Tonight, we learn about fog. Fog is a useful effect that makes things that are farther away greyed. Of course, you could make green fog with 3d graphics since they don't differ between green fog and grey fog, but green fog is not fog, it's toxic gas. The use of fog is to soften an image. Certain types of Range Fog can leave foreground images sharp while they make make further things fade. In fact, some fog is so dense that it can make things look like they aren't even there. It's amazing, but let's look at the actual usage. Here we see the further road looking greyish. But what else, the dome fades to grey. At the left, it looks like it's not there. On the right, you can see the lines. But notice a few bad things. It doesn't do much. Notice how this image is not saved by it's fog alone. In fact, it sucks. Without buildings, characters, and/or more terrain, this picture is worth a yawn and a half for wasting your time. But it's not about the picture, it's about what can happen after this picture. Once I put in buildings, this becomes a sprawling techno-future cityscape. When I add people, it becomes a bustling city center. When I add motion to those people and take numerous pictures, it becomes an epic 3d comic/movie. What a thought?! This is the start of something big. The fog has a specific purpose. It destroys that which is far away while preserving that which is close. Thus, we have focus and reality distinction. That is very good. Adding the list of things that I need will create something amazing. But remember that things are only as good as what holds them together. I believe that the fog will hold the focus together. Plot, characters, etc will also need to hold things together, but we got the focus problem half solved. Why only half? Well, pointing the camera in the right direction is often helpful. Focusing the camera's attention correctly is just as important. Remember field of view also. FoV in real life is set by the lens and the setting of the lens. For example, wide angle lenses make great wide FoV shots, but bad zoom shots. Whereas telephoto lenses can really zoom in. 3D has the best of all worlds as usual. FoV is controlled by a number. Aspect ratio is also controllable by a number. You can say, "I want wide angle," and it'll give it to you with less than 1% CPU usage. In fact, it's the same amount of CPU usage for turning the camera. Then you can have it zoom in from a mile away while moving in a curvy accelerated path to end it zoomed in on a mole on someone's nose. Not that you'd want to do that, but it'd be no problem to do it if you did want to.
If you're here to learn something about three-dimensional design, read on. If not, go down a paragraph. All the latest is right there. This picture is of Javantea jump-kicking. 3D is cool because you can do this type of stuff with drag-and-drop ease. You don't have to worry about if one leg will look longer than the other or if the face will look right. Not that it's much easier, but it relieves common drawing pains. I like it because it is simple, effective, and reusable. The more that a person can reuse, the more they can produce. If you can produce a lot, you'll end up with a much greater product. Tonight's lesson is, keep those body parts in check. You might see that Jav's non-kicking leg is bent at the knee. Not only is that common in martial arts, but it's vital to attacking. If a limb goes unchecked, it'll likely get broken or bruised. Boxers leave their arms unchecked because they know what is behind their arms: their face and body. In my experience with martial arts, you want your enemy to miss even your arms. You must flow around your enemy so that they cannot cause any damage. If you are a street boxer (no gloves), you want your arms to be in pristine condition, not bruised and broken. A well landed punch can easy break an arm in half. I well blocked punch can break the attacker's wrist. How do I know? My brother blocked my punch back when I was 11 or so. He used his entire body weight (he was hefty back then) at great speed and blocked with his bicep and elbow with is body behind it. It crushed my wrist and I had to wear a cast for six weeks. My wrist still hurts from time to time. How did a simple block break my wrist? He used my velocity and his velocity combined to raise the energy to very large amount and then turned the energy into a huge force: his arm backed by his whole body weight. In the end, my fifteen pound punch turned into a two hundred and fifty pound force all on my wrist. Did I deserve a broken wrist? Duh. It taught me well the physics of collisions.
Here, Jav is doing the same thing he's backing his attacking foot with his useless foot to create a normal that cannot be turned away. That foot will keep going forcing whatever is in front of it to give way. If the thing that is hit is stronger than Jav's attack, Jav will stop in mid air and possibly bend at the knee to absorb the shock. We'll see something cool like that in Scene 5.
Today's picture doesn't seem like much of a lesson, but boy oh boy, you get a good one today. If you're a struggling artist and fame looks like it's an inch away, you might want to take note. If you are a terrible artist like me, it might be a cheap thrill. My friend and neighbor Jay asked me if there's any way to protect his work on the internet. I think he wanted to test my methods. You see, I'm putting all this work into the web and all someone has to do is spider my site and put it up on their server to make all my work as their own. He seemed genuinely worried that people who do good work will not get paid. Well, there's a few ways to get paid. First off, make a good product. People are always happy to pay money for a good product. Secondly, ask politely for money. Thirdly, give something in return for money. EditPlus is my favorite tool of all history. They ask me to register so finally I did. What did I get in return? A stop to that nasty splash screen. Of course, I lost the Registration key during a reformat, but you get the idea. Then, if you are worried about actual artists stealing your work and getting it published, you can r0x0r them. When I say r0x0r, I mean h4X0r style. It's not exactly hacking, but rather the opposite: the securing of information. But hacking works both ways. Keeping yourself on top of the game is all that matters in hacking. My method today is steganography. This image is invisibly boobytrapped (watermarked) with my company logo. If a publisher were to ask me to prove that their client is stealing my work, I give the publisher the software and type in the password. There out of nowhere we see MY COMPANY LOGO encoded into his image! Let's see here... Hmmm... Ya... Explain that one, stealer of other people's work! ^_^ Now we know who, what, and why, how about where and how. The answer to "Doko?" is: this cryptography website and their steganography page. The one called S-Tools4 is the one you want. The answer to "Wie?" is: just drag and drop. First you drag the bmp or wav onto the program. It'll open up. Then you drag the file to be encoded on top of it. It asks you for a password and an encryption method. A good password is helpful. If you put 1111 in there, it'll be desteged in a few seconds. I've only done IDEA encryption, but I hear that is good. And the results are astounding. Or actually the opposite. I can't tell a difference at all. But wait, then you compress it to PNG. You can't change anything or you lose the watermark. Lossy compression (JPGs, squising, conversion to fewer bits, etc) will destroy the watermark, so beware. So then you have your image. But wait, check this out: the png with the watermark is larger than the png without. Why? Because S-Tools does stegging and compressing with the zlib algorithm. So your png size is almost exactly the same as the png of the pic without watermark plus the png of the watermark. Funky, huh? Also, note that if you watermark ever single work with the same password and you tell people that you do, then people will break out their brute force password breakers and break your password, take the steg out and steal it. However, I don't remember there being a desteg program. Oooh, interesting. The case of the un-dewatermarkable image.
Well, you didn't expect another shot of Jav, did ya? Well, my train of thought was able to stay on one thing for more than one day straight this time. This is another fight scene that I can't explain until I finish Scene 5. Jav is kicking someone and screaming while he's doing it. Wow... So, what's the lesson? Animation is harder than I usually say it is. I said that it was easy just because it's easy to start. What can be easier than drag and drop? Well, first off, it's hard to get the mesh to work with the skeleton. If you get your skeleton working with your mesh, then you actually have to do something with it. That's even harder. You need to drag and drop until the person looks like they're doing something. The only tool you have is your mouse and the XZ, XY, and YZ views. You can drag those bone around all day and get little more than a funky squishy mess that you say is your "animation". But really what animation means is moving pictures. We aren't doing moving pictures as much as moving body parts. It's a 3d thing instead of a 2d thing and it plain sucks. I don't like it one bit. I have no idea how video games do it. I used to think: why don't they hire better animators, these body movements look jerky and unnatural. Well, now seeing the shyte that I produce, it's all becoming clear to me. Skeleton animation is tough. A professional can hardly do it right, so what am I going to do? I'm going to make pictures that hide the ugly looking parts. I should look at the Half Life models, etc... I just can't do it.
