June 1-5, June 22-26 2009, Ogden, Utah: Novice Level Workshop
The planetarium of the Weber State University (see also their Blender production ‘The Nature of Science‘ and their free Fisheye camera rig) is offering two news Blender workshops. Participants will be able to see their work on the planetarium’s full-dome digital projector.
The Ott Planetarium at Weber State Unversity will host two production workshops this summer: a novice-level training June 1-5 and an another novice-level workshop June 22-26. The workshops will be led by Ron Proctor, producer-animator of The Nature of Science, Astro Otters, The Great Space Race and others. These will follow the format of last year’s (very successful) production workshop held during the 2008 Mediaglobe Users Group Conference.
The novice-level workshop will teach the basics of fulldome production, using a free, open source production pipeline featuring Blender. Attendees will create a short (3-5 minute) project during the workshop. A video example of last year’s projects can be seen at: weber.edu/planetarium/workshop .
The advanced-level workshop will introduce expert techniques, critical workarounds, and visual problem solving, while diving deep into Blender’s advanced features. The advanced workshop includes training in particle systems, the Blender Game Engine, physics simulation, fluid dynamics, compositing and more!
Link
That’s really nice !
Ron Proctor, don’t forget to talk about the BGE and its Dome possibilities :) :
(temporarily at: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Source/GameEngine/Fisheye_Dome_Camera )
For planetariums, you may wanna try the code currently available in the branch ‘ge_dome’.
There is an horizontal tilt option there that makes easy for planetariums to adjust the camera to its rotation.
Feel free to write me if you have any questions.
For everyone’s information, the advanced class was changed to a novice class by popular request.
The novice level classes focus on modeling, animation, and materials; but I am planning on introducing BGE on the last day. An advanced level class would spend a lot more time on BGE, fluid dynamics, composite nodes, etc.
I played around with the BGE dome camera a bit – made a little game that I played in my planetarium until I got sick! It was awesome.
Ott Planetarium’s new website: ottplanetarium.org