A good full-featured 3d modelleing/rendering package was something that IMHO open source lacked and needed. Blender 3d fits the bill perfectly.
blender hardly fits the bill perfectly... You talk as if a 3d modelling/animation package is equivalent to a web browser and without it, mom wouldn't transfer over to Linux. That is obviously a load of crap. Blender is a highly specialized piece of software that less than 1% of the computing population would ever even download and run... and as such, it doesn't compare well to the commercial offerings that Windows has. Of course, a lot of the high end software such as Maya and Softimage is already being offered on Linux, but until the companies that release those pieces of software start actually updating and supporting them as fast as they do the Windows version instead of just giving Linux something that's 3 versions behind without any support and only for Redhat X, maybe I'll think of switching over. As it stands, though, Blender is a mediocre 3d package and only fits the bill if you're a wannabe modeller/animator who needs something really cheap to get started... and that's not a bad market at all but far from the credit you give it. And yes, I've seen great artwork coming from Blender, but I've also seen great artwork coming from POVRay and 3D Studio 4 for DOS. It's the artist who is creating the art, not the paint and brush, but that doesn't mean you have to always hang on to your crappy brush.
I mean this is television. Maybe they took one look at him and found out he was not the buff trim hunky reality TV piece of meat that gets on TV nowadays.
Another Simpsons quote, They're looking for tv ugly... not ugly ugly.
I don't know about that... people would now pirate more than ever since they can just pay the 50 cents for their hour and record what they actually want to watch over and over again... I certainly wouldn't pay every time I want to watch a rerun of a good episode of Star Trek that I have recorded.
So basically, in the world of realistic 3d... the less recognition they get, the better they did their job.
While your example from Ep2 is a really good one - Anakin riding that creature was terrible CG, having effects stay completely in the background is often detrimental to the director's vision. Your example in Spiderman, for instance, would never be believable if it isn't believable now since it's "obviously CG" not because it just looks computer generated but because it would be physically impossible for any actor to actually crawl that fluidly in real life (up a wall or otherwise) and it would likewise be impossible for the camera to perform the complex motion that it did. Shots like the Spiderman one and the one in Fight Club where the camera is moving up through the garbage can are "obviously CG" because they are too good to be real, but they shouldn't be taken out of the film because they perfectly convey the plot points.
I think bringing the directors complete vision to the screen is the purpose of adding effects at all, be it background replacement/addition or complete CG shots, and one type of effect shouldn't just be thrown out because it's too good to be real.
Thats a joke since the PHB you work under isn't your boss because he's good at what he does. Maybe in fairly land it's skill that matters, but here in reality, communication and sucking up is what gets people around.
ah... so how many friends does your kid have? I know 3 years old is too early to make school friends, but staying at home all day might give your kid a better education in the long run but it won't make her as much of a well rounded person. I could be wrong, I don't know anyone who's home schooled and I'll be glad to hear your children's results after 15 or 20 years.
My view on schooling is that kids learn on their own anyway. Every subject is a "gateway" subject as far as I'm concerned. If a kid finds a bit of history or math interesting, then they will try their best to learn that bit and branch off onto its corresponding bits.
"You have moved into a dark place. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Re:Not always that great in person
on
Fragfest
·
· Score: 2
Just make sure they are smaller than you.
this is the geek crowd, no one resorts to violence... we just listen to what our mothers said: "The best revenge is living well." So the guy next to you is probably just gonna wait 20 years until he's making more money than you are.
Linux installation wins over Win2k in Linuxworld.com? What a shocker! This article is biased within the first 3 paragraphs stating twice in a condescending way how MS makes you read and sign the EULA in the beginning of the installation. Big deal, Microsoft wants you to know what you're getting yourself into. Also, what does clicking "I accept" in the beginning have anything to do with ease of installation?
Or play a realtime version of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but walk around the "set" in realtime with the characters or just keep the camera focused on Aki's bizznoobies.
I think that's never going to happen. Even when realtime graphics cards are capable of producing trillions of polygons per frame and are able to acurately render Aki and all the other digital characters in realtime, it takes a lot more than 1 render to create every frame in a movie like Final Fantasy. It takes painstaking compositing and color correcting of hundreds of layers to create the final image that you see in the theatre and I think it will be way too complicated and time consuming to make an image look good not only in one frame or sequence but in a full 3d environment that the viewer can rotate and "walk" around in. The only way I see that we will be able to walk around in photorealistic digital sets with unrestrained motion is when the graphics processor can handle real-time raytracing as well as global illumination , sub surface light scattering, and on top of that act exactly like a real camera lens, or a real eye - which is what compositors try to "fake" and immitate on every digital frame. I don't see that for a really long time and I doubt it will even be worthwhile, since I don't pay to see the movie that I can dream up, but to see the director's vision of the story. It's the difference between a Hemmingway novel and a choose-your-own-adventure.
well, I'd agree with you for movies like LotR with HUGE followings of DVD player owning geeks, but there are movies which regular people buy and they would buy only once. I own a crapload of bare-bones DVDs that have 2 versions of the same movies on a double sided DVD, one is usually the Widescreen and the other is the Full Frame, and if the choice would come down to either/or, I would always pick the widescreen... Not many people would buy something like Zero Effect or Ace Ventura 3 or 4 times so they could have every single version of it. There is I believe a market for single disks with a PG version and an R version of a movie on it, and I believe it won't cut into sales as much as you believe them to... they would only help to raise them since parents would probably buy more movies so their kids can watch a PG version of it as well.
well, it's all about supply and demand... movies are in less supply than music, I believe. I'm a college student - which is one of the RIAA's prime target markets - and all of my friends and practically everyone I know has more CDs than they have DVDs... so CDs can get away with a higher price since people are still buying. Also, CD player are much more omnipresent than DVD players are, maybe not among the geek crowd on slashdot, but among the rest of the American population.
so why don't arcades "upgrade" to LAN houses where you can charge people to play 18 player quake or whatever else there is in one environment? I remember a really long time ago during the SNES/Genesis days, there used to be a store where they charge a buck for like 10 - 15 min playing any SNES or Genesis game they had. That was a cool place. But anyway, arcades just arent fun anymore... I hate the new dancing games they have and they overcharge on everything... It used to be a quarter to play, now it's a buck to play for 60 seconds in Daytona. Arcades have killed themselves, I think.
I think if you haven't been convinced, then you'll never be convinced. Special effects are often used when it would be impossible/very difficult to actually film. You probably weren't convinced of the waves in Perfect Storm because you thought to yourself "Nah, that couldn't be shot in real life, it must be CG." I for one, was totally convinced of the CG water in Titanic because I didn't automatically have to disbelieve that they actually shot a regular ocean. I find this problem a lot when people are criticizing CG heavy films such as Star Wars. Everyone says the CG wasn't convincing enough and, true, some shots weren't, but when I was watching the segement where the clones come in and start fighting the battle droid army, I was completely convinced that most of the foreground clones were real, as well as the ground they were standing on and only the background and haze was digital (because it would be impossible for them to get that many clones and huge battle droid stations don't exist), but I found out that pretty much the whole shot was completely CG, and that amazed me. I think CG has gotten to the point where the only way someone can distinguish it from reality is because reality isn't accessible enough when you can just recreate it in the computer.
Slashdot Mirror
A good full-featured 3d modelleing/rendering package was something that IMHO open source lacked and needed. Blender 3d fits the bill perfectly.
blender hardly fits the bill perfectly... You talk as if a 3d modelling/animation package is equivalent to a web browser and without it, mom wouldn't transfer over to Linux. That is obviously a load of crap. Blender is a highly specialized piece of software that less than 1% of the computing population would ever even download and run... and as such, it doesn't compare well to the commercial offerings that Windows has. Of course, a lot of the high end software such as Maya and Softimage is already being offered on Linux, but until the companies that release those pieces of software start actually updating and supporting them as fast as they do the Windows version instead of just giving Linux something that's 3 versions behind without any support and only for Redhat X, maybe I'll think of switching over. As it stands, though, Blender is a mediocre 3d package and only fits the bill if you're a wannabe modeller/animator who needs something really cheap to get started... and that's not a bad market at all but far from the credit you give it. And yes, I've seen great artwork coming from Blender, but I've also seen great artwork coming from POVRay and 3D Studio 4 for DOS. It's the artist who is creating the art, not the paint and brush, but that doesn't mean you have to always hang on to your crappy brush.
I can answer those questions with a No... FBI, here I come! Oh yeah, I'm fat... nevermind.
1. Get Water
2. Add Salt
3. Put in energy
4. ?
5. Profit!
Both the study and article are about two weeks old...
TWO WEEKS OLD?! In this internet age, it's already outdated!
I mean this is television. Maybe they took one look at him and found out he was not the buff trim hunky reality TV piece of meat that gets on TV nowadays.
Another Simpsons quote,
They're looking for tv ugly... not ugly ugly.
I don't know about that... people would now pirate more than ever since they can just pay the 50 cents for their hour and record what they actually want to watch over and over again... I certainly wouldn't pay every time I want to watch a rerun of a good episode of Star Trek that I have recorded.
I also took a picture of the asteroid about to hit earth... Here it is
So basically, in the world of realistic 3d... the less recognition they get, the better they did their job.
While your example from Ep2 is a really good one - Anakin riding that creature was terrible CG, having effects stay completely in the background is often detrimental to the director's vision. Your example in Spiderman, for instance, would never be believable if it isn't believable now since it's "obviously CG" not because it just looks computer generated but because it would be physically impossible for any actor to actually crawl that fluidly in real life (up a wall or otherwise) and it would likewise be impossible for the camera to perform the complex motion that it did. Shots like the Spiderman one and the one in Fight Club where the camera is moving up through the garbage can are "obviously CG" because they are too good to be real, but they shouldn't be taken out of the film because they perfectly convey the plot points.
I think bringing the directors complete vision to the screen is the purpose of adding effects at all, be it background replacement/addition or complete CG shots, and one type of effect shouldn't just be thrown out because it's too good to be real.
Pretty neat for a piece of 1970's technology.
It's nothing compared to my lite-brite! Oooh, the colors!
Thats a joke since the PHB you work under isn't your boss because he's good at what he does. Maybe in fairly land it's skill that matters, but here in reality, communication and sucking up is what gets people around.
ah... so how many friends does your kid have? I know 3 years old is too early to make school friends, but staying at home all day might give your kid a better education in the long run but it won't make her as much of a well rounded person. I could be wrong, I don't know anyone who's home schooled and I'll be glad to hear your children's results after 15 or 20 years.
My view on schooling is that kids learn on their own anyway. Every subject is a "gateway" subject as far as I'm concerned. If a kid finds a bit of history or math interesting, then they will try their best to learn that bit and branch off onto its corresponding bits.
and all of them are variations on
"You have moved into a dark place. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue."
Just make sure they are smaller than you.
this is the geek crowd, no one resorts to violence... we just listen to what our mothers said: "The best revenge is living well." So the guy next to you is probably just gonna wait 20 years until he's making more money than you are.
Oh please... I bought that damn ring and it was stolen by some 3 foot midget... Don't listen to what he tells you, that ring is bad luck.
That's fuckedzilla. Izilla hopezilla theyzilla don'tzilla comezilla afterzilla mezilla.
that sounds like a new weird accent for another annoying Star Wars character... Hey George, you listening to this?
Linux installation wins over Win2k in Linuxworld.com? What a shocker! This article is biased within the first 3 paragraphs stating twice in a condescending way how MS makes you read and sign the EULA in the beginning of the installation. Big deal, Microsoft wants you to know what you're getting yourself into. Also, what does clicking "I accept" in the beginning have anything to do with ease of installation?
Or play a realtime version of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but walk around the "set" in realtime with the characters or just keep the camera focused on Aki's bizznoobies.
I think that's never going to happen. Even when realtime graphics cards are capable of producing trillions of polygons per frame and are able to acurately render Aki and all the other digital characters in realtime, it takes a lot more than 1 render to create every frame in a movie like Final Fantasy. It takes painstaking compositing and color correcting of hundreds of layers to create the final image that you see in the theatre and I think it will be way too complicated and time consuming to make an image look good not only in one frame or sequence but in a full 3d environment that the viewer can rotate and "walk" around in. The only way I see that we will be able to walk around in photorealistic digital sets with unrestrained motion is when the graphics processor can handle real-time raytracing as well as global illumination , sub surface light scattering, and on top of that act exactly like a real camera lens, or a real eye - which is what compositors try to "fake" and immitate on every digital frame. I don't see that for a really long time and I doubt it will even be worthwhile, since I don't pay to see the movie that I can dream up, but to see the director's vision of the story. It's the difference between a Hemmingway novel and a choose-your-own-adventure.
Which one of you does the spelling check?
I do... got a porblem with taht?
well, I'd agree with you for movies like LotR with HUGE followings of DVD player owning geeks, but there are movies which regular people buy and they would buy only once. I own a crapload of bare-bones DVDs that have 2 versions of the same movies on a double sided DVD, one is usually the Widescreen and the other is the Full Frame, and if the choice would come down to either/or, I would always pick the widescreen... Not many people would buy something like Zero Effect or Ace Ventura 3 or 4 times so they could have every single version of it. There is I believe a market for single disks with a PG version and an R version of a movie on it, and I believe it won't cut into sales as much as you believe them to... they would only help to raise them since parents would probably buy more movies so their kids can watch a PG version of it as well.
well, light's gettin' old and slow like the rest of us, what can ya say?
well, it's all about supply and demand... movies are in less supply than music, I believe. I'm a college student - which is one of the RIAA's prime target markets - and all of my friends and practically everyone I know has more CDs than they have DVDs... so CDs can get away with a higher price since people are still buying. Also, CD player are much more omnipresent than DVD players are, maybe not among the geek crowd on slashdot, but among the rest of the American population.
"[T]he company has gone to considerable lengths to train it's actors to avoid detection [as Ericsson spokespeople.]"
Going as far as telling the "leaners" to sleep with the first drunken guy who hits on them in the bar.
so why don't arcades "upgrade" to LAN houses where you can charge people to play 18 player quake or whatever else there is in one environment? I remember a really long time ago during the SNES/Genesis days, there used to be a store where they charge a buck for like 10 - 15 min playing any SNES or Genesis game they had. That was a cool place. But anyway, arcades just arent fun anymore... I hate the new dancing games they have and they overcharge on everything... It used to be a quarter to play, now it's a buck to play for 60 seconds in Daytona. Arcades have killed themselves, I think.
I think if you haven't been convinced, then you'll never be convinced. Special effects are often used when it would be impossible/very difficult to actually film. You probably weren't convinced of the waves in Perfect Storm because you thought to yourself "Nah, that couldn't be shot in real life, it must be CG." I for one, was totally convinced of the CG water in Titanic because I didn't automatically have to disbelieve that they actually shot a regular ocean. I find this problem a lot when people are criticizing CG heavy films such as Star Wars. Everyone says the CG wasn't convincing enough and, true, some shots weren't, but when I was watching the segement where the clones come in and start fighting the battle droid army, I was completely convinced that most of the foreground clones were real, as well as the ground they were standing on and only the background and haze was digital (because it would be impossible for them to get that many clones and huge battle droid stations don't exist), but I found out that pretty much the whole shot was completely CG, and that amazed me. I think CG has gotten to the point where the only way someone can distinguish it from reality is because reality isn't accessible enough when you can just recreate it in the computer.
so, lemme get this straight... what you're saying is that I won't be having sex with any hot blue extraterrestrial chicks anytime soon?