The Daily Render

A Digital Scrapbook for the Past, Present, and Future

|| 12/28/2005 || 7:34 pm || 2 Comments Rendered || ||
Salt Lake City Quilt with Clouds

: rendered at 12,000 X 8,000 :
Salt Lake City with Clouds by Nikolas Schiller

After over 28 hours of rendering time, this map finally finished up and I am very happy with the results. The merger of the natural (clouds) with that of the synthetic (tessellation) real (aerial photography) makes this one of my most unique maps to date.

The clouds, while not creating much of a natural shadow on the ground, look very realistic with different thicknesses and densities. To create these clouds I placed two large spheres on the left side of the scene and used the pre-made texture of “cotton balls” (I think?) to give them density and depth. I think I will start making more of this type of rendering in 2006.

However, while beautiful, these clouds take much more processing power to create because all of the shadows must be accounted for and in the 3D world the clouds take up a lot of space that needs to be calculated when ray tracing.

The last time I made something with clouds, after a 3 days of rendering a power failure was what ended the rendering (yet since it was 50% finished, I was able to reflect half of it, and salvaged the rendering– if you look closely, there is a face!).

Point being, this process is very slow and if I am to be making more of these my cycle of near daily renderings will be delayed to maybe one per week. I don’t mind this per se, but I’d rather have more than less maps at the end of 2006.

This progression session is one of constant revision and manipulation and as the Quilt Project has progressed from flattened spheres to infinite planes, I have attempted to better understand what exactly I’ve been creating and with this map I feel I made something that is truly post-modern and I must say that I am very excited about what the next map will be!

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|| 12/27/2005 || 9:30 pm || Comments Off || ||
up next

I am making something completely new- I am adding the element that all photogrammetrists hate- clouds. Using the 2-seam quilt template, I placed some white, wispy clouds on the left side of the scene (if it’s placed vertical, I think the clouds will look best on the top). The process for making clouds is a complex fractal so it’s been rendering for about 24 hours now and I expect another 24 more or so before it is finished. I am so excited about how it will turn out. Will the clouds look realistic? This map takes the post-modern theme a bit farther by adding an element of the natural world to the modified digital world. I see a whole cloud series following the outcome of this map. Sit tight.

|| 12/26/2005 || 11:00 pm || Comments Off || ||
DC Area Farmers Markets

This evening I made the first layer for an ongoing mapping project I’ve tasked myself to, “SUSTAINABLE DC MAP”

If you have Google Earth, cut & paste this link as new network connection, and zoom into DC.

If you don’t have Google Earth, you can see two screen shots I took, here & here.

I have going to have a planting party this spring… details tba

Remember, January 5th, 7pm, UDC & me :)

Related Google Earth Entries:

|| || 1:14 am || Comments Off || ||
Salt Lake City Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Salt Lake City Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

Looking good :-)

I wish I would have tessellated the source imagery differently. It would have shown more of the geographic location I wanted it to- the Mormon Temple. It only shows up on the periphery..

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|| 12/25/2005 || 12:34 pm || Comments Off || ||
Salt Lake City Scaled Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Salt Lake City Scaled Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

This is the first map that the scale has been so large. I’ve always though Salt Lake City was kinda far out. I visited the city on summer when I was growing up.

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|| || 12:29 pm || Comments Off || ||
Mission Dolores Quilt #2

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Mission Dolores Quilt no. 2 by Nikolas Schiller

I made this map because my sister’s house is featured in the map!

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|| || 12:01 am || Comments Off || ||
Happy Saturnalia!

Saturnalia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
Saturnalia was the feast at which the the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December. In the vagaring Roman calendar the Winter Solstice fell in this period; in imperial times that event was celebrated in honour of Sol Invictus and put on 25 December by emperor Aurelian in 274, so after the Saturnalia.

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|| 12/24/2005 || 2:25 pm || Comments Off || ||
Mission Dolores Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Mission Dolores Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

This map was made for my sister. She lives somewhere in the map above :)

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|| 12/22/2005 || 6:31 pm || Comments Off || ||
The Quilt Project is now searchable by geometry

I went through and categorized each map in the Quilt Project by the geometric design that at the center of the quilt.

So now we have:

Square	Hexagon
Octagon	Dodecagon +

Before it was only one link to the entire project and when clicked all the renderings (currently at 40) would show up. I think this categorization marks a new highpoint for this project! Now I just need to get them all printed out.

|| 12/21/2005 || 8:31 pm || Comments Off || ||
Houston Quilt 2

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Houston Quilt No. 2 by Nikolas Schiller

Interesting… So in my last entry I wrote on & on about lines of symmetry, and after looking at this rendering a bit more, I think some of my analysis was partially incorrect. Lemme break it down…

Okay so this map should fall in line with what I was saying comprises a 2 seam map, but what I found is another two lines of symmetry- lines that all 2 seamed maps contain is actually 4 lines of symmetry. In constructing this map I used a total of 4 infinite planes with each in groups of 2. The first two are 75 X 75 in size and at a Z angle of 5 & -5 respectively, and the second two are 75 X 75, at an angle of Z angle of 5 & -5, but rotate 90 degrees. In a 3D space this create a wedge of sorts.

To mentally picture this, imagine each pair as an X (each plane is at +-5 degrees), but instead of looking at the X from above, as you are now looking at the character on the screen, imagine that you are only looking at one side, which makes the X look more like a V. Furthermore, you are looking at the V from the side looking down into the vertex of the V, so you see two sides and at the apex is the central seam. By rotating the second pair 90 degrees, the V turns into a pyramid with 4 sides, and you are looking at the pyramid from below it’s base. Thus you get 4 different lines of symmetry for each seam. This make sense? I can take some screen shots to explain this a bit more…

With this jargon out of the way, the result is that with two grouped planes, I get 4 lines of symmetry. And it can be assumed that with 3 grouped planes, I get 6 lines of symmetry and so on. I think the most effective way to classify all the maps in the quilt project will be based of lines of symmetry (aka seams) because these can easily be identified, while the number of infinite planes (which result in the number of seams) is not as easily identifiable.

With #40 out of the way, its time to go through and classify them all……..fun!
==Update==
I ended up using the geometry as the means categorize my maps.

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|| 12/20/2005 || 10:20 pm || Comments Off || ||
Houston Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Houston Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

Like Providence, I have yet to visit downtown Houston, however I can still manipulate the city to some degree. Today’s degree is to the tune of about 60 :-) 360 divided by 60 equals 6 (which equals 3 lines of symmetry which I call “seams” of the quilt) and judging by my last quilts, I’ve found this number to be my favorite degree of manipulation.

So far I’ve made about 39 different quilts (multi-planar maps), and I think it is about time to begin the subdivision of the quilt project into the number seams each quilt has. This means I have to create a sub-category for each number of seams, and then go back through every blog entry and assign each quilt to it’s respective category. This will allow a casual visitor to this site the ability to look at all of the quilts at once or by each respective number of seams.

Starting at 2 seams, like the Ivan Memory (the first quilt) and Beverly Hills Quilt #3, then to 3 seams, like today’s quilt, and then quilts that have greater than 4 seams. This categorization of the quilt project will be helpful in the long run because it will show the ways the geographic tessellations react when reflected multiple times and more importantly it will help organize what has been my favorite projection of 2005.

As for Houston Quilt, the imagery is from 2002 from the USGS (of course!) and I modified the imagery in such a way that the center of the tessellation is Highway 45 and the high-rise buildings of downtown Houston surround it.

The drawback of this imagery, similar to my Denver imagery, is that the aerial photograph was taken in the afternoon and due to the angle of illumination, the shadows obscure much of the ground. Yet this can also be a nice aspect too because the shadows also reflect and make the rendering special in their own way.

I’d rather have the photograph taken from nadir (straight above) at noon on cloudless, sunny day (this eliminates shadows and distortion at the center of the scene). But of course that would be too easy right? :-)

The other drawback is that the imagery itself is somewhat devoid of colors. Granted the sensors did pick up colors, but they are not very vibrant. When looking at the map above it almost appears to be black & white, but when you look at the details you can see some color.

Maybe I should go in and modify the imagery again and add color? In the past, the closest I’ve gotten to doing that was embedding my name into the imagery, and that wasn’t that special. The Boston imagery is still some of my favorite imagery because of the color variations and the good news it that I also downloaded imagery of downtown Houston from 2004 which has an interesting patch of different colored imagery in. When tessellated, this imagery will add that colorful dimension this map currently lacks. First I have to prepare the imagery and I think I might just make another map using the Houston imagery. I was thinking of maybe a 2 seamed map or should it be 4? I’ll find out soon!

==Update==
I ultimately used the geometric shape instead of the lines of symmetry for my naming convention.

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|| 12/19/2005 || 11:43 pm || Comments Off || ||
Providence Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :
Providence Quilt by Nikolas Schiller

So I am totally on a kick now of making new maps using imagery from outside of DC. Today is Providence, Rhode Island, a city I have yet to visit. Tomorrow will be Houston, Texas, and hopefully the following two will be of Philly & Salt Lake City. So far I’ve only prepared the imagery for Houston and I need to mosaic & square the new imagery I acquired this evening. As for the Providence Quilt, there are a few interesting geographic identifiers that make this rendering all the more exquisite. The capital building is reflected numerous times within the map, but I really like the way the river & roads show up. Lately I’ve been enjoying the ways in which reflected highways make beautiful aspects of the tessellations, and I think the Houston map coming up next will be a great example.

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|| 12/18/2005 || 2:02 pm || Comments Off || ||
Lincoln Memorial Quilt

: rendered at 18,000 X 12,000 :

This is the first rendering I’ve made using the Lincoln Memorial as the subject. When creating the source imagery I took a different approach to setting up the geographic tessellation. I first rotated imagery 45 degrees and from that I cut out the Lincoln Memorial. I paid careful attention so that the refelection pool created a central X in the imagery. While the 6 seamed quilt template is not new, this method of source imagery creation is, and I am very happy with the result and will probably employ this method again in the future.

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|| 12/16/2005 || 9:20 pm || Comments Off || ||
a visit from dhs

so my website got trolled by 3 different servers and just about at the end of it, I got a visit from dhs
http://whois.sc/63.162.143.21

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|| || 7:39 pm || Comments Off || ||
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