Hong Kong

I’m currently flying over Russia, and it’s still 6 hours to Amsterdam. Our two days in Hong Kong were awesome. Such a full on city. We touched down just after 9pm and we had to get out of the plane and onto a bus which took us to the terminal. It was quite surreal walking around with massive planes all about. We took the train to Hong Kong Island and ended up walking with all our gear to our hotel, was a massive mission, but we had just been sitting for 12 hours so it was a welcome stretch of the legs. The GPS wasn’t working for us (turns out if you leave your iPhone in plane mode it disables it) so I had to use the internal GPS, which turned out to be pretty good. We stayed at the Cosmo in Wan chi and when we arrived they upgraded us to a better room, which was nice, still small but that’s Hong Kong. Crashed out at around midnight and had a solid sleep until the internal alarm clock went off, at about 5 am.

 

The Little OE

Well the day has arrived, I’m currently two hours north west of NZ traveling at 888km/hr towards Hong Kong. I’m on my way to a conference in Germany to deliver a paper titled “Hollywood landscapes: an exploration of Hollywood styled visual effects techniques for landscape visualisations”. My brother Simon is traveling with me as far as Holland, and we have a 2 day stopover in hong kong which should be a lot of fun. The conference is in a town called Bernburg and after that I’m planing to go to Munich then Berlin where I’ll be joined by a Cousin (from Holland) and perhaps a couple others (still in the planing stages). Then it’s back to the Netherlands for a few days to hang out with my Mum and old friends. On the way back I’ll be stopping in Aus where I’ll be joined by my wife and child for a 10 day mission to visit my cousin Pip, and meet my brand new nephew Noah Geggie in Lennox (couple hours drive from Brisbane). Expect to see many photos and hopefully some interesting stories over the next few weeks.

 

Shifting Perspectives

Well hello everyone. Yes I’ve been quite busy of late so a blog update is well overdue. Ive been working on a couple big projects, one being an exhibition! This is a first for me, so I’m a little nervous. Hopefully the big wide world likes what I’ve done. I’m sharing the space with William Bardebes on a common theme; “Shifting Perspectives”. The idea is to explore and expand the boundaries of both physical and virtual spaces, making the unreal real and the real unreal. I’m hoping the time is right for this as the attitude towards digital art is finally improving. I used to always get the response “a computer did that?” but as technology has infiltrated society the general populous are starting to realise that there is in fact a bit of skill involved. I suppose I’ll find out if it’s considered art or not soon, in fact It’ll be next week. It opens @ 5pm, Tuesday 3rd April and runs until 27th April at Unitec’s Snow White Gallery. Consider yourself invited.

Invite to the 'Shifting Perspectives' Exhibition

 

X–Section: Visualisation.

This year our students produced the first issue of X–Section [blog], an annual student magazine that not only showcases student work but also includes articles by staff and others industry leaders. The following is something I wrote for it, note that you can read the entire publication online too [click here].

A greek quarry.

Visualisation

In August 1998 I landed a job as a technician in the ‘School of Landscape and Plant Science’ at Unitec. I had recently graduated from Waikato University with a Science degree and had a healthy interest in computer graphics, at that stage AutoCAD, Photoshop and a 3D programming language called Pov-RAY. At the time the School had roughly three PCs and three Macs for students in a very small room, which was also my office.

Although I had come in as a technician, from day one I was teaching and within
six months had an official recognition of it in my contract. Since then I have watched the use of computers in the Landscape Department gradually change from year to year. Of course the technology has came a long way. In those early days we got excited about a few rather crude and identical trees whereas now we can produce a forest with relative ease. The biggest change however, is not the technology itself, but the perception and acceptance of it in landscape practice.

Back then, anything done on a computer was seen as computer generated, void of any design process. This was far from the reality but that was how it was perceived. It was a shortcut for those who did not have the time or skill to draw. I remember many students tracing their CAD drawings to avoid
the preconception that their design was done by a computer. That perception has dramatically changed since. Now it is well understood that designing with computers most definitely has human input and in most cases, has become a vital component of the design process.

Designers can also save a lot of time using CAD, however it raises the question: Is that time reinvested in making our rendered images look more realistic? This is an interesting dilemma as it can change the way a design is perceived. A simple line drawing communicates form, however a detailed render becomes a debate about materiality. Most designers would suggest it is self-destructive to present a major project without a bells-and-whistles digital render to go along side it. However, it must be considered what is being communicated and to whom. If the project design is still conceptual, then perhaps it is better to present imagery that suggests just that. If the design is past the point of negotiation then maybe it is time to show the viewer exactly what it is going to look like before construction commences.

This is where some of the new technologies available to the designer can take digital realism to a point that is difficult to tell it from the real thing. Not only that, a well- executed visualisation can show both the final site and the journey that the design went through to be realised, especially when film techniques are employed.

Well-executed design can neither be accomplished purely with or without computers – what should be considered is how they are used.

 

The worm in the Apple

In the last month I’ve had a play with Apples new FinalCut Pro X. My experience has led me to ramble on about Apples current treatment of the Pro market.

FCP-X received quite a lot of hash reviews immediately upon its release, wether they where fair reviews or just negative hype, I wasn’t sure however the missing features where reason enough for me to hold off upgrading. Recently a small project came up so I download the demo version (10.0.1) and with an open mind I launched the app and got into doing what I do. Injest from the EX1. Hmmm, no good. Few work arounds later and I have the files in the bin and ready for editing. But whats this stupid little clip viewer and psychotic canvas? The disappoints continued, and I must agree with the word on the street, this is iMovie Pro. This got me thinking. Whats with Apple and the professional market?

Apple appears to be abandoning its pro market, a market that got Apple through the tough times and continues to promote the platform as a serious computing platform. The pro users where originally from the the print industry but over the years has scooped up many others incl, Architects, Scientists, Musicians, and the Film industry. They’ve been a loyal Apple sector however over the last few years we’ve seen pro software and hardware either disappearing from the shelfs or gathering dust; The Xserve, Shake, Finalcut Server, Color, the current mac pro was released 17 months ago [at time of writing] and now Final cut pro appears to have been derailed.

 

Another Winner

Well it’s been a good month. I received a facility staff award for innovation in teaching and learning (mostly for my use of video and screencasts) and also Won a 3D rendering comp over at Cornucopia3d with an image that took me 20 minutes. Admittedly I used an ice texture I had been playing around with a couple months ago (which I tweaked for this) but I really wasn’t expecting to win it. What happen was that I noticed it was the day the comp was closing and I had less than 30 mins before I had to teach a class, so one quick render and pow.

In other news I finished a Viz job for Skyline Garages to be used on a new website, I’ll upload images soon as their site goes live and we’re working on a very ambitious short film script. This is something thats been in conceptual status for a very long time, and so far it’s pretty damn awesome. All I can say at this stage is that it’s scary and involves a Taniwha, stay tuned. Soon as we’ve finished story boarding it I’ll be setting up a website and we’ll start looking for contributors. Laterz….

 

Why I bought a 60D over the 7D

Recently I bought a brand new Canon 60D ( + 17-135mm lens and a 50mm f1.8 prime). Before you ask, I couldn’t afford the 5D mark II. The 7D was affordable but it wasn’t the cost difference that influenced by purchase. Firstly, the 60D and 7D are almost identical, both have APS-C 18 mega pixel sensors although the 7D can shoot stills at 8fps and the 60D at a little over 5fps. As far as I’m concerned it’s far from 25fps so I don’t really care. The 7D is more rugged, so if I was dragging myself through the humid swamps of Zimbabwe I may have bought the 7d, but I’m not. The 60D is a bit lighter and has a fancy swivel screen making in much easier to shoot in difficult locations, (one of the most compelling reason to shoot on an SLR) the screen can completely rotate protecting it from scratches too, cool. The 7D has auto gain only for the audio and no manual control for levels, the 60D has both auto and manual gain control. The 7D has more auto focusing points, can’t see why I need 19 over the 9 on the 60D, seems over the top to me. The 7D has a shutter response time of 131 ms vs 253 ms on the 60D, which a 122ms difference, this could make a difference for some I suppose. The 60D uses SD cards which means I can use the very cool eye-fi card, the 7D uses compact flash (I’ll post something about the eye-fi card soon). As you can see there’s pros and cons for both, and when you look at these you may still think the the 7D is the best option, I certainly did, but here’s the kicker. There’s a little firmware hack for most canon SLRs called Magic Lantern than unlocks a plethora of features, it doesn’t work on the 7D. I may write something about Magic Lantern at a later date but for now I’ll just say, it rocks! Go and have a read over on the site, esp if you own a canon DSLR. Overall, I’m loving the 60D, although my hard drive would tell you that 18mega pixel raw images are overkill, it may be right. Pics coming soon.

 

DCP – The end of 35mm film

I was going to right up a bit about the talk I went to last week about Digital Cinema Package, however Damon over at the LastFlight blog beat me to it. Rather than a re-write I suggest you pop over there and have a read. Theres some huge changes happening behind the scenes, so if your interested in how a movie ends ups on the big screen post 35mm prints, I’m sure you’l find it interesting.

 

What the Flock is going on?

I’d like to write something today that is a little off topic to the rest of this blog about the recent riots in the UK [edit: and to a degree the 'occupy wall street' protests]. Theres four groups I need to identify, rioter, defenders, clean up crews, and the police. First we’ll start with the rioters. Whats unique with this group is the way its organised, traditionally a riot was closely associated to a protest thats got out of control. A protest has a cause and is organised by an group of individuals much like a corporate structure, ie a leader, managers, secretary, PR officials, etc. However what we are seeing in the UK is completely different. It’s seemingly senseless, and other than the Police/government theres no leaders, no infrastructure, no event organising, and for most no cause.

So what is going on? We often hear that these individuals are using social media and text messages to communicate, but how can a simple tweet or text cause such chaos? Lets look at the dynamics at play here;

1. a large group of individuals are communicating with each other,
2. each of the individuals have no idea of the big picture, ie there is no central control system.
3. individuals react to the information it receives and to their immediate environment
4. each individual relays messages to another in their social circle.

What we have just set up is an algorithm (or set of rules) for Flocking. Flocking can be seen in nature, as flocks of birds, schools of fish, or swarms of insects.

 

Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral

As I mentioned in my last post about AppleTV, last night my wife and I spent a few hours watching TED videos. One of these was a presentation by Thomas Hetherwick, a London based Architect/Designer (http://www.heatherwick.com/). I was already familiar with his work however it was nice to see what he’s been up to lately. One thing I and many of you will appreciate is his ability to tie Art, Landscape and Architecture together to produce some truly outstanding design solutions in ways that’ll blow you away, utterly amazing.