Monterey Jack
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Posts posted by Monterey Jack
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Hey folks,
I'm a medical student at Case Western and after suffering through a neuroanatomy course at the beginning of this school year a programmer classmate and I decided to change the way the course was taught. For those of you lucky enough to have avoided this subject throughout your lives, a med school neuroanatomy course focuses on the spinal cord and brain locations of various groups of nerves that are functionally related. One of the big challenges is learning the clinical consequences of damage to these groups and how those consequences can change depending on where in the brain/brainstem/spine the damage occurs.
Right now, the way the course is taught is through textbooks and grainy, black and white photos. Your shown a blurry picture of a section of brainstem and then you read that damage at this location causes ataxic gait or some other fancy medical jargon. There's rarely any kind of visual explanation of the symptoms, students are just expected to know what ptosis or nystagmus looks like.
What my friend and I cooked up was a virtual 3D patient that can demonstrate the symptoms a doctor might see. This movie clip is a screen capture from a demo version of our program that shows our patient, Larry the Lesion Guy, presenting with Wallenberg Syndrome, a stroke that affects the outside rear part of the medulla in your brainstem. What you'll see is two major symptoms for both the face and the body. Please, please forgive me for the "normal" walk cycle, it was done at 6:30 am, 90 minutes before we had to be at the conference to present.
As far as we can tell, there isn't anything else like this program out there so we're pretty excited. We presented it at an anatomy conference a few weeks ago and got such a positive response that we're looking at the possibility of marketing it to other med schools. We still have a lot of work to do on it though.
A huge thanks to Paul Daley who modeled, rigged and textured Larry in just a few days.
http://www.cheesewars.com/larry_demo3.mov
Thanks,
Gregg
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Hey Mark,
This looks really cool so far, but if your looking for some C&C here are a couple of small things that kind of stuck out for me. The first is when he pulls the rope and starts floating there. Are you going to add some kind of effect maybe a electric jolt or something before he just starts floating? Maybe it's just me, but I watched the clip a few times and each time just wondered why pulling a rope would make him float for no apparent reason. Granted, that's probably a stupid thing to wonder since we're talking about a brain with arms and legs here. But have you tried having him pull the rope, having the pieces of neon drop down and start to glow with maybe a little electric burst, then having the letters float up into place and then the brain? Maybe have him slowly get sucked into the air against his will and have him try and fight it a little bit? This is probably a really stupid suggestion, but for some reason having the brain float there by itself for a few seconds just looks too weird.
Also, his hand movements at the beginning seem a little too symmetrical. Are they offset at all? Anyway, great job so far and keep up the good work.
Gregg
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Hey Roughy,
Where'd you get the the 3ds model you tried to use? I'd like to take a look at it.
Thanks,
Gregg
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Howdy fellow forumites,
We're moving along slowly but surely here at Cheese Wars headquarters. We'd like to be moving a lot faster, however, so we're here looking for some more help. We need a few more animators to help bring the new episode to life. It's a parody of the movie Aliens, so for all you sci-fi fans who have been looking for something to do, here's your chance.
Thanks,
Gregg
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Looks like my earlier post didn't make it, so let's try again:
We're moving most of the communication to a Yahoo Group to try and keep from spoiling the episode for everyone.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cheesewars/
Anyone who wants to work on it is welcome to join. We'll try posting some stuff here every now and then, just to keep people interested.
Thanks,
Gregg
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Has anyone modeled the lightswitch yet. I'll do that! <Raises hand>
Hey Rodney,
Just sent you an e-mail without checking the forum here first. Which lightswitch do you want to do, the one Earl hits in Scene 10? Sure you can do that. Would you like to do the electrical box in Scene 13 as well? You can be our resident key grip.
Gregg
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Also, maybe we should start a yahoo group or something (though I hate YG, I haven't researched alternatives). I'm loving the back & forth, but I wonder if the rest of the Hash forums are sick of us.
That's a great idea, Zach. I'll look into it.
Paul, the only problem I can see with everybody rendering out individual scenes and then sending me the TGAs is the sheer size of those kind of transfers. As long as people have fast enough connections and also don't mind tying up their computers on rendering then let's do it. Anyone who doesn't want to render can just send me the project files and be done with it.
And yes, this has been fun so far. Can't wait to see what else you guys come up with for the cheeses. I should have thought about this whole collaborative thing a few episodes ago.
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So some questions:
1) any suggestions for paper deformation (or am I even responsible for this?)
2) anything else you need modeled (or textured?)
Hey Zack,
1) Don't worry about paper deformation. The dictionary should be able to open up to somewhere near the middle of the book. Mel will run his hand over the page, but won't turn any of them, so don't worry about any kind of extensive rigging or smartskin.
2) Yep. We're going to need a motion tracker, a gun and some other assorted gizmos. What do you feel like doing?
Gregg
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Speaking of rendering, how are we going to tackle that?
Good question. I've got NetRender and two computers and that was about as far as I'd gotten on that. If everyone has fast connections you can try rendering your own scenes and then transferring the TGAs to the Cheese Wars website. Any other suggestions?
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One more thing for Gregg... How attached are you to those Simbiont textures?
Not at all. Texturing is a nightmare for me so anything you guys come up with will probably be a lot better.
How about adding some plates, glasses and silverware for Mel to knock off when he collapses?
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Hey Paul,
That's looking really good. I agree it is kind of cramped, but it should be usable. We can always stick one of the other cheeses in the background, I'm just worried about leaving enough room for the camera.
Is there room for a cheese or two between the two small tables closest to the camera and the bigger table in the back?
ZachBG is the one animating this scene, let's ask him what he thinks:
Zach you think there's enough room on this set for Mel on the table with the four other cheeses surrounding it?
Gregg
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I really admire the work you guys have done with these simple yet cool characters.. I have watched all the episodes so far... Definetly something to be proud of....
Thanks DarkLimit,
Simple characters are cool sometimes, but those fish things of yours are damn good. I'm not going to be able to eat tuna fish sandwiches for a month.
Gregg
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where can one find "Hamlet"?
I tried some searching but I got arrested by the "search flood control police"
cool cheese dudes
Hey KingSalami,
Try this:
http://www.cheesewars.com/hamlet/hamlet.htm
Enjoy,
Gregg
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It's always amazed me how much material you've pumped out- hamlet was funny!
Did you finish Hamlet? I need to download the last bits- got the first 2.
Thanks Dearmad,
There's only the first two acts of Hamlet so far. Once the new Cheese Wars is done, I'll get back to Hamlet.
As for putting out a lot of material, it's easier when you know your artistic limitations and are satisfied with real simple animation, i.e. the cheese characters don't even have heads. None of my stuff will ever get me a job at Pixar, but as long as people have fun with the stories, that's what's most important.
Gregg
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Hi all,
About to get started on the next episode of Cheese Wars and since it's been a long time, whipped this little render out just to make sure the guys still worked.
For the first time, Cheese Wars is going to be a collaborative effort. We've got a few people signed up already, but if anyone else is looking for something to do, there's always room for more. We still need some modeling and texturing done, mainly props, but the Alien is going to need a makeover too. And you can never have enough animators.
Thanks,
Gregg
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I tell you.. the guy at cheesewars.com gets my props!! He did a lot of work but put out 13 episodes. Its a fun series. I wish to do something like that for TV but better quality.
Thanks, Flog, I think. Glad you liked Cheese Wars, but it wasn't a collaboration like you're thinking of doing. I had a few friends help with some of the voices but all the writing and animation is my own. It was how I learned the very basics of 3D (the first six episdodes were done on Ray Dream) and how I continued to learn while making the Hamlets and now Episode 14. I never had any thoughts about merchandising or TV, just wanted to make each one better than the last.
Gregg Wrenn
www.cheesewars.com
AM teaching medical students
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Thanks for the comments guys.
Pixelmech: The screen capture was only about half of the interface, there is some more stuff like text and a diagram of the medulla that gives more info on the syndrome and its symptoms.
Gene: One of the main goals I had when animating Larry was to try and give him as much personality as possible without getting too goofy and losing credibility. As med students ourselves, we've spent way, way too much time being bored senseless by textbooks and other types of educational software that all seem to be written with the philosophy that anything educational must also be tedious and painful.
Gregg