DIGM 680 - Proposal Defense Dry Run

DIGM 620 - Week 5 Review

Here is a piece of concept art trying to depict the mass-mortality event. Here juveniles are trapped in a rapidly disappearing pool.

Here is one of the adult specimens that I generated photogrammetrically.

Here is a look at a slab of juveniles from the 123D Catch Desktop Interface.

Dave had suggested I invest a little more time into R&D of the rig to facilitate development down the road. Here I've modeled a very simple Bothriolepis in order to test out some of the properties of the hybrid animation/ontogenic rig.

Here are some rough anatomical sketches. I'm just trying to get aquatinted with all the armor plates and their positions.

Hours:

Meeting with Dave (.5 hr)
Meeting with Stefan (.5 hr)
Attempts to use ARC3D Serive (1 hr)
123D Processing (1 hr)
Concept art (3 hr)
Prototype rig (2 hr)
Readings (3 hr)

ANSP 21818 & 22336 Models

Speed Paintings

DIGM 680 - Week 5

Parry, Ross, ed. Museums in a digital age. Routledge, 2010.

Cameron, Fiona. "Museum Collections, Documentation, and Shifting Knowledge Paradigms." Museums in a Digital Age (2010): 80.

Frost, C. Olivia. "When the Object is Digital: Properties of Learning."Perspectives on object-centered learning in museums (2002): 72.

"...impact of the object may diminish significantly without the surrounding background necessary to understand its origins. "

Huhtamo, Erkki. "On the origins of the virtual museum." en PARRY, Ross: Museums in a digital age. London: Routledge (2010): 121-135.

-Exhibition design as a new medium

-avant-garde artists finding new ways to present art

Gammon, Ben. "Visitors' Use of Computer Exhibits: Findings from 5 Grueling Years of Watching Visitors Getting It Wrong." Informal Learning 38.p1 (1999): 10-13.

-There is no clear ‘average’ time that visitors spend at computer exhibits

-30-60 words per screen

-Restart button always cause problems

-Three modes of computer use/ three modes of behavior

-Purposeful use - people carefully and thoughtfully searching though the software looking for something specific.

-Exploratory - people flicking through pages looking carefully to find out what is there

-Playing - people rapidly moving through the different screens at random to see what happens

Paleo Ontogeny in the News

While the discovery of this new baby Parasaurolophus is really exciting, I was most impressed with the discoverers' multimedia approach to presenting their findings. A dedicated website was set up (http://dinosaurjoe.org/) to house all the content related to the actual discover, the bones, the reconstructions, and the science. They even upload the 3D scanned material onto the very handy p3d.in service that I have been using.

I'd be curious to see what sort of feedback the discoverers received from this  multimedia release.

3D reconstruction by Tyler Keillor


Illustration by Lukas Panzarin

3D model of full skeleton
reconstructed skull

Farke AA, Chok DJ, Herrero A, Scolieri B, Werning S. (2013) Ontogeny in the tube-crested dinosaur Parasaurolophus (Hadrosauridae) and heterochrony in hadrosaurids. PeerJ 1:e182 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.182

DIGM 620 - Week 4 Review

Last Thursday I visited Dr. Daeschler at the Academy in order to begin scanning the specimens. I'm still sifting through the files to access their usefulness, but I think overall it was a successful session. What I didn't realize was how physically intensive photogrammetry can be (see the video below). 

Photoshoot:
11 specimens 
1322 photos
3.85 GB

My setup

Hours:

Concept Art (3 hrs)

Storyboards (2 hrs)

Photoshoot @ the Academy (3.5 hours)

Uploading photos to 123D Catch  (2 hours)

Tentative Design Objectives

Here is an attempt to establish some concrete design objectives for my animation project. I can build support around these objectives in the beginning, use them to guide my progress, and then use them to evaluate the final product.


My animation should:

- Closely integrate source fossils with the digital reconstruction.
- Closely integrate source fossils within wider disciplines of biology (in my case ontogeny)
- Emphasize elements of the scientific process (observation, inquiry, hypothesis testing, etc)
- Communicate to the viewer points of scientific uncertainty 
- Communicate to the viewer when speculation is being employed
- Support visual elements with appropriate textual and/or audio narration. 
- Reveal elements of design process

Color Schemes

Like most paleontological reconstructions coloration is pure speculation. In some rare cases clues to coloration are found in the fossil record (there's been a lot of work involving the color pigments in fossilized feathers). Typically though, the artist exercises his or her creative license. It's not an entirely blind guess, as some plausible reasoning is used. 

Here I have explored several different color schemes for Bothriolepis. They are partially fanciful and partially based on contemporary fish living in similar environments and with similar ecological roles. Bothriolepis spent some of its time in freshwater environments, so it might have had a cryptic coloration to blend in with the sediment. The trout-like coloration (5th from the left) is my current favorite due to the subtle use of color. 

Here are some modern day fish (mostly armored catfish) that I've been drawing upon for inspiration. 

Ontogenic Character Rig

I've been mentioning an ontogenic character rig as one of the main technical modules involved with my project. Here is a diagram that I hope will clarify what I mean. 3D animation software packages (like Maya) use a hierarchal joint system to drive character posture, gesture, and locomotion. It's basically the digital equivalent of a metal armature. 

I am proposing the use of the same joint system to drive developmental changes. Overlapping the conventional animation joint network would be an ontogenic joint network that distorts the proportion of specific features on the character depending upon the desired life stage. The proportions will be based off growth slopes derived from the measurements of many individuals. The growth slopes for each body feature would be tied into the joints that control it. Global 'age' would be determined by a master control slider. Getting the two joint networks to work together will be a challenge, but it seems plausible. I know that in the animated film Tangled, the animators devised an "Age Slider" for the main villain. 

Week 4 - DIGM 680

Readings:

Mass digitization of scientific collections: New opportunities to transform the use of biological specimens and underwrite biodiversity science

Downstream user:

"Digitization, beyond making collections more accessible to researchers, provide access to downstream users such as the general public, government and non-government agencies and private enterprises."

Digital Futures I: Museum Collections, Digital Technologies, and the Cultural Construction of Knowledge

Modernist - "grand narrative"

Postmodernist - network of narratives

First Generation

Second Generation

Next Generation

Voice of authority

Constructivist approach to learning VS threat to curatorial authority

User Cases

-Curator
-Collections Manager
-Educator
-Non-specialist

Bonehead mistakes: The background in scientific literature and illustrations for Edward Drinker Cope's first restoration of Elasmosaurus platyurus

http://www.flickr.com/photos/orebody/4428031625/


Ancient Seas Exhibit @ Manitoba Museum

http://www.manitobamuseum.ca/main/museum/ancient-seas/

DIGM 620 - Week 3 Hours

Painting by Douglas Henderson

Week 3 Hours:

Environmental rendering w/ vray (2 hr)
Storyboards (2 hr)
Concept art (3 hr)
Diagram design (2 hr)
Meeting with Stefan (.5 hr)
Reading (1 hr)

Goals for this week:

Photoshoot @ Academy 10/17/2013
Environmental concept art
Continue with storyboards

Vray

Over summer break I started watching a few digital tutors videos regarding Vray. It seemed like a very versatile rendering engine. Here are some quick renders of an underwater scene. I still haven't quite nailed the look I want, but getting the environmental fog effect to work is a good first step.

Visual Reference of Fish

Since my candidate species Bothriolepis is long extinct I've been seeking out video references of how modern day fish behave and move. Here are few videos of fish I had videotaped at the New England Aquarium in Boston in 2010. They've been hogging up disk space all this time, but now I've finally found a use for them:

Proposed Timeline

Google Doc Link

Week 3 Readings

Valdecasas, Antonio G., and Ana M. Correas. "Science literacy and natural history museums." Journal of biosciences 35.4 (2010): 507-514.



Milner, Richard. "Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time" Harry N. Abrams, 2012





Sigwart, Julia D. "Crystal creatures: context for the Dublin Blaschka Congress." Historical Biology 20.1 (2008): 1-10.







Moltenbrey, Karen "Dino Might", Computer Graphics World, 32.7 (2009)

Pyropsis

A quick photogrammetry test of a fossilized snail Pyropsis (~5 cm. diameter) 

 51 photos taken with an iPhone:

 

Priceless Blaschka models on display | Natural History Museum

I was lucky enough to see a few Blaschka models at the Academy a few terms ago. They aren't just stunning glass sculptures, they are an early example of 3D biological visualization. Art was being used to make science more accessible to the public.

DIGM 620 - Weekly Update

DIGM 620 - Workshop Project Pitch

Click here for google document

This Week's Activities:

- Readings (3 hr)
- Visual Reference gathering (2 hr)
- Writing & Blogging (2 hr)
- Exploration of 123D Catch software (2 hr)
- Setting up time for photo-shoot @ the Academy (0.5 hr)
- Met with Dr. Stefan Rank & Requested that he act as my advisor (0.5 hr)

Readings:

Northcut, K. "Insights from Illustrators: The Rhetorical Invention of Paleontology Representations", Technical Communications Quarterly, 2011

Cain, V. "The Direct Medium of the Vision: Visual Education, Virtual Witnessing and the Prehistoric Past at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1923", Journal of Visual Culture, 2010

Sigwart, J. "Crystal creatures: context for the Dublin Blaschka Congress", Historical Biology, 2008.

"Placoderms (Armored Fish): Dominant Vertebrates of the Devonian Period

Upcoming:

-Photoshoot @ the Academy
-Generating concept art & storyboards
-Arrange to borrow diffuse lights from DIGM

DIGM 680 - Revised Question

Revised Question

Based on feedback in class, I went ahead and reworked my proposal question. Again, I am framing it as a practical question:


Topic: I am studying Digital Interpretive Visualization of paleontological subjects

Question: I want to find out how to make unshowcased fossil collections and their biological significance more visible and accessible to the public by utilizing photogrammetry, ontogenic character rigging, and digital animation.

Significance: In order to promote science outreach, establish a venue for visualization, and conceptually link physical fossils with the science that surrounds them.



Practical Question

Condition: Significant fossil collections are inaccessible.

Cost: Public is not exposed to source fossils and the important science that surrounds them/ missed opportunity for museums 

Terryl Whitlatch, Creature Designer

One of the best creature designers around:

Drawn to Dinosaurs: Hadrosaurus foulkii

A great union of art and science:

DIGM 680 - Week 2

Thesis Development Week 2:

I am still trying to get at the heart of my paleo-visualization project. 

I had somewhat placed the 'cart before the horse' in that I had a fairly fleshed-out project idea (an animated visualization of the developmental changes of an extinct organism) but didn't really have a compelling or specific enough question to go along with it. I have the somewhat tricky task of justifying a pure visualization project. I see an intrinsic valve in a science visualization, but others could very well argue that by itself, it doesn't really produce 'new knowledge'. It can synthesize, clarify, and focus knowledge, but can it really generate it?

To get some feedback, last week I set up a meeting with Dave Mauriello, since he has a background in biomedical visualization. I had come to the meeting with a short list of larger contexts that I could place visualization within:

• Historical - explore how visualization has changed through time/ how visualization is tied with the development of technology.
• Science outreach - it can be challenging for scientists to share their findings with the media & the public. 
• Create tools - Paleontologists are slowly adopting digital techniques/ I could potentially design tools to facilitate this. 
• Simulation modeling - Use a digital model of an organism to led support towards a scientific hypothesis - finite element analysis, biomechanics, hydrodynamics 
• Accessibility - Fossil collections are often difficult to access

My talk with Dave converged on the idea of accessibility. Visualization could be used to make fossil collections & the science surrounding them more accessible to the public. 

While going through readings for this week (Booth, 2008), I began using the template in the book to set up a potential 'Practical question'. I envisioned a practical question because there really is a logistical issue that exists in the world. The vast majority of items in a museum's collection are in storage, either due to fragility or the impracticality of displaying every single specimen. Because they're stored away, the public cannot benefit from their beauty, cultural history, or their importance to science. Here is a passage I stumble upon this week:

The key challenge for museums according to Glaister is to realize more of the fantastic potential of their collections by giving more people more opportunities to engage with them, increasing virtual access to collections, and releasing available information and promoting knowledge generation (e.g. more collection-focused research work of students) (Geser et. al., 2013)

An animated visualization could be used both to showcase these stored fossils and present them within the context of science. For example, the Bothriolepis fossils at the Academy are stunning objects by themselves, but as a collection they 'tell' an important story about development, ecology, and evolution. An animated visualization could tie together all these disparate things into a coherent narrative. The project would also address the growing movement to digitize museum collections. 

Here was my attempt to fit my project into the template:

Practical Question

Condition: Significant fossil collections are inaccessible.

Cost: Public is not exposed to source fossils and the important science that surrounds them/ missed opportunity for museums 

1. Topic: I am studying Digital Interpretive Visualization 

2. Question: because I want to find out how to produce an animated growth series based off of a collection of fossils

3. Significance: In order to increase accessibility of fossils collections and the science that surrounds them. 

It's still a rather broad question. I may want to find another word besides accessibility.  It is more commonly used when designing software for people with disabilities.

There is also the issue of how one would assess the success of a project like this. 

Hours:

• Blog writing: 2 hrs
• Proposal submission/ writing: 2 hrs
• Readings: 4 hrs
• Meeting with Dave: 1 hr

Readings:

Hublin, J.J. "Free Digital Scans of Human Fossils" Nature, 2013.

Lautenschlager, S. "A Digital (R)evolution in Paleontology" http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-04-23-digital-revolution-palaeontology"

Lukeneder, A. "Computed 3D visualisation of an extinct cephalopod using computer tomographs." Computers & Geosciences, 2012.

Geser, Guntram, and Franco Niccolucci. "Virtual museums, digital reference collections and e-science environments." Uncommon Culture, 2013.