List: Book Collection

This is just mine own personal books, not even taking into account Angela's books yet. Also, this is severaly incomplete as the majority of my collection is in boxes that I currently can not get to. So these are pretty much just the books that I have bought over the last year and a half or so.

Seems even though the authors are posted in my main menu, they dont seem to post onto the blog, not sure why. So, the authors are there as well, you just cant see them :D

Books List	Author
3ds Max 2011: One Project From Start to Finish	3Dats
Ancestor	Scott Sigler
Apocalypse of the Dead	Joe Mckinney
Canon EOS Rebel XSI	David D. Busch
Cataclysm - Ensemble	Stephen Molter
Cataclysm - Phoenix	Stephen Molter
Chasing the Dead	Joe Schreiber
Complete Birds of the World	National Geographic
Contagious	Scott Sigler
Dead Space: Martyr	B. K. Evenson
Elderst	Christopher Paolini
Eragon	Christopher Paolini
Feed	Mira Grant
Forgotten Realms: Legacy of the Drow - The Legacy	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Legacy of the Drow - Starless Night	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Legacy of the Drow - Siege of Darkness	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Legacy of the Drow - Passage to Dawn	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Hunters Blade Trilogy - The Thousand Orcs	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Hunters Blade Trilogy - The Lone Drow	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Hunters Blade Trilogy - The Two Swords	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness - The Silent Blade	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness - The Spine of the World	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness - Servant of the Shard	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: Paths of Darkness - Sea of Swords	R. A. Salvatore
Forgotten Realms: War of the Spider Queen - Book 4 Extinction	Lise Smedman
Forgotten Realms: War of the Spider Queen - Book 5 Annihilation	Philip Athans
Forgotten Realms: War of the Spider Queen - Book 6 Resurrection	Paul S. Kemp
Getting Things Done	David Allen
Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines	Graphic Artist Guild
Infected	Scott Sigler
Inside the Third Reich	Albert Speer
Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong	James W. Loewen
Parasite Eve	Hideaki Sena
Patient Zero	Jonathan Maberry
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies	Seth Grahame-Smith
Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds max and Mental Ray	Autodesk
Star Trek: All Good Things	Michael Jan Friedman
Star Trek: Crossover	Michael Jan Friedman
Star Trek: Dark Mirror	Diane Duane
Star Trek: First Contact	J. M. Dillard
Star Trek: Generations	J. M. Dillard
Star Trek: Insurrection	J. M. Dillard
Star Trek: Nemesis	J. M. Dillard
Star Trek: Metamorphosis	Jean Lorrah
Star Trek: Mirror Universe - Shards and Shadows	Assorted Authors
Star Trek: Myriad Universe - Echos and Refractions	Assorted Authors
Star Wars: Allegiance	Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Crimson Empire	Mike Richardson
Star Wars: Crosscurrent	Paul S. Kemp
Star Wars: Dark Empire	Tom Veitch
Star Wars: Dark Empire 2	Tom Veitch
Star Wars: Dark Lord - The Rise of Darth Vader	James Luceno
Star Wars: Dark Nest 1 - The joiner King	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Dark Nest 2 - The Unseen Queen	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Dark nest 3 - The Swarm War	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Darth Bane - Path of Destruction	Drew Karpyshan
Star Wars: Darth Bane - Rule of Two	Drew Karpyshan
Star Wars: Death Troopers	Joe Schreiber
Star Wars: Force Unleashed	Sean Williams
Star Wars: Outbound Flight	Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Survivors Quest	Timothy Zahn
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi - Outcast	Aaron Allston
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi - Omen	Christie Golden
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi - Abyss	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Jedi Academy Trilogy - Jedi Search
Star Wars: Jedi Academy Trilogy - Champions of the Force	Kevin J. Anderson
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Betrayal	Aaron Allston
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Bloodlines	Karen Traviss
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Tempest	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Exile	Aaron Allston
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Sacrifice	Karen Traviss
Star Wars: Legacy of the Froce - Inferno	Troy Denning
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Fury	Aaron Allston
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Revelation	Karen Traviss
Star Wars: Legacy of the Force - Invincible	Troy Denning
Star Wars: The Old Republic - Fatal Alliance	Sean Williams
The Art and Science of Digital Compositing	Ron Brinkmann
The Child Thief	Brom
The Children of Huran	J. R. R. Tolkien
The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft	H. P. Lovecraft
The Divine Comedy	Dante
The Elegant Universe	Brian Greene
The Fall	Chuck Hogan/ Guillermo Del Toro
The Living Dead	Assorted Authors
The Nuremberg Interviews	Leon Goldensohn
The Walking Dead Volumn 1	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 2	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 3	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 4	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 5	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 6	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 10	Robert Kirkman
The Walking Dead Volumn 11	Robert Kirkman
The Zombie Survival Guide	Max Brooks

List: Movie Collection

This is my movie collection so far as I have cataloged, yes, when I have nothing better to do, I start cataloging my belongings. Anyway, I know there are movies missing here, as there are ones I know I own, but they could likely be in storage or something. I only added the things in that I could physically touch the actual DVD/Bluray.

Movies - DVD

5 Children and It

10 Things I Hate About You

28 Days Later

50 First Dates

300

A Beautiful Mind

Abbott and Costello Funniest Routines

A Knights Tale

Alvin and the Chipmunks

American Girl Samantha

American Girl Felicity

American Girl Molly

American History X

Animatrix

Armitage Dual Matrix

Army of Darkness

Atonement

Austin Power's

Austin Power's Goldmember

Band of Brothers

Bed of Roses

Big Bang Theory Season 1

Big Bang Theory Season 2

Big Bang Theory Season 3

Bourne Supremacy

Bourne Ultimatum

Braveheart

Bridge to Terabithia

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Bubba-ho-tep

Casshern

Children of Men

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

Chronicles of Riddick

Clerks 2

Cloverfield

Coraline

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Crow

Dances with Wolves

Dark Knight

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Dead Silence

Diary of the Dead

Elf

Emma

Evil Dead

Evil Dead 2

Fast and the Furious

Fifth Element

Final Fantasy: Advent Children

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

Finding Nemo

Fountain

Frailty

Fringe Season 1

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Grave of the Fireflies

Grumpy Old Men

Grumpier Old Men

Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Hatred of the Minute

Hero

Hitch

Hot Fuzz

Hot Shots Part Deux

House of Flying Daggers

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In the Army Now

Insomnia

Ju-on

Juno

Knocked Up

Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda

The Last Samurai

Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events

Lilo and Stitch

Little Mermaid

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings Special Extended Editon

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Special Extended Edition

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Special Extended Edition

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Love Letter (korean version)

The Matrix

Memento Mori

Mist of Avalon

Monsters Inc

Moulin Rouge

Naked Gun 33 1/3

Neverending Story

Ninja Scroll

Night of the Living Dead

Night at the Museum

Notebook

Orphange, The

Out For Justice

Pans's Labyrinth

Persuasion

Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Pixar Shortfilms

Police Academy

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment

Police Academy 3: Back in Training

Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Pulse (japanese Version)

Pursuit of Happiness

Quarentine

Rest Stop

Resident Evil Apocalypse

Resident Evil Degeneration

Revenge of the Nerds

Robin Hood Men in Tights

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

Royale Tramp

Royale Tramp 2

Rush Hour

Rush Hour 2

Saw

Saw 2

Saw 4

Schindlers List

Secret Garden

Seven Swords

Sherlock Holmes

Shinobi

Shrek 2

Silent Hill

Somethings Gotta Give

Somewhere in Time

Spaceballs

Star Trek (2009)

Star Wars: A New Hope

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Special Edition

Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi Special Edition

Star Wars : The Phantom Menace

Star Wars : Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Step Brothers

Story of Star Wars

Superman Returns (2006)

Surviving the Game

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 1

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 2

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 3

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 4

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 5

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 6

The Three Stooges Collection Volumn 8

The Three Stooges In Color

To Live

Twilight

Twilight: New Moon

Twilight in Forks

Underworld

V for Vendetta

Vampire Hunter D

Vampire Princess Miyu Volumn 1

What Dreams May Come

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

White Noise

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Witches

X:1999

X-men 2

Movies - Blu-Ray/ Blu-Ray DVD Combo

Avatar Extended Edition

Beauty and the Beast

Black Swan

Despicable Me

Event Horizon

Final Fantasy: Advent Children

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Julie and Julia

Labyrinthe

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Ponyo

Princess and the Frog

Romeo And Juliet (1996)

Tangled

Twilight: Eclipse

Wall-E

UP

Photography: Canon EF 100mm Macro Lens

Just ordered it on amazon, so looking forward to playing with the new lens.

Shall hopefully be posting more pictures as the spring is just around the corner.

Stay tuned for pictures and other news.

Photography: Photo Study Numero Dos

After a few days of inactivity because of work, I have been finally able to get the next blog up. Although, I regret to say during this time of inactivity, we have been set back with the loss of our previous model. It seems that a better oppurtunity was found elsewhere and it left us even though its contract was not quite up yet. We shall be taking this through the full extent of the courts system and that model shall never work in this industry again.

Anyway.

We have a new model now, one that which is a bit better on the eyes as well. This is Stuart. Would like to give him a big warm welcome.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

The last time I posted, I did a test changing only the F/stop and not changing the shutter speed at all. This time I did the reverse sort of. I changed the shutter speed, but let the camera change the F/stop number automatically. I used the Tv setting on my camera instead of the full on manual setting I used before.

This time when letting the camera set the f/stop number in a low light enviroment, it would appear the that camera picks the inverse end of the spectrum. If the shutter speed is fast, the F/stop is at its highest point (ie, 1/1000 shutter speed = F/5) Or if the shutter was slow it would pick the smallest F/stop. (ie 30" shutter speed = F40)

Now before I had posted this I had to do some digging, as quite frankly I had no idea what either of these values meant. Which I think now I have a somewhat less retarded view of these numbers. Basically shutter speed tells the camera how long to leave the exposure open, or rather, how long to let light into the camera. A 30" exposure would mean the camera will take 30 seconds before it actually takes the picture. This works nice for night time as it gives you the chance to pull in more light and therefore be able to actually see what you are doing.

There is a downside to this though. With the shutter open so long, pretty much any movement from the subject will cause the object to become blurred. Long exposures like this would be nearly impossible to do to a human subject, animal or anything else alive for that matter. Although, I did find out something cool with this as well, it seems that once the shutter has been hit on these long exposures, that you the photographer could actually walk right through the frame, and you wont be in the picture. I am curious why this is, although I have a couple of theories.

1. You are just not in front of the camera long enough. There is just not enough time for the light from the scene to bounce of your person and back to the shutter long enough for you to make an impact on the final picture.

2. not much a theory but perhaps an observation. I am also thinking though there is a drawback to jumping in and out of the frame. I am thinking it might very well also darken the overall composition if you jump in front of the camera for too long a period as it would disrupt the amount of light bouncing off the subject.

3. You are just that blurred that you dont show up. Perhaps that the amount of time you are in frame, you are in fact in the picture but you went through so fast that the blur is almost not noticeable in the final shot.

Have not had the chance to mess with either of these yet, although I do wish to sometime here in the near future start messing around with this as I think its quite interesting to see.

Now the F/stop, is basically the Iris of the camera, same as the eyes of a human being. A low F/stop number, F4 for instance, is equivalent to having the your eyes wide open in direct sunlight. A ton of light gets into your eyes. Now with say a F/40 setup, you would need a much longer exposure in order to get a brightly lit picture in a dark enviroment. This is because its letting in much less light then it would be with the aforementioned setup.

Now I would imagine that in very bright environments, you would need a high F/stop number to limit the amount of light that is needed to expose a picture, since there is that much more light available. This is something I will need to look into.

Now with the image below, I had started this little test with the fastest shutter speed my camera could give me which was a 1/4000 of a second exposure. As mentioned the F/stop was left to auto, needless to say though, with the amount of lighting in the room, my F/stop could not go low enough to bring in enough light to properly expose the image. Whereas, by the end of the shoot, a 30" exposure was letting in almost too much light to expose the film and it was starting to blow out the colors a bit.

After this whole thing, looking at what I learned in the previous post, and taking into consideration what I have here as well. I think the .5" and F7.1 image has the best exposure and blur for the background of all the shots together. With that said though, it would need a bit of postwork to get it to where I think it would look really good. I prefer the color on the images around the 5" mark better. Which with Photoshop though, it would be fairly easy to alter the colors to be that from the .5" image.

A somewhat larger image of this, as it seems the images in the post are not thumbnails...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/TsukiyonoS/ShutterSettings.jpg

Photography: Photo Study Numero Uno

I took the time today to try to learn a bit about the settings on my camera. Mostly this first study was the relationship between the F/# and the background blur of the subject. In the process these test though I also decided to do a quick test to see how the ISO worked as well. The only thing I am not really able to change here is the distance, as the area I am testing at is sort of small in size.

Anyway, the perimeters are as follows:

Distance - about 4ft

Focal Length - 75mm

Exposure - 1/13 (1/200)

ISO - Auto (unless I changed it set them all to 400)

WB - Auto

(all other settings are camera default)

First Image - 1/13, F/4, ISO 400, 75mm

Great subject huh? I looked around and right now it was the easiest to control. Anything else would have too many moving parts and make taking about 50 pictures a trial in tedium. Anyway. This first image looks quite good to me, the subject is in the foreground (imagine that? ) the background is quite blurred (albeit busy) and takes little of the focus away from the subject. Our heroic bottle of colored water. God bless him.

Surprisingly I was expecting to see some blurriness here, as the shutter speed being 1/13 I thought would be too long of a shutter and me pushing the button down would cause camera shake. I guess not though, although I did push down on the button a bit to hard and slightly lowered the captures from here on. All the rest though are at the same area (more or less, scientific experiment to the max here)

Second...ish image (fast forwarded a bit here) 1/13, F/8, ISO 400, 75mm

With the second image here, you can see its gotten a bit darker, which is most noticeable from the light reflection off the top of the bottle. Also you can notice that the blur in the background, while still being a bit blurry, its not nearly as much as before.

Third Image 1/13, F14, ISO 400, 75mm

Again, much darker then before. My understanding is that the higher the F/# the larger the ISO would need to be, or the longer the exposure would need to be in order to get an adequate amount of light in. Also, the blur is almost completely gone from the background, many of the items back there now can almost have their titles read.

Last Image (this sequence) 1/13, F32, ISO 400, 75mm

Much much darker obviously. The blur is pretty much all gone and along with it all sense of depth in the image. The shelves in the background appear to be immediately right behind the bottle which is in fact closer to 5ft behind the bottle. Would likely need some sort of dedicated lighting system in order to take a picture with this F/#, although, the only purpose I can see of needing this high of a number would be for taking pictures of textures... which is a story for another blog.

In closing, I think its easy to say that for at least the types of photos I will be doing, (with the exception of textures again) that using the lower level F# on my camera. The blur to the backgrounds is no more important then I could have possibly imagined. I took and lightened the last image of the series to see it a bit better and am still completely surprised by the lack of depth in the image. I really didn't realize the importance of achieving a good blur to the images I take.

Thoughts: A New Beginning

A new year is upon us yet again. Its time to try to once again refocus myself on the work that needs to be done to get to the future that is what I wish to happen. As with last year, one of the things that I need to fix is my apparent ADD that I seem to always have when it comes to trying to focus on my task at hand. I always start with the best of intentions, but I always seem to fall short. I have started many projects, but I have finished o'so few of them.

My triumphs though of this past year, I have managed to get some models up for sale and free download. The free downloads are doing pretty well, but sadly I have not gotten a sale yet. Although, the fact I only have 5 models currently up for sale probably has something to do with that. Alas, this is a start and a great one as well. I hope to get a fair bit more models up this coming year. I also hope to make a sale, even if it is just a few bucks in profits, perhaps it shall provide me a bit more of inspiration to continue on the path. Things always look the most bleak before the sun comes up, or say its said, so perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel?

At least for the career minded portion of my life, that IS the triumphs for the year. The year went much quicker then I expected it to, this year is likely to do the same. Which forces me to act quicker which each passing moment. What will the new year hold? What will be my accomplishments? What will be my failures? For I assure you, there will be failures. How will I over come the obstacles to learn from these failures so I dont repeat them again in the future?

My failures this year: Wanting to learn and use more with the DSLR that I have in my possession. I have a camera and wish to get some photos for use as textures for 3d modeling purposes or for posting up for sale for others to make use of. I have the tools, yet, cant seem to get it through that I actually need to go out and use it to get those photos taken. Its a simple matter really, get dressed, go out, click the shutter, go back inside, edit inside photoshop for later use and posting. Done. The closest I get to that is, waking up.

Lesson for the new year: Waking up earlier. Getting work done on those days when I work the afternoon shift instead of sleeping till I need to get ready for work. That would give me a few hours at least of which I can work on things that need to be completed. Would give me time to read a few of the books I have purchased to teach me new skills for use with these projects. Would give me time to go out and take a picture of a tree, the grass, a cloud, the sky, a brick wall, random animals and so on and so forth. Do I get the picture? (no pun intended) Time will tell.

My failure this year #2: Modeling. I am modeling, but, its taken me way to long to complete a simple model such as a chair. Sure, I can chalk some of this up to inexperience. I have only been back into modeling heavy for the last two years now. I have had to relearn alot of what I forgot in that absence. But, the main thing is, even with forgetting alot of my training before, it should NOT take me two weeks to model a simple dresser. I proved that the other night, modeling an armoire in just about 3 hours. I am still not completed with the model though, I finished the modeling in 3 hours, but because of lack of working on this and finding excuses, I have been working on that model now for almost a week. I have most of it textured and UVmapped finally, but I could probably have had it posted in about an hour after I finished the modeling. I did not though. I got sidetracked by things and did not follow through.

Lesson for the new year #2: Follow through. As I said, I start ALOT of projects, I finish very few of them. I am the creator of my destiny, and right now the destiny I am creating will never be completed because I will get distracted by a shiney object in the background and walk off forgetting about it for a few months before I get back to it. I need to figure out a way to set a schedule and stick to it. This year I would like to add 100 small items to my online model store. I would also wish to add several larger objects to it as well. These large objects will take me much time to work on, but it will help boost my confidence level if I can ever manage to get them completed. Everytime I get distracted and dont complete a project, my confidence level in my abilities goes down alot. I need to rectify this and complete things, as I know I can do.

Projects for the year I wish to work on:

Modeling

As stated above, I would like to add 100 small objects to my online store. This would include chairs, tables, lamps and various other small assets scene around the house.

On top of this, I need to create a few larger projects as well. These will be more inline with the Venetian bridge I wish to create. It will take me much time for these, and texturing and all that will take even more time. So I will need to budget my time between these large projects and small ones so I can work on them at the same time.

Photography

Finally learning my camera and making use of the abilities it can add to my overall workflow. Learning a bit more about retouching, and trying to retouch my photos just for simple posting, instead of trying to be a professional right out of the gate. This will help me get used to the controls and workflow, as well as just giving me time to play in photoshop again.

Using the camera to take textures. Simple to do overall, allows me to do some post work as well. Then create the maps and after I get 10 or so, post up for sale. Simple really and I need to get on this. How though? Walk in the park I think would be great. We found a great pond inside of south park (local park) which is a great area for photography. Plus they have ducks :)

Movie world

Working on a unknown project with Matt that will give me a reason to start learning some compositing work as well. This should be an interesting experience for sure, I just dont know much details on this yet to even know where to start on this one.

Ipod Development

Working on a project with Chris as well. Will be a simple game for an ipod service that we can post up and make a few bucks for hopefully. Once again, more details on this project later as it develops.

Now, we look forward and never back, and we create that future that we only see inside of our minds and make it a reality. There is only one person that can persue that goal, that person is me. I am also though my worst enemy as I am the only person that can hold myself back. Time to destroy that person and to make a few steps forward instead of jogging backwards.

Craig Menne