caleb Posted January 12, 2007 Share Posted January 12, 2007 on this kind of topicdoes anyone know anything about the life test that Caleb Howard did a few years back? He talks about it in the Magic of Houdini book. I love to know more about this. Thanks I know a little about it. ;-) I was asked by IEEE's Computer Graphics and Applications journal to provide a cover image and story for the Jan 2000 issue of the publication. I took the opportunity to persue some ideas I had been mulling for creating particles as perceptive units capable of adapting their behaviours to their perceptions of their environment, and their current state of being. I've been a Houdini Evangalist, and enthusiast since I worked at SESI in '92-'93 - back when it was called PRISMS. ;-) The integration of a 3D world for the environment, and a combnation of, rendering, compositing, and image analysis provided the key components required, and in the joyful words of Carl Sims, "it just worked". I'd be happy to answer any specific questions about the project, though it has been a ferw years since I looked at it. That cover led to my work using perceptive autonomous agents for the mice army in "Cats and Dogs", a superbowl parking lot crowd scene in "The Sum of All Fears", some flying snakes in "Elektra", and, umm, some others besides, I think. An image generated during this project can be seen on my web site here: http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Images/ValleyLife.html Thanks for asking! Love, -caleb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynbo Posted January 12, 2007 Share Posted January 12, 2007 ah very great indeed I'm glad to see the offshoot of this used somewhere in production. So one of my first questions is was this done entirely within the framework of the software at the time or was there specific codeing you had to do to get it to work. Another question is when you mention a few days (or was it weeks) later you observed certain things in the sim. How is this time measured? Is it a hypothetical jump ahead in time, or is that literal? How did you get the sim to run that long? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caleb Posted January 13, 2007 Share Posted January 13, 2007 ah very great indeedI'm glad to see the offshoot of this used somewhere in production. So one of my first questions is was this done entirely within the framework of the software at the time or was there specific codeing you had to do to get it to work. Another question is when you mention a few days (or was it weeks) later you observed certain things in the sim. How is this time measured? Is it a hypothetical jump ahead in time, or is that literal? How did you get the sim to run that long? As I say, it's a bit murky, with the distance of time, but for that original simulation, I believe i didn't write any code. I have written small tidbits - POps, and SOps mostly for the production work that I did, but that was mostly to simplify and optimise the solutions, rather than being due to anything lacking in Houdini native. These days, I use VOps extensively, and rarely need to delve into the HDK. The week which I said the IEEE cover took was measured in real (my) time. I got the simulation to run that long by setting it up and hitting "play". I have never really had too much problem avoiding crashes. I guess that sim must have been runnung on my old Indigo (original purple box) under Irix, which was notoriously stable. The frames were far from real-time in their execution, and I cached *everything* to disk. A good deal of the time was in the evolutionary phase - as the behaviours (more than the morphology) of the creatures adapted to the ends of a decent survival rate. Once the critters had evolved to good modes of behaviour, the interactions of a scene like the one in the image were fairly quick to generate - (like a couple of hours). Thanks again for the interest. I'm quite enthusiastic in my pursuits toward digital life. I need to build a place to store my mind before my meatbrain stops working. ;-) Here's a couple of other sims I did to support the main one: http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Images/Morphogenesis.html http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Images/Trees.html And a shot of me and the Captain! http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Images/TheCaptainAndMe.jpg ;-) Love, caleb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynbo Posted January 13, 2007 Share Posted January 13, 2007 Thats great! I really liked the forest growing, great way to randomly add some trees, really great that they seed and then grow from that. I used to have an Irix box like yours many moons ago. It was the bastion of stableness compared to some of the machines I've had since then. Love the shot of you and the captain! Heres one of Ray and I oh and one more. Thanks for the reply Caleb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumpa Posted January 15, 2007 Share Posted January 15, 2007 i really cant figure out who is captain an who is caleb...btw i have i photo om myself and The King sitting his DeTomaso Pantera and flirting with some chicks, but i forgot where i put it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caleb Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Thats great!I really liked the forest growing, great way to randomly add some trees, really great that they seed and then grow from that. I used to have an Irix box like yours many moons ago. It was the bastion of stableness compared to some of the machines I've had since then. Love the shot of you and the captain! Heres one of Ray and I ... Thanks for the reply Caleb. That's sincerely my pleasure. Those are nice photos as well. Those Skeletons totally freaked me out as a child - though it was Star Trek and the first Star Wars that drew me into my career. I worked at a company that Shatner was a partner in a dozen years ago, and I must say, it has been a high point amongst a few memorable moments in my career that I had the opportunity to spend a little time with "Television's Captain Kirk". Of the various and infrequent encounters which this business has afforded me with famous people, none have been so immensely satisfying as the day I got to spend up at Shatner's house - just shooting the breeze. Of the folks I've met, none have been so genuine. The man loves horses. That shot was taken later on at a company party in Toronto. Anyway - I digress. Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caleb Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 i really cant figure out who is captain an who is caleb...btw i have i photo om myself and The King sitting his DeTomaso Pantera and flirting with some chicks, but i forgot where i put it... ...I'm the bald one ;-) It was actually a funny thing. When I was first interviewing at Shatner's animation house, one of the partners offered me the opportunity to come to Studio City and meet Shatner, kind of as an enticement to join the company, which I jumped at. At that time, I had really long hair. I really didn't know my way around L.A. so much back then, and so I got lost on the way to the meeting, and ended up quite late. As I walked into Shatner's office, there were six or seven folks in the room, having a meeting about a potential project. I knew one of the people was the guy who had invited me, but I didn't know which one. The only person in the room who's identity I knew for sure was Shatner. I felt a little rare at walking in late, but sat down quietly and listened as these folks talked about a VR movie. As the conversation went on, Shatner woud from time to time call back up to his house and tell an employee there that there wound be another person joining them for lunch, where it was apparent the meeting was going to continue. In a magic minute, each of the various people had a reason to leave Shatner's office - to call their people, or go to the bathroom, or something, and I was left alone in the room with Bill. I really didn't know what to say, so I did what I do when I am a bit self-conscious, which is to start babbling about the things I think. Since the conversation had revolved on this movie project, which had to do with Virtual Reality, and the loss of distinction between reality and virtual reality, I started talking about Quantum Electrodynamics, and the role of the observer in the collapse of probablistic waveforms into observed reality, and how this could form a basis for the premise of the film. To my great glee, Bill (I love that he told me to call him Bill) became quite enthusiastic. In total kind, he came back at me with a discussion of the Possibility of Psychism amongst insular tribes of Rhesus monkeys. When the others came back, he said "Caleb! Tell these guys what you just told me!". I did so, to their considerable disinterest, but it was sufficient to get Bill on the phone to his person at home to set one more place for lunch. "You can join us, can't you Caleb?" - Bill Shatner asked *me*. I totally could. I blew off work for the rest of the day (at the job I had previous to working for Bill's company), and went up to Ventura to Bill's place to enjoy a brilliant lunch with some Studio Execs, and *CAPTAIN KIRK*!! I even got to have a cup of tea served in the NCC-1701 teacups from the first Star Trek Film. Total Nerdvana! Oh yeah... like I said, I had a lot of hair that day. Later on, as I quit the one job and ended up at Shatner's place, I told the people I worked with - many of whom had not met Shatner - the story of how I'd got to hang out with the guy, and how Bill and I were like that (picture me crossing my fingers), and generally bragged at length about my enviable day with Shatner. More than a year later, it came to pass that Bill was going to be in Toronto, and that we *all* were going to have the opportunity to hang out with him for an evening of billiards and drinks. I was worried that - after all of my talking it up - Bill might not even recognize me with my newly shaved head, and that I'd be considered an exagerateur in my characterizations of our closeness. It just totally cemented my joy and love for the man when - on walking into the office he said - from the other end of a big room, and over everyone: "Caleb, my God - what happened to your hair?!" Bill Shatner *is* the Captain! That picture was taken that evening Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andz Posted January 16, 2007 Share Posted January 16, 2007 Heheheeh... that is so cool Caleb. I've had few opportunities in my life to be close to "important" people like that, maybe it was just me being impressed buy what the media inject in us but they all seem to have this "energy" around them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stu Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 And a shot of me and the Captain!http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Images/TheCaptainAndMe.jpg Hey, there's Ralph! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caleb Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Hey, there's Ralph! You are Correct, sir! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynbo Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Thanks for that Caleb. That was a wonderful story. What a great time that must have been. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caleb Posted January 17, 2007 Share Posted January 17, 2007 Thanks for that Caleb. That was a wonderful story.What a great time that must have been. Yeah... Even my night at the Oscars wasn't as much fun as my day with Bill. I'm pretty much done with the whole Production thing. It's hard to follow a day like that. ;-) Here's a couple of other stories. I like to tell stories, but I don't write them down too often. http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Stories/StoriesRants.html ...and here's a cool SciFi book my Dad wrote: http://howlor.com/Caleb/Personal/Book/Book_of_Sylvia.html My Dad's the writer in the family. Love! -caleb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dbeing Posted January 24, 2007 Share Posted January 24, 2007 (edited) personally i would just get an aquarium... woops replied to soon... wow this is a long thread Edited January 24, 2007 by 3dbeing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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