Research – Alex Furer

BabylonJS

I have always looked for possibilities to display 3D content on the web. Many authoring software packages or plugins came and died. Now there’s a new initiative that looks very promising. Modern, sexy (yes, I still use that description, sue me!), easy, flexible and just cool.

It’s called BabylonJS and you can find all information about it at their website.

Together with Blender3, the Blender BabylonJS Export plugin and the baking plugin BakeTools one is up and running very fast. Here’s a good tutorial on how to export from Blender using this plugin. I also just found this here. I will give it a try on my next run at this.

It’s then very convenient to load the exported scene into the BabylonJS sandbox where textures can be loaded or replaced and the materials can be tweaked. Plus there’s a lot more settings that can be set. Like how far down the user can tilt the camera, or add a dedicated environment and much more. And the Java capabilities of the Framework the sky is the limit 🙂

Also there’s a WordPress plugin to display your models on your website, stored local or in the cloud! Actually there is two plugins. More about them here.

Example; ArtRoom 2022 (revived)

I revived a project I did with Vera Liechti many years ago. We entered an exhibition contest and wanted to present Vera’s oil paintings interactively. Meaning we built in a stereo camera (something like a kinect) and the visitors could interact with the artwork by moving their body. The visitor could then step on a button and the version of Vera’s painting would have been printed and the visitor could take that print home. Here’s the PDF we submitted. Unfortunately we were not accepted. We had a working prototype. Here’s the previz data from then now reworked in Blender and exported to Babylon JS.

Blender «BakingTool» Addon

While getting nice results with the built-in baking in Blender, There’s no way to denoise the renders while rendering. That’s not a biggie, as the compositor can easily be used to denoise the results.

But the baking is sorta cumbersome and very manual. So I was looking for a solution that would automate this a bit. First I tried this GitHub project called «Lightmapper«. But even after hours of testing, running various Blender versions etc. I simply did not get any images out of it. It rendered for 0.0 or 0.01 seconds and nothing. I am sure I missed something, but as it looks like a cool solution. Give it a try! Projects like those are not priceless because they’re free, but many times they combine the best of many commercial tools. But there’s always the «which version of host app to run with which version of the code» problem. Which is not the case with commercial products.

So I found the apparently most well known Blender baking tool called «Baketool«. Bought it, installed it, played with it, consulted their documentation and watched a video or two and I was up and running and it rendered images in no time.

While there’s more than «Baketools» and the Github project «Lightmapper», I am happy with my purchase of «Blendtools». I found my list here. Give it whirl, you might find something that suits you.

Final bake in Blender (left) and the in the BabylonJS Sandbox (right)

Side note: I added a point light for more illumination than just from the neon tubes with an emissive material. And also a spot light to bake the figure.

Process

The process is very easy with this addon.

Create a new Job
Decide the baking mode (Individual or Atlas & Target)
Setup mode, save path, Image format and render device
UV settings (Good at default)
Then add the object you want to bake
Choose the render passes
Hit «Bake»

My setup

Created a job called «ArtRoom-2022_REGULAR»
Chose to bake individual surfaces to texture
Enabled «Expert» because it has more options
Set path, chose PNG and CPU (with my 1060 there’s not much difference to CPU…)
Added all the meshes I want to bake
Setup AO and Diffuse pass to be rendered (more samples on AO for less noisiness)

Photoshop – NOT saving metadata, a bug ?!?

Working on my 360 pano workflow I noticed that Photoshop is not saving some metadata with the image. There’s something called «maker notes» in the metadata which, in the case of the RICOH Theta Z1 contains the accelerometer data. This data is needed by PTGui to stitch the panorama in the correct horizon alignment. In other words the data contains the rotation of the camera in real world.

This was a real bummer which I had to fix manually until Adobe fixes this. I also tried to use the Topaz Denoise AI and the Topaz Gigapixel AI as standalone. But it turns out that Gigapixel AI is also not saving that particular metadata. Denoise does… Off course, being who I am, I wrote a ticket to TopasLabs. At this time I am still waiting for an answer…

So, knowing a little bit about scripting, not the actual craft, but cobbling together things that make what I want it to do.

Whoever works with digital photography probably knows about the ExifTools by Phil Harvey. The ExifTools can also be run in commandline and thankfully I found this page which let me create the following workflow to copy the metadata form one image to another. In my case between step 5 and 6 from this workflow.

Prerequisite

You will need the ExifTools installed anywhere on your computer
Get it here: https://exiftool.org/
In my case this is at: C:\TOOLS\ExifTool\exiftool.exe
But you can install it wherever you want to.
Check the path in the script to the ExifTools installation directory
Place the script wherever you want it to be

Download Script

DISCLAIMER: YOU ARE DOWNLOADING AND RUNNING THIS ON YOUR OWN RISK.
I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY WHEN IT DESTROYS YOUR SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE!

Copy metadata

Run the script either in a shell, or by double clicking it
Drag the source file containing the metadata you want to copy
Drag the target file to which the metadata should be copied to
Make your choice at the question and then hit enter.
«y» for yes
«c» for cancel
«r» to start over

Institute of Pharmacology «GH-Receptor»

This is an animation about growth hormone receptor docking and the effect of Pegvisomant and antibodies.

This was the first animation I did in Blender. Shoutout to Joseph Manion which is running the youtube channel CG Figures for providing the basic setup for the Phospholipid Bilayers!

From Autumn 2019 until Summer 2021 I worked in the research group of Prof. Stephan von Gunten at the «Institute of Pharmacology» at the University of Bern, Bern Switzerland, as a 3D instructor and animator.

Institute of Pharmacology «T-Cell Animation»

This is an animation showing a T-Cell that connects to a cell and is able to discharge when the cell is not covered with sugar crystals but fails if the cell is completely covered.

Institute of Pharmacology «Saccharification»

This is an animation showing a T-Cell that connects to a cell and is able to discharge when the cell is not covered with sugar crystals but fails if the cell is completely covered.

Institute of Pharmacology «Virus Animation»

This is an animation about the process of a virus docking to a cell, entering the cell and getting the cell to replicate the virus multiple times and the replicated viruses exiting the cell.

LEGO Research Showreel 1995 – 1998

This is where it all started…

This video is from the time at LEGO (1995 to 1998) and shows work Dan and I were involved in during this time. It documents what was happening in respect to human interaction in 3D space at LEGO and goes all the way to real time movie making with digital LEGO. It visualizes the vision we carry when we create a product like Xaelander for Motion4U.

The very first bit of the video shows an early prototype that was realized in collaboration with David Small which was at MIT at this point. As soon as the gentlemen in the yellow suit pops up you’re looking at Scott from Multigen that uses SmartScene. In the second part of the video there is footage from the castle demo of the WIZard group at SPU Darwin (actual name of the demo was «Batlord’s Castle»). In there you will also see Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen the owner of the LEGO Group (gentleman in the blue-shirt with tie and the VR headset).

So if you’re in for the short read, watch the vid, follow the links above and check out what you can get out of this today. If you care about background, history and tech-babble … keep on reading 🙂

LEGO Research Showreel 1995 – 1998 weiterlesen

iRubber – The next greatest thing after the iBed??

… maybe not

Google Wave

Watched the video of the new technology Google announced. This looks really interesting. I love the part about the history in emails and chat. How many times did you have to search through email, sms, skype chat history etc. to find that one statement of somebody or a link to something…

Google Wave will keep track for everybody and everything. Let’s hope the whole conspiracy theory stuff is a myth tho 🙂

Google Wave presentation
Google Wave Wiki (English)
Google Wave Wiki (German)
In depth information on Google Wave

Full Frame Studios goes Twitter

Opened a Twitter account. Check it out

Microsoft Natal

Just a short note on this «new» technology.

Microsoft has started to attack the Wii from Nintendo with the project Natal. Read More…

I remember seeing a video that showed someone sword fighting with his finger and of course I saw Bill Gates Talking at the D5 conference in 2007 about his «last» vision for Microsoft is in Vision Programming.

quote: «So 3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before. And we can take that into this communications world where the PC is playing a much more central role, kind of taking over what was the PBX, sort of one of the last mainframes in the business environment. That will be a big change that will come to it. And as we get natural input, that will cause a change. … Software is doing vision and so, you know, imagine a game machine where you’re just going to pick up the bat and swing it or the tennis racket and swing it.»

Natal is the first device that will actually release that does marker less tracking in an affordable price range. Of course there was the Z-Cam from 3DV, but now that Natal has surfaced it’s clear why Microsoft has bought them up.

I hope that their developers come up with more creative ways to use the motion interaction as some developers do for the Wii.

Google released open-source 3D API for the web

Could this be the one that changes the game? Google has released a 3D API, Quote by Google: «O3D is an open-source web API for creating rich, interactive 3D applications in the browser. This API is shared at an early stage as part of a conversation with the broader developer community about establishing an open web standard for 3D graphics.»

LEGO – squash and stretch to the ugly…

I wrote up an article one day because I am constantly getting annoyed by the ignorance of producers and animators towards the legacy of Godtfred Kirk Christiansen the son of the founder of the LEGO Group. To me the LEGO figure is molded with rigid plastic. Bringing those figures to live by deforming them destroys the look and feel. Read it here…

Now this Intro page to the upcoming LEGO 3D Digital Universe is probably the worst I have ever seen. Watch the mini figure in red dancing and bowing, errrmm… hitting his head to the floor. And mind the broken geometry on the arm when he’s waving…

Here’s a screencapture (1.8 MB QuickTime movie) of the LEGO Universe Intro (In case it changed…)

Here’s a more elaborate 3rd party article on the LEGO Universe followed by a very good comment written by a fellow co-worker at SPU Darwin and a dear friend of mine Christian Greuel. (NOTE: This is coming from the web archive website. Please be patient, it will load for a while.)

P.S. This text, nor any text on this web site are related, recognized or endorsed by/to the Company «LEGO® Group». LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies.

Lightwave Test

After doing the last watch animation in Lightwave I did a small test in Lightwave at home. I think Lightwave is a very good software. The main reson for me to get into Lightwave tho is that it has this very impressive plugin renderer that really blew my mind.

I tempted to underestimate anything else than Maya but I had to learn a lesson. Once you overcome the horrible interface you will meet a lot of stability, expandability and ease of use.

This is just a stupid test but the main thing for me was to do an outdoor scene using fPrime.

3D Internet – The future?

What if a website would be completly in 3D? I made the experiment and created this test using the X3D modeling package called Vizx3D. Media Machines (Tony Parisi) acquired Vizx3D and released later an application called Studio3D based on X3D.

~~You will need the newest installer to play this experiment. Get it here. Vivaty has taken over from Media Machines and has finally developed a plugin that also works in FireFox.~~

Update January 2016: Vivaty was bought up by Microsoft and their products and gallery were discontinued. More info also here. The player is now downloadable as part of this package.

Note: If you install the «SetupFluxPlayerStudio2-1.exe» from this package it will install the Flux Studio 2.1 and the Flux Player. Flux Studio is an interactive X3D authoring tool.

Warning: Although the Flux Player install will crash and report that FireFox is open and the plugin cannot be installed, the player will be installed. You can find it in the start menu under «Media Machines, Inc». I can confirm that it runs on Windows 7.

If you run it you can then open the URL: http://fullframestudios.ch/AREA/X3D/files/index_04.x3d to see the demo I did 8 years ago.

Be aware, this is completely experimental and I don’t take responsibility if it crashes your computer.

My basic idea was to transport the regular experience of browsing a website into 3D space plus add a little more excitement.

X3D_Images_01

3D Internet – The future? weiterlesen