Black and White Light- Week 6

Black light refers to the Ultraviolet (UVA) light in the non-visible area of the light sequence. People can't view UV light. UV light has a component of radiation attached to it. Black light is useful to make an object glow in the dark. Objects that glow in the dark contain a special light producing quality called phosphors. When the radiation of UV black light interacts with these phosphors, a special white, bluish or greenish color appears from the object. So it is phosphors that create these colors that people can visualize.

http://boingboing.net/2009/01/22/black-light-tattoo-o.html












White light is produced in three main ways. First, when the light of the three primary colors(red, green, and blue) are interconnected, this produces white color light. Another way is create white light is to incorporate all the colors people can see in one place. Thirdly, a way to see white light is to create an object or element that requires an enormous amount of heat. For example, stars and the sun come across as white light because of the energy and collision of its anatomy which produces heat.

http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~9~9~58479~162323

My research was taken from these websites:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/black-light.htm

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-white-light.htm

Transparent Glass Properties-Week 6

To further my discussion from last week about the transparency of an object, I thought exploration of transparency of glass would be useful.

Transparency of glass is established due to the contents from which glass is created as well as the framework of glass contents. The process in which glass is created includes taking sand and increasing its temperature. Other elements could be added to speed up the heating process and the reduction of temperature process. The sand and other elements form molecules that are similar to liquid components.

Solid component molecules have a closely packed and firm structure, while liquid molecules are formed in a more indistinct manner and are somewhat scattered. Gas contains disassociated mocules that are separate and unrestrained. Light travels between the space separating the molecules, but it is the miniscule properties of light interacting with a liquid/solid mass that explains why glass is transparent.

Glass is a solid but is made up of liquid molecular properties. The atoms that are contained in glass produce electrons that are the deciding factor of how much energy the glass will hold and what kind of response the object will have to light. The elements that transparent glass is made of don't allow the electrons to retain the energy from light that humans can see. The light that glass permitts is called transmitted light, which is the light that allows humans to see past the glass to the objects on the other side.

This website is the one I used for my research.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question404.htm

Goal #3:
Create an transparent model of glass in Maya and create a prism effect with a color spectrum that people can see.

Maya Shading Tutorial -Week 5

This tutorial is a brief defintion of diffuse reflections. The shader applied to the object in Maya will look different based on how light works on the object. A surface of bumpy, coarse material will send photons of light scattered in all areas of space, which creates a bright, somewhat glowing surface. A polished and uniform surface will make light travel symmetrically away from the direction it was received. The resulting surface is able to recreate its surroundings, however, with a distorted effect depending on the shape of the object.

I decided to experiment with shaders and materials in Maya to see what kind of transparency could result from it. I applyed a few different materials to my cup object and tweaked the transparency. I didn't seem to be getting very far with the shaders, so I assigned a blinn and made the color a dull turquiose. Increasing the transparency within the attribute editor gave the look of a frosted glass. Increasing such point value considerations as diffuse, ambient color, incandescence, and transluscence didn't seem to effect the material whatsoever. I will learn more about all of these material considerations in the future.

The first render, shown at the left, was not the correct effect. It looks like a negative space drawing of some kind. 

This image was created by taking the first image and decreasing the ambient color to zero and leaving incandescence to just above zero. This is more of the effect I was hoping for in this object.

Researching Color 2/17/11 -Week 5

Color Wheel

The interesting aspect of this illustration of the color wheel is that it uses different shapes to define the colors. Circles, which are whole and continuous, represent the six solid and main colors. The traingles along the circle are represented by triangles, perhaps to signify that a new color(one side of the triangle) is created by the convergence of two colors(the two other sides of the triangle).

Color harmony is the process by which meaningful colors can be created and involves various aspects such as hue, value, and saturation or chroma. Hue is obtained by developing a certain version of red, green, blue colors. Wavelengths of light are the origin of the actual hues or colors themselves.  Use the opossing colors of white and black to create specific looks for colors. There are three different and intersting ways to change color value. First, add white to tint a color and make it lighter and softer. Secondly, add black to shade a color and create a deeper, more pronounced effect. But when black and white are added together, a tone is produced to push the color to the middle of its scope.

 This image I created in Photoshop to repesent how chroma is created. The yellow line represents the whole spectum of saturation space. In the space of what I call non-saturation, white, gray, or black could be conveyed. So the colors on the second line demonstrate the chroma colors along the spectrum.

Using these three areas of color along with nine different specific color developments, including complementary color and color throughout the color wheel, effective color harmony can be produced. I will definetely be taking these ways to produce color into consideration when creating different color elements for assignment 3.

The following website contains the research I found and the first image above.
 http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2006/01/color-theory-for-digital-displays-a-quick-reference-part-i.php

Maya Difficulties and Insights 2/15/2011-Week 5

It is interesting and amazing how tiny mistakes made in Maya make a huge difference when running trying to run a program correctly. The following code is what I used to create the 3D dimensional color cube:

for ($x=0; $x<8; $x++)
{
    for ($y=0; $y<8; $y++)
    {
        for ($z=0; $z<8; $z++)
        {
            $name = `shadingNode -asShader blinn`;
            $tmp = $name + ".color";//blinnShader1.color
            setAttr $tmp -type double3 ($x/7.0) ($y/7.0) ($z/7.0);
            polySphere -ch on -o on -r .03;
            xform -translation ($x/7.0) ($y/7.0) ($z/7.0);
            hypershade -assign $name;
        }
    }
};

However, an error occured regarding the variable $name. After some help from Casey and Rachel, I realized that the variables $name and $tmp were not initialized. I then placed these two lines of code above the 3 for loops:

string $name;
string $tmp;

The color cube was created almost immediately. But one interesting point I discovered while working on this was that Mel programming is not case-sensitive like the Java programming language. The type string should not be capitilized. Also getting into the habit of checking carefully for tiny mistakes like missing tick marks and correct sign usage such as <, >, or =, would be tremendously helpful to my workflow.

In addition, trying to load the script file manually to recreate the color cube inside Maya came along with a few challenges. Trying to use the command action -o  in Mel does not work for opening the file. The script editor started to load the file but never finished because it couldn't read the file. The command that works was -import.  Scripts have to be saved to the Documents/Maya/Projects/Default/Scripts folder in order to be read into the Script Editor. I had to restart Maya and the Script Editor and enter the following code:

file -import "ColorCube.mel"

and put the file name in double quotations. The mel scripts will always have the extension of .mel. After these issues, the program worked fine.

Goal #1 : Try changing the colors of the color cube in Mel to represent deeper colors like those that were displayed on classmates PC computers.

Goal # 2: Figure out why the color ball that it supposed to represent full black color is displaying gray and how to make it black.

Rendering Options in Maya and Maya Composite-Week 4

This tutorial discusses some different options to consider when rendering in Maya and Maya Composite.

To access the rendering characteristics of Maya, select Rendering in the drop down menu below the top Menu Bar. Render passes is a term used when applying effects to a modeled scene. Render Layers are the separate elements that can be added to the scene similar to Photoshop layers in the bottom section of the Channel Box Editor on the right side of the interface.

Maya Composite works in conjunction with Maya. A Composite tree can be created in Maya Composite, which seemingly works to link all the effects and render layers together. However, Maya can automatically refresh and transfer items over into Maya Composite if a person just wants to work strictly in Maya. Several Effects can be created in Maya Composite to make an image or video look better, such as transforming video, colors, and effects, along with  experimenting with a Stereoscopic 3D environment, painting, pre-created animation, and vectors for animated characters.

Maya Introductory UV mapping -Week 4

Texturing in Maya with UV maps is a useful topic because currently we are discussing texturing with lamberts and other textures in Mel Scripting. Knowing how to create a UV map manually will facilitate my knowledge of how to script UV maps. Below is the tutorial I watched:

UV mapping has a few essential ingredients that should be included when texturing an object in Maya.

The fundamental steps of UV Mapping is first to open the UV Texture Editor and Hypershade windows. UV maps are layed out in 2D space and represented within Maya as 2D dimensional faces that can undergo several transformations such as rotation, scaling, and directional movement. The vertices of the UV map faces can be moved to cover a specific part of the texture, which can be accessed from right clicking and selecting UVs. Textures can only be moved from within the UV Texture Editor, not the 3D environment of the box. To transform the maps more sufficiently, a feature called Shade UVs under the Image menu in the UV Texture Editor can tint the maps so they are highlighted against the texture.

The Hypershade window is useful to organize the textures before they are mapped to the surface of the model. Exploration of the different textures is needed for my understanding of UV mapping, but from this tutorial I only learned simple texture creation. A lambert texture can be linked to a file derived from one's computer or hard drive. Then the scroll button must be held down to transport the UV map onto the object, which in this example was a box. Then, pressing the # 6 key on the keyboard allows the texture to be displayed on the object in the 3D environment.

If the option to Create UVs Based on Camera  is selected under the Polygon and Create UVs menu tabs, maps will be directed in the angle of how the camera is pointed at the object. Originally, the UV maps are displayed as connected to one another. But the Separate the Selected UVs button gives one the power to transform the maps individually to get the best quality look for the object. The edges of maps can be sewn together, as it is called by selecting the Sew UVs  Button within the UV Texture editor window. To transfer the UV texture into Photoshop, one has to save a UV Snapshot of it to a specific location. It can then be placed back into Maya later on and readjusted.

Every program has simple steps to follow when using it to do anything. Programming is structured in the same way. Once one realizes there is a specific process to creating these works of art, the process becomes inherently easier to understand and execute.