This is a seadragon viewer available from none other than Microsoft (click the full screen icon, it’s cool). Their R&D guys are also amazing. Gosh.. that’s a lot of amazings..

Skyboxes are six images that are mapped onto a cube that follows the 3D camera around in a realtime 3D space.  The skybox object is drawn first and then everything else is drawn on top of it.  It simulates a big giant sky.

I’ll post a tutorial in a while, I need to get these done first:

Me: home from a long day.
Deb and the Girls™: sitting in the living room watching some crappy chick flick.
Me: I think I’ll watch some olympics video on the NBC site…
NBC: You don’t have the right version of Silverlight.
Silverlight: Do you wanna?
Mac: Hey!  Are you sure?
Silverlight: Well?  Do you wanna?
Silverlight: Where do you want it?
Silverlight: Are you sure?
Mac: Gimme the password.
Silverlight: Click this.
NBC: Still can’t play your video.
Me: Refresh.
NBC: Loading Video!
Video: <volume=”10x”> AD AD AD AD AD AD AD!!! </volume=”10x”>
Video: Crappy slideshow with telephone conversation and blurry B-Roll!!
NBC: Here’s three pop-behind ads for ya!

Me: …

How can they think that I’ll ever come back?

This is my morning at the Aquarium:

Get it at the App Store.

Now with Fins!  Woo!

Creepy little fish.

Modeled in Silo3D, textured and rendered in Maya, tweaked in Photoshop.

It’s been suggested that I include the text of this character concept so here ya go!

Kierie

She is a slight girl in her early twenties.  Some Caucasian and Asian mixed with Pacific Islander and South American Native.  Above average intelligence and an almost spooky way with animals – they trust her.  Extremely lithe and physically fit but not very big, she sprints and jumps out of harms way instead of bashing through it.

She comes from a bunker in the desert where her stratospherically wealthy ancestors, the Chay-Nee, stockpiled goods and renewable technologies against what they knew was coming.  She doesn’t know this, but while they were not the architects of the apocalypse, they share a large amount of the blame for it.

The roof of this bunker has been open to the sky for the past 100 years since the automatic systems kicked on and let the People out.  Until this “Awakening” moment, the People had been fed and housed by an automatic system of hydroponics and hidden vats of genetically modified growing muscle tissue.  One year after the roof opened, all the systems shut down, throwing the People into a long period of chaos and then finally tribalism.  They use the remnants of technology of the past in shamanistic ritual and have a meme of a “final use of technology” that will be used at the end of times.

She is armed.  All of the People are hunters and farmers.  Her weapons of choice are two short machete’s that she wear on the outside of each thigh.

While out hunting, a band of nomadic raiders found her hunting party.  Seven of the People against thirty raiders, they killed the raiders and hung their carcasses in a circle around their camp.  That night, while they slept, a thundering wind and bright lights came from the darkness.  Everyone was killed but Kierie.  She awakes in a strange forest, completely alone and has been wandering and hunting for two months – trying to find her way back to the Bunker.

Darren Naish, Tetrapod PHD fires off a really interesting scientists view of the creatures of the planet Pandora from James Cameron’s Avatar.