Atari 2600 Nostalgia

Back in the early 80's my little brother had an Atari 2600. I saw an ad on TV this morning that reminded me of that great Activision game, Pitfall:



I spent many happy hours vine-swinging Jungle Harry over tar pits and alligator-filled lakes. Oh, how that digital Tarzan yodel takes me back!

Another family favorite was Megamania. Check out the thrilling gameplay (you might want to skip the lame intro on the video, though):



Hamburgers, cookies, bugs, radial tires, diamonds, steam irons, bowties... and, oh wow, it still gets my heart going seeing those falling dice at the end! Yeah, could you tell that's what all those objects were?

Also, not to be missed, is this classic 80s ad for Megamania. Rock out to the Megamania tune, and look on, in awe, as the rocker shoots radial tires with his guitar neck:



Megamania it's gonna drive you insane!

Creating Animated GIFs Using Stereo Pairs

Hey, I'm blogging again! Just when you thought it'd never happen... so... what's going on in my life? Well, I'm always up to something, and yesterday's entertainment consisted of creating animated GIFs using stereo pairs. For example, I took a stereo pair of this 3D doodad I created:















and put together the two images, using Adobe ImageReady, to make this:



Oooooh... the 3D-ness... ya gotta love love it! Jim Gasperini has some great examples of this technique, using stereo photography.

Apophysis Tutorials

After experimenting with the image varation in Joel Faber's new version of Apophysis, I found a great tutorial by Michael Faber that outlines how to separate an image into its R,G,B channels for import into JF's Apo. In a fit of recursion, I generated a render that uses a previous Apo render as image import (click for larger view):



Another tutorial, not to be missed, is nemopaice's Julian tutorial which was responsible for the following julian image with fangs (again, click for larger view):



Tags: apophysis | tutorials | recursion | animation

Apophysis, now with image variation!

Wow, lookit me -- two posts in one day. I'm making up for lost time! Joel Faber has released a new version of Apophysis that includes, among other features, an image variation. This allows you to import any image, and use it as a design element in your Apophysis renders. Cooooool. I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of this coolness, but here's a sample animation using a simple star outline as an import image (click the thumbnail animation to see larger view):



Tags: apophysis | fractal animation | way too cool

Guess who's back, back again?

To say I left this blog languishing is a bit of an understatement. But! I'm back with renewed vigor, and resolve. How about a couple of Apophysis renders, as a peace offering? Click for larger size:





Tags: blog death | I'm back | apophysis | fractal animation

Redfield Lattice Composer

Fellow fractal enthusiast PadleyWood has put me onto a great set of free Photoshop plugins from Redfield. The fractal imagery to the left was generated with Apophysis, then post-processed using Redfield's Lattice Composer. Check out PadleyWood's gallery of Redfieldized Apophsis renders here.

Tags: freeware | photoshop plugins | photoshop art | london ontario

Post-it Note Prank

The folks at mental hygiene have published a brilliant howto, outlining the steps required to create your own post-it note mosaic. The technique was apparently dreamed up for an office prank, where coworkers rendered The King in post-its on an unwitting victim's wall.

UPDATE: option8 @ mental hygiene informs me that it wasn't a prank. Please see the comments below.


Tags: post-it notes | office pranks | mosaic

3D L-Systems at Last!

OK, it took me long enough, but I've finally modified nthd.org's turtle and L-system scripts to work in three dimensions. The turtle now rolls and pitches in addition to turning. This allows the script to render those three dimensional L-systems I've been dreaming about. I've uploaded a sample render of a 3D Hilbert curve to flickr:



I'll post the code here when I've finished cleaning it up. The above curve was generated with:

angle: 90°
axiom: X
rule: X→^<XF^<XFX-F^>>XFX&F+>>XFX-F>X->
iterations: 3

UPDATE: here's what a 4 iteration curve looks like when the camera orbits around it:



l-systems | 3d hilbert curve | maya | mel scripts | 3d graphics | london ontario