Week 3

Here is my current progress on the Bothriolepis model.



Here is test video of a particle effect I would like to incorporate into the animation. Getting Maya to render transparent sprites is proving to be a challenge.

This is a chart describing the sort of shader I will be setting up for my ontogenic character. Vray has a blend material that accepts several separate materials and overlaps them. I'll have two separate textures for the adult and juvenile form, which will fade into one another under the control of the growth slider.

I figured out the positional specular highlight shader. I placed a conditional node between the samplerInfo node and the Vray material. The samplerInfo node sends the Y position of each rendered pixel to the conditional node. If the Y position is greater than 0: the specular amount of the Vray material is set to 5. If the Y position is 0 or below: the specular amount is set to 0.

Here is render test. Notice the faked Caustic lighting on the sand. Also notice the environmental fog that causes objects in the distance to assume the color of the water.

Week 2

Here is my progress on the Bothriolepis base model

Here's a render test of (faked) caustic lighting

Here are some renders of an attempted position-dependent specular shader.

Winter 2014 - Week 1 - Review

This week I returned to work on my thesis project. There are several administrative-type things going on behind the scenes (drafting requests for my expert panel, formatting my manuscript (thank you stefan), searching through spreadsheets of measurements, brushing up on allometric formulas, etc.).

I have been brushing up on how scientists study and quantify morphological change with the help of the book On Size and Life (1983). The most useful technique for assessing change is with an allometric formula. One chooses two measurable parts of an organism (x, y). These two measurements are then plots against one another. The following formula is used:

 y = bx^a

The exponent a reveals the type of growth occurring. If a=1, then one is observing isometric growth, two measurements changing at the same rate. If a < 1, then one is observing negative allometric growth (slower growth) and a > 1 is positive allometric growth (faster growth). 

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Related but unrelated to the thesis project, I have put together an animation demo reel. It highlights some of the characters I have animated over the last few years. 

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I have spent sometime working in Maya and Vray to simulate an underwater environment. Adding an environmental fog helps a great deal. Getting the surface to look convincingly reflective is still a struggle.

I've begun to model my character. Bothriolepis is encased in series of armor plates. Here I've been trying to add enough topology to allow these normally immobile plates to deform during 'development'. 

Source:

MacMahon, Thomas A., and John Tyler Bonner. On size and life. Scientific American Books, 1983.

DIGM 680 - Return from Winter Break

I have a few project updates.

Photogrammetry Video:

Here was a video I made for my DIGM workshop course. It summarizes my photogrammetry workflow.

https://vimeo.com/81362653

Work on the Rig:

I've added a bit more functionality to the prototype ontogenic character rig. Right now there are sliders that correspond to different ontogenic changes (head widening, trunk widening, etc.). These are very rough, but they show the basic concept. These individual sliders are controlled by a global slider.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNaTIXWNQBo

Texture Animating:

I've been dabbling within the rendering engine Vray. One of Vray's material nodes is a blending node which allows you to layer together several different shaders. This is a technique I can incorporate into the rig to transition between a juvenile color scheme and an adult color scheme. I  would also allow for layering in old-age wear-and-tear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT79Jv84xbA

Thesis Formatting (Stefan)

I would like to make sure my manuscript conforms to Drexel's standards. I've looked around, and it seems that past students have set up Latex templates for setting up a Drexel thesis. 

http://edge.cs.drexel.edu/GICL/howto/MSThesis.html

http://www.physics.drexel.edu/liki/index.php/Thesis

http://blog.tremily.us/posts/drexel-thesis/

So far, I haven't had much luck with getting these to work in ShareLatex.

Potential Awards:

I've been looking for potential awards to submit to.

Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize

http://vertpaleo.org/Awards/Award-(15).aspx 

     -Waiting for 2014 information

Red Stick International Animation Festival

http://www.redstickfestival.org/

     -Scientific Visualization category

Sci-An Award for Excellence in Scientific Animation

NSF's International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge

Potential Talks:

AMI 2014 - Association of Medical Illustrators

http://www.ami.org/meetings/2014/submissions.htm

     -Submissions Open: 11th November 2013

     -Submissions Deadline: 20th January 2014

GNSI 2014 Annual Conference - Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

http://www.gnsi.org/event/conference/gnsi-2014-annual-conference-boulder-colorado

     -March 1st - Deadline for entires

     -March 14 - Art selection and notification

IEEE VIS 2014

http://ieeevis.org/