K-Con front page image

[pieisexactlythree]

Out of curiosity, who designed the image that graces the front page of the Kumoricon website?  It looks as though somebody drew a 3D model of the convention hotel in Sketchup.  Who did that? Are there other architects in the house? 

[AnimeMatrix]

I *think* that image was done by Jeff Tyrill, our Director of Publicity.

However, there's the very good chance I could be completely wrong.

[MichaelEvans]

I *think* that image was done by Jeff Tyrill, our Director of Publicity.

However, there's the very good chance I could be completely wrong.

I recall that as being the case.  I think I remember him having a brief discussion, getting some ideas, and then after a short window he just sort of presented the main guts of that image.  A number of suggestions went in to how to improve it, but he figured out how to get several types of images to overlay in xhtml and poof, we had a nice full color rendered thing, a moving elevator, and the younger and older girls looking all kawaii in it (each of those being a separate layer).  All without using flash, which really makes me happy.

[JeffT]

Yes, you are correct. I did a 3D model in Rhino 3D (trial version, as it's expensive, but I used it in a high school class a long time ago), then parts in both Illustrator and Photoshop. I did a second version, which is on the back of the flyers, and in high-resolution, which fixes some of the rough bits and matches the details of the hotel much more closely in several places. This will be going online on the web site soon, possibly this weekend.

The 3D model is based on scale measurements mainly from Google Maps satellite view, but also using street view and some photos taken by Will, one of publicity staff.

It heavily relies on transparent PNGs so that the text and some other high-detail parts are lossless. The main bit is a JPG. There are hacks in place to make this work in IE6. I don't have moving elevators yet, but this is an idea for the future. We might limit excessive animation (or animation at all) to something like the info page, as it can be a distraction.

[MichaelEvans]

Which shows you how often I actually look at the image.  Yes it looks nice, but just about all the pages I go to I bookmark directly...  Oops, my bad.

[TomtheFanboy]

Since animation is trickier, maybe you could just have several images with the elevators in different positions and have randomization script to choose which position the elevators are in when you load your page. Sometimes there's no elevators, sometimes they're at the top, sometimes you can only see one, etc.

You could also save a bunch of trouble by just assigning each page it's own "elevator graphic" with the elevators in a different position. It wouldn't change on that pagebut as you moved from page to page throughout the website it would seem like the elevators were moving.

Heh heh, then I could assign special hidden interpretations to why you chose each elevator configurations based on the number value of the floors they are on (probably run through some sort of alpha-numeric matrix) and the content of the webpage that number was assigned to! 

[pieisexactlythree]

Interesting.  I've never heard of Rhino 3D.  Most architects use Google Sketchup for 3D modeling. 

[MichaelEvans]

Rhino 3D is (at least WAS, back when I was in 10th grade... geeze that's actually for-ever ago.) a NURBS modeling program.  It lets you define shapes by the intersection or removal of various geometric solids, but it also lets you stretch and pull and re-define where the resulting surfaces are.  In my opinion it's probably one of the most intuitive modeling programs you can find.  It also wasn't that expensive at the time (though I only used a trial version for one project for one class, since I wasn't a professional and didn't even have a job and thus no money to buy cool toys for a slow PC).

There may be better choices out there, but for someone doing a casual project or two, Rhino 3d is something I'd at least revisit, and is near the top of my list when you ask me about things off hand... easily so since the others I've heard about, 3dsmax, Maya, and a few others that are probably ancient or outdated by now (or so bloody expensive I no longer even hear about them), are quite outside of the 'casual' price range.

[JeffT]

I tried Blender first, since it was free, but got fed up after an hour getting nothing done, so went back to Rhino, which I knew was easy to use. There's still a learning curve, but everything in Rhino I needed to do I could figure out in a not enormous amount of time.

The Rhino trial has no time limit but is limited to 25 saves. I have used a little less than 10 of them so far. Maybe I should have bought it for the student price of $200 back when I was still a student. Not sure how often I'd use it, though.

[MichaelEvans]

On a completely unrelated note, that makes me wonder something.

What, technically, do them mean when they say 'Student' as in student license?

I think from what I recall that to keep using it they want you to graduate, but what if you've already graduated?  Or do you then have to get a renewed or different diploma?

Still, if you're brushing your self up, or if you already have the money, it may be more cost effective to do that through a CC and get craptons of student software then to buy them alone...

[JeffT]

The licensing terms are pretty good for educational copies:

http://www.rhino3d.com/eduproducts.htm

They still have it available. It's $200 instead of $1000, exactly the same in functionality as the commercial license, you can use it for commercial purposes even, and you can keep using it even if you no longer qualify to buy it originally.

[pieisexactlythree]

Sketchup's free.

[JeffT]

If Google wants to start making Windows software that attempts to comply with basic Windows standards--like not writing to Program Files under normal usage, and storing user data in proper per-user locations, I'd consider using it.

Meanwhile, much of their software

• Cannot be used except under a privileged user account
• If used under a privileged user account, that user's data from that software will be exposed to all users, which is a security vulnerability
• Creates user data will not be backed up
• Creates user data will not roam with that user's profile
• Creates user data that will be deleted (or is liable to being deleted) if the program is uninstalled

[pieisexactlythree]

And yet, it's the industry standard with all architects...  For one thing, it's capable of importing layers from CAD.

[JeffT]

The updated header image has been on the site for a little over a week now. I am wondering if anybody noticed the changes.