Working towards my final piece in SL today I imported a texture I created in Photoshop. This I then applied to the logo I've been building that will sit in the middle of the 3D ad. Yay!! I had to figure out where to find special characters in the character palette so I could include the registered trade mark symbol. Hopefully my plan to import a texture with transparency will prove as easy as today's task *crosses fingers*.
Ok ok! So I started building on the Collective Island and some (helpful) fellow student pointed out to me I was building in the wrong place. You can see on the pics in the previous post that I used a part of the island that looks like graph paper which is strictly forbidden. Ooops!
I have now got something that looks like what I am aiming to create (see below). I want my piece to look like a holographic representation of text. However, I also want to perform further transformations on the whole object (which is made up of linked parts). Second Life won't let me do that (as far as I know) so I need to find a way round this. I could either create the object from a single prim (difficult) or import a prim created in another application (eg Maya). Or possibly I will be able to use the inworld scripting to make the transformation I want (unlikely). OMG! What am I gonna do?
This is my favourite tutorial EVER! Its not that ground breaking. It's just that he sounds like he really can't be bothered explaining any of this. He even gets a bit sweary at the end! Reminds me of Marvin the Paranoid Android. [oo] Woo!
Anyway, here is what I managed to make using this and other resources:
My final piece will be a 3D model created in SL that represents an ad campaign for the design software package of the future. I want this to appear to be a holographic projection and I want the software to enable the designer of the future to edit in 3D. Below are some initial visualisations of my ideas:
This is my idea of what the virtual worlds of the future could look like. I anticipate they will be technologically far more advanced than they are now with a more intuitive interface and more realistic/intense visually. By 2020 I predict there will be more corporate involvement and a marketplace of worlds offering a variety of branded experiences ranging from recreation to education.
Current marketing is directed towards building up brand identity for various kinds of client - commercial and even now educational/charitable. Could the designers of the future be developing integrated identity for individuals? An avatar for the metaverse, a wardrobe for real life, a profile for social networking sites... Could people sell their identity or part of it in return for commercial advertising? Already individuals from reality tv shows are famous for being famous. They are developing a brand which can be valued and even sold. In the same way a PR firm might manage a celebrity's reputation the designer of the future could be used to build up the identity of the client in the digital media of the future.
This inventor is using old junk to produce affordable technology. Is this the future of tech? Recycling could become the most economic way to produce goods sooner than we think...
Ha ha! The gullibility of manipulators! Raises questions about the originality of the creative process though?
This is how I am visualising my animation plot. It revolves around the idea of a jug that is "drunk" and a glass that is "sober" and how they might interact. This is what I have ended up with after editing down a much longer storyboard that I came up with originally. I anticipate making this as a stop motion piece although I am reserving judgement until I have seen how the 3D software we will be introduced to works out.
I've been working with a rostrum camera and a shareware app called framethief to generate this piece of animation. I'm trying out the idea of liquid in a stop motion format to see what sort of effect I should be aiming for. I'm pleased with how this has turned out as I was expecting it to look a lot jerkier and more amateurish than it's ended up. Still lots of work to do on the timing and spacing I reckon, but this is promising. The volume issue could be a thorny problem to resolve. I didn't really pay any attention to whether the amount of liquid looked convincing as it passes between the vessels. Lets see.
I thought this looked like an interesting idea. Its a font building application that allows you to create handwritten type from scans. The possibilities for creating new and unique typefaces are amazing and there's even a handy automatic ligature feature which could turn out to be dead handy. There's no release date yet so we'll have to wait and see about price etc. After setting type the traditional way in my printmaking induction (and finding out how infuriatingly time consuming it is!) I appreciate just how much of a revolution computing brought to the world of typesetters. I also have a greater appreciation of the craft and skill it entails even now to bring text to life on page and screen.