A while ago, I promised someone to write a brief intro to some technical CG terms used in materials such as specular and diffuse amount. I guess that’s what I’m doing now!

Light rays do not exist, per se, in pixels — and, incidentally, hence the bane of digital cameras vs. traditional cameras, btw — but, it’s interesting to note that 3d software are often developed based on the physical theory of light. Raytracing is basically about light bouncing off things and onto other things so that the colors appear the right shade.

When light hits a surface, it is either reflected or transmitted (or absorbed - but, in general, we needn’t worry about that in CG).

So, I really like how modo breaks up its material panels into ref and tran:

Reflective

• Diffuse Color: The object’s basic color. If pure white light hits the object, this would be the color you see. Diffuse Amount would modulate the intensity. A Diffuse Amount of 0 yields the best version of a black body your screen can represent.
• Specular Color: The object’s highlights. A Specular Amount of 0 would yield a dull un-shiny object. Specular should be equal to Reflection for realistic effects.
  • Specular Fresnel: Fresnel, in this case, basically refers to specular light hitting an object perpendicularly. A 100% specular fresnel would mean an object’s reflection perpendicular to you becomes unrealistically white. It’s named after this guy named Fresnel who proposed that waves basically sprout out perpendicularly from points.
• Reflection: 100% turns your object into a mirror. This actually doesn’t have a real world analogy.

Transmissive

trackback

P just sent me a new word called Hikkomori, which I immediately wikipedia’ed. While the researcher who coined the word had initially thought the phenomenon secular to Japan, Hikkomori actually exist all over the world. They’re basically young adults who are in a state of flux–and thus have chosen to withdraw from society.

I can’t say I’m housebound as a refusal to interact with physical society… I’m basically just trying to settle some personal conflicts that ought to be settled internally. I have a background in physics and engineering… but when I visualize myself as a physicist or engineer twenty years later, I usually wind up with a panic-attack. Another part of me wants to be an artist.

It used to be that I regarded any work that didn’t have tech innovation to be menial and in vain — spending hours and hours doing pixel art, for example, may yield a beautiful end result, but doesn’t yield any “net work.” But, the thing about modern science and engineering is that it’s all messy and ephemeral and based on the wrong paradigm :-O. Everyone’s basically just finger painting on a dirty canvas.

So, what of the recluse who locks herself up in some cloister and dreams up beautiful equations all day and then burns them all up so that they remain hers… It’s what E said about art being not about the end product, but the actual process. In the end, what you actually get to make all relies on your own perception of your work… and, that’s process dependent.

I for one hate waste, and would try to make something out of everything. Eventually, at least. I have a tendency to fall madly in love with projects and then lose interest before completion.

It’s also about what K said about doing what you enjoy… And, I enjoy taking photos of fake people in a fake world… currently more than any other occupation in the world. (Yes, there *is* that annoying part of me that wouldn’t shut up, the part that keeps at it with the mantra: “you are *so* wasting your life; you are *so* wasating your life; you are *so* wating your life; you are *so* wtng your life…)

trackback