notions

a few different notions floating around my head today...

i have thus far made the magnificent longcat logo that floopy made for me into a 3d shape in blender...

and what i want to do, is to make an animation/film, in which the camera floats around the 3D logo before plunging into one of the eyes, coming to rest, then a hatch opens in the side of the passageway and i beckon the camera into the hatch, the room beyond is my room with my rhodes, piano and such...

although it might be better if balthazara was the one popping out of the hatch...

and actually, i went round to see john sinclair yseterday, his computer is being odd and i picked it up and took it to floopy who had a look at it...

the house john was in is up in woodgreen - 5 minutes away on my bike - it's the home of D, who i really hope to get in an improvisation one day soon, also his two kids stay there with him half the time, it's the london home of john and it's soon to be headpress's office, headpress under whose name i bought my hammond organ, but who are a book publishers...

D took me up to the roof room and there's a lovely view south, in the direction of this flat, and if i took a picture of that view, put the longcat 3D logo in amongst it somehow...?

so, on to the techy side of it and all those who wish to not be geeky turn away now please...

so, a little internet research showed me how to easily export from google sketchup into blender, so i can make things in sketchup which i find quite easy, such as buildings... simple buildings of course, nothing too fancy at this stage,

maybe the view from D's house is cut out as a bezier curve, imported into blender, the bezier curve becomes a mesh and it's extruded, exactly how i did the longcat logo,

the picture itself then put on the front of the shape, (something i haven't yet done but it shouldn't be too hard?)

and now i think about it, i could cut out a few different shapes from the picture, several different horizons, then create a kind of staircase effect, looking straight at it it would look like the picture, but as you travelled over it, different parts of it would become visible...

hmmm, makes me want to go over there right now and take a picture...

anyway, a combination of this and sketchup versions of some kind of town in front and behind the longcat logo would be nice...

then flying around the logo is done in blender although i don't yet know how to do it,

then the chroma keying, green screen as it used to be, get a solid sheet and colour it accordingly, (whichever colour is least in either me or balthazara), put a hatch into the sheet, put the sheet at the right angle, camera on the other side, video me opening the hatching and beckoning,

i also thought about using the colour black as the chroma key colour, putting the camera in the loft in compete darkness, pointing at the hatch, then i open the hatch and appear.. easier... i might try it...?

anyway, having exported the blender movie into vegas, chroma key, or maybe just use the bezier mask to cut out the right shape, but it moves of course... hmmm...

so techy thoughts over...

that's what's swimming around my head at the moment,

we watched the first episode of GBH just now and i have the rest waiting for us, although each episode is over an hour and i'm not convinced dinah is really up for it... we'll see...

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