Hynds|Studio

From the Blog

Sep

Experimental Blend: House of Flying Monkeys

Posted by BrianH at 12:02 pm

Here’s a really neat trick to play around with. The particle system has been around for quite some time now and has seen some major improvements. One of it’s great features is collision detection. In this .blend setup, I’ve added 2 planes, a Suzanne object and a camera for rendering. One plane acts as the emitter and the other as the collision surface. The Suzanne is setup to be used for the particle visualization. 1000 particles are emitted over a 30 frame time period (1-30). There is some randomness setting set in the particle system, but it can be improved a lot. Feel free to check out the .blend file and experiment for yourself.

Naturally there are some problems with this setup. The particles don’t always bounce off the surface and sometimes collision isn’t detected until the particle is further into the plane then it should be. I don’t know why this happens, so if you have any ideas feel free to leave a comment.

Note: For further experimentation, you can adjust the collision surface’s damping settings, and/or even add another collision object.

House of Flying Monkeys (364.0 KiB, 507 hits)

Sep

QuickTip: Keeping the Symmetry

Posted by BrianH at 4:53 pm

There are several ways to create symmetrical objects. In most bilateral cases, the Mirror Modifier is sufficient. It reflects the objects data from it’s center point onto the opposite side of the axis set in the modifier’s settings. This is sufficient for most cases, but what if your symmetry expands beyond the mirror? What if you had a windmill which has multiple blades, and you only wanted to model one blade? The Mirror Modifier would not work in this case because of the rotational symmetry. This is a job well suited for the Array Modifier. To achieve a Rotational array, you have to use an Empty Object as it’s offset. You can adjust the Empty’s position and rotation as you need to achieve the symmetry needed. With some fancy footwork, the Array Modifier can also achieve Helical symmetry, which is found in drill bits and cork screws. Next time you’re modeling, think of how to improve your model by looking at it’s symmetry and let Blender do the hard work for you.

Sep

Multi-touch and Blender 3D, Concept and Discussion I.

Posted by BrianH at 1:41 pm

Lurking in the labs is a fast, growing technology that will make its way to home computers all around the world. It has already been put into commercialized production and is rapidly developing. I would like to take a moment to look at how this technology will affect us, and how to explore it yourself (on a low cost budget of course).

Multi-touch technology has revolutionized the way we interact with the user interface. Hand gestures, movements, and tracking have opened way to more “human” interaction with computers. You’ve probably experienced it on your iPod or iPhone. But what you might not know, the technology has been around for quite a while now. And it’s rather cheap to explore for yourself.

One of the multi-touch solutions that has been developing over the past several years now is FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection). In layman’s terms, infrared LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes) shine light into the sides of an acrylic sheet. This infrared light is reflected internally within the walls of the acrylic. Once a finger touches the surface of the acrylic, the infrared light is “frustrated” and reflected in an outward direction. Using an infrared camera, we can detect this frustration and use computer tracking software to put this data to use. Tracking software can also detect multiple “blobs” of frustration.

This diagram below is by Jeff Han, a consultant from the New York University, Computer Science Department. It demonstrates how the infrared light is frustrated in an FTIR setup.

Jeff also made a presentation for TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), an annual conference held in Long Beach, California. He used an FTIR setup to demonstrate the possibilities of multi-touch design for future applications. His video can be found here.

In the coming posts, I will explore low cost solutions to building my own FTIR table. And most importantly, conceptualize the possiblities for use in 3D editing and production using Blender 3D.