Today's lesson is about a virtual brick wall with virtual paint on it. First off, we have a brick building. It's simply a box with texture stretched on it, not very impressive, right? The only cool part about the building is the brick and I didn't make that texture. Thanks to whoever I got it from. I'm going to have to make my own, but for now it's nice to have. Well, it has a window into Jav's room. That's cool, right? But AS3d isn't handling the transparency correctly, so it's not cool. But then there's the mural. Yes, the saving point to the picture is the nice mural. It's a larger-than-life size mural which is my favorite. In fact, it could even be made of duct tape, an art form that I invented immediately before the WTO protests. Larger-than-life duct tape murals, who would've thought? However, it's not made of duct tape. In the pre-nano world of 2014, Jav invented AltSci Bits, a light show type device that uses lasers and micro-scale floating mirrors to project a huge image onto any surface using solar power. Instead of paint and spotlights, many businesses use AltSci Bits in gigantic morphing video displays. AltSci Bits are so flexible that even interactive displays are common in department stores. [SEE Theremin] So, how did I do it? It wasn't too hard, just a bit of guess and check. First I took the mural in vector graphic form. I exported to a bitmap and I selected the person and sun, etc. I copied that onto the brick background. But the problem was that it didn't fit and didn't look right. So I tiled the brick and cut the brick and mural out. Then I made it 512x512 so that it'd be a texture. Then I put it on a square in my picture. Then comes the hard part: lining it up so that it works. So first I lined up the top. Then I slowly stretched the bottom vertices so that they matched up with the bricks at the bottom. Then I expanded it until it was square (hint: a square made of two triangles has a perfect 45 degree angle line between the two triangles).
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This isn't just a lesson, it's a bunch of them. I guess I'll give you a bit of each. The first is the computer. My vision of the future is not too bright in JF, you see. Computers still have boxes for the processor, HD, video card, sound card, etc. Most visionaries (including myself) believe that computers in the future will be light as a feather, smaller than a quarter, and faster than a Cray. Well, perhaps with nanotech, but in the pre-nanotech world of JF, we're going try to keep our feet on the ground. Of course, that box is a 1 TerraHertz 256-bit processor, 5 GB of RAM, with a 20 TerraByte HD. It runs on AltSci Thin Client OS, Business Edition. It's running AltSci Network Status viewer. It's a simplified map of the world and their internet connections. But anyway, it's of little importance. In Scene 4, Jav will just look at it and look away. The Wall, floor, door, window, and ceiling is a perlin texture made by Corel Draw. The window is pretty cool. It's transparent. The third picture is from the outside looking into the room. The perlin texture makes the other side look textured. A nice effect. The posters on the wall are actually pictures taken by my webcam of my walls. I have eleven posters in my actual room. I didn't want the other six because they aren't as dear to me as those five. Notice the glare on the Cowboy Bebop poster and the Neon Genesis Evangelion poster. It actually looks good rather than bad. However, in motion, it doesn't look as good. Not only that, but selling pictures of those pictures is illegal I gather, so I'm going to have to replace those before I do the anime, but details.. Next is my bed and pile of clothes. You see, a room without a pile of clothes and without a closet implies that a person doesn't change clothes. Jav does change clothes and thus he has a pile of clothes. It's kind hard to do that in low poly, but I just took a 3 level box, rotated each level, and moved each vertex a bit. It looks decent enough, I think. If I was a perfectionist, I'd model actual shirts and pants in 3d and wrinkle them up in a pile, but I'm not. Next, the bed is pretty simple. Another extruded box as you may have guessed. Extrude, squish, extrude, squish is what I always say. A bit of luck made it look like there's actually a top layer in picture 2.
The Finale to Scene 3: Page 3! I sure do hope you like it. It's the first JF page with non 3d art on it. Notice that Sensei's Cousin's Grandaughter is not 3d. I wanted to use one of my Making Of vector graphics because it is pretty decent. You won't think less of me will you? Secondly, this picture is dated. And where does it come from? It's a mental image projected from Sensei to Jav. Nothing magical, but they say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I contend that a few well chosen words can be worth more than a picture. And thus here is the explaination of this picture. Nice, huh? Next up is the other pictures. Boxes 1, 2, 4, and 8 were done at the same time Scene 3 Page 2 was done. Look back and you'll see. The other three were done today. That's mainly because the latest three weren't possible before last night. I finished that character last night as you'd know if you keep up with Making Of series. Tonight is the first night in Forty or so nights that I will not do Making Of. I decided that school is more important tonight. If you like, this will be the making of and tomorrow I'll give you something spectacular. ^-^
UPDATE! I downloaded a little thing called bbMPeG aka AVI2MPG2 from Digital Digest. so now it's a small DivX movie! In fact, it's tiny.Download the low-quality movie or watch it here.
