The first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon has successfully arrived.

Being kind of a geeky person, kinda surprised I knew nothing of this project.

“After a journey of nearly five months, taking it far beyond the Moon and back, the little CAPSTONE spacecraft has successfully entered into lunar orbit.

"We received confirmation that CAPSTONE arrived in near-rectilinear halo orbit, and that is a huge, huge step for the agency," said NASA's chief of exploration systems development, Jim Free, on Sunday evening. "It just completed its first insertion burn a few minutes ago. And over the next few days they'll continue to refine its orbit, and be the first cubesat to fly and operate at the Moon."

This is an important orbit for NASA, and a special one, because it is really stable, requiring just a tiny amount of propellant to hold position. At its closest point to the Moon, this roughly week-long orbit passes within 3,000 km of the lunar surface, and at other points it is 70,000 km away. NASA plans to build a small space station, called the Lunar Gateway, here later this decade.”

…

But the one-sentence mind-bender is this IMO.

“NASA plans to build a small space station, called the Lunar Gateway, here later this decade.”

Like, what? Hold up here, WHAT?

Houdini UV Flatten - Rectify to Quads

What a great new node in Houdini for dealing with UVs.

“I'll show how to use a handy feature of the UV Layout SOP to quickly arrange quad groups to perfectly straight islands. I also go over a few features of the Curve SOP that are new to Houdini 19.5”

Undetectable very-low frequency sound increases dancing at a live concert

Crank up those Subs people!

“We tested whether non-auditory low-frequency stimulation would increase audience dancing by turning very-low frequency (VLF) speakers on and off during a live electronic music concert and measuring audience members’ movements using motion-capture. Movement increased when VLFs were present, and because the VLFs were below or near auditory thresholds (and a subsequent experiment suggested they were undetectable), we believe this represents an unconscious effect on behaviour, possibly via vestibular and/or tactile processing.

People attending a performance by the electronic music duo Orphx at the LIVELab were recruited for the study. Participants gave informed consent, were fitted with motion-capture marker headbands, and completed pre- and post-concert questionnaires (see Supplemental information). We turned VLF speakers (8–37 Hz) on and off every 2.5 minutes over 55 minutes of the performance (Figure 1D), calculated head movement speed (the three-dimensional path length per sampling unit of time) for each participant in each of the eighteen segments, and compared average normalized movement while VLFs were ON vs. OFF. Our data show that audience participants moved more, on average by 11.8%, while VLFs were ON vs. OFF (t(42) = 5.32, p < 0.0001; d = 0.81; Figure 1E).”

Freetone!

With all the crap going on between Pantone and Adobe I kinda knew it only be a mtter of time till someone comes up with a solution. Check out Freetone. Cool stuff.

“FREETONE by Stuart Semple contains 1280 colours including digital versions of his Pinkest Pink, Incredibly Kelinish Blue, Black 3.0 and TIFF.

A SIMPLE & TOTALLY FREE COLOUR PALETTE PLUGIN FOR ADOBE

That unlocks a whole books worth of very Pantone-ish colours.

1280 Liberated colours are extremely Pantoneish and reminiscent of those found in the most iconic colour book of all time. In fact it's been argued that they are indistinguishable from those behind the Adobe paywall. “

New work in the wild:Altra running

Just saw this insanely punched in crop of some work we did for Altra Running. Like that’s over 100% punched in. Glad we pay close attention to the details!

Trying to use Squarespace from the iPad ands cluuuuunnnnky……

Houdini doodle: Waves of Whiskey

Just messing around with some fluid sims and some materials.

Final render

Here are some screen grabs of other set ups and the final frame with the build out.

Houdini Doodle

Just messing around with some vellum sims today.

Blackmagic Design Announces DaVinci Resolve for iPad

Huh, this is pretty cool actually.

“Blackmagic Design today announced DaVinci Resolve for iPad, so creators can extend video workflows in new ways and new places. Optimized for MultiTouch technology and Apple Pencil, DaVinci Resolve for iPad features support for cut and color pages providing access to DaVinci’s award winning image technology, color finishing tools and latest HDR workflows. And Blackmagic Cloud support allows creators to collaborate with multiple users around the world. DaVinci Resolve for iPad will be available in Q4 2022 from the Apple App Store as a free download, with an upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio for iPad also available as an in-app purchase.”

“Supported file formats include H.264, H.265, Apple ProRes and Blackmagic RAW, with clips able to be imported from the iPad Pro internal storage and Photos library, or externally connected iCloud and USB-C media disks.”

Be safe out there people!

New study was just released about long time COVID effects. Just stay safe out there will ya?

“Memory impairments, commonly referred to as brain fog, were the most common symptom. Compared with the control groups, people infected with COVID had a 77% higher risk of developing memory problems.

People infected with the virus also were 50% more likely to have an ischemic stroke, which is caused by blood clots, compared with the never infected group.

Those who had COVID were 80% more likely to have seizures, 43% more likely to have mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression, 35% more likely to have headaches and 42% more likely to suffer movement disorders, such as tremors, compared with the control groups.”

DALL-E experiments

Over the weekend I received my invite to play around with DALL-E the AI art engine and it’s been pretty trippy messing with it. Here are some of my prompts and the results. I could see it being very useful in doing Look Dev and concepting for sure. Use it as a tool to rough out ideas and then work on the actual piece in CG.

This is one of the abstracts I polished up and scaled up to 6k using GigaPIxel AI. SO much AI…

Tumblr O'clock: Teenage Wasteland.

You gotta love tumblr, the blogging platform that cause yahoo to lose almost 1 billion dollars. I have been going there for years and have never once made a account, lol! Anyways, here are some gems from one named, “Teenage Wasteland”.

When Cities Treated Cars as Dangerous Intruders

Cars were not always the rulers of the roads. Just imagine how it would be is the car was not so totally dominant here in the States.

“To many urban Americans in the 1920s, the car and its driver were tyrants that deprived others of their freedom.”

City people saw the car not just as a menace to life and limb, but also as an aggressor upon their time-honored rights to city streets. “The pedestrian,” explained a Brooklyn man, “as an American citizen, naturally resents any intrusion upon his prior constitutional rights.” Custom and the Anglo-American legal tradition confirmed pedestrians’ inalienable right to the street. In Chicago in 1926, as in most cities, “nothing” in the law “prohibits a pedestrian from using any part of the roadway of any street or highway, at any time or at any place as he may desire.” So noted the author of a traffic survey commissioned by the Chicago Association of Commerce. According to Connecticut’s first Motor Vehicle Commissioner, Robbins Stoeckel, the most restrictive interpretation of pedestrians’ rights was that “All travelers have equal rights on the highway.”

I might have posted this before, but it kinda touches on this from another view.

It’s the cars, stupid. Why we must restrict cars to save our cities

“When you next walk around your town or city, look around at the space we dedicate to cars. When you next press what has been nicknamed the ‘beg button’ to allow you the luxury of crossing from one side of the road to another, have a think about why those travelling alone in a metal cocoon belching out poisonous fumes have priority over you.”