Thea Render

I just now made my very first rendered image using thea render. I'm pretty excited to finally get my hands on this program. The price for students is insanely cheap. About 100 bucks for me.

I got the program itself which allows you to import models and two plugins which allows you to render from the programs itself. I will definitely keep posting my progress on here. As of now I've only had a bout 20 minutes to play with the program itself so we'll see where this goes! Also update on how the fluffy muffin is doing. We have just been approved for google adsense so thats a step in the right direction!. We are adding a new section as well. Something about surviving life/college. I'll be posting on that a minimum of once a week and the other team mates will be posting as well. AND we are currently in the process of reorganizing and redesigning the entire site and the GUI. Stay tuned!

Camera Posts in Rhino 4

Hi guys. Today I am going to be doing a quick tutorial on making rhino camera shots. Its quick and dirty. I am Helping out a friend tomorrow on this subject and just wanted to make sure I can still do it so here we go.

First I've set up a basic land form that you may want to camera shot different angles of.

This first thing you want to do is make some "camera posts". Now usually if you want a specific view you are trying to get a view of a human at your site. So I've made my camera posts 5.5 feet tall and put them at several corners of the landscape. You can put these posts anywhere you wish. Its easiest to put them at corners, edges, intersections, etc because then you can snap the end of your line to one of those objects, just make sure your snaps aren't disabled at the bottom of your screen.

This is the landscape in perspective view after the posts have been added. Also when you are drawing your post lines make sure you are holding shift on the vertical scale so that your posts are strait. make sure you draw them in them first in the top view then finishing them in the front or right view to ensure that you aren't flying off into space.

So now you want to first double click the perspective title in the perspective viewport. Then right click that and hover over "set camera" then on the next menu click "set camera and target". Then with click the top of the post you wish to be the source of your first view. Then with the second click on where you want the view to be looking. You will probably get something like this. pretty narrow viewport.

So here I wanted to get a slightly more panoramic view so double click the perspective title again to go back to your four viewport screen. Then in top view click release then click and drag slowly the edge point of the camera box to widen the view. If you cannot see your camera outline thus are not able to manipulate it right hit F6 or right click the perspective title >>> set camera >>> show camera. now you should have a more desirable view.

Now to save your view you want to click and hold the little car icon at the top of your screen. and click the grey car with the floppy disc icon next to it. The command bar is going to request a name but be sure that when you name your view you DO NOT include any spaces in the title. You pressing space bar will end the titling and start new commands. Once your view is saved you can always access/manage it by pressing and holdign the red car again but this time clicking on the grey car with the pointing finger above it. Click the title of the view you want and your set! These views will exist regardless of what new modeling is added or old modeling is manipulated, You can even delete or hide your camera posts for rendering. Hope this helps!

Until next time!

From Beginning to End: Sketchbook

This post is going to be the first installment of projects that I have completed from "beginning to end" meaning the initial concept phase up to the making of a final prototype project. The first project is a sketchbook I made for my girlfriend for Christmas. Alice does all the comics for our website Fluffy-Muffin so I thought I'd give her this to make it a little more official.

The first phase obviously was thinking up what to do in the first place. This is what some of the initial sketches looked like.

I kind of mulled about on this concept for a week or two then ended up going in an entirely different direction and decided to go strait to a RHINO model. First I was going to go landscape orientation but decided on portrait just because she usually likes that better.

I then exported these vectors to autocad and simplified it to make a CNC laser cutter compatible file. All that really means is making the lines you want cut to be red and a 1.00mm line weight and the lines you want etched in blue. everything else should be on a no-plot layer.

The cuts came out fairly nicely.

Then here is the final product after staining, sanding, and glue!

I am definitely going to make some variations of this in the future. My next one I am planning to use cut stainless steel on the front rather than wood stained a different color. I'll let ya know how it turns out!

Until next time!

Working from the Sunny State

So yesterday I submitted my final model for my Rhino modeling class and here are a few pictures of it. A couple things I definitely could have done better if I summed up the motivation was variate the fern rotation and scale a bit more, definitely should have done a better job on marsh grass. Somethings I still need to figure out is how to make face-me objects, for those of you who don't know what that is, it is just an image that turns and always faces you as you are orbiting the model, I don't think it does so well with shadows though. If you didn't see the earlier version you can check out a picture here. Anyways I may continue to work on this model for a piece of portfolio as it is not quite up to standards as of yet. Take a look at some of the pictures below! AND if you would like to support me take a look (and by take a look I mean click) some of the advertisers on my page!

Other news. So I had my telephone interview with the firm I mentioned previously and it seemed to go ok. I don't know if I'll be selected but the interviewer and I seemed to hit it off well. I hope to get the position but I am ok with not getting it too. If I don't I'll find something somewhere else soon! I'll keep you guys updated. Also on another front, my partner and I have decided to submit to the ASLA awards the Orcas St. Housing Project later in the New Year. I hope to be more thoroughly involved in the submission process and I think it's going to be a good experience winning or not. Some things to be aware of if you find yourself in a similar position is the 50 dollar fee to become a student member of ASLA and the Entree Fee for the project itself! You can look at some of the PRE REVISED graphics in my earlier post here. Until next time!

Final Submission

So today me and my partner put together some pages of 11 x 17 to submit to our professor for grading. These pages will also be given to the city of Redmond to show and consider at future meetings concerning the park system. Hopefully its helpful. Comments are welcome! Until next time~

On other notes, so far California has been great. Pretty cold down here. Tomorrow I have that phone interview. I actually looked at the land8 lounge blog for some tips on what types of questions to expect and what types of questions to ask, but they all seemed geared more towards professionals seeking jobs, not a student looking for an internship. I'll let you know how it goes! Wish me luck!

The morning after

Well the quarter is over! The above picture is the aftermath of my studio desk and it was well worth it. Our presentation to the redmond arts commission was somewhat of a disappointment due to the attendence of only a single guest. Better than no guests I suppose. It was a stark difference to the review on Wednesday to professionals  professors and students. Overall I think the quarter went fairly well and I think I was taught more this quarter than the previous three combined. It's been great.

So in other news, I now have a phone interview scheduled with a firm here in Seattle who is looking for a winter quarter intern! I am pretty excited to get the opportunity to talk to them in a form other than a resume or cover letter. Wish me luck! 

Right now I am on a train on my way to California for the week where I shall finish my final rhino model and prepare for the interview!! Pictures to come as I go.

Until next time!

Tree[D] and Arbaro

Supposed to be learning about flamingo nxt renderer today

Productivity

Have you ever been sitting at your desk with mountains of work piling up around you?