3D Software Interest Group meeting Friday 2/24 @ 11am
Come to discuss, learn, teach 3D software. In ZML.
We will be following the same schedule as IMAG(E), meeting every 1 and 1/2 weeks (Friday, skip a week, Tuesday, etc).
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February 22, 2006
IMAG(E) meeting: Friday 2/24 1-3pm @ ZML
Yet another meeting of the IMD's Art Interest group. You know you want to be there.
From now on, the schedule will go like this:
Week A: meet Friday 1pm
Week B: no meeting
Week C: meet Tuesday 1pm
This way, we'll be meeting every 1 and 1/2 weeks.
Mark Pauline speaks
Fringe Exhibitions, 504 Chung King Court
Saturday, February 25 from 5 -7 PM
Mark Pauline, director of Survival Research Laboratories, will give a talk in the gallery.
http://www.fringexhibitions
February 21, 2006
CONTEMPORARY ANIMATION FROM LOS ANGELES ARTISTS
February 28th, 7:30 pm
UCLA James Bridges Theatre (Melnitz 1409)
Artists have long explored Abstraction and Visual Music using techniques such as film animation, video synthesis, and computer graphics. Developments in one medium have become common in others, as with the burgeoning VJ scene which combines popular music, experimental imaging techniques, and live performance.
Los Angeles, a city famous for mainstream media, also is home to a vital and diverse community of alternative media artists. The iotaCenter presents films by several local artists who in most cases will be present to discuss their work. Although varied, their films are united by an expressive approach to cinema. As paintings in motion, or music made visual, they transcend conventional film form with personal freedom and technical virtuosity.
(USC is well represented, with work by Mar Elepano, Michael Scroggins, Kathy Smith and Vibeke Sorensen.)
February 16, 2006
SCSC February Meeting - tonight!
Stereo Club of Southern California [SCSC] Meeting
Thursday February 16, 2006, 7:30 pm
All 3-D Digital Shows! Including A 3-D Harold Lloyd Digital slideshow!
When: Every 3rd Thursday of the month at 7:30pm.
Where: 711 South Plymouth Boulevard, near Crenshaw and Wilshire, in the downtown area of Los Angeles.
What to bring: 2 eyes and a friend. 3D glasses will be available.
http://www.la3dclub.com/
(apologies for the last minute posting - pH)
February 15, 2006
Resources for CTIN544
Finally. Basic Stamp code listings, circuit diagrams, Max/MSP patches, etc. Work-in-progress, not everything's there yet. This is where I'll be putting resources for the class from now on.
2/18/06 OK, changed the format, it's now frame-free; tested on OS X with Safari, Firefox, Netscape and Camino - seems to work fine with all of them. Please let me know if anyone runs into any problems using Windows.
February 7, 2006
stereoscopic animation in Adobe After Effects
We'll be going over this tomorrow in class, but here it is if you want to get a head start.
February 6, 2006
IMD Forum Speaker for 2/8/06: Robbie Conal
Robbie Conal, guerilla poster artist extraordinaire, comes across campus to the IMD to speak about his work this week. Noted for his "gnarled, grotesque depictions of U.S. conservatives and other U.S. political figures of note", Robbie has developed a devoted army of volunteers who plaster his darkly satirical posters throughout the major cities of the USA.
Robbie has gained national prominence as the country's premiere poster artist; his work has been featured on "CBS This Morning", "Charlie Rose" and in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous daily newspapers around the country. He has won a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant, a Getty Individual Artist Grant and a Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Individual Artist's Grant (COLA).
He has authored two books: "Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Poster Artist", HarperCollins, 1992, and "Artburn", Akashic Books, 2003. Robbie is an adjunct professor in the USC School of Fine Arts.
stereo calculator
Here's a little application that you can use to calculate how far apart your (real or virtual) cameras should be to generate a given amount of parallax.
You have to enter:
a) distance from the camera to the closest object (maximum negative parallax)
b) distance to the screen plane (zero parallax)
c) distance to the farthest object (maximum positive parallax)
e) the camera's horizontal field of view (in degrees)
f) width of your final image.
It doesn't matter what units you use, as long as they are consistent; 'camera units' would normally be in inches, and 'screen units' would normally be in pixels.
The calculator returns positive, negative and total parallax. Because the calculator assumes parallel cameras (not toed-in), your images will be offset from each other, so it also tells you the amount, and how far you will have to manually slide them to correctly set your screen plane.
Eventually I'll get around to adding lens focal length as an alternative to camera field of view.
OS X only for now, XP eventually.
February 5, 2006
On being a 'player'...
...in the sense of being 'part of the action'.
(from 'Crap Shoot', an essay by Garret Keizer, in this month's Harper's)
We should be cautious of aligning the player with playfulness and placing the worker on the opposite side. Sports and gambling have always been highly esteemed among the working classes and among working people in general. What distinguishes the worker from the player is the former's understanding that the game is just that. The worker possesses the consciousness, as noted by Huizinga, that play is "different from ordinary life." That's a large part of what makes it fun.
In contrast, the player conceives of ordinary life as "the game". The casino world of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or the racetrack or the numbers racket, is the norm. Work is the diversion. Work is something you do at the gym. You work at your "relationships". You work during your "off" hours. But business is all about the game... You always know you've met a player when someone tells you about an activity that's "better than sex." What the person generally means is less work.
(not available online but you can find much of the article quoted and paraphrased here.
February 4, 2006
3D modeling software
A few options for free and low-cost 3D modeling software:
February 1, 2006
Stereo 3D software for 2x iSights
This is the software application to accompany the article "DOUBLE iSIGHT: EZ 3D Filmmaking"", published in RES Magazine Vol. 9 No. 1.
Notes:
a. Make sure your two iSights are plugged in BEFORE you start the application. (Actually any pair of Firewire or USB cameras should work, but haven't tested any others yet.)
b. OS X only for now, Windows version coming soon.
c. Instructions not finished yet (coming soon) but everything should be reasonably self-explanatory.
d. Drag on image to adjust registration; hold down SHIFT to restrict to horizontal, OPTION for vertical only.
e. While you're recording, updates of the on-screen display will be very slow. This is so that all available resources can be devoted to the recording process; don't worry, the resulting quicktime will look much better.
f. No support for audio recording yet; hopefully this will get added eventually.