Earth

Earth. Our one and only planet. At least for now.

Am learning about UV Mapping. Its a technique that lets you take a picture and define exactly how to wrap it around an object.

First you take the object and "unwrap" it. For a sphere for example, you first need to create a seam around the equator, then when you unwrap you get two circles full of triangles. You take the image and lay it over the triangles. Then you adjust them to completely cover the image. When you wrap it again, it places the image onto the same spots on the 3D where the triangles originally came from. Ok, so its hard to describe - you have to see it to understand it. Or get someone who is better at describing it.

I took Google Maps, satellite view, grabbed a partial screen shot, and brought that into Blender. I wrapped it around the sphere. Not entirely successfully, you can see Africa looks a bit distorted. The image I had to Photoshop a bit, to remove the Google text and stuff. Although in my case its not Photoshop but a similar program called Pixelmator.

I also took another left and right pic to get 3D view. Doesn't work so well with stars in the background - they look very 2D.


This technique can be applied to much more complex shapes than a sphere. The most common one it is applied to is the human body. You can buy whole male and female body skins to wrap around your models. The better ones can be upwards of several hundred dollars, available at websites like TurboSquid. With amazing skin details, up to things like fingerprints.

True 3D

Ok, all these 3D pics, are not really. They are just 2D pics. All pictures are 2D effectively, so I guess we can't blame them for not living up to their name. They are called 3D of course because they are designed and generated in 3D, and as you have seen before, you can take two pics (or as many as you want) from different angles. As opposed to being designed in 2D, or drawn, or painted or a 2D canvas.

I decided to jump ahead a bit, and make some actual, real, 3D pics. Since you don't have a 3D computer screen yet, I found another way to show it to you. Maybe. If you can hack your eyeballs a little.

I took the 12 pipey thingy from last time, and took 2 pics of it from very slightly different angles, and put them side by side. The left one is from a spot corresponding to your left eyeball, and the right one your right eyeball. If you look closely you can see the images are just very slightly different.

Now, all you have to do is look at the left image with your left eyeball, and the right one with your right eyeball. What's the matter, you can't do that? Yeah, its not immediately obvious how to, but it can be done. Try the following - if it doesn't work, just pretend you can see it anyway.

Start by making sure no-one is watching you. This is going to look pretty silly. Bring your face right up close to the screen. Put your nose just about touching a spot between the two images. It will be very blurry, since no-one can focus that close, but don't worry. Now, let your eyes relax. Each image is directly in front of each eye. They both will sort of blur together into one image, but nothing you can make out very well. Stare straight ahead, right through the screen to a point several feet behind. Tricky to do with a screen in your face. It is still burry. Just ignore that. Keep your head level.

Now, very slowly, I mean really slowly, move your face backwards. Or the screen forwards, your choice. Keep staring in the distance. If at any point the two images that are blurry in the middle together start to spread apart, stop, and go back a bit again until they remerge. Keep relaxing. Come back out again and repeat until you are about 10 inches away. Relax. The central image will slowly un-blur, and become clear. Suddenly you will see the object in full 3D. And the surprise will make your eyes revert back to focusing on the screen, and you will have to start all over again.

Once you get it it really does look quite cool. And with a bit of practice you will be able to do it more and more easily. I can do it now without even moving my head. Since you liked that pic, I created a second one for you to practice on, based on the first, a sort of clubby thing that you might knock people on the head with who look at you funny. With eyeballs staring right through you.

Pipes Redux

What is brown, lies on the ground, and is sticky? Answer at the end. Don't peek.

Three weeks ago I showed you four shiny pipes, each one actually a join of several pipes together. But all the joins were at right angles. And based off a cube (a pipe coming out of two or more faces of the cube). Ever since I have wanted to revisit them, and do a much better job.

Remember back in school when you learnt the five platonic solids. Everything from the simple cube to the complex icosahedron. And you probably thought you would never need them again. And you probably never did. Just like most of the stuff you learn in school. Well, I took each of them, and created pipes coming out of each face. You can see them below, 4 pipes for the tetrahedron, 6 for the cube, 8 for the octahedron, 12 for the dodecahedron, and 20 for the icosahedron. I know, I'm such a dork.

I smoothed them all, and then added some textures, and color blending, and various things so they didn't look so flat. The red cube based one is nice, looks like its very hot in the center and cooler toward the edges. But my favorite is the orangey dodecahedron one, the pipes are round and fat, with just the perfect amount of unevenness to the surface so you know it would feel nice under your fingertips. And something about it just looks nicer that all the ones based on triangles.

Generally I think they all came out pretty well. The blue one looks like it has zillions of glass shards embedded in it. And the green one is sort of barky. Not that bark usually comes in green. And the cyan one's surface is like a whole tube of spearmint toothpaste was smeared all over it. So I guess you could say it is sticky.

Which reminds me of the sticky question I posed at the beginning. So what is it that is brown, lies on the ground, and is sticky? Did you think of the answer? Clever you. A stick of course. I hope you weren't thinking of something else.