It's been almost a month since I left home for the big trip. Seattle was awesome and meeting so many people I've known and worked with for years for the first time was an excellent experience.

It's been over 2 weeks since I've been in Costa Rica. I extended my stay a few more days and will leave next week, and then back home by the 20th.

Costa Rica has been a very unique experience. I'm staying here on top of a mountain overlooking the coast in the middle of the rainforest in my dear, dear friend Cynthia's home. I've met some very interesting people, and a few hilarious characters.

I've FINALLY overcome my cynophobia (fear of dogs) and am in love with two little amazing doggies. I'll post photos when I'm back - the bandwidth has been terrible here. I've taken some of my best photos ever on this trip. Wait till you all see the crocodiles and the amazing landscapes! Some photos are up on my flickr [link] - althought more nicer photos and nicer versions of these photos will be uploaded to DA once I'm back home and on a decent connection.

Oh, and I finally got a chance to cook for people. Yes, real people. And they survived. And not only did they survive (mostly), but they loved the food too. I intend to expand my culinary skills.

CR has been perhaps the best and worst times of my life. Sounds conflicted, and that is how I am. This was a healing journey for me - to find some quite time with myself and my thoughts - away from the 9 years of hardcore business and technology that I was up to my neck in. I have learnt so much about myself in the past 2 weeks. My deepest held convictions were challenged within 24 hours of my arrival to Costa Rica. Some of them took a major blow and may never recover, others that survived are stronger than ever. I'm learning forms of patience and courage I've never known. And I'm now facing the biggest test of my heart and soul ever. Its essentially walking a fine edge - on one side we have happiness and vindication and on the other side we have an absolute failure resulting in a cascade of not-so-positive events.

Let's see what happens.

Join the all new Vue club:

...for the time being.

For the first time in 9 years since I dropped out of school to start my own company [link] this is my first real vacation. I'm going away on the 11th of April and back on the 13th of May. Bhuj (India) to Mumbai (India) to Seattle (USA) to Chicago to Houston to Costa Rica (where I get to see someone really close to me for the first time in 5 years!! I deserve a medal for this!) then back to Chicago then Detroit then Chicago again and then back to India.

=1vue will be cared for in my absence by ~ParvezAnsari and I'll try to log in from time to time, of course. But for the next month, the following is my only forseeable deviation. Enjoy!



See you all in a month!

Join the all new Vue club:

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out (belatedly) that e-on software [link] the creators of Vue used my render for the primary image in their advertisement.

This thumb appeared on their main page. Click the image to see the full advertisement.



The image used is:



And on a sidenote, a big thanks to for featuring me - AGAIN! Go check out his work. He's awesome!

Join the all new Vue club:

It's been a long road. Getting from there to here. Yes, I've been watching too much Enterprise.

Yes, I'm back. Work, family, other stuff. Sometimes it just piles up, doesn't it? Anyways, I'm back on DA - need to catch up on my 300+ messages and my 4500+ deviations!! Sorry if I haven't responded to you all, I'll rectify that asap.

Wow. I just realized how much I missed dA!

Join the all new Vue club:

Wow. Happy new year, everyone.

It's been long time since I actually spent some serious time on dA. Work, stuff, all that.

Finally spent some much needed time on the Vue club =1vue (Sorry for the delay, guys). Need to finish a couple of tutorials for it as well.

It also looks like I'm getting a Picture of the Day on e-onsoftware.com ([link]) every week! Here are the recent ones:


Microsoft recently published part 1 of my article for Designers working with Expression Blend [link] (Flash people, you may want to look into this - nice new business opportunities in this rising industry). You can "The Designer Role - Part 1" here: [link] Part 2 will appear in February.

And for those of you already working with Blend, you may want to keep your eye on [link] - we're coming up with some seriously hot stuff in the next few days.

Join the all new Vue club:

Arid Lands got Picture of the Day again on e-on's site: [link]

Join the all new Vue club:

Last night was the peak hour of the Geminids meteor shower. As planned, three of us went into the hills (Bhuj, India) to catch the peak hour at 10:15pm. We were fortunate enough to witness four fireballs of about -8 to -6 magnitude!! Unfortunately, none were caught on camera.

I did manage to catch the persistent train of one (this is the trail left by a fireball meteor). You can download the hi-res video here: [link]

More important than that is that while I left my camera (with 50mm f/1.4 lens) running on continuous drive taking 13 second exposures, there is what appears to be a UFO in these shots. I have about 14 frames (13" exposures each) that shows a faint dot moving against the motion of the stars. An aircraft or satellite would become a streak - a bright line - on a 13" exposure (as far as I know), but this little bugger remains a DOT!!

It was NOT dust or another artifact on the lens - we checked several times. And you can SEE the definitive motion of the object. You be the judge - download the hi-res video here: [link]

When I talked about of documenting aliens in my previous journal entry, I really wasn't this serious!!

I have a 3888x2592 video of both these events if anyone is interested. I will post more photos from the trip a little later tonight.

Join the all new Vue club:

The Geminids meteor shower is happening this Friday night, at about 16:45 UTC (10:15pm Indian time/+5:30GMT). This is one of the most "reliable" meteor showers, with a maximum burst of 160 meteors per minute at it's peak hour (the time above). You can see it these days (although with a less intensity) too.

~ParvezAnsari, another friend of ours, and I are going to from about 7pm and going to stay there till dawn. We'll be taking along a lot of equipment (Canon 400D + lenses, my EQ-2 m=135/f=1000 telescope w/ 400D adapter, a camcorder, a couple of laptops, a few more cameras probably, and lots of other junk) so any alien abductions will be thoroughly documented. And by alien abductions, I mean us bagging us a few greys!

Should be an awesome night in the hills - away from light and air pollution. Lots of warm food and drink to keep us alive. A good campfire - a dare is going on who can light a fire without using matches/lighter). And of course, all the snakes and scorpions will keep our adrenaline going.

More info on the shower and when/where to watch it: [link]

Maybe in the summer, I will be going deep into the desert (Rann of Kutch [link]) and do some good astrophotography there. There have been numerous reports of seeing floating balls of light at night in the desert. Might be fun to stake it out if someone is willing to join me.

Got a pleasant surprise a few days ago. E-on Software chose SUNRISE AT FROZEN LAKE as their Picture of the Day.


[link]

I totally forgot to post the news

I've just started a new Vue Club - =1vue

Here's the link to the official story: [link]

The club has kicked off with 10 free resources (more to follow very soon), and a tutorial/walkthrough:



Check it out. Spread the word. And don't forget to join!!

We should also have a contest up soon with some (hopefully) expensive prizes. Maybe Vue 6 Infinite/xStream itself!

Wow. So woke up and checked my mail and saw that I am sharing the co-runner up position with *priteeboy in =dr-druids' competition.

The image that won was:

Thanks to everyone (all two of them ) who voted for me. And as promised on Monday I will gift a 6 mo subscription to a more "worthy" deviant.

I recently bit the bullet and shelled $350, and upgraded Vue 6.5 Infinite to Vue 6.5 xStream. For those of you who don't know, Vue [link] is the best natural 3D package out there. Infinite is their professional level edition. xStream is the same type but allows you to put integrate Vue within all the big 3D packages. I am using MAX 9 (64-bit) + Mental Ray. Work has been keeping me busy but I will post some new xStream stuff soon. I also need to catch up on my devWatch (1303 currently).

I spent some spare time I had today on creating a few nice renders with Vicky.



All are 1920x1200 and can be used as widescreen (16:10) wallpapers.

Enjoy!

VOTE FOR ME!!

I've entered =dr-druids's 3D landscape competition. Please go to this page: [link]
and vote for any of my pieces (below) entered there.



Your vote is very much appreciated.

IMPORTANT!

Y'see I don't really *need* the prize (1 yr or 6 mo dA subscription) - at least not as much as some other people who really deserve it (who are not in this competition). I'm just doing it for the fun of friendly competition. So I promise that if I win any subscription, I shall donate the exact amount to a deviant who doesn't have a sub but would find one really helpful.

VOTE FOR ME!!

I've entered =dr-druids's 3D landscape competition. Please go to this page: [link]
and vote for any of my pieces (below) entered there.



Your vote is very much appreciated.

IMPORTANT!

Y'see I don't really *need* the prize (1 yr or 6 mo dA subscription) - at least not as much as some other people who really deserve it (who are not in this competition). I'm just doing it for the fun of friendly competition. So I promise that if I win any subscription, I shall donate the exact amount to a deviant who doesn't have a sub but would find one really helpful.

The Chosen One is being born. Tomorrow, I shall build Vader's [link] companion - Anakin.

Anakin consists of:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.40 (64-bit)
(I'm just waiting for the new processors to hit the market, then upgrade it - quite similar to Anakin's hand upgrade)

Intel Desktop Board D975XBX2 (SLI ready)

ASUS EN8800ULTRA/768MB DirectX 10
(I shall have my revenge on Crysis! It so fucked up my EN7950GX2/1024MB)

4GB x DDR2 RAM

A terabyte or so of HDD space

I'll just reuse my 24" DELL widescreen monitor

Expect photos soon. Including those of the process of building Anakin and its "Super Extreme Gravity Centric Cooling System". And of me getting electrocuted.

May the Force be with me.

Oh, and I need to post the reason for this new machine - other than the usual need to build a better rig - a new animated short I have to make for the new face of Nukeation (my company [link]). We already have hired a voice actor in Hollywood for the voice. More on all that soon.

I'm doing an animation project with Poser 6/7, and Daz's V4. If anyone knows a good professional who can help with lip sync animations (need them to be very natural), that'd be fantastic!!! Please note me and save my ass.

The Traitor project is still undergoing mutation. A backstory is being developed in detail that depicts the history of Humans from 2090 AD to 2240 AY (After Exodus) - including the Great European Conflict, the Artemis Threat, Wormhole Technology, Human Exodus to New Earth, and the Second Alien Threat that leads up to the event of Traitor.

The actual story will be told in a mixed-media setting consisting of audio visuals, animated shorts, and just images. Those things are still solidifying. More on that later.

I'm working on the website [link] and enlisting the help of a few friends to make this project a bit richer.

Vue 6(.5) Infinite is playing a large role in the production. Almost all visuals are being developed in that software. We are creating lots of new assets in 3D Studio MAX and using Vue's natural systems for the scenes. Poser models currently serve as the characters, but that may change.

The following are the Character Wallpapers I released last week:

Please note that the planets were NOT postworked into the image. The render took place WITH the planet in Vue 6. Using Alpha channel export, it was later on blurred for DOF.

Other two wallpapers that depict two important scenes from the story.


The "Veteran" discovers alien installations deep in the canyons of Pollux-3. This will be an animated shot (in Vue) that shows a 12x12 kilometer terrain in a single shot.


The Vigilance Grid is overrun by alien slave grunts as the "Veteran" and the "Thief" try to hold them off long enough to evacuate the station.

So traitor is becoming a bigger project than I had anticipated. Into what exactly? Well, you'll just have to wait and see.

We've just created [link] - where more information will follow.

In the meantime, enjoy the first promo wallpaper:

I've been revising the TRAITOR [link] story line to fit the visuals and flow more nicely. Since its mainly a visual project, subtle story ideas are of no use. Only grand dramatic scenes matter.

One such moment in the story is when the Elite Corps traitor meets the old veteran soldier at an abandoned Enforcer Citadel on the planet Pollux-3. From the start, I wanted to exclude traditional weapons in the visuals. This is far enough in the future that they fight with energy projectiles - whether they're created by the power of the mind, some sort of Force-like energy field, or by the intense technology suits they wear, I'll leave up to you.

As the two powerful soldiers clash, there will be some massive energy outputs and I've been working on some effects to show just that. My main research and inspirational material consists of Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell ("Innocence" more than others), Final Fantasy, and Star Wars. For this particular piece, I was inspired by the Anakin vs. Obi-Wan fight at the end of RotS where they Force Push each other.

I leave you with a WIP shot of "TRAITOR - Confrontation"


_{Please note this is a work-in-progress and it will quite possibly change a lot before the final render.}

For a long time, I've been meaning to create a series of renders that are built loosely around a story. I tried doing it with the "Troll Twins" (see my gallery) story, but at some point it just broke down and wasn't visually attractive enough. Surprisingly, clichés make for great visuals and I've now thought up a nice little "cookie cutter" sci-fi story - TRAITOR - and am making the visuals for it. And since I'm a total non-conformist, I'm following my usual pattern of not doing anything in a pattern. That is, I'm not making the visuals in order.

Here's the story:

The Elite Corps of the Sol Defence Force, a female only covert ops unit (Cliché! Anime has screwed me up, yes, I know) is hunting down one of their own. The traitor has taken a valuable ... thing (I won't know what it is until I actually model it in 3D)... and has fled. A special assassination squad has been sent to track her down, kill her, and retrieve the object.

The traitor seeks refuge on the barren planet Pollux-3 where an old Terran outpost exists. The assassins catch up with her as she prepares to enter Pollux Three's atmosphere and there is a zero-g confrontation where the traitor kills her old comrades.

She finds an old warrior - a veteran of the SDF - who has also taken refuge there. He also did something bad, but to make it more mysterious (and easier on myself) we never find out what. Guess what, they join forces! And later she falls in love with him (mostly because it was a contractual obligation).

They face down an alien horde on the planet and survive. They go on to escape the planet and follow a fleeing alien ship to their home planet where something big and nasty is in the works (usual universal domination, etc.).

While investigating they are suddenly caught by a new batch of assassins.

The alien horde finds them and the whole lot of them fight together back-to-back.

Only the two traitors survive the onslaught. Relieved at having survived, the female traitor relaxes only to be murdered by the male traitor. And he walks away with the stolen object.

Let's see how the images turn up. Suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

You can see the first image - "Hunt her down" - the zero-g showdown at:




More soon.

I thought perhaps I should share some new tricks I've been experimented with in Vue 6.5 Infinite.

One criticism I have of Vue is that it's new Spectral Cloud model is quite nice but it doesn't match up to Terragen 2's cloud system. I've been trying to work with Vue to create more realistic atmospheres, and I found that for "clear day" scenes, the old flat clouds (especially Cirrus) comes in quite handy.

The trick here is to use small dithered clouds in a clear scene and then lower its density (somewhere between 2 to 12, depending on your needs). Add multiple cloud layers (it doesn't lower performance much since they're flat). This works better in the Spectral Atmosphere in my experience.

You can also mix with Spectral and other clouds that are NOT toned down like this. It makes for great complexity that adds that extra touch of realism to your scene.

Here are some examples of this low-density technique:






And especially this: --- this is an extreme closeup of the first image above. There are only 2 cloud layers (Cirrus, Dithered) at 5 and 9 density respectively.