A Blender visualization

So this is what has been keeping me busy: “OceanViz” is a realtime visualization application running on Blender 2.49a’s build-in game engine.  I, along with a few other artists, created this visualization as part of a research project at the University of British Columbia’s Fisheries Centre in Canada.

Have I been promoting this project to death?  Definitely.  I talked about it in Amsterdam, in Vancouver, online, and pretty much everywhere I get a chance.  But is this cool?  You bet:

View OceanViz in  HD

This video is captured in a rush, I did not even attempt to hide all the debugging cubes or the non-animated species floating around in the scene.  But apart from all that, I am quiet happy with where we are with this project already.  Because what we build is a rather scientific visualization, and not a screensaver, all the fishes are dynamically populated by Python, using a series of XML files for biomass data.  So while it looks quite simple, there is a lot of background coding going on to make it all happen.

2009
06/27
POSTED BY
mike pan
2 comments

Hello World

I am a horrible person.  I would publish stuff (sometimes even useful stuff!) on my website, build up links, and then 6 month later wipe out everything with a ‘website redesign’.  Every since the redesign, I’ve been getting emails requesting files, information, or how-to’s, some of the letters are impressive in length.  Personally when I encounter a website that returns 404, I hit the back space as fast as possible and carry right on, writing well composed emails requesting content from the site author is just so genuinely human that I can’t stand not answering them.

So, my minimalist my portfolio stays, and this blog is created to refill that information void.  Don’t count on too much updates though.  If you need some things to pass the time, I frequent these website:

Blender news: blendernation.com

A software engineer’s insights: codinghorror.com

Inspirational short talks: ted.com

Amazing photo-journalism: boston.com/bigpicture

xkcd needs no introduction: xkcd.com

You think your IT job sucks: thedailywtf.com

2009
06/26
POSTED BY
mike pan
2 comments