CG Water Splashes

This afternoon I played around with creating large scale CG water splashes using compositing tricks. The results are below...

Background Plate

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CG Splash Element

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Final Composite

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For a more in depth rundown of how I created this effect, head over to the CGTalk Particle Flow Discussion Thread

As a side note, today is my 3rd wedding anniversary to my wonderful wife Sarah. I love her very much, and I look forward to the many more years we will spend together.

"The Menagerie Part II"

So, tonight Jonathan, Sarah, and I finally got to watch the Menagerie Parts I&II at our local theater. You can refer to "The Menagerie Part I" (blog) to read about how Tuesday night's attempt to watch it got me a speeding ticket.

I must say, it was a great time. There was even a guy there fully decked out in a 60s Starfleet uniform.

CBS Digital has done a great job cleaning up the old camera negatives, and making the episodes look sharp and colorful. The new CG effects, most notably, the all new digital U.S.S. Enterprise looked great. Very nice job all around.




Great night. We all had lots of fun. And this time, the showing wasn't canceled, and I didn't get a speeding ticket.

"The Menagerie Part I" (A.K.A. How Star Trek Got Me My First Speeding Ticket)

So, last night theaters across the world showed a Star Trek Remastered episode to promote their new HD-DVD release of Star Trek. The episode shown was "The Menagerie".

I learned about this showing a month or so ago. Sarah and I made plans to attend the screening, with our good friend Jonathan, on November 13th at 10:30pm.

Why Jonathan agreed to go is beyond me, because he claims to hate Star Trek. However, in the past year, he has watched all 10 Star Trek feature films, numerous episodes of TOS, TNG, and VOY. He has even admitted that he has watched episodes of VOY on his own. He's obviously a closet Trekkie. Maybe one day he will "come out".

Anyway, on to the story. Because of work, I knew that I would miss the first 15 minutes or so of "The Menagerie" showing, because it started at 10:30p.m., and I don't get off work until 10:33p.m. The first 30 minutes, however, was a behind the scenes look at the Remastered episodes, and so I knew I wouldn't miss any of the actual episode.

Around 2:30 p.m., Sarah goes to the theater and buys tickets for herself, Jonathan, and me. The theater lady asks her if we are going to the 10:30p.m. Star Trek, and Sarah says "yes". The theater is expecting alot of Trekkies to attend at that time.

So, Sarah and I spend a whole day at work, looking forward to seeing the episode, as it's a diversion from the monotony of my daily routine. Obviously, Jonathan spent the whole day dreading it, as he won't admit he likes Star Trek.

Anyway, 10:33 rolls around, and we head out in a hurry to get to the theater, which is about 10 minutes away. So with Jonathan, Sarah, and I loaded up in the car, we drive fast down the parkway toward the theater. The speed limit is 50, but I know I hit probably 72 or so.



As I'm peaking at about 70, I came over a large hill, and right as I reach the peak, I see a police car sitting on the side of the road. As soon as I pass him, he jumps on the parkway right behind me. I knew he was after me. He throws on his lights, and I pull over.

The officer walks up, and asks me for my license and proof of insurance. Then he walks back to his cruiser to run my info. He takes a good while, I'd say 8-10 minutes before he comes back. At this point, I am very late for the screening of Star Trek. When the officer comes back, he hands me a speeding ticket for doing 67 in a 50. The first ticket I have ever gotten.

At the age of 24, my first I got my first speeding ticket, all because of Star Trek.

So anyway, after the officer let me go, I continue on to the theater, and at this point, I am almost 30 minutes late, and I know that the episode starts at 30 minutes in. I am quite frustrated at this point, because I have a speeding ticket, and I am missing the event I waited all day for.

Jonathan, Sarah, and I get to the theater, and run inside to get a seat. As we walk in, a theater worker asks us what we are there for, because all screens have already started showing. We explain to her that we are there to see Star Trek, but are just a bit late.

She then informs us that the 10:30 showing was canceled. We couldn't believe it. Why would they cancel just mere hours before the showing? It didn't make sense. Anyway, we got a refund, and free passes to our next movie. We are going to try for the Thursday night screening instead.

So there you have it. I had rushed to the theater, got an expensive speeding ticket, all for nothing. We Trekkies sometimes have to pay the price of social awkwardness, but never once did I think Star Trek would make me pay the price of a speeding ticket.

"The Great Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Size/Taste Differential Experiment"

Everyone loves Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. They are delicious. The chocolate, the peanut butter...mmm, what a combination. In fact, it appears that the combination is in fact the secret to the success.

My friend Jonathan and I have agreed on something about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It seems that the smaller, miniature cups, seem to taste the best. Don't get me wrong, they are all good, but the small cups seem to be far superior to the normal sized cups. Then they released the "Reese's Big Cup" and these tasted even more inferior than the normal sized cups.

The larger the peanut butter cup, we found, the more unfavorable (or unflavorable) the product became. How could this be possible? In our society of supersizing, isn't bigger better? You would think more chocolate and more peanut butter equals more taste. I won't lie, this paradox troubled Jonathan and I for many a year.

So in the name of science, Jonathan and I set out to find the answer. Thus began, "The Great Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Size/Taste Differential Experiment." Also known as the "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Experiment" for short. Like any good experiment, first we needed a hypothesis. Jonathan and I bounced around many theories as to why the smaller Reese's cups tasted better than the larger cups. After thinking about it for a while, we came to the conclusion that the chocolate to peanut butter ratio in the miniature cups must be the most favorable (or flavorable) ...this would be our hypothesis.

However, is there a higher chocolate than peanut butter ratio in miniature cups? Is it a higher peanut butter to chocolate ratio? 50/50? These quesitons would form the basis of our experiment. We called this "yummy ratio" or as we will refer to it further in this writing, the "yummatio."

So first we needed many specimens. We bought the miniature, normal, and big sized cups. First on the list, were the taste tests.

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We began by sampling the miniature cups. Then we drank a mouthful of water to "reset" our tastebuds for the larger cups. We then taste tested the normal and big cups, again with mouthfuls of water in between.

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After running the first test we definitely felt that the smaller cups seemed to taste more chocolaty. However, we couldn't prove this on taste alone, so we continued our experiments.

Our next test was to cut the cups down their centerline so that we could have a cross section look at their insides. We theorized that the larger cups would need more of a chocolate shell in order to retain structural integrity. So we began to cut into the cups. Believe me, this is no small feat for two nerds in their early twenties who never go to the gym.

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Once all of them were cut open, we were shocked at the findings. Our theory about the structural integrity was disproved. In fact, the opposite was true. Through visual inspection of the specimens, it seemed that the miniature cups had a greater ratio of chocolate, while the larger cups had much more peanut butter, and a smaller ratio of chocolate.

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We could have ended our experiment there, as we had seemingly found the answer, but we had to be SURE. We reasoned that the incision of the knife caused minute buckling and collapsing of the top chocolate layer, and could possibly skew the results. So we decided to run a second test...core samples.

From our earlier difficulty with cutting into the surface with a knife, we knew the top crust was very strong. We were not sure if we could push a plastic straw through the top crust of the cups. So to test its strength we used a Dremel tool to see how easy it would be to drill through the surface.

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After running our test we thought it might be possible to take core samples. While we don't have exact numbers, we know that the strength of the top crust layer is somewhere between that of butter and forged steel. With that knowledge, Jonathan took a plastic straw and began extracting core samples from the various sizes of cups.

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We ran into a bit of a snag at this point. When we tried to push the core samples out of the straw, the samples would crumble and thus ruin the evidence. We almost accepted defeat, when my brilliant wife came up with a solution. She suggested putting the samples in the freezer so that they would harden, and thus be structurally sound when we pushed them out of the straw. So that is exactly what we did.

However, at this point, we had to wait for awhile for them to harden. During this time, we took other measurements just to be sure we had enough data. Jonathan then ran some equations on our data.

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After about an hour, we were able to pop out the core samples and take a look. Here we found the very same results as our cross section experiment. It was indeed the larger chocolate ratio in the miniature peanut butter cups that provided the optimal "yummatio".

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Finally, we had a reason why the smaller the Reese's cup, the better the taste. It's the larger chocolate ratio. For those of you who have been confused up to this point, we have provided a scientific graph to illustrate our point more visually...

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So, in conclusion, I hope you will remember what you have learned here the next time you are craving a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. When you can't decide which size to get, you can bank on our findings here. The miniature ones will always provide the optimal ratios for the best taste.

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