RE: Inspiration shortage and question for medically inclined.

[Chad Cooper]

 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2000 9:25 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Inspiration shortage and question for medically inclined.

Well, I had an abundant supply of inspiration, but now that I have finished a
majority of the story outline for my animation, I seem short on both
inspiration and focus.  Normally, to fix such a situation, I would just go
watch Dinosaur... unfortunately, Dinosaur isn't in theaters anymore, and
won't be available on video until January 30th (ARG!!!).  Rather than put off
production, I went to the store to purchase Watership Down and The Secret of
NIHM on video.  Those were two of my favorite animated films as a child, and
since I am trying to target this animation for children, I thought those
might be good sources for inspiration.  Unfortunately, I was a couple bucks
short to buy both (I get paid this Friday, and I hate using credit cards
unless absolutely necessary, and really hate using my ATM card, which I have
only used on two occasions, both times were on long trips, where I don't like to keep lots of cash on hand), so I just got Watership Down (the more
difficult of the two to find).  I'll probably watch it after work tomorrow.  
Hopefully, Watership Down will help me get up and running again with my
animation.  I'm not surprised I am dragging my feet a little though... I just
hit the character and object modeling stage.  That is the most time consuming
stage, and results are not easy to see right away, so the process feels like
it drags a little.  A lot of progress happens during that stage, but it
doesn't feel like much progress because you can't *see* much of the progress
until the texturing and animation stages are finished (and ARG!!! I realized
I have to make a few models with full skeletons, internal organs, etc., for
sonar representation purposes).

On a related note, can anyone in the medical field tell me (or refer me to a
web page, or send me graphics illustrating) how dense cartilage looks
compared to bone in an ultrasound scan?  Sharks have no bones, only dense
cartilage, so I will have to know the difference if I do want to do the sonar
representation part.  Ultrasound scans of spinal columns might be helpful,
though I don't know if that has ever been done.  I imagine cartilage, being a
flexible, non-crytaline structure would absorb a lot of sound, and not
reflect much sound, though being more dense than normal tissue is bound to
reflect some sound that passes through the tissues of the body.

Michael Harney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  

 

I think that if your are trying to represent dolphins being able to do ultrasound type imaging, that this would be unrealistic, unless the dolphins had a type of aperture to control depth of penetration, and a method to "focus" on a discrete plane. However, I think a better effect, is to represent the dolphins view of a sonographic image, as something like a shimmering holographic image with slightly opaque wave fronts leading away from the contours of an object. This would all have to be in grayscale of course, since color is not a function of sound. Check out http://www.nvidia.com/Pages.nsf/Lookup/Reflection/$file/Reflection.mpg (This is a big file).

 

By the way, I found a dolphin model at the same site - http://www.nvidia.com/Developer . You would know more than me on how to check it out.

Nerd From Hell