Images
A riff on the Picasso using "Suzanne," the monkey-head mascot for the Blender 3D software package.
An abstract look at what self-assembling swarmbots might have in store for us in the not-so-distant future.
Kelcey sleeping in on a weekend morning. One of my first experiments with raytracing and UV textures.
Weebles crack me up and Viking Weebles all the more so.
In spite of their disgusting habits, flies are pretty interesting creatures to study and model. I'm not sure they could be this well domesticated, though.
Created for a modelling contest on the theme of "Origami."
Sort of my David Cronenberg take on home furnishings.
"According To Spec." I've worked a few jobs like this.
An attempt to produce more painterly watercolor effects with a 3D renderer.
This is one of a series of images I produced for Wikinews topics.
Another image from the series. I am a big proponent of free software and open media, so I chip in whenever I can.
This and the above graphics were, at one time, assigned to special coverage from Wikinews on these subjects.
Similar to the above, but created for the more immediate circumstance of the Huygens landing on Titan last year.
These jam labels were created for a bake sale I held with my wife to raise money for MoveOn.org--part of a national series of bake sales that raised over $500,000 on the first day. Creative political organizing is an interesting outgrowth of the Internet.
Back to topSoftware
Back to topIncluded in the DVD under the software directory are two games and a modelling utility for Blender. The games are only playable on Windows, but the utility can be used on any platform that is running Blender.
Kill The Pretty Flowers:
You are a disease. Your job is to infect as many flowers as possible.Don't worry--it's not as gruesome as it sounds. "Kill The Pretty Flowers" is a simulator for epidemics and evolution.
To set up, unzip the ktpf-0.6.1_win.zip. Go into the ktpf-0.6.1_win directory. Double click on "main.exe".
When you play the game, you are presented with a field of lovely daisies swaying gently in the breeze. In the bottom left corner of the screen, you will see a box called Flower Health. The following data are shown there:
- Healthy: This is the percentage of flowers that are not infected by you (boo! hiss!)
- Sick: The percentage of infected flowers. Try to keep this level high!
- Dead: The fraction of pretty flowers you've killed. The $20,000 question--is it good for this to be high or low?
- Infections: The total number of flowers you've infected in the course of a game.
- Resist.: This is a measure of how resistant the population is to you. The higher it is, the harder your job will be.
In the bottom right corner are your Simulation Controls. You can adjust these with the keys indicated or you can click anywhere on a bar to change its setting. You may adjust these settings before you begin or at any time during the game:
- Contag.: This controls the contagiousness of your disease. ( W-key = less contagious and E-key = more contagious)
- Lethal.: This controls how quickly your disease "kills." ( S-key = less quickly and D-key = more quickly )
- Renew.: This controls how quickly an infected flower returns to full health after "death." ( X-key = less quickly and C-key = more quickly )
- Sim. Rate: The speed of the simulation. ( + = faster and - = slower)
Also, you may quit at any time by pressing the Q-key or ESC. You can reset your simulation by hitting the R-key.
Okay, let's get to it. To begin the epidemic, move the mouse over any flower in the field and click on it. It will immediately go from being a healthy flower to a droopy, coughing, sick one.
From this point on, the simulation takes control. How many other flowers get infected, how quickly they get infected, how many die, and how long your epidemic lasts in the wild depend on the simulation settings. Experiment with these!
Remember, the more times you infect a particular flower, the greater its resistance will be to you. The more resistant a flower becomes, the bigger it will be. Eventually, the whole field may be filled with super-resitant flowers. At that point, you're out of luck, Chuck. Evolution waits for no man.
Also, you may eventually find the optimal settings for the simulation controls. Think about what these might mean in the real world. Hint: is it REALLY necessary to kill all the pretty flowers?
Have fun!
SoyaBowling:
To set up, unzip the bowling-0.3_win.zip. Go into the bowling-0.3_win directory. Double click on "bowling.exe".
SoyaBowling is a two-player bowling game. The first player will be presented with a view of the alley and a bowling ball in the foreground. To throw the ball, click on it and hold down the mouse button, keeping the mouse toward the bottom of the screen. Line up your throw, then push the mouse cursor toward the top of the screen as quickly, and in as straight a line, as possible. Moving the mouse too slowly will cause the ball to be slow. Moving it on a diagonal upward will cause the ball to veer to one side or the other--which can be good, depending on the set of the pins.
Once the ball has hit the pins, press <Enter> to reset the lane and move on to the next throw or frame. To quit the game, press 'Q'.
SoyaBowling was designed to test the physics of bowling, as well as provide an interesting interface for controlling the ball. Although it has not been tested yet, I believe that it would be pretty fun to play with a trackball.
Kelvin for Blender:
To set up, unzip the kelvin-0.1.zip. Load the python script into Blender via the text window and press Alt-P to launch it.
The Kelvin script creates an interface in Blender for 3D modellers to adjust their lighting to produce more natural effects. Artists can select a type of light source, from candlelight to noon sunlight, and set their white balance to indoor or outdoors (or any other Kelvin value for light temperature). It will automatically update the lights in the scene with the values selected by the user.
This python script is especially useful for artists who are trying to composite animated objects on to real scenes by finding the matching light source and environmental conditions that exist in the live action. It is also useful for creating realistic scenes purely in a 3D world.
Links
Back to topSadly, a great deal of my software work is either tied up behind corporate firewalls, subject to non-disclosure agreements or the victim of the dot-com collapse. Nevertheless, here are a few of the sites that still exist where some part of my work can be seen. For a more thorough description of the work I have done that is not publically available, please consult my resume.
Barnes & Noble.com: My current employer. I have worked on every public facing area of this site. Most of my work is just behind the scenes, but there are a few exceptions. The bulk of the ordering system, videogame products, and used books are built on XSL and XML I designed and maintained. I am also largely responsible for dragging the company into using CSS over the deprecated markup tags in HTML as well as making a push to use HTML that is at least more friendly to XML, if not wholly XHTML compliant yet.
Alan Klotz Gallery: Though I take no credit for the design scheme, which pre-dated my involvement, I built the entire site on my own with PHP and MySQL. The administrative interface was built for users who are not technically savvy, but who have nevertheless been able to run and maintain their site for years without needing support.
Studio Distribution: I wrote this site from scratch using the design skills of Brian McConnell. Once tied to a crucial but undermaintained set of Excel spreadsheets, the company now uses the site not only to provide views of the catalog to customers, but also to track their inventory and communicate with the labels they serve.
elysiun.com's Animation Challenge. Though not a site for which I program, I have administered the bi-weekly Animation Challenge for over a year now. The Challenge pits 3D modellers of every skill level against each other to see who can produce the best work on a given theme. The entrant who receives the most votes wins the chance to pick the next week's topic. It has been a great educational opportunity for me and others--most of the animations in my portfolio stem from work I began here. It is also a very cooperative atmosphere, and I take its educational mission pretty seriously, both as a way of teaching people to animate and to increase the popularity of Blender itself as a tool.
Antholog: I've been blogging for several years. The site serves as a soapbox for several of my friends and me, as well as allowing me to play with the latest blog-related technologies like RSS, trackbacks, pingbacks, etc.
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