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.

Ambient Occlusion

Ambient Occlusion - the idea behind AO for me has always been "well, if I can include that in my renders, I will really be the cream of the crop."  However... I never have really looked into it in a hard core kinda way.  Go figure.

So, embolded by my foray into SEM textures, I did a little looking.  And by a little, I mean about 20 minutes worth.  So, really little.  I am working on this crazy iBook thing...  In any case.  AO is nifty.

Obviously, this isn't anything special.  My hand model, with just a few thumb tendons and some ligaments.  But... I love the way AO looks.  My fellow medical artist, Leslie White, has done some really nifty AO renders of the head and neck that I just adore.  They look fantastic.  I'll post some of those soon.

So, I have my settings saved now. An AO texture that I can apply and render out for all of my models, bake it on, etc. I really wanted to be able to show you a non-AO model vs. one with AO... but that's not happening today.  I have had much too much to do to tweak anything anymore.  So, here's a comparison between final gather & global illumination vs. none.

The Goldilocks senario of FG & GI:

No FG & GI

Too much FG & GI

Much closer to 'just right.'

I'm still tweaking the settings, but it's getting to a much better point that it was just a few hours ago.  And if I can bake that type of light map onto the model, I can export it out into Unity and iBooks, etc, and make the models look 4000x better.  In the mean time, I have a ... few renders that look a little less like crap in the iBook now.

Real or "fake"?

I had an interesting interaction with a doctor that I work with quite often.  It really brought up the question, "Is what we do as medical artists real or fake?"

(At this point, I should take a moment to apologize for the over-use of quotation marks in this post.) 

I don't have an good answer for that question, especially in light of the reactions from said doctor.  Before observing her reactions, I would have said with 100% confidence - what we do is "real."  So, yesterday we were working on the project we have been collaborating on, and I was updating many (most) of the images.  One of the things that Stanford (and myself, especially) is very aware of is copyright. 

i.e. You can't just use images from Google in things you are offering outside of the University, and especially not for profit.  

I thought that this was common sense, but it seems that many a professor disagrees.  One of the things I have had to do on this project was replace images pulled from Google with original work. On a personal level, I know that I wouldn't want people ripping off my hard work, so I tend to lean towards the copyright enforcer role sometimes...

In any case, we needed an X-ray that depicted a CMC fusion.  I pulled one that I thought portrayed that surgery from her library... but I was wrong.  It was a hemitrapeziectomy with a k-wire pin, not a CMC fusion with a k-wire pin.  Darn and blast!  It turned out that she didn't have a CMC fusion with a k-wire pin example in her library.

Now, if this book wasn't due the day before yesterday, she could go off to her case library, strip all identifying data from a patient case example, and use an x-ray from there.  Especially since she has a ton of x-rays from patients that have agreed to let their data be used in studies and papers.  But... needs must.

So I modified an x-ray that we had available.  It was ours, nearly showed what we needed it to, and was fairly straightforward to edit.  Which is better than what might have happened- yep, google was the first place to turn to.  Now, she made the argument that an x-ray with identifying data stripped from it is actually in the common domain.  I have no idea, truthfully.  She could have been 100% correct and I spent my time on nothing.  But I would rather err on the side of legality, especially since it's my name on the artwork in this book.

Looks like a CMC fusion x-ray to me!

As I was exporting the book for final edits tonight, her reaction to my editing this x-ray really struck me.  She was unhappy that we didn't have the real thing, or access to one via the internet.  On the other hand, I was happy that we had a drawing that looked accurate and was from source photos that we owned.  I was really wondering why editing an x-ray was bad, but editing photos is okay (I did a fair bit of that as well).  Or even teaching via 3D models and line drawings... why does a "false" x-ray ring so much more on the 'not good' side than the 'teaching' side? 

I don't have an answer for that, but I found the idea of it intriguing. 

Maya SEM texture

So, I've been busy working away at lots of really, really cool things... that I can't talk about.  I'll do another post on Amira soon.

In the mean time, one of the things that I was playing around with on my own time.  Nothing ground breaking, but I like the look of it.  A WIP SEM type texture for Maya.  It's not quite as hard as I would have feared, thank goodness, although not as easy as I remember Max being.

Shading network

This is the shading network that I worked out, with some google-fu and intuition.  I have two SampleInfo nodes connected to the V-coordinates and U-coordinates of a RampTexture that has a black to white ramp.  This is then fed into the transparency setting of a lambert shader.  I have another SampleInfo, connected similarly to another RampTexture.  This one has the color that I want reflected in my model (just a test here) as part of the ramp - as you might expect, this is fed into the color connection of the lambert.

To round it all off, and give a hint of style, I have a brownian bump map on the texture.

I also deleted all the lights in the scene, and amped the Ambient setting to the max, as SEM and Xrays don't have light sources...

This is what it looks like in the scene window... :(

But this is what it looks like once rendered!  Fun.

Started playing with the settings a bit more - adding in some iridescence to give a flatter look, etc.  Having fun!

So, nothing super spectacular, but at least I have the beginnings of how to simulate a neat looking render in Maya.  I'm going to save this Shader, and try out a few more permutations... and maybe see how it looks in Unity as well!

Anatomy inspired Art

Recently Yvette Deas installed her "Dissection Series" in our hallway.  I can't tell you how excited I was (and still remain) to have this art in our halls.  I got her to give me a few paragraphs to give to anyone interested, and I printed up small placards to place next to each painting.  They are quite lovely, and I enjoy looking at them every day.

"Dissection Series, seven paintings installed at the School of Anatomy at Stanford, takes dissection as both subject and process. Considered as an examination of portraiture (which is, itself, always a process of dissection), the subject is variously centralized and decentralized, alternating between the seductive amorphous absorption of flesh and the idiosyncratic vestiges we leave behind. Body parts: belly buttons, painted fingernails, tattoos, and the gesture of a face under cloth become traces of a life once lived, even as the surgeon's hands becomes the artist's hands and the viewer's eyes.

These paintings were wholly unintended, the result of taking my figure drawing students to the Anatomy lab at Stanford. Welcomed and encouraged by the doctors and students, most especially by Dr. Srivastava, they allowed me to poke and prod and mush the bodies, and rearrange their parts (I put them back, though, I promise).  I asked the students questions: was there a part of the body that popped you out of the dissection – a minute in which you were suddenly reminded of the body as a person? I found that their answers were the same as mine and my students. These paintings explore those strange moments of absence and presence, person and non-person, a psychic dislocation impossible to reconcile. The paintings, still multiplying in my studio, are alternately strange and indecipherable, familiar and tactile.  For me, they are a source of endless fascination and beauty."

Harold, oil on canvas, 96” x 72”, 2012

 

Quita, oil on canvas, 96” x 72”

Harold II, oil on panel, 14” x 11”, 2012

Quita II, oil on panel, 14” x 11”, 2012

Ron, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2012

Jan, oil on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2012

Most of these are installed in our main hallway, in front of the elevators.  This last piece is installed in the dissection lab, near the sinks.

Eleanor, oil on panel, 20” x 16”, 2012

Found Anatomy

After the conference, I went down to Arizona to visit with my family one day later.  This has stressed my self-appointed schedule a bit, but it's awesome to see them.  I'm not sure if my step-mother follow my blog, but I guess I'll find out after this post.

The first thing we did when I reached their house... drive up to Prescott, AZ to pull up the floor boards and clean out an old animal nest.  There were two boards that were 'soft' and had a lot of give, and we were certain that the nest was under one of those.  We were wrong...

Upon finding the correct board, pulling up all of the nails, and then cutting it away from the pipes.... we raised up the board to find a lovely, smelling, dessicated skunk carcass.  I then proceeded to freak out my father and niece by claiming the skull almost imediately.

"You want what?  You are so weird!  Why do you want that nasty skull?"  etc.

I won't go into everything we had to do to clear out the mess under the house.  Let's just say that it was nasty.  More animal poop than I knew how to identify. 

Improvised face masks because I was having an asthma attack just looking at the mess

However... I may have kept the skull.  Just maybe.  I bagged it into 7 ziplock bags so it won't smell, and I stashed it in my Dad's shed.  That way it won't ever have entered my step-mom's house.  Hopefully she'll forgive me for keeping it.  She's under the impression at this point that I left it at the cabin.... so like I said, I'll find out if she follows my blog tonight. 

I'll figure out how to clean it off more thoroughly after I get it home

I've been trying to find time to work on my literature and research proposal in between pulling up floor boards, cleaning out dead skunks, gluing broken things, figuring out how to sew a vinyl bag for a scooter thing... etc.

I'm going to stop writing this and go back to doing that now.