Lighting Profiles: IES Lighting Information Files

Today we learned about IES and how you can attach it to a light in your scene. I found this really handy to know.

 Finished results:

Process:

Kinetic Sculpture- BMW Ball Bearings Sculpture

 

While I was looking at existing ways sculptures have been made kinetic I found this really fascinating sculpture that was made for the BMW museum. It is completely synthetic, made up of spheres and speed related so the Futurists would definitely approve!
Here is a clip of it in action, in parts it actually looks like the car is driving along!

Artist Influence- Alexander Calder

After my tutorial on Friday Phil directed me to look at the artist Alexander Calder for his moving sculptures as a possible influence and solution to movement in my futurist garden.

 

20th century artist, Calder, was an American sculptor. He is well known as the creator of the kinetic sculpture of the mobile which moves due to motor or air current power. His works are highly abstract and use synthetic materials such as thick plastics.

Here are some examples of his interactive sculptures:

 

 

 

 

 

I really wanted to know what his kinetic sculptures looked like in actual motion rather than just looking at still photographs because it would help me relate this to animation in maya and figuring out the layout in my designs. I found a video on YouTube which showed his work in action.

Flower Forms- Existing Examples

I feel that I am finally getting to grips with the specific ways flowers/plants can grow so I thought I would test my new found knowledge and understanding by seeing if I could correctly place my favourite flowers in their form categories, then move on to find more examples. I don't think I did too bad, after checking if I was right I only had to make a couple of changes. It is really interesting looking at flowers in a completely different way than I would normally. I even couldn't help but grab my own orchid and look closely at the little points the flowers come out of :)

Practicing Flower Forms

As part of my working out my digital set world and making it convincing I needed to look at the formation of flowers, leaves and trees. I had already looked into the forms and got diagrams for them but actually drawing them out myself and getting back into photoshop at the same time has really helped me figure out how to create these forms. Just blocking in colour with the paint bucket tool also helped me keep them looking simple as I had started painting them with light and tone adding lots of complexity and actually stopping me from seeing how I could break this shapes up into Futurist shapes.

 

 

The CG Handbook of Futurism

As part of my project pre-production I needed to create a set of rules that I would abide by for the duration of my project. This was because I had taken a theme- in my case an art movement- to base the art direction of my CG world around. Being that this theme is massive I had to narrow it down to a selection of rules that would convey Futurism but also be suitable for my project. Working with the idea of Futurism it only seemed right that I make these set of rules in the way that the Italian Futurists would do themselves if they had been able to create CG digital sets. This is through the writing of a manifesto!

The CG Handbook of Futurism by Emma Foster

Mental Ray: Round Corners Node

Learning about the round corners node was really helpful. I already knew about it from the adaption project last year when Alan said I may be able to use it for my my 'Around the World in 80 Days' stand but I had never used it properly and with as much understanding as now!

Finished result.

Process: