Halloween!

To me, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.  Mostly because there are a ton of bones and such everywhere.  Everywhere.  It's awesome.  I had a lot of fun this year, decorating the office a little bit, possibly pranking a coworker, etc.

I also tried out some new makeup.

I was a tad social this year too, and went to a Halloween party.  It was a ton of fun.  I went as a grim reaper type, the whole skeletal paint on the face and neck.

I'm not going to go step by step, as it's pretty obvious how to paint a skull.  I did learn a lot by doing it once and would change what type of makeup I used, and how I applied certain things.

I wanted to add some bones on my chest where they would go into shirt as well.  I needed some better black make up and some powder to set it though.  Oh well.  It worked, and it was fun.

I decided not to do quite as many teeth as at first, and put those two small muscles in for some contrast.  Added a bit more definition to the shape of the bones, and a bit of shading.  Not much though.  That's something that I would change next time too, if I chose to use this idea again.

Yay grim reaper!  All black, a scythe that I never actually used, and a bit of red for contrast.

I got the cloak at an Anime convention years and years ago.  Best $10 I even spent - I use the thing for everything, I swear.

A friend did a medically themed red velvet cake.  I did some jello in a brain shape.  :D

For Halloween in the office, I toned it down a little bit.  Some orange and black with some dark makeup around the eyes for the most part.

Grr... witchy.  Sorta.  Not really.

 Very witchy!  Cute witchyness.

And... one of our coworkers hate spiders.  And he is always 'getting' others.  So... someone(s)... took the opportunity of the season and moved some spiders into his office.


Yeah, he had a great reaction.

 

Daily photo log

So, I may have plugged my other blog, Stanford Sunrise, here a time or two.  I have a great deal of fun and creative outlet taking my pictures every morning.  I just took a gander at the 'Places' function on my iPhone, and the result was kinda neat.  Not always completely accurate, but neat.

You can see my basic walk to work, picked out in photos placement here.  There's a small deviation to the right, at the bottom of the map... that's where I sometimes have started walking over to the Clark center on campus for more photo opportunities.  There has been some heavy construction on my regular walk, which is starting to really limit my photo-taking choices. 

Hey... you took away my grass, trees, and little mushroom guys.

They left the gate open... I promise.

Crane through the fog, with the 8X lens.

I've already self-limited to an extent, trying to take a years worth of photos on this one walk.  But it's been totally worth it. If anyone else is undertaking a similar journey, I would love to hear about it.

Discharge printing - masking tape

So, after trying out the stencil version of bleach dyeing, I decided I wanted to branch out.  There was this one idea that was just stuck in my head... And so, even though I didn't truly have the proper supplies, I struck out.

Really had no idea what I was doing though...

I guess I should start by explaining that I love cats.  I have two of them, and the dog you can see hamming it up in this photo.  There is this one doodle I've done for forever of an exaggerated cat, and I immediately wanted it on a shirt.  Go figure. 

So I started googling the water resistant properties of masking tape.  With little to no success, I decided to just go for it anyway.

Making a masking tape cat?  Not quite as easy as it seems.




But, doable, as it turns out.  It requires much tearing, ripping, things not going quite right, etc.  I put multiple layers of tape on, for two reasons.  One, I wanted it to be as water/bleach resistant as possible.  And two, I was hoping it would come off in one piece later so I could possibly make a stencil of it or something.

The tail wraps around to the back of the shirt and curves back to the front. I was the most worried about the ears and the tail as far as bleach blocking pitfalls go.

I decided to go with a slightly different model of spray protection this time.  Because I wanted a more even spray on the front and the back pretty much simultaneously, the cardboard method was out.  So, I tied a garbage bag to a hanger, taped another one to that to make it long enough, and hung the shirt off of my shower head. 

My shower is completely enclosed with a built in vent, so it worked pretty darn well. I had to remove the hand shower sprayer for it to fit, but that was exceedingly easy with my model of shower head.

 Again... I didn't have the proper materials and I was much too lazy to actually head to Target that day.  So, armed with the pre-mixed counter cleaner (bleach brand), I started to spray.  I wanted a bottom up look, which worked really well for this hanging style.

The number 1 thing I've really learned from these two shirts that I've done? Be. Patient.

When you aren't patient and just keep spraying the shirt because you don't see anything happening... you end up with unintended results.

And thus, my shirt bled.  Interestingly enough, the ears did great.  I think it's because I didn't have a heavy spray next to them.  The neck, tail, part of the back, and all along the bottom bled heavily.  I pouted about it, then tried to move on. I told myself that obviously, overspraying the fabric soaked it and allowed the bleach to travel where the tape was covering the fabric.  If the shirt was just sprayed lightly, it turned colors and the bleach stayed where it was supposed to be.

But the bleed continued to bug me...

I rinsed and dried the shirt.  Then, I masked around where I wanted the skull inside of the cat head to be.  This was a slightly last minute addition, but I liked the idea of it.  I had no idea if it would work, because I had a slightly different plan this time.

I sprayed twice to lightly coat the skull area, but not strongly because the tape around it wasn't very extensive.  Then I broke out the paint brushes.

One of the things that I missed during this process was having the option to make my mixture stronger.  I really wanted some straight bleach to mix up my own dilutions for better painting abilities.  So I know what to do next time.  This time, I just tried to paint over an area multiple times if I wanted it lighter.  It... sorta worked.  In an artsy sort of way, I suppose.

And I was still thinking about those areas that bled...

So I decided to try and dye it back.  I did a little more googling and found out that Prismacolor markers weren't permanent, nor were Sharpies.  Pigma Micron pens were, but they aren't the best for this type of fabric.  I did end up trying them all on the shirt, and liking none of them.

And then I remembered that I had some black Ritz fabric dye tucked away.  Perfect.

Because the tail had ended up nearly completely filled in, I tackled that first.  The Ritz dye went on well, and spread slightly when I painted it on.  However, that may have been due to the dampness of the shirt. 

The one complaint I really had about the dye was the lack of fastness.  I rinsed the shirt and then stuck it in the dryer without washing it to try and help set the dye, but it really ended up looking splotchier than I wanted.  Better than before, yes, but still splotchy.  Next time, I will be trying a vineger solution first to help neutralize the bleach and set any dye I have put on later.

What I have mostly learned is that I need to plan better.  I have a tendency to forge ahead without much thought when I get a hair-brained idea.  But I still really, really love this look and I plan on doing many more.  I probably won't go as step by step, unless one of the three people that read this blog ask.

I want to do a cat again, but this time with a full skeleton.  A better skeleton.  A galaxy shirt.  Possibly do one with tentacles...

As a side note, I have noticed that none of the areas that have been bleached seem weaker, but I suppose only time will tell.

Discharge printing - bleaching fabric

My friend, Leslie White, decided that she wanted to try this really awesome technique of reverse dyeing T-shirts and took me along for the ride.  It was amazing fun.  I think I'm addicted to it, really.  I can't wait to get some more T-shirts to try it out on.

First attempt, with stencil.

In any case, you can google "bleach dyeing", "reverse dyeing", "bleach galaxy how to" etc and end up with a ton of results. Some great tutorials, etc.  This is just a quick "hey, this is what I did" accounting.

We started with a couple of cheap T-shirts from Target, medium thickness, etc. It was actually more challenging than expected to find some that were of a decent thickness, and we ended up going with some undershirts that came 2 for $11, just in case these bit the dust.  Leslie had found a ribcage stencil that we used to do the first shirt.  She had decided to do a front and a back on her shirt, and I was just going to do a front.  So she started first.





We actually had a fairly technical method worked out at her house.  We wrapped a cardboard insert in plastic, so the bleach wouldn't bleed through. That worked very well.  I ended up stretching the shirt over just this insert and taping it at the back.  I didn't like that as much.  It made a sharp line where the splatters stopped.

Then we pinned the stencil to the cardboard with basic pushpin tacks.  Leslie had spent some time cutting out the stencil with an exacto knife, so we had both a positive and negative relief of the stencil.  She also covered it with clear packing tape to make it waterproof.

A tip: tape beyond just the stencil, or the bleach will bleed through and make unintentional shapes.  Or use a more waterproof material for your stencil.

Another tip: a paper stencil with pins works very well for one application of bleach.  After that, the pin holes start to enlarge and may let bleach through the stencil in unexpected areas.

Leslie and I used her shower to contain any splatters.  It worked pretty well and wasn't hard to maneuver in there.  But it does splatter. Not so much on us, actually, but on the area around the shirts.

 The back of Leslie's shirt turned out fantastic.  You can see the small triangle where the bleach had started to bleed through.  Otherwise, it was a very sharp relief.  I think a combination of stronger bleach mix (we mixed it 1:7 with water, but I think she ended up with a little more of it in her application) so she didn't spray as much and being the first one to use the stencil helped out.

Check out her post to see how her shirt turned out.  It's pretty freaking awesome.

The shirt I did, I ended up soaking too much.  You can see the wet outline on the fabric.  I think this made the bleach bleed more once we upped the concentration.  Not a bad thing, and I kind of like the look.  I ended up adding more splatters to it as well.

After I got home, I ended up using some fabric dye to 'erase' some of the lines that I didn't like.  Those that were made because we skimped on the waterproofing to some extent, and because I went crazy with the spray.  I also blended that hard line of spray ending that I talked about back into the black of the shirt. I'm digging it.


I did a second shirt with a cat relief that I love, but I'll talk about that in the next post.

Watch those model names...

This is NOT what you want to see when you start working in Unity 3D on Friday, with a meeting scheduled later on.  My scene view looked like this:

Broken textures...

We've been implementing a new naming structure for all of our files, and at some point I broke Unity.  At least you'll never be wondering if everything is connected properly.

Truthfully, most days I long for a programmer. While I can get myself in trouble with coding, I usually don't have much luck in starting from scratch.  And there are things that I do routinely in Unity that I know could be made into scripts.  One day....

Much better.

With a little elbow grease, I got it looking as it should again.  I can't wait to have some time to add Ambient Occlusion into the diffuse maps for these models.  Maybe do a little light mapping....

iBooks and 3D models...

I have come to the conclusion that the iBook authoring tool (and iBooks in general) are just not logical.  I'm trying to accept that, so I can move on and not suffer the same aggravation level that I do now.

I put out a notice, a plea for help really, on a couple of the forums that I follow that deal with new technologies and 3D models.

"So, this might be a long shot... but I'm hoping that some of you may have been working/experimenting in other delivery methods for 3D models. "

However, this is not really an issue that I think has come up for many people in the iBook arena. (At least not the ones I know.) And conversely, those that are used to working with real time 3D models are not really working with iBooks.  It's a subject that I can't address at work for the time being, but it's still very much so on my mind.

Screenshot of the DAE file from the iBook

So, we at Stanford have the "problem" that we are media rich for the anatomy section.  Large images, renders, movies and 3D models.  Now, it's that last one that is really giving me fits.  2 reasons:

1. Because we are hoping to get this book to run on all three versions of the iPad, the 3D models have to be pretty low res to fit.  Luckily, they were designed with real time in mind, so it wasn't that big of a leap.  But, they are still causing the iPad1 to crash.  At least... I'm 80% sure it's the models.  Everything works, as long as the user is patient.  But what user is actually patient with anything?  Otherwise, the book crashes, and not always with a series of replicable actions.
2. Animations are supposedly able to be included in the DAE format.  I can't seem to get this to work... anyone know if animations driven by a rig are needed, or if it's only key framed animations?  I'm using the OPENCollada plugin to export the model, which supposedly supports animations...
   EDIT: I gave up on animations.  I would be happy with just a consistent working 3D model.

In any case, I've taken the models down so that they are at least between 30K-60K, if not lower.  (this is for the entire hand - as seen in the screen shot above.)  But I think it's the number of materials associated with the model that might be killing the iPad1, even if the DAE file isn't huge (ranging from 5 to 16mb... and it's actually the larger one that performs better).  Unsurprisingly, transparency and normals maps don't work in the DAE format, so it's only the muscles that have individual striation textures.  I have on run some test variations with completely unreliable results thus far.

While both models 'white out,' only the one of the left does so consistently.  Despite being the same number of polygons and same number of objects.  The only difference is about 5 more materials in the model on the left, which lends credence to the material level theory.

So, when I was testing, I ran into an interesting issue.  There is a threshold where a model causes the iBook to crash every time that page is brought up, a point where the model just 'whites out' and disappears, and finally the point where a model shows up just fine.

I set up this test in a 'test' iBook - which may be part of the problem, but I wanted to remove that as a variable for now.  From the various testing I have done, it seems that the overall load on the book has an impact on whether the 3D models will work as well.  When I went to some 2K graphics for some of the interactives, the model performance decreased significantly. ):  In any case, my testing models -

1. A 35k model with textured materials
2. A 56k model with textured materials
3. A 35k model with procedural materals
4. A 56k model with procedural materials
5. A 12k sphere with basic lambert
6. A 50k sphere with basic lambert

Overall, I have a feeling that it's not the count - I have models that I was testing (for limits) at 165K that show up just fine on the iPad1. In the actual book, even.  No issues, doesn't crash, etc.  But it only has some basic procedural color maps on it.  Which is why I started thinking it wasn't the size of the model, but the number of textures.  I included the sphere because I also started wondering if it was the number of models within the 3D DAE file as well.

However... all of the models in the above testing scenario worked.  The only one that 'whited out' occasionally was actually number 4... which makes no sense to me.  What so ever.  I would have thought it was going to be number 2, if any of them.

I put each of the models on their own page in the test book, but the model that constantly whites out in the actual book is right next to another model that works all of the time (also, making no sense, as it is the same model with slightly different textures, but the same number).

I decided to reduce all of the models in the actual book anyway.  Previewing the book with the reduced models in it didn't have an affect on the usability.  If anything, it went down.  So strike that.  The client doesn't want to really change the look of the models, so I am trying to not loose all of the textures on the hand.  I may need to go to a single model with a texture atlas instead of individual models though...

What aggravates me the most about all this is the lack of consistency.  If a model crashes the book, it should be that model that needs to be addressed.  But, there is not a series of replicable actions that I can get to crash the book.  Heck, I can't even get the same model to not work every time.  This is the source of my frustration.  If I knew which models needed looking at, I could fix them.  Otherwise, I'm shooting into the dark and hoping to hit a bulls-eye.

Sunrise Stanford

Hello all!  I have started a sister blog - Sunrise Stanford - designed to house just my daily photos of my walk to my building on Stanford campus.  And by 'started...' I mean back filled it so that all of the posts were on the correct days.  That was 81 posts to back-fill... A fair number. However, all of the photos taken thus far are up on that blog.

Photos from the most recent entry:

 

Most of you know this - but to get everyone on the same page - I only use my iPhone for this photojournal.  I have a set of lenses (from Photojojo) that stick onto my case using magnets to enhance some of the photos.  I tried to tag any posts that use one of those lenses- macro, 8x zoom, 2x zoom, wide angle, and fisheye.





This is where my photos will be living from now on - I'll work on how to best cross post for those that don't follow my blog, and I have a twitter handle started up just for those photos. I will attempt to avoid spamming this blog or the @anatamation twitter feed with the photos, although you can find a link to the most recent entries on the right....

 

In any case, Sunrise Stanford has it's own dedicated blog now. I hope you enjoy some representations of the beauty I see in the world around me.