Link from Toxi

I love 3D. I wish I had spent my time learning Maya instead of Flash. Greener grass and all. Part of the fascination is the ‘magic factor’. Not sure of the exact name of the phenominon or if it is a phenominon at all but I kinda remember the gist. Something about showing a calculator to a caveman and him thinking you are god. Or an evil spirit. Cant quite remember, but it was definitely something big. I am the caveman and really damn good 3D is the calculator. Ok, not the best metaphor. Or is it a simile. Sigh, I digress.

I love 3D, not because it is pretty or lush or convincing. I love it because I just have no idea how to do it. Maybe ‘wow factor’ would be more appropriate. I see good 3D rendering and I think “Wow! How the hell did they do that!” I think we all do this to some extent. The danger with this line of thinking is if you are unfamiliar with the tools, then you cannot fully appreciate the amount of work that was put into a piece. The first time someone showed me photoshop pre-packaged lens-flares, I probably said something like, “Oh my holy freakin god! How did you do that?! It looks just like I am looking directly into the sun. But without the squinting and oh jeez, did you just make it all ripply like the ocean! Wow!”

But it was just a single button press. The filter did all the work. I think we all know where the lens-flare effect ended up in our repetoire. Right at the bottom, just under page curl and spherize.

So, when I see something that makes me say ‘wow’, I sit back and think. Is this actually something to ‘wow’ at or is this just a prepackaged effect that anyone in-the-know would realize took all of 2 minutes. After seeing the 1st Ave Machine video, I could easily tell that this was something special.

The light-matching and camera tracking alone is impressive. Near perfect integration of realistic 3D into a filmed scene. I say ‘near’ only because something seemed off. I couldn’t say what, exactly. Cannot put my finger on it. I am going to go watch the videos again. Maybe I will figure it out. But man … Wow.