This assignment is from the first term, but I never had the time to post it online. It is part of the CGI Tools module at the NCCA where we had to create a still image with the topic dynamism. Inspired by one of my favourite podcasts, You look nice today, I recreated (modelling, texturing, lighting, rendering) a scene inspired by their logo in 3d using Maya. Here is the result:
The slightly dark look is intended and the lighting suggests the unknown waiting for him behind the door. The flowers and some objects in the background could have some more detail though. Overall, I’m quite happy with the result given the limited amount of time and since it was one of my first attempts using Maya as opposed to other 3d packages.
For the RenderMan part of the CGI Tools assignment, a simple real world object had to be re-created and rendered. The tasks were to analyse the object and apply the correct techniques in terms of displacement, shading, lighting, etc. The report documents these steps and the methods used. In order to produce two final images, a Ferrero Rocher chocolate ball has been created from scratch and placed in a scene.
The renderer used is 3delight and can be installed on Mac, Linux and Windows for free. Also see my TextMate bundle for rib files and 3delight.
For the module Animation Software Development, I recently developed a 3D game for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. It is fully data-driven and uses Lua and irrlicht. There is also a full report available for download below. It contains the initial design, concept drawings, explanation of algorithms and technologies used.
The game currently features 5 levels, each 45 s long. They all differ in the speed of the airplane and the amount of obstacles (so far mainly trees). I plan on releasing this to the App Store at some point in time. However, I still need to add more level packs and add things like Game Center integration so players can submit highscores.
Doing my first steps with Pixar’s RenderMan I was installing 3delight on my Mac and started playing around with shaders and rib files. To simplify development I created a little bundle for my text editor of choice, TextMate. 3delight comes with the commands shaderdl and renderdl to compile shaders and render rib files.
Using the bundle, all you have to do is press Cmd+R when editing your rib file. The file automatically gets saved and a window pops up showing the status of the renderdl command. Also, the rendered image is displayed. The bundle also supports a slightly better syntax highlighting (based on the C bundle).
Setup
Download the bundle and double-click on the .tmbundle to install
Set the variable DELIGHT In TextMate’s preferences => Advanced => Shell Variables to the path of your 3delight installation, e.g. /Applications/Graphics/3Delight-9.0.84
(You can find this out by typing echo $DELIGHT into Terminal)
Feel free modify, improve, tweak it to your taste. Feedback welcome! N.B.: Your rendered image has to have the extension .tif and has to be named like the the rib file for the preview to work. If you want to use other formats, you can change it directly within the bundle editor.
I’ve spent a couple of days porting my gesture library to iOS to do some tests with the iPad 2’s front-facing camera. I also added head tracking with OpenCV for Head-Coupled Perspective (HCP) and a sort of 3D effect. It’s an early prototype for an ongoing project at the NCCA, still a lot to do, but I thought I’d give you a short preview. Stay tuned! The system is implemented in C++ and some Objective-C (for iOS glue code), powered by openFrameworks.
Update: New video showing an updated version with some new functions like the feature in the end that could be used for some sort of AR shooter game.
Update 2: Thanks to Renato Mitra for featuring this video on his site, one of the most popular blogs in Switzerland. Salü Äpflblog-Bsüecher
The last months have been busy at the NCCA with a lot of projects, most of them will be shown here soon. Let’s start this with the group project that we handed in a month ago.
The game is simple: The world is ending. Can you escape the nightmare?
Thanks to my group members Firuze Kiraz, Elliot Spence, Alex Poolton, Pete Smith and Simon Roth. It was amazing to work on such a great project with such great people. My main contributions were developing the scripting interface and its integration (Lua), event/animation system, lead of Mac platform development and general coding tasks. More videos of this year’s group projects below.
After being a busy with studies and, to be honest, a lazy blogger, I want to start catching up and share some projects and new numbers with you. As you know, “Roll it!” has been on Apple’s AppStore Since the end of 2009. I’m happy to let you know that so far it has made it’s journey to over 6000 iPhones, iPod touches and iPads in more than 30 countries.
Another great thing is that since the introduction of Game Center support, hundreds of players are competing online, every day.
Thanks to everyone for their support. Of course, you can still get it in case you haven’t tried it out already. Have fun and as always – keep on rollin’!
Now that the year is almost over and most of the work is handed in, it’s time to show you some of it. Below you find information about my modules and the portfolios created as well as a show reel. On this occassion, I would also welcome all the visitors from our film show Smoke & Mirrors 2010.
Individual Project – Webcam Gesture Library
Final Report (PDF) • Poster (PDF) • Demo Video (Vimeo)
Digital Media Technology 2
Portfolio (PDF) • Ident (Vimeo) • “Roll it!” Ad (Vimeo) • Think Different Ad (Vimeo)
A lot has changed in the past months. First of all, “Roll it!” for iPhone still selling well all over the world, with over 2400 people having downloaded it (since the launch in December). I receive a lot of positive feedback and the game currently ranks in the top 20 of dice games in 5 countries. Additionally, with the upcoming iPhone 4.0 and features like Game Center, stay tuned for exciting new features.
Also, “Roll it!” for iPad made its way into the AppStore and was available since the iPad US-launch on April 3rd. New high-resolution graphics, a 3D splash screen and a landscape mode make the game even more fun to play.
I just wanted to post a little update on how the game is doing. It’s is very popular and since December 2nd, over 1100 copies have been sold. There is also a new update coming out in the next days – it’s already been submitted to Apple. It contains localisation for the Czech and Swedish language and addresses a bug in the random generator and the auto-resume function.
