Added some new stuff to the portfolio the other day, some renders and some serious color ups / product swaps. I really do not enjoy making those galleries for some reason, lol!
And for whatever reason, I am really digging early live Talking Heads. It’s so stripped down yet holds up as full songs. Some real artistry going on without just doing anything flashy.
I have been messing around in Unreal a bit here and there and find it pretty powerful for real time stuff but narrow use cases for my actual work. It’s not photoreal enough for some of the stuff I do but it’s damn close. I want to work up a music video in there eventually for instance. Music vids are not that particular on being photo real for instance. I did use it to render out a bunch of ears for a work project using metahumans though the other day and it turned out to be an excellent solution for that. Hence, narrow use cases for actual work.
That said, this new update is pretty exciting. Better foliage, reflections and GI, that’s all pretty exciting stuff. I could see pitching this to a studio that does installations for instance.
Shoddy research….. interesting…
In a new, unprecedented effort, scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) scrutinized decades of research on red meat consumption and its links to various health outcomes, formulating a new rating system to communicate health risks in the process. Their findings mostly dispel any concerns about eating red meat.
But the take away line is buried which is important.
“The evidence for a direct vascular or health risk from eating meat regularly is very low, to the point that there is probably no risk,” commented Dr. Steven Novella, a Yale neurologist and president of the New England Skeptical Society. “There is, however, more evidence for a health risk from eating too few vegetables. That is really the risk of a high-meat diet, those meat calories are displacing vegetable calories.”
Check out this awesome walk through on a foggy highway build done in Houdini by Anodé Designs.
Was just sent this shot of some retouching and compositing work we did and how it looks in the store. Super cool!
Some work we did for Ultimate Ears just surfaced. I’ll try to get the before and afters posted soon. We did some crazy heavy lifting on these which are not really visible in the crops, lol!
Being kind of a geeky person, kinda surprised I knew nothing of this project.
“After a journey of nearly five months, taking it far beyond the Moon and back, the little CAPSTONE spacecraft has successfully entered into lunar orbit.
"We received confirmation that CAPSTONE arrived in near-rectilinear halo orbit, and that is a huge, huge step for the agency," said NASA's chief of exploration systems development, Jim Free, on Sunday evening. "It just completed its first insertion burn a few minutes ago. And over the next few days they'll continue to refine its orbit, and be the first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon."
This is an important orbit for NASA, and a special one, because it is really stable, requiring just a tiny amount of propellant to hold position. At its closest point to the Moon, this roughly week-long orbit passes within 3,000 km of the lunar surface, and at other points it is 70,000 km away. NASA plans to build a small space station, called the Lunar Gateway, here later this decade.”
…
But the one-sentence mind-bender is this IMO.
“NASA plans to build a small space station, called the Lunar Gateway, here later this decade.”
Like, what? Hold up here, WHAT?
Man, what a great interview here. They cover meditation, visualization and all sorts of good stuff. I don’t think they talk about actual drumming once?
What a great new node in Houdini for dealing with UVs.
“I'll show how to use a handy feature of the UV Layout SOP to quickly arrange quad groups to perfectly straight islands. I also go over a few features of the Curve SOP that are new to Houdini 19.5”
Crank up those Subs people!
“We tested whether non-auditory low-frequency stimulation would increase audience dancing by turning very-low frequency (VLF) speakers on and off during a live electronic music concert and measuring audience members’ movements using motion-capture. Movement increased when VLFs were present, and because the VLFs were below or near auditory thresholds (and a subsequent experiment suggested they were undetectable), we believe this represents an unconscious effect on behaviour, possibly via vestibular and/or tactile processing.
People attending a performance by the electronic music duo Orphx at the LIVELab were recruited for the study. Participants gave informed consent, were fitted with motion-capture marker headbands, and completed pre- and post-concert questionnaires (see Supplemental information). We turned VLF speakers (8–37 Hz) on and off every 2.5 minutes over 55 minutes of the performance (Figure 1D), calculated head movement speed (the three-dimensional path length per sampling unit of time) for each participant in each of the eighteen segments, and compared average normalized movement while VLFs were ON vs. OFF. Our data show that audience participants moved more, on average by 11.8%, while VLFs were ON vs. OFF (t(42) = 5.32, p < 0.0001; d = 0.81; Figure 1E).”
With all the crap going on between Pantone and Adobe I kinda knew it only be a mtter of time till someone comes up with a solution. Check out Freetone. Cool stuff.
“FREETONE by Stuart Semple contains 1280 colours including digital versions of his Pinkest Pink, Incredibly Kelinish Blue, Black 3.0 and TIFF.
A SIMPLE & TOTALLY FREE COLOUR PALETTE PLUGIN FOR ADOBE
That unlocks a whole books worth of very Pantone-ish colours.
1280 Liberated colours are extremely Pantoneish and reminiscent of those found in the most iconic colour book of all time. In fact it's been argued that they are indistinguishable from those behind the Adobe paywall. “
Just saw this insanely punched in crop of some work we did for Altra Running. Like that’s over 100% punched in. Glad we pay close attention to the details!
Trying to use Squarespace from the iPad ands cluuuuunnnnky……
Just a quicky cloud thing before a little break.
Just messing around with some fluid sims and some materials.
Final render
Here are some screen grabs of other set ups and the final frame with the build out.
So good.
Moritz Schwind, part of the Entagma team gave a pretty interesting presentation at Siggraph this year that I missed.
Just messing around with some vellum sims today.
Huh, this is pretty cool actually.
“Blackmagic Design today announced DaVinci Resolve for iPad, so creators can extend video workflows in new ways and new places. Optimized for MultiTouch technology and Apple Pencil, DaVinci Resolve for iPad features support for cut and color pages providing access to DaVinci’s award winning image technology, color finishing tools and latest HDR workflows. And Blackmagic Cloud support allows creators to collaborate with multiple users around the world. DaVinci Resolve for iPad will be available in Q4 2022 from the Apple App Store as a free download, with an upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio for iPad also available as an in-app purchase.”
“Supported file formats include H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips able to be imported from the iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, or externally connected iCloud and USB-C media disks.”
New study was just released about long time COVID effects. Just stay safe out there will ya?
“Memory impairments, commonly referred to as brain fog, were the most common symptom. Compared with the control groups, people infected with COVID had a 77% higher risk of developing memory problems.
People infected with the virus also were 50% more likely to have an ischemic stroke, which is caused by blood clots, compared with the never infected group.
This probably is not gonna last long so watch it while you can.
