Been at work, but wanted to catch these questions.


St. wrote:
>    Have you seen my attempts on (cgsphere)?

Is there no search on that site? I found your stuff, but only by paging
through the gallery. I like "Meet "Slotty"". Cool concept and great
looking lights. A very non-obvious choice to give him bushy eyebrows!

I can't understand why the BASE-Jump[R]#2 submission is the top rated
right now. I think that with CG bromides like "Moon Lander" the
execution has to wow. The modeling of BASE-Jump[R]#2 isn't exactly
mind-blowing IMO.

"Meet "Slotty""
http://www.cgsphere.com/gallery/details/fullsize/?submission_id=2518
BASE-Jump[R]#2
http://www.cgsphere.com/gallery/details/fullsize/?submission_id=2737


Ben Chambers wrote:
> It looks like you created the normal for each point as the normal
> of a plane including the two adjacent points.  Once you have a
> string of points and normals, there are any number of methods for
> creating control points (many of them even allow you to adjust the
> "curviness" of the spline).

No, nothing like that. My method is not elegant enough to be found among
"any number of methods" anywhere, nor is it an average or combination or
any familiar methods. Like most of my methods, it is
convoluted, is suited exactly to a very specific purpose, and will
likely only be used for one image. If you have one, I would like to see
a link to information about this normal method, however.


Thomas de Groot wrote:
> Excellent work, Shay!! I am really deeply impressed. Especially if
> you say that nothing special is involved, I am all the more awed.

Thank you, and I wanted to say a word about the "special" methods I did
not employ. Sometimes the best way is indeed the easiest, but the
easiest way does not produce something exotic, which is my intention. I
might have made a better looking model using (almost exclusively)
subdivision, but it would have looked like a subdivision model.

I'm the same way with cooking. When I have people over, I take hours and
hours to do things the hard way. That way, when someone comes to eat at
my house, he has the pleasure of enjoying a taste he has never or rarely
experienced. Sure, sour cream mixed with powdered onion soup makes a
great dip, but I've tasted that a hundred times.


Dave Matthews wrote:
> Two questions about the shape:
> 
> 1.  Is it one continuous piece (as it appears)?
> 2.  Is it closed (or are there "start" and "stop" edges, hidden
> somewhere)?

1. That is a matter of perspective. Everything is touching. If this were
modeled with subdivision, it would appear as one rope which splits and
then rejoins itself. If the shape were 3D printed, it would not rattle.
ON THE OTHER HAND, widening the splits (at the straight lines) would
leave several bars, each a continuous loop.

2. It is closed. Nothing is hidden.


Hope I didn't miss anyone.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message