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The main character of The Autiton Archives™, NineOh™ (0090™),
has been evolving over many
years, spurred on by the evolution of computer animation
technology itself from 2D to 3D.
Above are LightWave 9.5 nodal texture studies of the NineOh™ (0090™)
3D character model, version 3.5. Click an image or thumbnail to
view a full size sample. Below are various samples from different
stages during the long and varied research and development of the
3D character, 0090.
Above are a few model studies of portions of the new 0090 model
that I’ve redesigned in modo 2.03. The character model will
be rigged, textured and animated in LightWave 9.3. Click an image
or thumbnail
to view
a full size
image.
The original version 1.0 character models were designed
back in 1998 in form-Z
for limited animation and would need an update for
more advanced animation. In 2005 I imported the old
form-Z 0090 model into modo 1.0.3 where I rebuilt
it using all quad-based subpatch meshes as seen in
the screen grabs below. I then brought the new model
into LightWave 3D 8.5 where I textured, lit and rendered
additional tests with FPrime 2 as seen above.
BlastOff! An Award-winning 3D Animated Short Film
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After the successful 0090 version
2.0 render tests
and building a Mac
OS X based LightWave 3D render farm at DreamLight
for a number of 3D
commercial projects, it was time
to see if the technology had finally matured
enough to
produce the Autiton Archives. So in
2006 I created BlastOff!, an
award-winning 3D animated short film to test
the viability of producing a 3D animated short
film, from concept to completion including Web
publishing, with current off-the-shelf technology. BlastOff! was
a successful dry-run test for the actual Autiton
Archives series.
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In 1998 I designed and built the first two
Autitons, intelligent interactive 3D characters named 0090
and 03BD.
Based upon my previous 3D character named 2K (below in the
next section),
I designed
them with
floating parts that could be pre-rendered and individually
controlled through object oriented
programming in Macromedia Director. I built the characters
in Form-Z
using
metaballs for the organic elements and spline cages for the
geometric
components. I did the texturing, lighting, animation and rendering
in Electric Image 2.75. Above are samples of the first rough
character animation walk cycle tests.
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I created preliminary character design
sketches on the Macintosh with a
pressure
sensitive stylus on a Kurta drawing tablet in Fractal Painter.
These early character animation and rendering tests
indicated that the Autiton Archives 3D animated series
wouldn’t yet be feasible to produce with
off-the-shelf
technology
currently available at the time. |
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Quipples: The Internet Game Show of Satirical Riddles
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In the mean time I decided to spin off a test
project, Quipples – The
Internet Game Show of Satirical Riddles, as a proof of concept for the Autiton
technology I had developed for simulating intelligence
in interactive 3D characters using object oriented programming.
I pre-rendered all the necessary character animation pieces
in Electric Image 2.75, rendered the 3D communicator interface
elements in LightWave 3D 5.6 and programmed it all together
in Macromedia Director 7’s object oriented Lingo. I posted
Quipples
live
online in 2001.
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This
image is available on DreamLight Merchandise!
In 1997 I created the above series of 3D scene
tests with an early 3D character named
2K – The First Microbot. I used Form-Z for modeling
and Electric Image 2.75 for texturing, lighting and rendering. |
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I had originally designed 2K
back in 1991 using Swivel 3D to build the model and Mac Renderman
for
rendering the test image at left. I designed 2K as a simple
3D character intended for interactive animation in Macromind
Director. I designed 2K with floating parts that could be
pre-rendered and individually controlled through programming
in Director’s object oriented programming language
Lingo through a method called factories at the time.
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2K seated directly behind the computer screen and play a
game
on the screen as if the surface of the screen were simply
a transparent piece of glass between 2K and the user. After
initial testing however I soon realized that the technology
at the time wouldn’t
yet be quite powerful enough to play back sophisticated
interactive 3D character animation, at least until I later
revisited the concept with the Quipples
project mentioned previously.
DreamLight Verttice: An Award-winning Game of Skill & Strategy
I
decided to spin off the game project by itself and we created
DreamLight
Verttice™ v1.0
An Award-winning Game of Skill & Strategy in
Macromedia Director 3. We released it as a shareware game
for download in 1993 on early computer networks
including
Compuserve, Delphi and GEnie. |
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Then in early 1995 I rewrote DreamLight
Verttice v2.0 in Macromedia Director 4 while I was beta
testing Macromedia’s
new Shockwave technology for the Internet. I released the
Shockwave version of DreamLight Verttice 2.0 on
the Web as one of the
very first interactive Shockwave games on the Internet as
soon as Macromedia officially released Shockwave publicly. In
2000 I rewrote DreamLight Verttice v3 once again
in Macromedia Director 7 to enable it to continue playing
with the current
Shockwave player and make it cross platform. |
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This
image is available on DreamLight Merchandise!
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As soon as I founded DreamLight in 1987,
I set about designing a couple of 2D characters – Impith™ and
Oogles™ – for
a potential 2D digitally animated series named Deseden™.
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I painted the original black & white
bitmapped character sketches in MacPaint and ComicWorks
on a
Macintosh Plus using a Summagraphics drawing
tablet and stylus. I then
created 2D PostScript illustrations with Adobe
Illustrator 1.1 and some simple animation tests in Macromind
VideoWorks the precursor to Macromedia Director.
I created a few greeting cards with the characters from
1987-1988 and did some early interactive multimedia
tests
using Apple HyperCard in 1989-1990.
0090
and 03BD are modern 3D characters whose evolution
can be traced all the way back to these original 2D characters. |
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 DreamLight
Interactive Releases New ScreamerNet UB Launcher
DLI_SNUB-Launcher™ is
an XCode Aqua GUI front end to interactively configure and launch
multiple LightWave 9.3-10 ScreamerNet UB instances for standalone,
batch and network rendering. Download
your copy today!
Created by the author of Mastering
LightWave ScreamerNet Rendering for Mac OS X, Michael Scaramozzino
- LightWave
3D Artist Profile.
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 "CLICK to view full character still rendering.")
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 "Click to View Larger Image of 0090 & 03BD")
 "Click to View Character Design Sketches.")
 "Click to view the first rendering of 2K in Mac Renderman from 1991.")
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