Photosynth

Just thought I'd point out the extraordinary free Photosynth service Microsoft released yesterday. It's intended for photos, but I must say, it'd be rather cool if it were applied to renders of a 3D model, particularly if it were a model of rarely-seen areas of, I dunno, Disneyland or something. Hmmm...I'll have to see if I can find anyone working on a project like that. It'd be better than downloading the model itself.


XD

Owen Pope house and new "virtual tour" video

Hi all! As the CURRENT FOCUSES box indicates, I've been working on redoing the backstage house where Owen and Dolly Pope once lived. I'm in the process of adding all the yummy details, so I thought it'd be nice to show 'em off in their current state. (Actually, I've already done more since the creation of this render, such as adding another window and making the foundation visible at the base of the walls.) It's a reasonably fun part of the model to work on currently, though the molding along the window panes can get a little tedious when it comes to being accurate. Note that all the things visible in the background of this render are in the right places, but they're not actually visible from the house in real life. The berm gets in the way. I haven't added that yet in this part of the park, but I will. You'll see. I'll show ya. (Anyone else feel like The Dark Knight featured some phenomenal performances yet fell way short in the plot department? Sigh...I didn't think so.)

Anyways, I've also uploaded a new "virtual tour" video to YouTube. This explores the areas you saw in those renders I posted last time, as well as the Pope house for a moment. Enjoy, and sorry for the cheesy beginning.



On a side note, I'm still posting many piano renditions of my favorite film scores and...you guessed it...Disneyland music. I'll let you check out my YouTube channel for the former, but here are some of the latter for you to enjoy here and now.







Notice a trend? ;) Actually, I'm even planning to do Phantom Manor from DLP, but I shouldn't have too much more HM stuff after that. Perhaps the WDW music room piano eventually. As I said, check out my channel for stuff from Lost, 24, Indiana Jones, and so forth.

Backstage renders and HISTA & Space Mountain on piano

I'm still working on the various back-of-house areas to the northwest of the park. Lots of fun details to put on the rooftops, much of which I have photos of, due to my own photographic excursions around the outside of the park. (No, I haven't intruded into backstage! I just find the best onstage vantage points I can.) This first render is an overview of the whole area I've been working on. I have notes up on Flickr for this rather large render, so be sure to click this thumbnail to see the full-sized version before clicking Back to the Flickr photo page to see the smaller version with the notes.

This is just a view showing off some of the rooftop details on the cycle shop and, to a lesser degree, paint shop. The turbine ventilators were tough, but I'm glad I spent the time on 'em.

In other news, here are my piano recordings of the music for Space Mountain and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience. Various non-Disneyland film scores and so forth (e.g. the first Pirates movie and the Olympic theme) are also showing up on my YouTube channel, so don't hesitate to check those out, too.





If you're wondering when I'm going to start doing actual videos of the model again, don't worry—these piano recordings are not a replacement for those or anything. I just like to wait until I have enough new stuff to really make a worthwhile video about. I'm planning on doing a new one once I finish the staff shop, which is off the right of that first render.

Indiana Jones, Pirates, and Lost on piano

This is off-topic, but I thought I'd share it anyway. My other main activity besides reproducing Disneyland in 3D is arranging film scores, Disneyland attractions, and so forth for piano by ear. I've finally begun uploading some of these to YouTube. Unfortunately, I had to make do with audio recordings only, so all you'll see is a handsome title card made by yours truly. But it's better nothing. If you'd like to see these on YouTube directly, along with detailed descriptions, check out my channel.









There's a tenuous connection to the subject matter of this blog—"The Map Room: Dawn" includes parts that were adapted for the Disneyland attraction. (And three different statements of the Raiders' March are heard in the ride, too, though none of these are heard in the videos I've posted so far.)

Let me know what you think, especially if you have suggestions for improvement! (Other than the errors I've already mentioned on the YouTube pages.) Hopefully, I'll soon be uploading my renditions of the music for the Haunted Mansion, Pirates, and Indy of course. Oh, and Space Mountain. Maybe Splash Mountain...doubt it, though.

Transportation facility, etc.

All righty! As I mentioned in my most recent post, I decided to start modeling the areas I photographed from Mickey and Friends. These back-of-house areas are what we might call hardcore backstage—in other words, they are crucial to the park functioning, but their coolness doesn't stem from any real proximity to onstage themed environments. I'm not as big a fan of these sorts of places; my fascination with backstage is, in its purest form, a curiosity about what lies directly outside onstage scenes. But there's a sort of guilt-by-association thing that happens. Since these structures are near the backstage areas that more intensely interest me, they draw my attention as well. And at the moment, they're screaming for some attention.

My first order of business was this pair of buildings. I got everything in the foreground of this render done in one day (August 4^th, to be specific), a fact I'm rather proud of. As always, I based the north/south and east/west scale on Live Search Maps' fantastic aerial photo of the park. Building outlines are pretty easy to make out. Getting the vertical scale approximately right required a lot of measurements on various images. Since I knew the IASW show building stood thirty feet tall above ground level (based on blueprints), I could use shadow lengths from the terraserver-usa photos to provide me with a basic height figure for the nearer building. After that, I used Live Search Maps' "bird's eye" photos to provide me with more information, both in terms of vertical scale and in terms of door placement and the like. These things don't show up from straight overhead, and I don't have detailed blueprints of this area. The photos I took from the parking structure were also of great help...not so much for specific measurements, but simply for providing me with more detail than the aerial photos do. A couple of photos I took from the sidewalk of Disneyland Drive were also helpful.

Work continued on the surrounding areas the following day. Again, I don't know a whole lot about these structures and regions, so I appreciate all the help I can get. New elements include the additional buildings, yellow bollards, and lighting poles in the parking lot. Unfortunately, many of the new buildings are hard or impossible to see in the photos I took, so the detail level on those suffers. Not to worry, though—there are several other significant buildings that were visible in those photos, and I have every intention of decking them out with lots of details.

More to come later, as always!

Backstage photos and Indy spike room render

All righty! I'm back at my computer and I thought I'd share the spoils of my victorious adventures around but not in Disneyland. As I mentioned before, I was in Downtown Disney for a showing of WALL·E at the AMC, and I thought it'd be nice to snap some photos of backstage from the parking structure while I was there. Here are a few of my favorites; the rest can be seen on my Flickr photostream. Make sure to check out the Disneyland Backstage Photos collection, where I put all of my interesting and unorthodox backstage shots (none of which have been taken through illicit means).

As you can see, the fireworks were finishing up as I set up my camera on its teensy tripod on the skinny handrail. In my excitement, I must have bumped the precarious camera, because the fireworks shots are all slightly blurry. =( You get the idea, though, and the later shots are quite sharp, for the most part. Although I must say I'm sorry about the increasingly steep angles. My group was waiting for their resident backstage nerd, so didn't really have time to get the tripod to work correctly. I'm just glad my Digital Rebel XT didn't fall and shatter on the ground far below. [EDIT: I've now decided to begin modeling this area. I'd already gotten a fair amount of work done on many back-of-house areas, but some of the areas shown here don't exist at all in my model. I'm now working on reproducing them, starting with the transportation facility in the center of shots like this. I'll share my progress as I go.]

In addition, we were driving past Disneyland on I-5 today—er, yesterday, I suppose—and I snapped some shots of the roundhouse and IASW show building.

Anyways, enough with the photos. We must press on to the real topic of this whole blog, after all—the model. I wasn't going to post any renders of the Indiana Jones spike room yet, but I figured I'd waited long enough. Just one spike so far, but the other elements are mostly in place. Still a little more lighting to add, as well as the remaining bamboo along the path. Beyond is the half-finished hall of descending blocks, with the (currently) gray interior walls of the show building beyond that. This whole queue area is progressing rather nicely, and it's making me feel a lot better about eventually tackling the attraction itself. In the mean time, we have the fabulous work of Ryan Batcheller and MiceChat's BurtGummer to keep us entertained and make my work on the attraction look pathetic...whenever I actually get it done. ;D

Current goings-on

Hi all! No renders today, I'm very sad to say. Just wanted to fill y'all in on what's currently going on.

Firstly, I've been gone on a camping trip and a visit with some family, so my time for modeling has been very limited. The project hasn't been abandoned or anything, though—I'm hoping to start a renewed effort on it in the coming week. The Raiders of the Lost Ark temple, however, is kinda stalling, since it's just so dang difficult to line up the camera angles perfectly. We'll see how far I get with that. Also in a holding pattern is that second never-built Haunted Mansion design. I've still got more work to do on it, but I'm just not "feeling it" right now. When inspiration strikes, I'll get back to work on it.

That leaves the queue for the Indiana Jones Adventure, my most current modeling challenge. The interior is progressing rather nicely; I hope I get to show off the spike room soon. The walls, ceilings, bamboo pole, and some of the bamboo along the path—all that's in place, but I still need to add the crucial spikes. I've modeled one, but I'm not so sure of the exact sizes and placements of the others...I may just have to make intelligent guesses, based on photos and video. =(

Though I have been too busy (and gone) for much modeling to happen, I'm happy to say that I most definitely have gotten something done to further its progress. Last night, I went to see WALL·E at Downtown Disney. I loved the movie, but you must understand that I didn't choose that particular theater for no reason...of COURSE I had to go sight-seeing! =D I got to watch a bit of the fireworks show over the roofline of the Indy show building, and then I took the tram to Mickey and Friends so I could snap some nighttime backstage shots from the top level. I can't offload the photos yet, but I'll certainly post 'em to Flickr once I can...probably Monday. And I'll do a post on this blog to show 'em off. Because honestly...I'd never seen long-exposure photos of the back-of-house areas while the fireworks were going off before, so I'm assuming you haven't either. ;)

Well, I suppose that's it for today. I'll leave you with a completely off-topic photo I'm rather proud of: a panoramic image of Lake Almanor, up in northern California. My recent camping trip was my first time at that particular lake, though I'd enjoyed many stays at other nearby bodies of water. This is a composite of six shots I took at dusk. Consider yourself forewarned...the original, which you'll have to click the Original link to view, is very large.

I'll see you all a little later...