http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/ marksnoswell's gallery of images en-us 120 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/378260

This is a sequence from the work we (wwww.cgCharacter.com) did for A Sound of Thunder film.
The character work was done in 3ds max with Absolute Character Tools (ACT) and cgSkin software we have developed here.
http://store.cgsociety.org/product/000125/
http://store.cgsociety.org/product/000065/

We did the rigging, skinning, physiquing and some effects. Regretably the rendering and compositing were out of our control and really let the film down badly.

Originally everything was to be done in 3ds max. However this all changed (several times). In the end we did final modelling and rigging in 3ds max. We exported the rig to Maya and wrote importers to get the bone animations back to max. We provided a facial rig in 3ds max. After combining the facial and body animations in 3ds max we polished the physiquing and skinning -- this included skin sliding over muscles and bones underneath. We believe this is the most realistic and sophisticated work of this type ever done (pity it was wasted in such a poor production). We had developed s set of unique mental ray shaders for rendering -- including our own shperical harmonic and ambient shader code. However the production pipeline was changed at the last minute and we ended up writing exporters to get all the baked skin data out to Lightwave.

We had 8 people working for 6 - 12 months on the Babliz and T-Rex creatures for this film.

I was the CG Supervisor for the creature effects we did. I personally developed the main deformation engine software in ACT and a set of very cool mr shaders which never got used in the end. The bulk of the work was done by our great team of animators/TD's.]]> Fri, 07 Jul 2006 01:32:17 +0000 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/329914

THis image was created using human models I had built and The Ultimate Human model set we created. It was created on the suggestion of Cedric Itor. I designed the shot and did the bodies and skeleton. The chopper was a generic model (I forget from where) that we modified. I had Damian Snelgrove and Sam Hodge helping on the renders and cleaning up the chopper model -- although I think this is one of my personal renders... anyway. THis is the first time we have released this image to the public. It was created in 3DS Max in 2003 with the intention of getting the bike built -- it is designed to be buildable and ridable.]]> Fri, 17 Mar 2006 05:48:26 +0000 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/329906

When I get time I can do photoreal renders, character modeling, rigging animation -- whatever. I dont get much time to play myself theesdays -- I am almost too busy to do supervise CG effects any more either. However, every now and then I get a chance to play... we needed an image of the Leather bound books to sell them. The problem was we needed it before we have the actual books. So, from memory alone, I made up the leather textures and created the now infamour Ballistic LE renders -- most of which have been my own work to date.
Textures and maps all made in Painter. Renders in 3ds Max (standard renderer) and image processing in Photoshop.
I keep meaning to update the mac file to use mental ray -- but it's photoreal for the web where we use the images so there it's much incentive to play with the scene.]]> Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:56:10 +0000 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/329899

Illustration for a short story "Stress Fracture".
One pannel of 6. Created in Painter 3 about 1996 - 1997 .
Features in a 12 page article on Painter techniques published in Design Graphics issue 4.
The 6 pannels illustrate a 1,000,000 zoom in on a painted fractal.
Was one of the first uses of resolution independance paint engine in Painter (or any package for that matter). Everything painted from scratch with no texture or photographic references.
This image appeared in EXPOSE 1 on the last page.]]> Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:53:41 +0000 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/329903

This was created in Painter starting from an image of a waterfall. After about an hour of image processing the eye began to appear -- a further hour of processing produced the final image. I then painted in a tiny glint on the eye -- everything else was achieved with painstaking "hand" processing.
THe image was created in about 1996-97 and made heavy use of new Glass Distortion filters that Fractal Design had added at my request -- to Painter 3 or 4 I think.
The image was first published in Undercover 4 (I think) -- the worlds first Rock and Roll magazine on CD (which we produced).
The latest publication was in EXPOS'E 1 ]]> Fri, 17 Mar 2006 04:32:10 +0000 http://marksnoswell.cgsociety.org/gallery/329928

AH-- I do conceptual physics theory development to "relax" ... anyway. Sometimes I also take the opportunity to test renders and really go over the top on the scientific renderings. This is one of those times.

For those of you interested here is my discussion on this device...

I have been pondering the first chapter of Carver Mead’s book “Collective Electrodynamics”. You can find the first chapter on line here -- http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/12/6013.
He considers a superconducting loop… In a closed superconducting loop the current (and magnetic flux) can ONLY take on discreet levels. The explanation is that the electron wave must be in phase around the loop. OK – but there is a really big difference between the inside and outside diameters of the wire loop – compared to the wavelength of the electrons that is. So how can all the electrons in the superconductor be in phase? … in a collective system they *all* are, the question is how?

There are several interesting ideas that suggest themselves. The first is that there is a voltage (and frequency) gradient across the wire – with a lower frequency on the outer perimeter. This would keep everything in phase. This is possible and arises from the natural self repulsion of opposite currents (repulsion from the centre of the coil due to current repulsion from the opposing current in the opposite side of the coil).

The second idea is rather appealing… First I should point out that the skin depth in a superconductor is only about 50 nm (0.00005 mm). So even in a 0.1 mm wire the current is flowing in a very thin tube on the surface. Now if the current spiralled around the outside of the tube by 180 deg (or (2n+1)pi times) per loop then this would make all paths around the loop almost the same length. It is noteworthy that it would now take two times around the loop for a wave to return to it’s start – and electrons are spin ½ (which means that you have to rotate them 720 deg before they return to the same configuration). To say the least -- wow! The render here is of a coil to demonstrates this spin ½ current flow on the surface of a toroid. Over this are wound two identical probe coils with opposite spins – the question is would you detect different mutual coupling in the probe coils with a signal injected into the toroidal spin soil? ... if you do then this method could be used to test if this surface spin of current flow occurs in superconducting loops.

Hmmm... here is a third possibility that is a little more out there. This could work with the first two ideas. That is that “current” is related predominantly to rotation frequency of the electrons. We know as the voltage goes up that the frequency goes up (as does the mass – but not by 9 or more orders of magnitude sufficient to account for the electrodynamic inertia). Perhaps it’s the rotational torque between the large scale 4 dimensions and the internal 4 dimensions (string theory and Tony Smiths D4-D5-E6-E7-E8 VoDou physics model) that we interpret as electrodynamic inertia. This would explain why this electrodynamic inertia is uncoupled from “classical” inertial mass of the current carrying electrons.

(OH – oh – oh … this just gave me an idea to explain how a current flowing in one conductor induces a current flowing in the opposite direction in a neighbouring conductor… but that will have to wait for next month)

The next interesting things to note is that the total electrodynamic mass calculated from the inertia of the current carrying electrons can exceed the total mass of a typical coil ! … and yet this is not felt as “normal” inertial mass. It’s not as if the coil gets a lot heavier (it does get a very little heavier due to the stored energy) as the electrons accumulate a massive inertial mass. And you can rotate a coil carrying a massive current without it resisting rotation – although I can’t find experiments to verify this.

This leads me to wonder if anyone has ever measured the ESR (electron spin resonance) of the electrons in a superconducting coil as it is turned – do the electrons precess and give rise to an ESR signal as they resist rotation by their own magnetic field? Has anyone even measured the resistance of a superconducting coil to rotation? These may seem stupidly trivial things to measure but I can’t find any record anywhere of experiments like this.

... anyway. Read Carver Meads first chapter. It’s very simple and it shows just how we would have formulated our understanding of electromagnetism with the hindsight of superconductors.
]]> Fri, 17 Mar 2006 07:26:06 +0000