Urban Exile

Samurai Jack Fan Tribute

June 30, 2015

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A fan made an amazing short animation as a tribute to Samurai Jack, the classic Cartoon Network animation created by Genndy Tartakovsky. Take a look:

The animation was made in Blender, which is a freely available 3D animation software package. I am impressed with how well the creator was able to use a 3D animation tool to match the look and feel of the old 2D cartoon.

On a related note, I also just found out that Samurai Jack has a been turned into a comic book, continuing his story after the abrupt end of the television series. That set of comics started about a year and a half ago and recently finished. In addition, another set of comics was released that covers events before and during the television series, named “Samurai Jack Classics”.

But Samurai Jack is still lacking an ending. Maybe one day Genndy will return to his creation and let him return to his own time after defeating Aku.

“Mr. Show” Reunion

June 5, 2015

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This information is not new, but somehow I just discovered that the cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David will be starring in a new sketch comedy show on Netflix, named With Bob and David. The series will only have four half-hour episodes and an hour-long making-of special, but most of the original cast will be part of the series. It is expected to come out either later this year or early 2016.

In related (and much older) news: I stumbled on the above amazing information after noticing that the credits of one of the Mr. Show episodes lists Dino Stamatopoulos as a writer. I have mentioned Dino before (he is from Chicago, created multiple animated shows, written on various shows including Late Night with Conan O’Brien and MadTV, and plays the character “Starburns” on Community). But somehow I never learned that he has also written on some of the Mr. Show episodes, which I’ve been a fan of since the original run on HBO. For those that know the Mr. Show episodes — he is also one of the dancers in the “Jeepers Creepers” musical sketch.

As if he hasn’t already done enough cool projects, Dino will also be part of the new With Bob and David show.

Rick and Morty Season 2

May 20, 2015

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The official premier date of the second season of Rick and Morty has been announced: July 26! And, as a bonus, they animated the couch gag on the season finale of The Simpsons last week, which you can watch on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel. Enjoy!

The Jim Gaffigan Show

May 15, 2015

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In case you haven’t already heard, Jim Gaffigan has a new show coming to TV Land in a couple months. Today, he made the first episode available for streaming from his website, jimgaffigan.com/, for free.

The series also stars Michael Ian Black and Adam Goldberg, and the first episode has a lot of quick guest stars. For those that know his stand-up, the first episode makes passing references to a few of his bits, but fortunately do not dwell on them too much.

Butter Robot from Rick and Morty

April 20, 2015

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I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on an image inspired from the fantastic Adult Swim animated comedy Rick and Morty. I mentioned the show last year while the first season was initially airing, and my appreciation for the show has grown tremendously since then. I even bought the Season One Blu-ray when it was released, which was a pleasure to watch. In fact, I enjoyed the series so much that I even listened to the bonus commentary, something I rarely do.

The image below shows one of Rick’s creations from the ninth episode of the season, “Something Ricked This Way Comes”. The robot was created by Rick for one singular purpose: to get the butter for Rick’s breakfast. The robot is mainly only in the episode during the opening scene (plus a minor callback gag later) but I thought the scene was hilarious, especially the more I thought about it. Who’s actions were more pointless at the breakfast table: Jerry playing a mindless game with no score or Rick creating a robot to get the butter from 2 feet away?

Anyway, I built a model of the robot in LightWave 3D 2015 and created the set around him to look similar to the breakfast table in the show. The final image is large enough to use as a desktop wallpaper, if you want.

Let me know what you think!

Click for 1920x1200 wallpaper-sized image. — Click for 1920×1200 wallpaper-sized image.

P.S. – According to the official Rick and Morty Facebook page, season two will be airing in the summer!

Creating a Star Field With LightWave Instancing

April 6, 2015

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In LightWave 9.6 and earlier, I knew how to make a simple star field in LightWave using one-point polygons. But I was always bothered by a limitation of that technique: each star has a maximum size of one pixel when rendered. A star field would look much more realistic if some of the stars were bigger than others. Also, I recently discovered that one-point polygons do not work well with transparent objects in front of them. For instance, in my 3D Earth tutorial, the atmospheric glow around the earth would completely obscure any stars, even at the outer edge of the atmosphere where the transparency is nearly 100%.

After playing around with instancing the other day, I realized that LightWave instancing could provide a much better alternative to surfaced one-point polygons. After much testing, I found an elegant solution that only uses two objects. Using a single luminous sphere and creating many instances of it far from the camera, I can simulate a simple star field.

I created two simple objects for my scene: a low-polygon small sphere (1m radius, 12 sides, 8 segments) and a medium-polygon large sphere (10km radius, 24 sides, 12 segments). I inverted the polygons of the large sphere, so the polygons face inwards, and set the surface to black. I surfaced the small sphere to a bright white with 0% diffuse and luminosity turned to 100%. Continue reading “Creating a Star Field With LightWave Instancing”

LightWave Instancing

March 28, 2015

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I played around with one of the newer features in LightWave this week: instancing. This feature lets you load a single object and then duplicate it throughout the scene. There are multiple advantages to using instancing instead of manually loading multiple copies of an object into the scene. First, instancing uses far less memory to store the duplicated object information, which becomes very obvious if you duplicate the object hundreds of thousands of times. Second, you can use some simple rules to automatically place the objects throughout the scene, either uniformly or randomly. You can even control the random placement using a texture map.

In my initial tests, I just wanted to get instancing working using a very simple scene. Inspired by the recent news of the Kaze series, I decided to try to make a field of bamboo stalks. First, I created a single square polygon to act as a ground plane. Next, I created a very rough model of a bamboo stalk, extending vertically about 3 meters from the ground. Then I loaded those two models into Layout. Continue reading “LightWave Instancing”

New Recording Equipment

March 12, 2015

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I recently had to record a live talk for someone and I wanted to get good sound from the person speaking. Unfortunately, up until now all of my sound recording experience was in a homemade studio using a full-size microphone hooked up through a computer. So I had to invest in some new audio equipment, but I did not want to spend a lot of money.

Fortunately, I found an excellent budget solution that still gives very good sound quality. I put a lavalier microphone on the speaker and ran it to a small sound recorder in her pocket. Continue reading “New Recording Equipment”

New Kaze Productions

February 25, 2015

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I stumbled on some announcements from last year that a new series is being produced in the same world as Kaze: Ghost Warrior, the independent pilot episode created entirely by Timothy Albee using LightWave 3D. The producers are also creating a separate sci-fi series using LightWave, too. However, it looks like they plan on releasing both series as Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality shows (presumably on Oculus Rift headsets). I assume that the episodes will be available in a non VR/AR method, but the press releases are not clear on that point.

Dalton Industries, the producers, seem to be betting pretty hard on VR/AR acceptance. They have also announced virtual toy lines for both series that will be sold to users of VR/AR systems. The prices seem steep to me; how many people will pay $20-$50 for virtual toys that can only be seen in a virtual headset?

As an aside — the creator of Kaze is now credited as Amadhia Albee, after she publicly changed her name and gender identity in 2009. Whatever name she wants to go by, she has some of the best LightWave animation books, which can quickly get anyone ramped up in any aspect of creating a film using the software. So I hope that the Kaze episodes get released to the general public and I can view them without needing a VR/AR headset.

LED Strip Desk Lights

February 15, 2015

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When I bought a new computer a few months ago, I also purchased a replacement for my ten year old monitor. Although the colors on my old monitor are very inaccurate due to age, it has no other problems so I decided to keep using it in a two-monitor setup.

While it is great that I have twice as much screen space, I lost a lot of physical desk space. Which means that I no longer have enough room for my desk lamp. So I began to search for an alternative desk lighting solution and found a way to create custom lights using LED strips.

The interesting thing about LED strips is that you buy them in a large roll (usually up to 5 meters in length). Then you can cut them to whatever size you want, at marked two-inch intervals, and wire them together as needed.

So I bought some inexpensive multi-color LEDs from Amazon, which included a power block and a remote for controlling the lights. I also had to make a few local purchases for wire and additional connectors. Then I soldered together the LED strips in the general shape and size of the back of my two monitors. Finally, to add a little extra light (and make my desk look cooler), I added a strip of LEDs to the back of my frosted-glass desktop, so the light diffuses through the desk.

The picture below shows the result. I normally have the light set to a warm-white setting, but for the picture I set it to a deep blue. I can choose between about twenty different colors, which is mainly nice because I can choose which shade of white light to use (pure white from a LED is pretty stark — I prefer a warmer light, especially at night). Just in case I decide to have a dance party in my office, I can also turn on various strobe effects, but I doubt I’ll ever need those.

My new LED desk lights, set to blue. Click to view full size image.