Hubble Deep Field: The Most Imp. Image Ever Taken (Redux) - Research

This is apparently the most important image ever taken so I had to post something about it. It is rather interesting and some of the poorly composited nebula's show that can be achieved easily by even by amateurs.

Milky Way in 3D - Research

I have chosen to post this purely because it has nearly 840,000 views and a 4 out of 5 rating, people who rate stuff like this on YouTube are morons. Throughout my research I've come across loads of crap like this, it seems to be all over the Internet. It makes me wonder how this was made, by guess is celestialmotherlode had a part to play in supplying the entire project file.

Moody's Synapses - Development

I'm not much of a modeller myself, my freind Alex Moody knows what he's doing so I asked him to model some synapses for me as it would take me a long time. This video isn't tracked very well but you get the idea.

Development - Alpha Masks in Maya using Photoshop Texture

It's about 9 months ago that I last put this technique to use so it was a good idea to have a little refresher. This demo will show how to add an alpha channel onto an image in Photoshop to mask (remove) any unwanted area on a file texture.

This was the technique I used for the D&AD Black Hole Brief last year. I tried this but it didn't get the desired result, the image looked all scatty around the edges where the black fades into light.

I decided to make a transparency map by turning the image grey scale and mapping it to the transparency node in Maya. Apply the colour and transparency files to a new lambert the assigning the lambert materiel to a polyplane gave me a satisfiable result so I duplicated the polyplanes. Back in photoshop I varied the colour by adjusting the hue and saturation, saving several colour variants.

Assigning different coloured galaxies to polyplanes and randomizing the size and position made my galaxies look as though they are within a Universe. The bottom image shows the transparency against a white background.

Research - Earth Zoom

There are several points in this visual effects piece that sell the photo-realism factor here, notice the birds a couple of seconds in, the cloud level, the camera tilt from vertical about 12 seconds in and the satellite. The sun doesn't look to great neither does the opening image, because of this I feel youtube viewers have been a bit too generous with the 5 out 5 rating.

Rymdreglage - 8-bit trip

This is completely irreleavent to the work I'm doing, I was just impressed that it took 1500 hours of moving legobricks and take photos of them to make this music video.

The universe - How big are you? - Research

This video is rather interesting, although the aesthetically value of this piece differs vastly from what I am trying to create, the relevance lies within gaining an understanding of the scale I will be working to when flying through the Universe.