So I seem to be caught up in a whirlwind of projects at the moment. IBM is showing that final push to do what should have been done months ago (don't worry, I've learnt not to believe in miracles). Freelance work is full-on with coding a new payment gateway and full backend order and stock management system. Whoah! Plus there's that HTX (Hursley Technical Exchange) video that needs editing and music sequencing added; but simply not of a priority at the moment.

Tuesday shall be interesting where I have a meeting about adapting my Blue Fusion video for some corporate presentation. Should be an interesting meeting, and as usual, the prediction will be that will end up with more work to do.

I'm also putting together some ideas for a music video for The Rivers of Sound. The track in mind will be Dreamer's Dream. I plan for it to involve CG, composition in After Effects and green screen shots of the band. Sure it's an ambitious project, but if I pull it off, my portfolio will actually have some merit.

But to keep my creative mind flowing (pun intended), I've been playing around with the awesome open-source Blender 3D. Now, you may be thinking, why use a free application like Blender when I already own LightWave and Modo. The answer is because it now supports fluid dynamics.

So here's what I created (QuickTime required):

A simple blob that splashes on the ground.
FluidTest.mov (145KB)

Now lets try to fill a mug with a pool of falling water which involves setting the proper materials.
MugFluidTest.mov (667KB)

But after realising that the native Blender renderer has a bug (hence the dotted grid on the floor), I discovered that I should be using the open-source render Yafray. And of course, why flood the scene while I'm at it.
MugFluidTestPour.mov (1.58MB)

My plan now is to figure out how to export the fluid animation into LightWave. But that is sadly a challenge for another day as I've got other work I need to be doing. My biggest dream is the day I only have one 9-5 job; how sad is that.