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created amazing organic animation with his own proprietary software.

"The Conquest of Form," Latham's first animation, was released about 1989. The forms in this animation are wonderfully textured and diverse.

His hypnotic creations squirm, writhe, and mutate. These forms were

"self-evolving" creatures constructed from algorithms Latham wrote based on

certain base principles of natural selection and Darwinism—in other

words, life and how it evolves. I am vastly oversimplifying a deep digital

concept for the sake of brevity. Beyond the math, Latham's technique was

• A full bloom is made up of concentric layers of petals emanating from a single bulbous base.

• The aged blossom unfolds, revealing its inner sanctum. Center stage is the pistil, which includes the stigma and style, surrounded by a ring of stamen.

• The bud is nothing more than the neatly compacted version of an expanded flower blossom.

• The smooth green stem is alternately peppered with sharp woodlike thorns and dark green leaves, with micro-fine serrated edges with thin stems.

You could continue, perhaps microscopically, and see that Mother Nature is still con-cerned about her organic symmetrical design elements. In other words, nature is the inventor of systematic multireplication—everything from a spiral staircase to a pack of birth control pills. We always have been and always will be consciously and unconsciously influenced by the symmetry of nature. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show some organic bits and pieces from my backyard that I have microscopically enlarged from 10X to 200X. Notice that even at this tiny level nature is systematic in its design choices.

Figure 3.1: Photos A, B, and C are various angles and magnifications of an animal bone. Photos D and E are various magnifications of a tree seed. Photo F is a mature grass species.

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The other thing you notice about natural objects is the duplication that takes place when nature creates. Replicating the simpler form leads to the more complex and interesting shape.

The computer is a perfect workhorse for the geometric math involved in replicating forms.

Every time you create a bicycle tire and spokes or a ceiling fan, you borrow from nature.

Nature is not always exclusively organic. You can also find artistic inspiration in grav-ity, thermodynamics, and surface tension. As a reminder, I keep a chunk of wax near the rest of my computer adornments. I removed the wax from a dish that had been filled with coins.

In the center of the dish was a large wine-colored candle, which eventually overflowed its seeping hot melted wax onto the coins. Retrieving my coins uncovered an amazing and inspiring form, shown in Figure 3.3. Gravity, thermodynamics, and surface tension were among the contributors to this bit of natural art.

Figure 3.4 shows an image modeled in Xfrog and rendered in Maya. It was the direct result of finding the wax. This image is an example of how all experiences, great and seemingly

Figure 3.2: More organic bits and pieces microscopically enlarged

figure 3.3: An image of coins imprinted in melted wax Figure 3.4: The resulting image derived and inspired from the wax

I'm often asked how I create certain images. My moving images puzzle people. Noncom-puter types get the three-word, short answer, "3D virtual spirograph." 3D people get the one-minute concept demo in Maya. The reaction is similar to that of a magician's fan who becomes privy to an easy trick they had thought difficult. The results of my little "trick,"

however, can be quite complicated and amazing.

Let's begin modeling our first organix primitive. Follow these steps:

1. Load the Maya binary file c a r a p a c e . m b from the CD, and then open Maya's Outliner (choose Windows Outliner).

2. Select c a r a p a c e from the Outliner, as shown in Figure 3.5, and give it a quick render.

The carapace object is a simple NURBS cone that has been distorted a bit. I put a simple ramp texture on it with earthy tones. I used versions of this same ramp for a bump map and incandescence maps. Which textures you use is an aesthetic judgment call, but con-trasting patterns work great. I often liken this situation to a kaleido-scope: depending on the mixture of elements you place inside and the random spin, the results can be sur-prisingly dramatic. Whether you place corn kernels, broken glass, small screws, pebbles, or vitamins inside, the single units seem to lose identity in the whole pattern.

3. With carapace selected, group it to itself. Choose Edit

Group Highlight Parent and Center, then click Apply.

Name the group Unit_Seg-ment, as shown in the graphic on the left, and then select Unit_Segment.

Figure 3.5: A rendering of the single carapace object hides the more complex results derived from its use.

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Now let's duplicate the group a bit and change our single organix primitive into a more complex shape.

4. Choose Edit Duplicate Set Translate to 0, 0.3, 0.3; set Rotate to 10, 0, 10; set Scale to 0.9, 0.9, 0.9; set Number of Copies to 39; and set Geometry Type to Instance, as shown in Figure 3.6. Set Group Under to Parent. That's it. Click Apply and check your result. You should have something that looks like Figure 3.7. Move your camera around a bit and check out the shape.

5. After you check your result, render it out, and then save your scene.

Figure 3.8 shows several rendered angles of the new object, which is organic looking indeed. The simple shader that was placed on our base primitive object takes on a whole new texture life after it has been assigned individually on the newly replicated objects. The repeti-tive nature of the texture is reminiscent of thousands of insects and reptiles. The cone point takes on new significance as well because it appears to be part of a series of thorn, claw, or spikelike barbs. Notice too that we used instances instead of copies, which saves rendering time and memory. Using instances also gives us our backbone for entry-level animation, with which we will deal later.

Figure 3.6: The Duplicate Options dialog box

Figure 3.7: A hardware-rendered result of what your result should look like with the Outliner settings

Figure 3.8: A collage of four separate angles of the new primitive showing its diversity and ability to blend separate components into one

By simply altering the pivot point a single sphere can have wildy different duplication results when performed with the exact same parameters. The three sets of images shown in Figures 3.9 through 3.17, show the sphere before and after duplication. The first image of each series displays the highlighted relative position of the pivot point prior to duplication.