33/5. Pages of code

I have really neglected the other project, its just been all go with the other scene and i would rather have that one really nice and polished. However, this project is really important as it is one of the other types of metaphor. The continental drift metaphor is more abstract and draws upon natural commonalties such as the heat inside the globe to the heat in side the earth. This project on the other hand is about taking a well understood model and projecting that onto something very complex in a bit to rationalise it with something more relatable 

So i have been diligently looking into how genetics work and using an extract from a book by Richard Dawkins have been formulating a way to best relay the genetics within a single cell

Below are pages for the rigged book i acquired .

Some letters are backwards as they appear on the mesh on the reverse page. 

As seen in the blue sketch book development the books are the chromosomes, within the books are chapters - these are the genes- then within the genes are the amino acids or the words on the page. 

see sounds simple, but it really was a nightmare to figure out. 

So for an example, you take one of the red books off the shelf, lets say volume 10 and open it to chapter 6 and read the page finding out its about blue eyes. 

What you are really doing it selecting chromosome 10 from mothers genetic material looking at a segment of the DNA within the material that makes up a gene. Within that you are then looking at some of the genetic coding that denotes the amino acids that are required to make blues eyes.

Breaking that down 

cell/embryo - bookcase

shelves - nucleus

books - chromosomes

All pages together - DNA

chapters - genes 

words - amino acids

Maybe i would of taken biology if it was put like that, but it was very hard to get my head round and write that down with trust in what i was saying was right. Safe to say i never did take biology.

So putting that into a practical input i made the final pages for the rig.

I wanted there to be coded pages with the T-A G-C (denote the amino acids needed) to be on the pages, then it changes just to say what they would make, so in this case blue.

So then it reads chapter 6, eye colour - blue. 

I then wanted the blue fathers book of the same volume as the mothers to come in beside it for comparison, it would open to chapter 6 as well but the code this time would denote brown eyes.
with blue being recessive, the child would then have brown eyes from its father. 

phew. I know some visuals would help to explain that bit, so i hope to get them up in the next few posts. I really want to have the animation at least blocked out for submission as i think that it works so well and is really backing up my project. 

right page texture

left page fathers eye colour

stacks of pages for both books

new book (newer genetic material) mother

new book (newer genetic material) father

Old book mesh (older genetic material ) father

Old book mesh (older genetic material ) mother

right page fathers eye colour

Front of book and main animated book for the mother

Mothers eye colour right page

Mothers eye colour left page

coded pages that appear before the coloured pages containing the amino acid codes

The main gold here was to keep it as true to genetics as i could but still getting those visual ques in so the viewer can try merge the model of the bookcase and associate it with the complex genetic information. For examples having the chromosomes on the spine of the books spines relates it more to picking a singular chromosome out of the 46 pairs and looking inside. vu just having them as books

33. Setting the scene and adding glow

http://vimeo.com/19419930

After wanting to put an emissive type glow to the lava i followed the tutorial above and then tried to apply it instead to the sub surface shader by adding a light surface to an input... First attempt resulted in a fatal error. However after a few attempts and a bit of experimentations i got it working and it give off a slight glow even in the dark.

Here is the scene before adding the shader, I also re did all of the lighting again in the scene, i think the portal light broke. 

Its looking really good and im happy with where the project is at, the dynamics are animating well and the lighting is really giving it some depth. 

Another darker shot with the lamp giving off a bit of a glow

I love the way the lamp reflects within the globe, its almost perfect as the whole project is about how the globe reflects some of the attributes of the lava lamp and versa verse with the lava lamp. .

this is the lava at rest, for the transition into the next scene i would like to fade the lights out and have the metaphor emerge from the glowing base of the lamp. But im going to do some thumbnails to better decide how it will work.

I have also tinted the glass blue to reflect that the green continents are in blue water and then in the next scene there will be a blue haze that could represent the same effect. Creating more visual continuity and bringing the connections together

This scene test below is to showcase the glowing lava in the lamp, im pretty chuffed with it and think its coming together. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmg16xZUCYQ

another scene test, but i think the glow is too much in this one. Again the lava at the top show not be brigther than the lava at the bottom, this ensures that its more realistic and so evokes more memories or accosioations with real lava lamps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGvsg4qW1FQ

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!

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