3d - Technologies that will change the future of 3d-modeling

The fact is that we have gone far from the times of Utah teapot.

GPU-rendering  

If you are player of computer games, then
you may have figured out that the games of today are actually
graphically in the same level with the 3d-movies were few years
ago.  

It is intresting because the rendering of the games are
not done with the CPU (Central Processing
Unit). They are rendered with GPU (graphicalprocessing unit) and something like
60-100 frames / second. The rendering process of the movies can
easily take about 60 minutes / frame of your life with CPU-rendering.
So the graphic cards of computers have become in these days so
powerfull, that it may be better that we start inventing rendering
softwares not anymore using CPU  for the rendering process, but GPU .

Actually I am sure that if the rendering
developement goes like this in the future also, then we will forget
the word "rendering" in the 3d-modeling process. With the future
programs we can model everything as we model today, but then we are
working with the full working materials and settings while modeling. So the
process will be more and more similar with the real world.

Interestung links:
Octane render
Lux-render
Cycles

Digital Lighting and Rendering (2nd Edition) 
Commercial link

Image-Based 3D Photography 

Scanning 2D-photos to the 3D is actually
really old invention. (if anything in the computer world can be
called old) We have seen many of different projects about
3d-scanning, but all of these have been focused for the professional
movie making etc. so all the amateurs just have to wait until
someone can make so cheap system that everyone can
buy and use it.

Here is for you
some really intresting video from Wojciech Matusik, who is
research scientist at Disney
Research Zurich.

 Photosynth  

Also Microsoft have done some intresting
research work about 3D-photography.

Their project name is
Photosynth. Idea about this wonderful technology is that the admin of this utility does not take the photos. He just only provides their processing capasities for the people who has the photos.
Okay, good examble would be
The Colosseum in Rome. So, we have 1000 people who have been in the
Colosseum and they all have uploaded their photos to Facebook or
other same kind of place. Then they just have to upload their photos
to photosynth and it generates 3d model of the
whole place.

Interesting links:
Photosynth

Video based 3d-objects

Video/movie is actually same than just
taking 24 photos in second (PAL) or 30 photos in secod (NTSC). So
with using video we can do more detailed 3d models in the shorter
time period than just messing around with ordinary camera and taking photos.

3D-printing

Some day you will model
full working 3d-porche and then you realised that you did 6 months
of full time work with your model, but you still can't touch it or
start driving. It is just only the picture on your computer screen
until...

"3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing technology
where a three dimensional object is created by
laying down successive layers of material.
3D printers are generally faster, more affordable and easier to use
than other additive manufacturing technologies. 3D printers offer
product developers the ability to print parts and assemblies made
of several materials with different mechanical and physical
properties in a single build process. Advanced 3D printing
technologies yield models that closely emulate the look, feel and
functionality of product prototypes." Wikipedia

Okay, it can be bossible that you ever can't print your full
working 3d-porche in the real world, but no worries, you can use it
in the other way in some computer programs.  Probably in the future in every home is one 3d printing device and you can buy models from the internet stores and just print it. Maybe that closer of teleportation we cannot ever reach.


Few printing services:
http://www.shapeways.com/
http://www.3dcreationlab.co.uk/
http://www.thinglab.co.uk/
http://i.materialise.com/

3D-internet   

Today internet is somehow really different world than our real world. I
believe that in the future internet will be also more and more
going to be similar with the real world where we are living,
because for human being it is more natural to go and remember
things in the 3d world, than in the 2d.

Or it is for me, because I have photographic memory.
It means that I can remember easily what kind was the shop inside where I visited year ago, but
hard to remember my bank account number.
First we will see more and more differend and innovative 3d worlds that we can use traight
with the browser. Then you shall see that the worlds will be linket
together, so you can go from the world to the another without
leaving the 3d space.

Then, some innovative big or small company
invests for their internet pages and models paraller version of
their internetpages by the 3d-technology.

Let's think that the company is a bank. (I know, we all have in our mind the idea that 3D =
game, but just fall with me to this thought experiment)

So when you
type the internet address of that bank to the browser and press enter
you'll fastly see that you're actually in the street and straight
front of you is the bank.

It is similar with the real world bank,
you can see all the logos and other things that you have seen in
the same company bank when you visited there last time, but this 3d
bank is still somehow more beautifull and shiny. You can see also other people with you
on the street and they are all going to that bank, you will follow them inside of the building.

Virtual Reality Technology
Commersial link

Everything inside looks nice and
safe. You can see somewhere the flying screen. When you touch it
with your mouse, it will come to you and you can read the text.

"Welcome to the Nytech Bank of internet Mr _your name_. If you need
customer service, choose it by clicking the button one. If you just
want to check your bank account or disburse your bills, press
button two."

You click the "button one" and the machine pulls out
the paper with number 141. It is your queue number.

"You have 12 people before of you in the queue. You can wait you'r turn in
our waiting room. Let me lead youe way to there Mr _your name_"

You will be teleported some new place and you see  lot of peoplewith you there.
You hear speaking and you realise that everyone there is 3D-avatar of the
real people.
You can speak with them with your microphone if you want to. You can also ignore them.

Everyone also can show their real faces. It can be projected
from the web-camera to their avatar faces as a texture. Because of this - you
actually can know with who you are speaking.

You take the seat and start  reading magazines.Text interactive and it is from the RSS-feed from the
magazines web page.

Soon its your turn and you get teleported to the room where you are with your service agent. She will ask you
that how can she help you and you tell that you need a second pank
account. Everything works fast and soon you are ready to go.

Interesting links:
http://www.khronos.org/webgl/
http://secondlife.com/
http://www.minecraft.net/
http://www.habbo.com/

Holograms  

Have you ever wanted to touch your models or
edit them with your hands? Soon it will be possible, because
japanese scientists have invented in the university of  Tokio
some cool technology that provides for you the feeling that you
actually are touching the holographic images.

So, in the future when this kind of technology is more developed I am sure that we
can use 3d modeling tools with our hands. Like sculpting the clay.

Volumetric modeling

When the computing capasities will
increase, the complexity of the 3d modeling will increase at the
same time and speed. First in the professional movie making, like
Hollywood, but then you'll see more and more different optons for
doing it by yourself with your own home computer.

Think about your own body. What is the first idea about it? Something with the shape? Or what?
Your body is an object and it looks like an object,
but acually you are cloud. You are the horde of the small particles. That
horde is just too tight for that nothing can go trought of it
without using damaging force.

So it is fact that you are the cloud of the millions and millions different living cells.
And the cells are the clouds of the smaller units, called atoms.

Now theorically we can model this kind of clouds, and movie industry will rub their hands togeter because if everything is modeled like that, it means that
you can also explode everything in the same way how it happens in
the real world. We just need to wait few years until our computers
can handle this kind of data that much.

Other - An inspiration

Few years ago I was reading Donald Duck comics and I learned from there, that you will need some kind of "Muse" that helps you for finding an inspiration. And why did I started with Donald Duck? Because it is one of the most readed and respected science magazine in the world. You should also use it for the learning purposes.


Muse?

From ancient Greek stories we can learn that Muses were goddess women who lived on the Pieria's rivers and help'd an artists for finding their inspirations. Of course this is just a fictional story, but today the word "muse" is the symbol for all kind of artistical inspirations. (Muse is also a band)

Everyone who want's to be creative needs an inspiration before they can start doing their work. Picture without an idea is just too boring. You can create technically nice pictures and they still can be lame, but you can also do pictures that are technically lame, but their ideas are brilliant. Internet is filled with this kind of memes. Somebody just draws the picture without drawing skills, but because the idea - that picture will be viewed millions of times around the net. 

The fact is that people will look longer the one picture that has nice idea - even it is technically lame. So the idea is of course that inspiration what we are looking for. If you can make pictures that are brilliant with their ideas and technically also, then you have done something that will be also remembered and you have possibilities to earn with them. That fact also works with music and writings and speakings and with every creative work.

3-D World magazine
Commercial link

How to get an ideas then?

• Scrapbook
  
  Everyone can get an ideas. So you are also the one who has an ideas, maybe you just forget them.
  
  Start doing scrapbook. Buy from somewhere the small book that you can draw everywhere with you. So if you find something intresting from the  newspaper, you can take your scissors and cut it off and put it to the book. If some of your friends will say something funny or intresting - take the scissors.. or not. You can write it to the book.. etc. Did you get the idea of scrapbook?
  Then next time when you have some job to do, you will search an ideas from that book.
  
  
• Music
  
  Most of people have skill to "see" pictures when they are listening music, you can try it just by listening something.
  
  You are walking in the forest and then you suddenly hear the sound of benguin. You know that its penguin before you really can see it - and you may "see" the penguin inside of your head - and run away before it eats you. Then you may say to your friend that "Guess what did I saw in the forest?? The penguin." Even you did not actually see anything, just heard the sound.
  
  Do you remember the first time when you heard the sound of piano? For me the first time was when I were kid and my father did play it nearly every day. So when I hear piano somewhere, I can see/remember my father playing it if I want to. But we all have heard millions of times sound of piano, so we can mix the situationst togeter and make our own "scenes" in our head. Thats the reason why you can't put the action or horror music to the romantic part of your movie. Eventhough that music so nice is. (But if you're musician, you probably can't see anything else in your mind than just notes..."
  
  D.I.Y. Or Die: How to Survive as an Independent Artist
  Commercial link
  
  
• Nature and travelling
  
  Walking around of the forest may be great source of  the ideas.
  
  Seriously, do you really think that you will find an ideas while watching an empty photoshop screen?
  This is not going to happen, you must find the ideas from something else than photoshop manual. So the best solution for this problem is just go out and watch around you. You will find lots of different details from your own yard that you can use for your future works. Take photos of all the differend and intresting things. Then come back and finish your work.
  
  
• Other people
  
  You just don't have time for thinking about everything and at the same time draw pictures about it. So let other people think about everything and then draw pictures about their mindings.
  
  Just take a little time for your friends. Probably you have created your own manners for your workflow. It means that you do everything by the same way and the result is the similar with the previous one just only little variations. It might be good result but if it is all the time same kind than all of your other works - then it becomes little bit boring. Most of cases you can't breake your manners by yourself, you need someone who laughts for your works and says, that they are all the same... (when it happens dont be angry, it happens to every one.) If youre doing graphical design and your boss wants you to do every day about 10 illustrations - then youre deeb in the swamp of manners. No one can be creative that fast.
  
  
• History
  
  Did you know that Roman emperor Caligula did named his horse Incitatus as a senator of Rome?  
  
  Not just only art history, but all the history. You know, everything that people ever has done, is in the history. So this is one of the most greatest sources for your inspiration, just don't despice it.
  
  
• Internet and library
  
  21th century inspiration source.
  
  Read books, blogs and forums, watch videos and play games. Stumble upon is some good add on for firefox browser. You can get it form here: https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/addon/138/
  You can rate internet pages and watch other pages that other people have rated as good.
  
  Red Dead Redemption game
  Commercial link
  
  
• Ideas are free
  You can copy the ideas from the pictures.
  
  If you like some idea you found from the work of somebody else, just copy the idea. But don't copy the work. You must make your own version from the original work. The idea can still be very same.
  
  Or actually you can't even know what was the real idea of the original artists, but you will get your own ideas from the pictures and you may think, that you have copied them. Its little weird psychology, but it works.
  
  You don't need to invent every time the wheel again because someone have already done it. You can just use it and you don't need to know what for the wheel was invented first time by the original invertor.

Other - Computer problems

So, you're the guy who don't have ever had any kind of problems with your computer and now you wanna know what it is if someone has. You're in the right place.

In the life there is some kind of weird rule that if you had one problem yesterday, today you have them 2, then 4 and at the day 60 you have more problems than in the universe is an atoms. I am now living at the day 335 with this process.

About one year ago I did bought components for a new computer. With my friend we did build the whole machine to ready. My plan was to do a computer for graphical design, 3d-modeling and for playing sometimes, but the windows 7 were not yet released so we planned that I would install an Ubuntu for the computer. Then I would use it before windows 7 can be bought.

Okay, Ubuntu is a great operating system. It works perfectly, except with my computer and asus ati radeon 4970 card and Mobile stick ZTE 636+.

Ati has some kind of problems because they just don't wanna make enough good drivers for ubuntu users. Their cards does work, but the system can't get all of the possibilities out of your hardware if you're using ati card with Linux. So buy nvidia if you wanna play with Linux system.

Faked cd-rom driver


The next problem was with that mobile stick. It really sucked and it was nearly to make me cry with all of this.

The stick, it was trying to become as a CD-ROM driver, even it actually was USB-stick. That was the base of most idiotic problems in the world of USB-problems.

The First solution was to make the stick work in the normal way with Linux. (just let me go to the internet!) I have no idea what my friend actually did for the stick, but it needed some kind of inbuilt firmware script changing to make it become again as USB-stick for the pc - not CD-ROM driver. Finding out the solution for this took about 2 months. Then and only then I did could use an internet with my computer. But this was just beginning.

Because the stick didn't work. The network was actually still cutting all the time. You know how annoying it would be if your internet cuts off every 2 minute and only way to make it work again is to get the USB-stick off and put it again.
From some forum we did found that the USB-stick needs script that checks out the text messages 1 times at 10 second. If it won't do that, it will cut off the internet. That of course needed scripting...
Why the messages must be checked so often is one of the biggest mysterios of the world. Woman is another one.

But actually it did not work as well as we planned. The real problem that cannot be fixed was actually that ZTE and Saunalahti (my network operator.) didn't wanna develope drivers for Linux and we did not have capacity for doing them by ourself. So their product was actually a shit, but they didn't wanna give me my money back.

I downloaded Windows 7 RC (relase candidate) for the computer.

The random blue screen generator

The internet started working, but the computer started also for producing mystical blue screen messages all the time without any sensible reason...

So I tested the memories and seemed that they were ok, so I did send the mother board back to the shop. The post officer probably though that the mother board were some kind of a bomb, because she did change to calm and just did few steps backward when she saw the component... Until it was clear that the motherboard won't explode she did came back for helping me for sending the box.

The mother board was ok after the tests, so the shop did send it back to me...

But the random blue screen generator still was there.

Finnish post office

So I did send all of the components for them except hard drives and CD-ROM driver and that wonderful USB-CD-stick-ROM.


And then something happened.

You probably don't know what Itella is, but I'll tell you that its Finnish post office.
Nobody in the world knows what Itella means. Few years ago post office here was "posti" but now its "itella", because they thought that it would be more global name. Eh.
Before postmen were "posteljooni's" but not they are "itellajooni's" in Finland. Actually its kind of cool because now they are more international etc. Maybe.

What ever. Post office still did lost my computer. I did call everywhere and no one did know where it would be. It was also my own mistake, because I did lost the paper where was the tracking code, but still. How can that kind of huge box just lost somewhere?

My own guess is that the "itellajooni's" still were thinking that the computer was a bomb and they did sent it for CIA so they can test it with their bomb tools. When it was tested they did send it to the Alaska where the crayfishing boat were towing it to the Finland. But they did not had changes to come in Finland so they did gave it back to the itellajooni's in the black side of the moon.

After towing the box, no one wont read the text from it because paper made box will get wet if you drop it to the sea. So they did send it to the London if some Sherlock would read it. And it was in German France and Portugal... Then it just arrived into the Verkkokauppa.com in Finland. This episode did took more than two months.

Verkkokauppa.com did send all of the stuff back to me, except the motherboard. They did change it to the new.. Maybe it was broken?

So when I did get all of the components back, I did test it and it worked perfectly! Even it were in the Alaska and it was been used in German as a football in the some empty storage.

Good. Now I have been used it about 3 or 4 months without any visible problems, except now, when it crashed and did not boot again. I am nearly sure that the power supply breaked.

So I am writing this story with my 10 years old computer that still works perfectly. Is it good now mr. president?

And when the 10 years is again gone, I could say about that my new computer that "this is my favorite computer! Processor is changed 5, memories 15, motherboard 3, graphic card 9, power supply 4 and the cover about 3 times."

3d - Sintel is out!

Sintel - the movie

Young Girl finds a dragon baby from her hometown. After the bigger one dragon took the baby from the girl by the violentic way starts the long and dramatic path in her life to find the dragon baby back...

The process

Sintel is an open movie created by Blender foundations with their international team in their studio that is in Netherlands. The main function of this animation film is to help developing open source program Blender by using it in the real production process. With this kind of productions can Blender foundations find the real challenges of the software developement with Blender and defeat them.

Because Blender itself is an open source program, will the movie also be open as in every section of its production. It means that the movie and all of the materials that are created during this throughput will be relased under the creative commons license shortly after the premiere day. (That was today)

So you will have all of the possibilities to reproduce the movie for uncommercial purposes like you have also with the other open movies created by Blender foundations. Thats why this is  a great opportunity for the film makers who are intrested about working with Blender. (and other nerds who are intrested about everything.) You will get full completed movie and all of it's files that you can use for your tests and demonstrations.
Also if you're software developer - this can be helpful for your research work with blender developement.

The movie employed up to 14 full time workers for more than year.

Budget of the film was about 400 000€ and most of it came from the benefactors.

The complete list of the benefactors can be found from the credits of the movie.

Sintel is the thirth open movie.

Previous two movies were Big Buck Bunny and Elephants dream.

You can download all of the movie files from www.sintel.org

Blender foundations have also relased game as in CC license.