So, what is this? It's not JF Scene 5, is it? No, but it's training for it. As you can see, we have a pretty simple scene. A guy, a billboard, a pillar, and a set of chairs. This is a scene that I ripped from Strange Days (one of my favorite movies of all time) VHS with my ASUS GeForce 2 card. It's one of the first videos that I've gotten from it since I don't own a TV or VCR. My neighbor lent me his VCR to grab an important video. I'm having a bit of trouble with my capture stuff. I'm going to mess with it. You know what that means, you should expect JF to be out of commission tomorrow. ^_^ Naw, I think you should expect Page 2. But what about this picture. We don't get to see the goon's face. Well, there's a reason. First off, it's the only picture with the gun in a correct position. Secondly, faces look awful when captured from TV. Thirdly, the background is nice. The picture is pretty small, I captured it at 320x240. It's odd because at 640x480, the capture program drops frames like nothing. But the solution is to compress before I save. The capture+compression program is saying that I have an invalid device. *shrug* So here I am with lo-res pic. But the oddest thing is that when it's not capturing, the picture looks good, but when it captures, it goes into 8-bit mode or something. It looks awful. But then when I compress it later, it looks much better. What is the problem? I think it's a header file giving incorrect color depth. But that should crash any program trying to read it. But now on to the picture. My simplifications are not very good. I just traced his body parts and traced the scenery. But a few interesting things pop out. First off, the floor is a perfect judge of position and orientation. We know that these lines are perfectly parallel and perpendicular. With that we can find the vanishing point, calculate the FoV, and the position of the camera. I like it. I should use that effect in JF. Of course, it won't look natural. You see, look at the lighting, shading, and shadowing. That's a huge part of it, right? The bright floor shining and the pillar is shadowing it, it's wild. Look how soft the shadow is, though. It's more of a darkening spot then a shadow. I doubt that a scene like this will be reproduced pixel for pixel in the next few years. But that's fine. I like real-time low-poly movies. Watching Jav busting heads together makes me smile. It's not even close to getting there, but I squelched out 90% of the memory leaks in AS3D today. That's not very easy. They should all be gone in a week. Then for more functionality. I need multiple Skinned Meshes, non-crashing videos, and better path stability. The skinned meshes ought to work, but they just don't. The videos I can make now crash most of the time and come out upside down and far too slow. Well, see for yourself [229 KB DivX]. Then there's the path system. As you can see in the movie, there's a white line across. That's an infinite number you're seeing. I don't know why, it must be the code somewhere.
Below is a movie taken directly from the alpha version of AltSci3d Anime Producer. Pressing the R button started the movie at the compression I wanted. The scene played through and I moved the camera with the common WASD style controls. When the animation finished, I pressed the T button to end it. I closed the program and in my program directory was a 1 MB file called test.avi. I cropped it in Virtual Dub and here it is. This is the type of action that will be continuously seen throughout Javantea's Fate Anime in less than a year from now. It will be approximately two hours long and will cover the manga's content. I will sell it as a download, DVD, VHS, DivX on CD, and 3d medium. Are you impressed yet? As I said, it isn't ready for public consumption, but how long will it take when JF will not have to compete for time with my Physics degree? Secondly, check out this animation. I'm getting pretty good with MS3D aren't I? That model is very old (84 days old) and my newer models are much better (the Dojo Ambush perp models are 43 days old). What I'm trying to sell here is the idea that as I get better at this (which I am at a fast rate), the technology is in place so that it will be sweet.
What's with this picture? Well, it only took 45 minutes to make it. It's a continuation of the previous one. What's the diff? Duh, look at the shirt. The previous shirt is a pullover (I wear pullovers from time to time). A more realistic shirt is the 50% zipper or full zipper. That's kinda what this is. It's not very good, but it's something. Everything starts with something. Add a zipper to the texture, add a collar, and make the undershirt look more realistic and there you go. The lesson? No pullovers! Even my favorite pullovers have a small v in the front. My knowledge of fashion is zilch, but I know that by 2014, I'll be wearing clothes that make me look cool. That rules out all clothing that would fit a 6000 lb gorilla which sadly enough all my clothes do. Don't blame me, I don't buy clothes. Most of my clothes are around five years old, back when I gave a damn (it didn't make a difference, I looked like a dweeb then, I look like a dweeb now).
So the plan for tonight? If you're a smart, single, beautiful, young lady who has a liking for an optimistic physicists, the plan is to come over to 5050 7th Ave NE. ^_^ Else, you'll have to just listen up. I was being lazy with this. I didn't change the character model. I didn't change the grenade launcher. I just combined the two and gave it a new skin. What's so cool about that? Really nothing. It means that Scene 5, Page 2 and 3 are coming soon, but not tonight. Tomorrow would be a JF day, but there's a lecture on Nanorods at the UW tomorrow at 3 PM. Factor in sleeping in, training, talking with my housemate, and surfing the web and you'll likely see something like this tomorrow too. The lesson? Texture means a bunch to a secondary model. Just switch the texture and you have a second person. I feel bad saying it, but people are hardly unique. Tomorrow I'll prove that wrong, just watch.
