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Smooth Flame Motion

Here's a better example of the smooth motion interpolation just released with FLAM3 2.7b7.

Compare smooth and linear interpolation. Both of these animations use the same keyframes. In the linear one there are two angles or jolts in the motion, one at 2 seconds in and the other at 4, but in the smooth one there are none.

They were rendered with this frames 30 to 120 of this sequence with this command:

env begin=30 end=120 qs=0.1 ss=0.25 flam3-animate < cr3.flam3

You can set the interpolation from linear and angular to smooth Catmull-Rom splines on any keyframe. It then applies to the interpolation from that flame to the next one. You cannot apply smooth interpolation to the first or last keyframes of a sequence.

Thanks to Chris Ursitti for the genome used as the basis for this example.

sheep windows client 2.6.6b10 released

download the latest torrentized windows client, v2.6.6b10. release notes:

Reduced lag between sheep, Reduced BitTorrent processor usage, Fixed runtime error, Added all torrent's status to display

Under specific conditions, the bittorrent client would cause all other traffic on the machine to grind to a halt. The new torrent thread looks at all seeds on the client every 10 minutes to find the 3 worst-seeded torrents and seeds those only.

FLAM3 2.7b7

FLAM3 v2.7b7 available for download. This implements smooth interpolation with Catmull-Rom splines, as promised. Try rendering frames 100 to 300 of this sequence. Try changing the interpolation from "smooth" to "linear" on all the flames and render it again.

Golan Levin performs on Friday

Golan Levin, Sue Costabile and Laetitia Sonami are performing live at KinoTek, part of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Golan is at the forefront of artists expressing themselves through computer programming. In these interactive works, he uses sophisticated computer vision as well as more traditional composition to make an uncanny collaborator out of the computer. The machine watches Golan and follows along, elaborating and playing with him. The work is so polished the gears of the technology are hidden. Its retro and funny and our future all at the same time. Don't miss it.

Broken in Again

I returned to my home to find a window smashed and boarded up. Yes we had been broken into again. I can't even count how many times now. This time they got some DVD players. Not mine, so far I have been lucky. I must get out of here.

In case any of you wonder how I get by without a day job.... I live in the Tenderloin. On the way to Dorkbot I saw someone on the street screaming. After Dorkbot I was out getting a beer and I saw someone crying and bleeding in there, then the cops showed up.

Fuck!

Electric Sheep in Evolver

Evolver is a new magazine edited by Erik Davis and Daniel Pinchbeck and designed by Erika Rand. I just got Issue Zero in the mail and it looks great. There's an article by Mark Pesce Hyperpeople - what happens after we're all connected? that includes three full-page sheep.

coming to FLAM3: Catmull-Rom interpolation

At the behest of Thomas Williams i'm finally putting normal spline interpolation into FLAM3. It's not released yet but I thought I'd give you a preview. Compare these two clips: linear and smooth.

Dreams in Pittsburgh

This Friday April 21st the Dreams in High Fidelity will be shown at 5 Hot Metal Street on the Southside of Pittsburgh starting at 9pm. This is at the alumni and friends after-party of CS50, celebrating 50 years of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (where I got my PhD in 1997).

NPAR and Annecy

I'll be giving an invited lecture at the The 4th International Symposium on Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering (NPAR) on the technology of the Dreams in High Fidelity. The work itself will be on display all week in the associated International Animated Film Festival. It all happens June 5-10 in Annecy, France, on a lake in the Alps.

Dreams at the Rx

The Dreams in High Fidelity will be on display at the Rx Gallery for the coming week at least through the DorkBot on Wednesday April 26th.

FLAM3 2.7b5

FLAM3 v2.7b5 available for download:

rename XML attribute "estimator" to "estimator_radius". fix the progress callback. add use_mem envar. move palette database to external file. cleanup namespace. fix flam3-convert. add new variations blur, julian, and juliascope. add experimental color shifting via "shift" envar. supports finalxform. can read hex palette format. avoids the "square" that appears from NaNs. release as 2.7b5.

linux sheep client v2.6.6

download the latest linux client, v2.6.6. release notes:

Eliminate unreasonable static storage. When changing generations only delete sheep from the generation we are leaving. This allows keeping archives of sheep in the cache without fear of deletion.

v2.6.6b8 for windows

download the latest torrentized windows client from David McGrath. v2.6.6b8 release notes:

Faster display of first sheep.

sheep windows client 2.6.6b7 released

download the latest torrentized windows client from David McGrath. v2.6.6b7 release notes:

libtorrent now sends client version and ID in agent string, Improved Seed handling, Reduced lag between sheep, Improved dead torrent cleanup, Better error handling, Fixed low framerate if not downloading bug, Improved framerate on startup.

Dreams at ArtSFest Spectra Ball Tonight

Last minute announcement: the Dreams in High Fidelity will be shown in the ArtSFest Spectra Ball tonight (Saturday April 8th) at the Regency Center, Sutter @ Van Ness, 8pm-2am.

The Moro Crater Massacre

I was researching Mark Twain and learned of a truly horrific incident in American history: the 1906 Moro Crater Massacre, where 600-1500 Muslim villagers armed with knives and spears were attacked with machine guns and mortars. Why?

The Philippines were purchased from the Spanish after the Spanish-American war, the one started after highly suspect claims that the USS Maine was sabotaged were used by the Hearst newspapers to inflame the public. In fact, this episode is the origin of the term "yellow journalism".

Filipinos however had been fighting for their independence from the Spanish, and didn't cooperate with their new masters. They were declared "outlaw bandits" by the Americans, who sent in over 100,000 troops without a declaration of war. They insisted on calling it the "Philippine Insurrection" to legitimize it and avoid liability claims by veterans. US soldiers regularly wrote home bragging about committing atrocities. Villages were burned and civilians were placed in concentration camps. General Jacob H. Smith, a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre, ordered his troops to "Kill everyone over ten."

Vastly outgunned, it wasn't long before the Filipinos gave up on conventional war and turned to guerilla war, but by 1901 their leader was captured and the Christianized, Tagalog northern islands were "pacified". The Muslim southern islands however had never been conquered by the Spanish, and were politically separate. The Moros, as they were known, had been led by the Americans to believe they could retain their religion and autonomy, but that didn't last.

The Moro rebellion lasted for 10 years. The low-point was the Moro Crater Massacre, aka the Battle of Bud Dajo. Major General Leonard Wood led the assault with 540-790 solidiers. The Moros were holed up in a forfied volcano crater. Every single man woman and child was killed. Wood was named Army Chief of Staff a few years later, and eventually ran for the Republican Presidential nomination, winning New Hampshire but losing to Warren Harding. Ever heard of the Teapot Dome scandal? Did you know it was about oil?

Deja Vu. It just goes on and on. I have to quit this and get some real work done.... Oh yea, so what does this have to do with Mark Twain? He worked to oppose the annexation of the Philippines as vice-president of the Anti-imperialist League.