The long lost robot is here

A long time ago, I wrote:

Does anybody remember a Lightwave page with a faked radiosity render of an awesome Grendizer robot? It was somehow connected to a rendering hack. If you know about it, please send me the link!

Well, today I found it. Only, it wasnt’ a Grendizer, it was a Wanzer.

That’s why no one told me about it, I guess. Anyway today I found the page and the image while browsing for totally unrelated stuff. Rendered by Jim May (Court Jester Creations) it demonstrated an hair-tearing technique to generate GI like illumination and glossy reflections without raytracing. Still cool!

Speaking of bio mechanical monsters, does anybody remember an old tutorial, maybe for 3DS Max, that linked a human mask to a few pistons linking them to the facial animation? If so, please leave a comment and link to it. It seems I can’t find anymore most of my favorite links online. (Another being a closeup animation of a Mantis done in Lightwave and featured somewhere as the demo for a plugin -please drop me a link for that as well if you can remember it).

Fancy some realistic camera shakes with real time rendering?

But what made me drool was when the presenter bumped the camera to zoom it, and the preview updated with the bump. I want that camera controller!

Better yet, since I am now daydreaming, I want a GPU powered, real-time, camera tracker capable of controlling any 3D application. And, a chroma key shader surface. Octane Renderer guys, are you listening?

Anyway, that video is cool. I remember when a beige spacemouse with RS-232 interface was the most awesome controller money could buy (except maybe a Nintendo Poweglove) and this video made me feel like a dinosaur.

After Effects and Lightwave

Looks like there’s still life in the Lightwave world. This new plugin creates an hybrid lightwave after effects tool, allowing to export Lightwave cameras to After Effects and synchronize the 3D scene in real time. Besides looking as cool as a Zack Snyder shot, this tool fills a long standing gap in Lightwave’s toolset and puts it haeads and shoulders above the once king of the hill of After Effects integration (you know, that 4D thing).

It’s amazing that it took so long for software developers to realize that we all need a super fast, no brainer connection with compositing applications. Autodesk unveiled its own exporting tool for 3DS about at the same time the Lightwave plugin was released, and I wouldn’t be surprised if more developers went ahead with similar solutions for Nuke and Fusion in the near future.

So let me add something to the wishlist above: I still want that camera, but I now want it to be able to pass through the data along several applications, all in real time. So that if I bump it, both Lightwave and After Effects bump at the same time (okay, a slight delay would be acceptable). Daydreaming? Maybe, but what about Brekel’s Kinect driver that talks to Motionbuilder in real time? Can’t we just have a standard tcp/ip stream of realtime 3D data flowing around and joining whatever app we happen to use?

This great tutorial from Lots Of Robots shows how to animate and guide a spider rig.

Click the image for the best part of the tutorial, the one where the spider’s goal is moved during the animation. This is a must see tutorial for anybody interested in automatic animation, but it’s a little Max biased, as the whole bunch of leg animation is in a Max Script.

I once did a walking spider very easily, using offset sine waves to drive the legs’ goals. The result was not perfect, but given it was a long shot it worked nicely.

And while we are at this, years ago there was an awesome thread somewhere, with an automated spider rig done in POV Ray! The author’s site stated that the scripts were not available, but I must have a backup of that discussion and of the test videos in an old backup. Too bad the secret behind these videos was never released, but if someone can point me to that POV discussion I’d appreciate.

A Gundam model rigged with bones

The Gundam model is not the kind of subject I like, but then I’m partial to Votoms. Maybe a little too partial.

Is it just me or the girl’s body briefly glimpsed at the beginning bears some resemblance to Megaman? Love the concept art anyway.

And, for what is worth, the ending remark about “endless desire” strikes home to me.

I always loved this image, it is so cyberish!

But I just love it! The spikey tubes, the subdivision surfaces with just a little bit of the polygonal cage still showing… Being half borg code myself, I can’t deny it has a strange appeal to me.

I think the original reference is somewhere between Star Trek’s borgs and the iRobot movie (oops, sorry, iRobot will probably be a new Apple device: “I, Robot”).

The overall color correction looks good, again hinting at an “I, Robot” homage. And I’d rate A+ a fractal noise rusted scar anytime. What do I like most? The texturing on the front mask, the way organic tubes twist and fit, as well as the old fashioned cannon-like connectors resembling broadcast cables from the eighties, aptly placed in the foreground. The overall composition is nice: rule of thirds at its best!

I found it on a wallpaper site, click on the link at the bottom to go to my source and open a full-size version visiting the original site. If anybody knows who the author is, please drop me a message using the contact form, as I’d love to give credit where credit is due.

Original source: http://www.hiren.info/desktop-wallpapers/3d-digital-art-pictures/cyber-girl

If anybody knows who the author is, please drop me a line and I’ll credit the original creator.