thursday vivian street

No work to show from home. 3ds Max has left my husband a broken man...

Have lightened the file by seperating the iterations. Now have 12 - 20 file started. Still very slow by the 14th.

Here's the work I completed in the tute today:

Continuing the adversaries narrative... the first sees the thread trapping the fabric and by the 3rd the fabric dominates. 

tuesday betty street

Came home to do some more work on lighting and materials while I set up the other computer.

I created a simple object to bring out the differences most clearly.

This is the first version. I had to use a screen grab because I was still using the old computer with the crappy video card so I couldn't render it. (Even on the lowest setting).

The background is from some images I took last weekend down at the Waterfront.

These are the main lighting settings I used:

mr Area Omni
Ray Traced Shadows
Decay: none
Start: 157.91
Near attenuation
Start: 80
End: 200
Advanced Effects
Diffuse: off
Specular: off
Shadow Parameters
Colour: Black

Here's a collection of a few other surfaces I photographed and am considering using as materials for my final presentation:

tuesday vivian street

Finally heard from Autodesk this morning who have allowed me to download the 64 bit version of 3ds Max for my upgraded computer.

So have been working on iterations instead of a lecture this morning.

Here's where I was at at the beginning of the tute:

I lost my final iteration from the last blog post...

Here's the end of the tutorial:

10 iterations

Final iteration detail

monday betty street

I can't stay away from the lattice.

This really is a dance between the two objects. Each object seems to work hard to be the aggressor, they thread in and out of one another. I find this very beautiful.

Note: I had to abort this iteration as the lattice wasn't workable on my home PC.

sunday vivian street

Back to sort out this mess.

My final image of work before I delete the lattice heavy work...

Look at that flamboyant, crazy lattice-work

Then here are my less troublesome, curtailed iterations...

Still a feeling of a dance, cause and effect, sparring partners.

Details...

saturday vivian street

Utter frustration - twice now I have reached 10 iterations and then lost my work. First time I forgot to save then it crashed. Redid it all this morning but had been saving to a temp internet file and ... well you know the rest.

So finally have it all saved nicely and am taking advantage of weekend in 322 and using two computers to work and blog while waiting for the computer to open a new modifier.



Part of my work from today

  I feel like I am progressing my idea of a battle for domination with this iteration; however I am having real problems with my file taking AGES to load and change.



Final iteration for the day - the troublesome one - but look at that lattice work...

I have reached the point where I am going to have to do something radical in order to continue my work. The lattice modifier makes the file so heavy it literally takes 20 minutes to open, and the same time is involved with each modification and that is with the current iteration in isolation mode.

I decided at home tonight that I am going to save this file. Start a new one and get rid of the last few iterations that include the lattice work and start again. Hopefully this will help.

thursday vivian street

Made progress with a few mysteries about 3ds Max solved. I just need to get the placement sorted and I couldn't figure out why I kept selecting my objects and discovering there were multitudes of objects (not just two) selected. I also had a conversation with Sunny that confirmed my issues with settling into the design ethic. Having spent most of my working life being concerned with the pragmatic and what will 'work' I find it hard to shift into the abstract. It requires a concerted effort for me to look beyond the literal. So each iteration becomes an exercise in resolving that conflict. Strangely that lends itself to my narrative because it feels like each of the two objects are engaged in a battle to master one another. There is an obvious a sewing theme to the story but as the shapes develop there can a several metaphors that apply to their relationship for example parent/child or dance partners.
Note: Kraftwerk an excellent soundtrack to work with.

Progress

Detail - lattice expresses fabric notion

Enlarging the black object with 'Push' modifier reinforces its objective which is to dominate the other.

Betty Street

So I went home and started from the first iteration (yep from square one) and got up four straight away...

...and so the battle begins.