational. 

Getting a good frame to work from is half the battle to seeing what all the shader looks like 

here i have added some lights in the base to ramp up the amout of light being fed in to the particles.

I like the viscous feel these next images have, though they seem a bit too solid to be lava lamp wax

At this point i think i was taking a few steps backwards, i was having some problems with the light bouncing off the top of the cap and making the top of the particles lighter than the base, breaking the visage of a lava lamp with its light source being in the base.

getting better..

another step back

I made some bigger changes and mixed up the colour of the lava to be more yellow and i got some really nice effects. 

I then fixed the lighting after a few attempts, but i was also getting a few holes in the mesh here and there, so looking into that i discovered that having the mesh in tris was not working to i switched them to quads

You see the white marks at the back? those are the missing polys, took me a while to figure out how to get rid of them. 

I was very happy with this render so i decided to do an ambient occlusion on another layer

I then composited it in Photoshop and had a play, above is the end result , which i think looks really nice, maybe too solid or needs more reflections. This is rendered without the glass so that might help too.  

I then became intrigued as i have never really rendered out any more render layers other than ambient occlusion, so i followed a few tutorials and got to grips better with the functions and can now do a batch render with mutiple render passes. I had tried to use it in an animation last year but to no avail.

http://www.cgsource.net/render-passes--compositing.html

With the master beauty layer rendering out pretty much the same image, i was a bit curious as to why it was better to do passes, so i did a bit more research and found out all baout how it gives you more control and allows you to make colour changes without having to rerender the whole scene.
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/maya_render_pass_concepts_and_techniques_whitepaper_us.pdf

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/passes_layers.html

Here is one of the specular passes which i thought looked pretty cool anyway, might do a chrome type animation after the project is done, would look like molten magnesium!

29.Lights, camera, lava

Ive been working on the model for the globe this week, trying to get the mesh right the first time round and use the mia_x materials to create a bronze effect for the base. Ill then animate the globe for the final scene putting it on a axis on the globe to give it more of a real to life planetary effect, better connecting the imagery to that of the planet - thus strengthening the visual language and metaphor

Below are some of the first scene test renders. I like the shaders, but the lighting is too dark and ruins the spectacle of them both. I would like to try and keep the dramatic feel of the scene to give it more intrigue and cinematic feel, keeping the viewers attentinon.

I lightened the scene a bit and started to ramp up the samples in the sub surface scattering in an attempt to get some setting fixed, then i can begin animating the camera and working on the composition. 

Below is a new lava lap (minus the glass) showcase the improved lava dynamics that i have been working on.  Im still trying to get the shader right and I would like to look into giving it a emissive glow so that if the lights dim the lava will still give off a little light, like a real lava lamp. Again strengthening the connection and imagery of what is familiar. 

Looking into who this could be aimed at and at what level, I researched the level of detail that they are taughts continetanl drift in GCSEs and standard grades. I think that this is a lot less condicending than a lot of  learning and gennerates inturige into the topic, its a lot more expressive than in a lot of shcools but the aim is to provoke new ideas and to make connections about the two, almost like poetry. They share commonalities of being molten and powered by heat, breaking apart and forming again into new masses. It creates a model that could then be built upon,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/21c_pre_2011/earth_and_space/continentaldriftrev1.shtml

While looking this up I also looking into genetics as i am having some issues planning out the finer details of how to show the more complex layers of the genetic process. 

Reading these two links it is very clear that there is a lack of visuals that relate the information in a relatable way. DNA and genetics are on a micro-scale that is hard to imagine on the best of days, but when thinking about what is inside DNA and how the structures all relate to each other its very easy for them just to become words with little connection or grounding to each other,it may just be a personal observation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/21c/genes/genesrev1.shtml

It provoked me to wondering why there is such a lack of materials that really showcase what is going on, thinking about it a lot of the materials and curriculum is made my teachers and learning officials  These people would of gone thought teacher training, and it may be a stretch and a big generalisation but i theorise that they are all very well versed in English due to university - and the field of specialisation such as physics etc- But many will not be artisticly inclined. Despite there being a lot of proof that many people are visual learners it is not as integrated as teaching with litteracy, thus causing a lack of visual resources.

For examples this website that is used by teachers to teach about chromosones and gennetics. The animation 3/4 donw the page is somththing i was all too familiar with at highschool, it is in desperate need of revising.
http://www.biotopics.co.uk/genes1/genesDNAchromosomes.html

28. Lav'a Good lava lamp

http://simplymaya.com/autodesk-maya-video-tutorial/free-tutorials/intro-to-maya-complete-lava-lamp-project/?tut_id=327

I found the perfect tutorial that uses Ndynamics to crate a lava lamp and also has parts on  how to model the  lamp itself! Now despite being a 4th year my modelling skills are still rather poor, myself and maya do not get along, i seem to take the long way round doing everything and then somthing goes wrong in the end. So its always been something ive wanted to work on, so i did all 7 tutorials which proved to be a pretty lengthy process but i gain a great few new modelling tips and ticks and generally feel a lot more familiar with the basics again.  

 This is actually one of the final images i have right now after doing the tutorial, so if the reader would like to scroll to the bottom of the images ill got though them from the bottom up.

here is the final iteration for now, I want to restart the dynamics and add my own flare, as the animation in the tutorial was very basic and i think i can make it look better and play with the algorithm used to make the lava rise and fall. The animation tests are at the bottom of the page.

increasing the samples of the subsurface scattering and playing with the colours of the effect

above is the new model with the restarted dynamics, here i was applying the subsurface scattering to create the lava lamp type effect to the particles

this is how the model looked before the fixes in scene, the highlight is crooked and the base shows the vertexes where they join the bottom.

Below is the finished remodelled  lamp

#

I also remodelled the glass and increased the polys

 bellow are some of the artefacts that were showing up

So as i wasnt happy with it i modelled it again, taking more care and really thinking ahead now i knew the process, i then repeated the dynamics and scene lighting letting the new skills sink in even more looking at the tutorials for reference when i got a bit lost. I am much happier with the model the second time round, and after doing the tutorial i really thing i can improve the original metaphor imagery ,

Above is the what i had by the end of the tutorials, i used a different source image from the man in the tutorial but i wanted it to reflect the lava lamp i bought for the project. It wasnt modelled as wel as his and was showing up the imperfections by the end of getting the shaders and lights up.

some have uploaded, but the majority refuse so they are all on youtube as a back up

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC0DFYdC3xY

My first attempt seemed jumpy like a blobby bug crawling up the glass... but the basics of it where there and i could really see where i could take the project if i could get a really convincing lava lamp i would have a great signifier for the viewer so they could connect the attributes of the lamp to that of the continental drift. 

This one is worlds better, less scuttling blobs up the side, but that can be fixed with more playing with the mesh threshold, blobby scale radius (who comes up with these names), motion trail and conserve. Also the general magnitude of the volume field axis that pulls up the particles.

Even better, even have some nice separation of the particles but, it still feels likes it pouring up too fast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFNeEbJwmc

Possible a step backwards here, but there is a lot less out of thin air particles coming in and judders.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaIhz87Q0sM

getting closer, needs slowed down and more of a meandering feeling in the blobs i think. And i would like more separation of the particles- more tweaking. Its so hard to tell what the movement is like just from a few renders, they all look good but then its all about the movement.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWzy0e-9OzY

Im  no the right track now getting so close, im a lot happier and you can see clear defined blobs which is what i want, maybe take it even slower, the conserve slider changes the reaction so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPXCboiNkOw

no much effect in this one, the fine tuning is proving to be very laborious with all this rendering but, i have invested in a new desktop so its no longer taking gratuitous amounts of time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrO6HQN8tvE

I think i am happy with this for now, its a lot slower, doesn't look like its pouring upwards and has minimal juddering in the particles appearing. A few artefacts here and there but I can very fine tune them out. Now i will apply the subsurface scattering and look into maybe adding a glow type effect as to them too somehow.

Next steps to finish the scene, merge the new animation with its subsurface scattering and also make the globe to accompany the lamp.

Its good i really feel like the project is finding its feat again, and i feel a a lot more equipped now.