Culinary Masterpiece

Bright lights, photographer, stylist, agent, product....and food. Yes, today, in our very own home, we hosted a culinary photo shoot.

I REALLY enjoy photography, but every now and then I get to take pictures of something just challenging enough to keep me very excited.

A friend and former roommate (victim?) of mine is part of a business that cans and produces food storage products. I'll get you a link to their stuff soon; they have some really amazing stuff coming down the line. He came to me for promotional photography.

Anyway, we planned it all out in advance. We had the layouts, the positions, almost everything was thought out. We figured it would take nearly 3 full hours.

5 Additional hours later, we were finally finished. But the results were well worth it...and the food was pretty good too.

The images we took were for both their can labels and their website promotions. Here we present to you (with encouragement) a selection of my favorites of both.

Update: Our very first comment on this post has reminded me to let you know that not only are the products in the bowls real food, so is all the other food, none of that photo trickery for us. (Glue instead of milk? Surely milk is still a LITTLE cheaper?)

Test 2

The Question was asked me in regards to the last 3d test 'what is it for?'

I suppose I should explain the point. This is a small tool to allow people to view models that I have created with Blender 3D. Beyond that, it is an opportunity to show what I am capable of in regards to programs that I have no formal training in. In short, it's a brag. I am self taught in what I do. I am showing that I understand the capabilities of the programs, and that I can see ways to make them flexible in purpose.

So, here is the proof.

This may take a bit to load. It's 3 times the file size of the last test, but in regards to my personal attention to the construction, I only had to take 5 minutes to put it together. Also, Until it has loaded for several minutes, it will only play the file linearly. Basically, it will only go left. That's not my fault. It's your internet connections. It's the same navigation, so enjoy.

Test

I've been trying to do some new things with some of the programs I've been learning. I decided to share my first results with you. This is a combination of work from Blender3D and a trial version of Adobe Flash 7, which is 2 generations behind the current version of flash. This has taken a week to put together, but the nice thing about this project is the setup. Now all I have to do is take any model I have created, set up the camera and animation (this will take 15 minutes and then walk away while the computer renders (that can take days.) Then when it's done, 15 minutes is all it takes to make the flash now. The template is set, and off it goes.

So enjoy this little interactive toy just below, let me know how it works. Just use the arrows after it loads.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Keeping up with reality

So I thought I might show some of what I've been working on. After 2 1/2 years of playing with various ways to model water, I finally found one that works, and not just works, but works on a very simple level. Up to this point, I had been trying to model water as a three dimensional object.

Imagine a globe, with latitude and longitude lines. Each place where the lines interconnect you get a vertice (also known as an angle.) You can deform the globe by grabbing a vertice and pulling it out, down, any direction you want. However, each vertice you add to a model makes it both harder to deal with AND takes longer to compute a full picture.

The water in this animation is just a solid plane. Basically a piece of paper with only four verticies, one at each corner. But then you paint a series of light and dark shadows on the paper. In a 3d Program, the shadows can become anything. they can represent different levels of reflection, or light absorption, color, or in this case, height. Then you cause the shadows to move in one direction or another. The painted image adds about one percent of computation time compared to what it would if you doubled the number of vertices to eight.

In addition I have found ways to tell the 3d program that repetative objects, like carvings on the temple, are just duplicates of one object. The end result of all these changes is that it now takes 6 minutes to compute one frame of animation. It used to take nearly 4 hours. Here is one I did a couple months ago.

Keeping up with reality

I have, not including home improvements and gardening, 2 hobbies. As a statement of how much I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ I would like to say that both hobbies tend to gravitate towards the church, specifically the temples. However, both of my hobbies have disadvantages attached.

I like to be good at the things I like. Specifically I like to be best at the things I like. With my photography the problem is that there are so many people doing it. Therefore the disadvantage of taking Temple pictures would be my own pride, but to assuage my conscience I like to say that it's that so many people do it better than me.

Photography does help me with my other hobby, which is 3d Animation. Of Temples.

Reality.

Not Reality.

As far as I know, (and I have looked) the only folks doing this kind of temple art better than me are the folks designing the temples. But even this has disadvantages. Mainly, I can't keep up with reality. The Church keeps changing around the temple grounds, so when I go to take some reference photos, well, everything changes.

Take for example the changes recently finished at the Mount Timpanogos Temple. Six months ago when Paige and I got married there, the grounds were still in the same state they were when I started that model a bit over a year and a half ago. (I bounce between models, so I never really finish one). This week the temple finished with some major changes to the grounds, as follows.

Before

After

Actually, making it look like the real thing is where the challenge and fun come in. As I add the new features it often helps me get the proportions for features I already had in better aligned. Plus as someone who does a lot of wedding photography at Timp I'm really excited about the changes they have made. The patios are on both sides, though there are only new doors on the south side. But on Saturdays, when 6 wedding parties are trying to take pictures at the same time, there is a much better chance of getting a good setting.

Besides, it gives me a chance to show off my 3d skills.