I am still trying my best to understand animation nodes in Blender 2.80. It is getting very time consuming and a little frustrating. A bit like this.
This is just a bit of fun but difficult to recreate. Nor is it an animation it's just a simple illusion.
I haven't started using Complex numbers yet but have revised my fifty year old knowledge of them. A complex number is expressed as a+bi where (i) is the √-1; a and b are scaler numbers or normal ones. The first two GIFs below avoid such malarkey and only require a bit of normal binary maths, the normal O-level type stuff with a few trig, square, log (or collectively) unary operations thrown in. Many posh patterns like fractals and Julias are enough to make ones brain bleed. I spent years using spherical trigonometry but only to plot a position line on a chart at a moment in time so all was assumed to be stationary. To animate stuff I thought I was going to have to learn to use Euler's formula for expressing a point in 3D space. Apparently his hard work is now obsolete and has been for a hundred years or so he sorted it out in the mid 1700s, his name is pronounced oiler, nothing to do with Euclid who was a long dead when Jesus was born. It gets worse as Euler has a serious flaw that computers dislike. It locks when any two of the three axis become coincident. I now have to learn Quaternions, these were invented by an Irish chap called Hamilton and he wrote them on a bridge in Dublin in 1843, they get round the freezing problem by introducing an extra complex number or a fourth dimension. Blender or Python do support all the above as does OSL and the computer can do all the heavy lifting. No worries....In theory.
This girl is created using 2,500 hexagonal columns displaced using a B&W image cleaned up in Photoshop. It could do with twice as many at least but it was slowing the machine down and I am impatient.
This is an animated Trefoil a Mobius type thingy. The node trees for both are massive but the logic is manageable.
The next three are far more complex and require me writing Python script which like all computer stuff appears to have had a bit of an update (*) no longer means multiply I have to use (&) now. I think.
Wonderful This will keep me entertained for years if I don't become disheartened. I can do a little bit of programming but converting °C to °F doesn't impress the headbangers in the programming stratosphere. The little tinkers are even scripting their own special nodes unfortunately I can't just copy and paste their script because I don't know how......Yet. Quite possibly I never will. I do know Ctrl C and Ctrl V but it appears to be more harderer than that.
Just to add to my tribulations I was forced to update Photoshop as it refused to accept Save GIFF files. On top of all this I couldn't read my script in the Blender text editor. Was holding a magnifying glass up to the monitor until I had a brain wave and increased the scale in preferences.
Who would have thought modelling a shed in 3D would have got me in this mess?
Have a good weekend.
I haven't started using Complex numbers yet but have revised my fifty year old knowledge of them. A complex number is expressed as a+bi where (i) is the √-1; a and b are scaler numbers or normal ones. The first two GIFs below avoid such malarkey and only require a bit of normal binary maths, the normal O-level type stuff with a few trig, square, log (or collectively) unary operations thrown in. Many posh patterns like fractals and Julias are enough to make ones brain bleed. I spent years using spherical trigonometry but only to plot a position line on a chart at a moment in time so all was assumed to be stationary. To animate stuff I thought I was going to have to learn to use Euler's formula for expressing a point in 3D space. Apparently his hard work is now obsolete and has been for a hundred years or so he sorted it out in the mid 1700s, his name is pronounced oiler, nothing to do with Euclid who was a long dead when Jesus was born. It gets worse as Euler has a serious flaw that computers dislike. It locks when any two of the three axis become coincident. I now have to learn Quaternions, these were invented by an Irish chap called Hamilton and he wrote them on a bridge in Dublin in 1843, they get round the freezing problem by introducing an extra complex number or a fourth dimension. Blender or Python do support all the above as does OSL and the computer can do all the heavy lifting. No worries....In theory.
The next three are far more complex and require me writing Python script which like all computer stuff appears to have had a bit of an update (*) no longer means multiply I have to use (&) now. I think.
Just to add to my tribulations I was forced to update Photoshop as it refused to accept Save GIFF files. On top of all this I couldn't read my script in the Blender text editor. Was holding a magnifying glass up to the monitor until I had a brain wave and increased the scale in preferences.
Who would have thought modelling a shed in 3D would have got me in this mess?
Have a good weekend.
Fascinating animations. Not handled complex and imaginary numbers since I was 18. It was heavy going then. Don't think I could cope with them now.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I survived school in a perpetual daydream. It wasn't too bad in summer as I could watch grass grow to pass the time. These Mandebots and Mobius whatsits have really grabbed my attention.
DeleteAh! I remember the first time I used a computer (BBC B I think) to generate a Mandlebrot and had to leave it running all night to let it complete. Fascinating the way no matter how much you zoom in to one it gives the same pattern.
DeleteJohn, they are fascinating things. They can be generated in seconds now. Plenty of free software. TRY THIS.
DeleteFascinating, but mostly beyond my ken. Had never heard of Euler until the movie Hidden Figures came out, wherein it apparently saved the day.
ReplyDeleteIf nothing else, this post makes it clear that you are not just a simple man who lives in a camper van with a couple of West Highland terriers for company. (Confession: I first wrote "lives in a camper" but that evoked too many disturbing images.)
Bob I read something years ago to the effect that the Saturn rockets were stabilised using Euler and they had a bit of bother. I believe they added a third gyroscope and that sorted it, a rather agricultural solution but who cares it worked.
DeleteI am struggling with this stuff but it is more entertaining than getting it ready made and just running it.
There are a couple of campers I wouldn't mind being inside.
It seems that you're quite the mathemagician, Adrian. I lost any skills I had in that direction several decades ago.
ReplyDeleteRichard, computers allow me to mess with calculations that are way above my skill level. It never ceases to amaze me that Blender is capable of so much. I edit and composite all my videos in it but strangely it can't make GIF files. Probably a licence fee to pay.
DeleteAbsolutely fascinating but the creation of them would be way beyond my mental powers. Just thinking about it does my head in.
ReplyDeleteGraham, you can get apps to create them but doing them yourself is where the fun starts.
DeleteI suspect it will be beyond me as well but i love messing in open source software.