Shiny

I decided to start working on a spaceship in Blender. I do this from time to time and it seems like each time I get a little better. I have never been very accomplished in 3d work so I am proud of what I accomplished in four hours worth of work. Here is what I have so far:



I started with a rough shape and just started forming it as I went. Normally I have a pretty hard time just thinking about the model in my head and then building it, but this time it seemed to go pretty smooth. So far the back is the only thing with a lot of substantial work on it and it is only about 60% detailed, so I still have a lot of work to do. I rendered some shots of the back section:





The original concept was based on Serenity (from firefly). Once I started though the model began to take on a different form so very little is left of the original firefly concept (the spinning grav ring made it though).

Speaking of firefly, I discovered this show yesterday on hulu.com and proceeded to watch the entire season. I had always heard that it was pretty good, but I had never seen it. All I can say is I loved it. It was so good my day became really sucky because I realised that they aren't going to make anymore seasons. Now I understand why everyone was so upset. Oh well at least I have the movie (which I plan on purchasing as soon as I have money). Everyone should go watch firefly now goramit. You wont be disappointed.

3d capacitive controller and some art

I started playing with a capacitive controller the other day. It works on the principles of capacitance (like the iPhone, just not a s cool) obviously. Basically it is three pieces of cardboard with some aluminum foil taped to it. Those pieces of aluminum are connected to my little arduino board through a couple resistors. For each "plate" I set up a basic RC circuit with an extra resistor to protect the arduino from any surges that may occur. The plates are arranged in a sort of half cube position. When I put my hand in the middle of them each plate uses my hand as its second plate. The arduino board calculates the amount of time it takes for each plate to reach a HIGH signal. I can then use that data to determine that distance that my hand is from each plate. Right now I am using the controller with a simple tone generating program I wrote in processing. So far it seems to be working fairly well. I can control the pitch, phase, and volume of a simple sine wave just by moving my hand around. There are a lot of applications for technology like this (as can be seen with the iPhone). I think something like this could be used along with a multitouch system to achieve some cool effects. One of my next projects is a multitouch table so maybe I can include some of this stuff. After that I just need to add a wiimote and then I will be golden ;)

Along with all this technical stuff I have found time to do some sculpting. I am almost finished with my first sculpture ever (aside from playdo when I was 5) so I will try to post some pictures.

Until then...