FinalDog

Emily - The tech demo

I remember the days when digital photography and Photoshop were harkening in an new age of image manipulation. We’d see (and eventually do) things with images that were quite surprising, and it quickly became apparent that you couldn’t trust what you saw in a photograph any longer. As I wrote about a few days ago, those same days are happening again, for video this time. Take a look at the tech demo below of “Emily” from Image Metrics. Yes, she is the demo.

Believe it or not, that is a completely CGI face placed seamlessly into the video. The demo shows some wireframes and other effects around the 1:20 mark, and reverts back to the girls real face at the 1:30 point.

There’s a great article about the company and what they’re doing at the Times Online.
Absolutely amazing stuff.

(Thanks to Tito at The Career Gamer for the link)

Wallpaper - The clouds don’t mind at all

I woke up recently with the words “the clouds don’t mind at all” in my head for some reason, so I made this image to capture the idea. The full size is 1680×1050 and is well suited for widescreen desktop wallpaper, which is what I’m using it for.

I suppose if you’re feeling stressed out about something in your life it might pay to step back and think about this, and try not to worry.

Enhancing video using photos

I’ve been shooting a lot of video lately (see related posts below) and likely because of that, I find the following demo vid fascinating. There’s a full abstract about what these guys are doing entitled Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene and it’s well worth looking over if you’re at all interested in videography. The essence of it all is that they’ve figured out a way to seamlessly use high res digital photographs to enhance video of the same scene. There are a lot of creative possibilities for this sort of thing.

We present a framework for automatically enhancing videos of a static scene using a few photographs of the same scene. For example, our system can transfer photographic qualities such as high resolution, high dynamic range and better lighting from the photographs to the video. Additionally, the user can quickly modify the video by editing only a few still images of the scene. Finally, our system allows a user to remove unwanted objects and camera shake from the video. These capabilities are enabled by two technical contributions presented in this paper. First, we make several improvements to a state-of-the-art multiview stereo algorithm in order to compute view-dependent depths using video, photographs, and structure-from-motion data. Second, we present a novel image-based rendering algorithm that can re-render the input video using the appearance of the photographs while preserving certain temporal dynamics such as specularities and dynamic scene lighting.

WordPress Automatic Upgrade

Not a creative topic, but I can not speak highly enough of the Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin available from Techie-buzz.

When I logged into my admin section this morning I found a note about Wordpress 2.61 being released and frankly, that sort of thing always causes a minor knot in my stomach. I’ve had upgrade disasters in the past and it’s also generally a pain in the backside even if it goes well.

Not long ago I came across the Auto Upgrade plugin and it really does work as advertised. This is the second update to Wordpres I’ve done through it and it went absolutely smoothly. Just click the Upgrade button in your admin section and follow the directions, which simply involves read>click>read>click>read>click and you’re done.

It backs up your database (optional but wise), then puts your site in maintanence mode (essentially shutting it down to visitors temporarily), then shuts off your plugins, downloads and installs the Wordpress upgrade, prompts you to click and update the database, reactivates your plugins and opens the site to visitors again.

It turns what has been a slightly scary task into a few minutes of clicking. I did it while drinking tea just now.I can’t imagine why functionality like this isn’t built into Wordpress, I bet they’ll absorb this plugin at some poin down the road. It’s essential.

(Spiffy Wordpress logo was created by Jon of 3nhanced.com)

Avatar Scultpure Works

In keeping with yesterdays post about realistic looking paper models of human subjects, I came across Avatar Scultpure Works which consists of two amazing artists named Jamie Salmon and Jackie K. Seo. Their work is created entirely by hand using silicone rubber, fibre glass, acrylic and human hair. Absolutely inspirational and absolutely amazing stuff. Sample below, and many more at the link in their gallery section.

Paper Sculptures

There are a lot of resources around the web for making paper sculpture and models. (Try googling either “paper scultpure” or “card modeling” for instance), but Bert Simons has some really neat stuff. I’ve come across models and plans for airplanes, houses and things of that sort but never realistic busts done with paper. As I always say, inspiration is where you find it.

A slight site shift

Now that I find myself back amongst the feelancers of the world, I think this site is going to need a slight repurposing. Nothing major mind you, but it strikes me that I should gear it a bit more towards my services than just a pure blog, though the blog shall remain. I’m considering setting up a front page with all the relevant info about who i am and what I do, with a /blog link from that but I’m 100% sold on that idea yet.

The other option is to leave the blog as the main portion of the site with a link to further information about my freelancing stuff. The jury is still out, but I’ll sort things out by the end of the day.

The Olympics, Fake Fireworks and Quality

One thing lacking in a lot of aspects of the world these days, is Quality. When I say that I don’t mean how shiny your new car is, or how may channels your TV can get… I mean true, honest quality. You can’t define it, but everyone knows what it is. A lot of the time this lack of quality is a product of the society in which we live, it’s geared towards mass produced, low quality so much so that most people don’t even see it. What gets me is when people willingly choose a low quality route, eschewing honesty and effort in an attempt to gloss something over with a thin veneer of something it’s not. It happens all the time though, most recently during the opening ceremonies at the Olympics in Beijing.

Olympic Fireworks Faked for TV

The global television audience of more than three billion people watched in amazement as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks proceeded through the night sky from Tiananmen Square to the Bird’s Nest stadium - except they were watching a computer animation.

Even the giant television screens within the stadium itself broadcast the fake images. Stunned viewers thought they were watching the string of fireworks filmed from above by a helicopter. But in reality they were watching a 3D graphics sequence that took almost a year to produce. It even included a ‘camera shake’ to mimic the effect of filming from a helicopter. The dupe was revealed by China’s Beijing Times.

Rather than make an honest effort at creating some spectacular fireworks, or accepting what they wanted was out of reach and going with a more traditional display someone made the decision to fake it. Had they been up front with that fact, it might not have been so bad but in apparently trying to be devious about it they simply cheapened the entire thing. A more standard fireworks display would have had much more quality than something that pretended to be what it’s not.

There’s too much of that in the world as it is, no need to make more of it.

Ray

I thought I’d post a bit more about some of my past work, in an effort to highlight the sort of thing I do when not engaged with client work. I created a super hero character named Ray several years ago, and to this day I still get comments on him from around the web. He was initially created for a short film I had in mind called “Hero”, but like most of my short film ideas it didn’t get to far along before I realized the scope was a bit large for one person. I kept fleshing him out however, altering his look and motion until I got him where I wanted him to be.

At this point I’ve got several renders of him in various situations, and a few test animation as well and the more I look at the guy the more I think I should update him. He was created around 1999 - 2000 or so (at a guess) and I can see a lot of things I’d do differently now as I’ve progressed a lot as an animator/modeler over the years. I might have to rebuild him from scratch, come up with a proper story and maybe create some animations keeping in mind that whole scope issue that’s always come up in the past.

Here’s a test animation I did of him way back then which admittedly still needed a bit of work. Ignore the url at the bottom, that’s long outdated.

Twitter Updates for 2008-08-10

• ok, that’s enough messing with the website for one day. #
• Sunday morning, not quite as relaxing when you’re self-employed…. but still relaxing. #