![[OLD SEMESTER] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice](../../../../wp-content/uploads/2023/09/stop-banner.png)
I came across a project of a house model in Russia that looked really cool — looking at houses in general is really fun when you take out the burden of having to pay for it. This project on Behance, by Red Avenue Studio, is one of many by the company, which creates architectural visualizations. Their work consists of a lot of modern architecture, and its buildings are often very big and expansive. The software listed here consists of a lot of 3D rendering programs, along with Photoshop. I assume that their work consisted of less coding and relies heavily on using these programs to create models. I suppose there’s also an intial sketch that’s created, as well. Constructing a reality on a computer is such a cool aspect of today’s technology, as one can actually imagine themselves in a house or establishment long before the project is even completed in person. It also allows for more efficient changes that might be time-consuming when done on paper.
Category: LookingOutwards-05
LO 5: first 3D animation
The first 3D animation was created in 1972 by Edwin Catmull and Frederic Parke, students(!) at the University of Utah. The film shows the process of creating a mold of a hand, tracing the mold with precise polygons, and translating this data via an analog computer.
I admire the commitment and precision of this tedious process because we now take for granted the power of 3D computation for countless purposes. These techniques may seem dated, but they are the process upon which our sophisticated 3D animation is based now (Edwin Catmull is a co-founder of Pixar…)
This is more of a “Looking Backwards” report, but I feel it essential to learn about the backstory of the tools we depend on and to understand how absolutely mathematical and physics-based it is.
looking outwards – 05
Hybrid Forms by Andy Lomas
The artist known for his unique vases and coral-like structures is generally fascinated by how natural forms manifest, grow, and expound from one another. I think this sensibility of his culminates perfectly in Hybrid Forms where he extends on the prior work Cellular Forms in which he creates his graphics, generative art to present the valorization of what seems to be microscopic entities. I like how Lomas goes above and beyond his primary attraction to coral and plant-type structures to, usually, more dynamic ones found in bacteria, viruses, and animals. Cellular + Hybrid forms strive to show these structures and growth through code that generates literal cells that compete with each other, “iterated over tens of thousands of time steps, with final structures having over a hundred million cells and remarkably complex morphologies.” I think the bacteria and virus associations are heavy, but the animal threshold is just broken through with Hybrid Forms as many graphics become similar to jellyfish or water bears in my mind. Nonetheless, static images are amazing, of the structures, but the videos are even better.
Looking Outward 5: 3D Computer Graphics
Author’s Name:Joan Madrid
Title of the Work:“The Kiss”
Year of Creation:2019
Link:https://vimeo.com/340175147
Il Bacio “The Kiss” by Joan Madrid is a 3D video that depicts the short story between a knight and a prince. The feature I admire about “The kiss” are the characters were intriguingly puppets and the clip was done by about 70 students from BigRock Institute of Magic Technologies. It’s really inspiring and encouraging to me how students can work together to build such high-quality 3D videos. The software used to create this project are: Mudbox, HTC Vive Proprietary System, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, and Adobe Audition. Autodesk Arnold was used to render the clip, and the HTC Vive Proprietary System was used to generate 3D models. The creator’s artistic sensibilities manifest in the final form of 3D videos that convey sorrowness of two protagonists, who can only kiss each other by killing themself because puppets can’t kiss.
Video:
Looking Outwards 05: 3D Computer Graphics, Section B
Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen is a generative artist with a background in physics and computational chemistry. He generates 3D images in a project called Syntopia. His works are varied and experimental. He keeps a blog and a Flickr account of his finished works and his experiments. I admire his sharing the results of his experiments with the world. Even though they are not completed works they are inspiring and show the iterative process that goes into creating a project.
Most of Christensen’s images are geometric renderings of complex shapes and building designs; however he has also created color swapping algorithms and texturizing art. The images from these projects take existing images and sort the colors into layers or add disturbing textures, such as lizard scales to lettuce.
Christensen is passionate about complex systems and has written his own software to generate and render his images. His software, Structure Synth, is available for download and can be found here. It is written in C++, OpenGL, and Qt 4.
Looking Outwards 05 – Computational Graphics
One computational graphics project that really impressed me is the work of Vincent Pace and James Cameron in the film Avatar. The movie, released in 2009, was critically acclaimed for its advanced usage of CGI and how it advanced CG technologies that set precedent to sci-fi movies later to come. The usage of stereoscopic cameras and rigging actors with gear to mimic human eyes. 60% of the film utilized CGI imagery, as the film integrates CGI with live action recording as well – each second in the film contains about 17 gigabytes of data.
What I especially appreciate about this piece is how natural the integration with technology and graphics was undertaken. It’s always a risk to “overcompute” a creative practice within these types of projects, which undermine the realistic nature of the scenery. However, the project revolutionized how the movie industry can be taken further through CGI.
The Evolution of Animation to CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) and the Impact of James Cameron’s Avatar
Blog 05
Vogue China is launching Meta-Ocean, a collection of 3D digital works by 24 artists under the theme of the mythical world under the sea. This includes sculptures from the city of Atlantis by Anushka Tendolkar. Previous Vogue issues inspire numerous works, pioneering a new way of designing fashion. Plans for expanding the curation of artists and art are under works and the market for NFTs can open up a new way of supporting ocean awareness. Vogue China had an “open call” for artists’ nominations from editorial teams worldwide. One of the artists, Justin Ridler, created work that combined photography with CGI. His designer wife also helped to style the model, demonstrating a new way of approaching fashion photography and designing.
https://vogueworld.viewofficial.cn/
Looking Outwards-05
Computer Graphics
When I think about 3D computer graphics, as a designer I immediately think about Solidworks.
Solidworks is a CAD program that can be used to digitally design three dimensional things, and then render those things and produce drawings that may be helpful to the user.
It’s hard to imagine this heavy complex program in terms of what we are doing in class, but I would assume there are a lot of simple math functions that need to be done to make the program work. I guess you could simplify Solidworks into an interactive visual processor.
What I like most about Solidworks is its practicality and exactness. It is a very powerful tool that is fun to explore as a user. It also does a lot of math and measurements that might be difficult to impossible to do all by hand.
Looking Outwards 05
This piece of 3D artwork is by Jakub Javora. He is a 3D artist with a background in studying at the Academy of Fine Arts and over 10 years of experience as a matte painter and concept artist in the movie and commercial industries. His typical works represent lifelike paintings and scenery depictions. He is well-known in the industry and currently works as a concept artist for Paranormal. I admire his creative ability to combine fantasy scenery and characters with reality. He uses the software Maya to create these experimental parallaxes that are usually in the form of 5-10 second GIFs. In one of his interviews, he mentioned that he takes inspiration from nature a lot and also just in his daily life. It’s important to surround yourself with inspiration.
l.o. 5: 3D art
louie zong is a los angeles-based multidisciplinary artist working primary in freelance animation and instrumentation in jazz, pop, and blues. he uses blender, a free and open-source 3D creation software, to make music videos that feature lively, fun, and sculptural animations that are synced to the waveforms of their corresponding audio clips. (watch: quack!, elephant memories)
louie’s background is in 2D story art and illustration for children’s cartoons, and the color and textural style of his 3D work maintains those visual anchoring. because blender is meant to encompass the entirety of the 3D animation pipeline, I assume that he first models figures and then motivates them in a video editing format.