Other, astronomical, digital images
My first attempt at 3-D computer
graphics, at age 18: a wireframe image of a distorted octahedron
generated October 1975. The image was calculated on a mainframe at
Blackburn
College with an ALGOL program that I had written, transmitted
over a modem (yes, they had modems back then) and printed
out on a teletype at Nelson and
Colne College, where I had recently completed my "A" Levels. I hope my spelling has improved since
then...
1997 Xmas contest mystery picture (75 K JPEG)- click on the thumbnail
for the full sized version. Andy White, as the first Lowell person to figure out
what this image represents, won a pair of movie
ticket coupons for Harkins Theatres. Two non-Lowell people
(Nick Schneider and Erica Ellingson) also figured it out. Clues, and wrong
answers given here. And finally, the
answer!- if you want to solve it for yourself, don't click here.
Simulated Scottish Highlands scene (81K JPEG). Bryce 2 rendering,
with rowboat modeled in Imagine and imported as a DXF object.
All my earliest Bryce scenes ended up looking like Lake Powell, so
this was an attempt at a very different type of landscape. The
pebbly shoreline was added using a trick, described here, that can be used to add shorelines
or beaches to any Bryce landscape.
John and
Jane's 1996 Xmas card (79K JPEG). Imagine 4.0 rendering of Io,
Europa, and Ganymede, with Jupiter out the window. The pine branches
are rendered needle-by-needle, which proved more realistic and less memory
intensive than making them with brush maps. The maps for the celestial
bodies are accurate maps based on Voyager images.
John and Jane's 1995 Christmas Card (121K JPEG). Imagine 4.0
rendering: note the soft shadows. The subtle streaking on the apple
(maybe a bit too subtle) uses the "IRIS" texture.
For the 50th Anniversary of my in-laws (178K JPEG). Imagine 4.0
rendering.
Virtual silverwork: a concha belt (37K JPEG). The design has
no symbolic meaning whatsoever. Imagine rendering.
An attempt to model a real-world object as realistically as possible.
The jar was a wedding present from Pui Hin and Sam Rhoads,
so if either of you stop by, thanks! Note the recycled apple from the
Xmas 1995 image.
(66K JPEG). Imagine rendering.
John and Jane's 1993 Christmas Card. Imagine 3.0
rendering. Also incorporates our 1992 Christmas card.
John and
Jane's 1990 Christmas Card. Deluxe Paint drawing using
colorized digital data from the ProtoCAM infrared camera on the NASA
Infrared Telescope- I probably used PBMPLUS to convert from FITS to
Amiga image format. The original image is available here. Jane did a further and
even more complex transformation of the data, converting the
upper-left image into embroidery, pixel-by-pixel.