Ran across some interesting images built using Structure Synth and rendered in POV-Ray. Thought it’d be cool to try some myself. I was playing some of the demo scenes, exporting them to POV-Ray for a high quality render. The image looked like hair and made me think LEGO minifig! I’ll definitely need to try some other stuff.
Needless to say, one of the many reasons I started Reid’s For Fun was because of Yahoo!’s neutering of GeoCities: removal of ftp and a paltry 4.2MB hourly limit. It was, however, my friend in the hey day of Internet growth and I am saddened at its (un)timely demise.
Seems my lizard has been covered by some minor growth. I ran across this great ivy macro by hobBIT while hanging around the pov-ray.org forums and had to give it a try.
Between blogging about digital TV (it’s all over) and playing Halo 2 (finished campaign on legendary) I’ve been working on a new dynamic userbar. This time, I’m generating a weather userbar showing the current conditions and temperature.
Well, less than a day left and the old NTSC-M broadcast signal will almost be gone. I say almost because a few low power stations can still broadcast and I’m sure a few places will get by. But, by and large, it’s all over for our old analog receivers.
Well, two days left and I’m good to go for the digital TV conversion.
Okay, Safari 4 is out, showed up in my update today. I was a bit surprised as I thought I already had 4 installed, but it didn’t take more than a quick peek at my existing Safari to realize it was the non-beta version. Like a kid opening a present, I quickly cut out of what I was doing and hit the Install button. A short time later, I was ready to load the latest experience. That was when disappointment set in.
I’m still playing around with recreating old LEGO models. I spent time today modeling more road plates with the intention of creating a large town image. Unfortunately, after finishing the road plates, I got side tracked on completing the old space crater plate that for me, at the time, was a gray baseplate.
I have radiosity fever of late, converting or creating a number of new LEGO images utilizing POV-Ray 3.7 beta. Below are two new renders.
This is a “sort-of” recreation of the original cow image with the “Moo!” bubble. Unlike the original, this is a true brick cow and I’ve tried to make it more “realistic” then the original “flat” and shiny version. I had added the bubble with Paint Shop Pro on the first version. This time, I’m using CSG to do the same thing all in POV-Ray. Enjoy!
I ran across some interesting Iterative Imaging Code that creates interesting fractal like graphics using POV-Ray. Basically, it creates the image and then uses that image to create the next one.
Ran across this really interesting LEGO set and I just “had” to render it. I needed to model a few parts I didn’t have in my library. I also threw it into the same background I used on one of my Fire Truck renders. I might change the scene a bit to better show the texture on the front slope. In all not bad for a first render.
Spent some time last weekend doing some additional renders using the latest 3.7 beta.
I ran across this wonderful little macro by Jaime Vives Piquere to do Pseudo-HDRI lighting. I ran the macro with both POV-Ray 3.6 and 3.7 beta 31. I actually liked the 3.7 better. However, the image map I used is a bit lower resolution then I would like causing the pixilation in the background.
Will wonders never cease! Looks like the coupons opened up again and those of us that let our coupons expire can try again! Yeah! I’ve ordered another at https://www.dtv2009.gov/.
Well, the original date (Feb 17th) has come and gone and my Userbar is showing 33 days past. Since the conversion has been delayed till June 12, I thought I’d better update my application for those still brave enough to use it.
I’ve been updating my LEGO Renders in POV-Ray and one of the ones I recently “fixed” is Horses.
If you are like me and can’t stand to see the default “missing album art” icon in your iTunes or iPod Cover Flow — you know who you are — then I have a place for you.
I was looking over my Lorenz Attractor images and wondered how the spiral would look close-up. So, I created another version looking down on the spiral with the tendrils coming up from the it. To make it stand out from the others, I changed the sphere colors to blue and added some filtered transparency to them. It makes them look a bit like beads of glass.
I’ve been a lurker on deviantART for awhile now and decided to take the plunge and upload some of my ray traced images there. Since I tend to use the same alias at all my sites, you can now catch SafePit on deviantART. Normally I use Flickr for images, but since I tend to head over to deviantART for interesting wallpaper, I thought it worth the effort to join. I even uploaded a new version of my Snowman.
It seemed to take me forever lately, but finally made it to 30K. I blame my Halo 3 addiction to the lack of improvement in my gamer score. It seems silly tracking this stuff, but it is fun tracking each of these 5K milestones. It is also interesting looking back over the last few years and see what I’ve been playing and what gamer picture I was using. I’m obviously using NXE’s avatars now. Will be interesting to see if I bother updating it. Next up, 35,000. I wonder how long that will take?
A few years back, I started to convert some of my old ZX81 programs so they could be use in various ZX81 emulators. That project was mostly my way of trying to preserve some printouts from my now faded programs. I was curious if I there was a way to emulate those programs in a web site. Surprisingly, the answer is yes!
Okay, let’s see how old you really are. Anyone remember these trading cards from ’78 back when the “original” Battlestar Galactica aired. I was cleaning out the attic and found this in a bag with some of my other childhood memories. I don’t remember keeping this card, but it sure is interesting to look back and remember a different time. Hard to believe this was issued thirty years ago. I swear, it was yesterday. Wasn’t it?
I’ve blogged about Photosynth before; however, that was when it was still a preview technology. Photosynth is now out for the general public to use.
So, I broke down and bought a new laptop last weekend. No, I didn’t buy an Apple. I just couldn’t see myself shelling out twice as much money for half the computing power. I purchased one on sale with similar specs, if not the same OS and “coolness” factor. I was able to transfer most of my settings making it much easier to get up and running. It did take me a bit to get the “crapware” uninstalled. However, it did provide me the opportunity to try out some new software.