Day 24 -- 6/7/2011 Wednesday

Started the day with going through the list of tutorial Ziggy sent us, filtering what was useful for me. I looked up on the VEX tutorial. It was a introduction video, it was since then that I just know, VEX (vector expression) was more of the coded stuff and VOP (vector operator) was for the visual people but basically they both do the same thing, playing with the vector of points of geometry. It was not long before I stopped the video as it was going deeper into the mathematic part.

I also checked out the shader/material video. Basically, shader runs in render-time, freeing calculation time in scene/viewport. Material, assign to geometry able to view in the scene/viewport. It also showed how to apply them on geometry level and sop level.

I stumbled upon an expression video. It explains detailedly what each expression does. One of the section demonstrates how to create a spring using Sine & Cosine expression.

Sine Expression
Can be used as animating a wave (think of it as a snake-curve on X-Y graph)
> sin($FF*Frequency)*Amplitude + Offset <------- *use offset if want curve to move in any axis

Clamp Expression
Cut of any thing the goes beyond the range (pretty much like fit expression)
Takes in 3 argument
> clamp(condition, min num, max num)

Absolute Expression
Make all negative values to positive (no matter what)
> abs()

If Expression
Do this specific expression if condition are met, if not, don't do it
Takes in 3 argument
> if(test condition, do Argument1 if true, do argument2 if false)

Fit Expression (taught by Ziggy)
Fits a old range of data into a new range of data
> fit(condition, old min value, old max value, new min value, new max value)

Also, there was another way of doing the "in-and-out" wall, in a more directed way. By using paint sop, I can paint on which area to be more extruded. Promoting the color in attributePromote, from point class to primitive class, I was able to activate this method. As for now, I blocked out the first shot. I can explore the variations of stuff like, should the cube be here, at which spot, etc. I plan out everything nicely before executing the ideas and get the final shot.