Engadget Defames and Libels good friend.

Yesterday, the popular gadget blog Engadget defamed and libeled a good Japanese friend of mine. While they think it is all in good fun, they certainly don't understand what 'losing face' in Japan means.

After digging a bit deeper, I uncovered the seedy journalism by Thomas Ricker, Engadget's editor for the article. It appears he received a one word anonymous email with a link. The word was only "Wow!"

So with a faked link to a fake website, and a single word, Mr. Ricker placed a defamatory and slanderous article about both my friend, Dr. Itami, as well as his business partner, Sega. So much for ethics in journalism at Engadget. They didn't bother checking their source (because they couldn't), much less anything else about the slanderous website-- and get this, they even hosted the illegal video. And had the gall to keep showing it long after they were notified it was a fake and illegal. Sheesh. 

It also should be noted, when asked to post a retraction article, they refused, and instead only annotated the existing one. This is important as NOBODY goes BACK and reads posts they've already read. Contrast this with Gizmodo's behavior. While they wrongly did post the original article, they immediately posted a new retraction article so all their viewers would see it-- including the RSS feeders.

I guess Bruce Sterling's prophecies regarding the shady ethics of many businesses and folks inhabiting the internet have come true after all. Engadet, and their editor Thomas Ricker are certainly among them.

Desert Secret Take 2

Some simple changes, the big one being using a displacement procedural for the vehicle. I think I like this one better.

Desert Secret

Had a few minutes and knocked out this speed render-- mostly a composition study. Seems like it could be a good start for a final render. Super simple construction: Back wall is 2 cylinders subtracted and top rail is two more cylinders with GridModeler texture, Ship is a cube and sphere metablob, near spherical wall is 2 spheres subtracted. And two alpha planes, no maps for the foreground and background shadows. Only three materials used: The ground, the walls, the fence.

And of course...MetaPeeps :-)

Temple of the Terrains

Quick speed render. Deconstructivist architecture celebrating a building created with four terrains, four cubes a single cube metablob and a couple MetaPeeps. All textures procedural.

MetaPeeps

One of the things you can't do with the free version of Vue 7 Pioneer, is import Poser characters, or other geometry. Populating a scene with people is just about impossible.

So, I created 6 nifty MetaPeeps which can be used to easily populate an existing scene. MetaPeeps are completely created in Vue using metablobs, so they can import into any version of Vue 7 and it turns out they render pretty fast! I've also included a MetaPeep EcoSystem which anyone can use to quickly populate your world!

One of the really cool things about these little guys (and/or gals?) is their clothes automatically change colors depending on where in the scene you put them. So, 6 MetaPeeps with different clothing can create a realistic crowd. Check out the image to see what I mean.

Of course you can download them and the EcoSystem and have fun!

Who's going first?

Here's another image from the same scene. Again all modeled and rendered in the free version of Vue 7 Pioneer.

I took the existing building and turned it on it's side and tweaked the twist parameters to the right.

Added some interior scaffolding on the left building. Created a ladder and turned the ship around to view it from a different angle. The ladder is a quick hypertexture object just twisted. 

Same two lights: the sun and the foreground negative light. The blue glow is from an extra luminous blue layer added to the ship's hull, which had it's altitute set so it was at the very bottom of the ship. You can't really even see the luminous blue, but you can see the radiosity effect it has. Luminous materials not only glow when radiosity is turned on, they also emit light! And..it renders pretty fast as well.

New Sci-Fi Tutorials

Listening to my daughter and her friends bang pots and pans at the stroke of midnight. Going outside (again with daughter and friends and wife), digging a hole and burning private 'Bad Fairy' notes from last year, then burying them. Creating a Sci-Fi model and scene tutorial using the free version of Vue 7 Pioneer. All these represent my New Years Eve...how was yours?

Here's a speed render completed with instruction in around 37 minutes and broken into 3 different tutorials. 

The first tute is a quick primer to learn some basics about Pioneer (it's 11 min and not included in the 37). I think it may have some useful content for non-novices as well.

The second tute shows a quick and dirty way to create a spaceship model in Pioneer, which can be saved and loaded into other scenes as well.

The third tute pulls it all together by creating a scene with a building, and adding some metablob characters and knocking out a rendering. 

The goal of these three tutes is to show what can be done with ONLY Vue 7 Pioneer and no other products. All textures are created from the filters which come with Pioneer. Hope you enjoy! 

Sorry about the audio-- it's a bit muddy at times, but hopefully it won't get too much in the way of understanding what's going on.

Oh, and by the way-- here's the final Vue Scene file-- just in case you want to try it out yourself (or better yet, grab the metablob figures and/or building).