Architectural Rendering - 3D Applications to Real Estate

Real Estate is an ever-changing and evolving field. Just like any other trade design, usability and quality are the driving force behind a huge surge in the design of property and related spheres of specialty.

Gone are the days where it as all just about having it neat and clean. Property and Real Estate today signify a stamp on your personality, a statement you make and a life you live.

In such ever-changing scenarios the process of design and the very basics of design are pushed to their limits while yearning to create and deliver excellence. Real Estate Companies, Developers, Architects, Contractors, etc. all work hard to be a part of a unique project which would yield them many rewards both on the fame and fortune fronts.

Computerized design and presentation tools play a very important part in the entire process right from conceptualization, design, testing and development to sales marketing of the project.

Going 3D has proved to be a major boon as it has allowed or several real-world steps and stages to be incorporated right at the design stage and thus helped save time, efforts and money during the later stages of construction.

3D Architectural Rendering

One such process which is now heavily relied upon is the process of 3D Architectural Rendering and Illustration. Also referred to as Architectural Visualization this involves the creation of virtual 3d models based on the designs presented / conceptualized. The 3d Models are then colored/textured to closely resemble real-life instances of the property. This helps in easier display and demonstration to civic bodies, buyers and other decision-makers involved in the process.

Architectural Rendering also helps portray the final shape and look of any property on the various marketing channels like Print, Film, DVD, Mobile and the Internet.

Architectural Walkthrough and Fly-By Animations

Being able to animate / lend movement to virtual cameras has also presented designers and developers with an opportunity to present Architectural Walkthrough Animations. These 3D Walkthrough / Fly-by movies helps demonstrate salient features of a project by way of simulating a walk, run, drive or flight while highlighting every feature and specialty of a real-estate project.

Being able to deliver Architectural Rendering and Walkthrough Based services has also allowed real-estate related marketing to get high-tech and present their properties in a better manner over the ever evolving video and photo sharing sites globally. Social media sharing of these renders and videos too leads to higher returns and better sales prospects for any real-estate-marketing firm.

Computer aided 3D Applications are empowering real-estate designers/architects, developers and marketing professionals at every stage and are helping to deliver quicker and better.

Just a simple search performed on YouTube.com for Architectural Walkthrough, Architectural Animation, etc. always results in several thousands of demonstration videos created and delivered through the use of computerized 3D Software and rendering solutions.

Architects, Developers, Contractors, Real-State Companies and Marketers the world over look to these Architectural Rendering and Walkthrough solutions to help them deliver better in terms of quality and usability. The tools that help deliver these services too keep evolving rapidly and can be broken down into 3d modeling and animation, composition and editing categories.

Launching and Promoting Your Anime Blog

If you have a strong interest in a hobby, chances are that you are likely to own a website devoted to your favorite pastime. You might have a domain name lying around that's relevant to your hobby, or have been recently inspired to start a website altogether because of another site you visit often. The anime fandom is an example that I can relate to, as the owner of an anime blog.

You might have surfed by a blog of such in the past, either finding pictures of cosplayers, or tutorials on becoming a cosplayer. Maybe you found a review of an anime or manga series you were interested in, only to find yourself a fan because of one's recommendation. Or maybe you found a review of a figure that caught your attention, inspiring yourself to becoming a collector. If you've been through these scenarios, then here is how to start your very own anime blog.

Differences Between Blogs and Websites

There is a difference between a blog and a website. With a blog, you present your thoughts and ideas directly to visitors, where you, the webmaster, can worry less of the presentation of the page and focus more on producing interesting content right away. With websites, it can be anything besides a blog, which can be a social network site, or a message board. Launching an anime blog has been a popular way to launch as a site at all, giving the webmaster an opportunity to cover their hobby as if it were their very own anime magazine.

Choosing a Hosting Service and Blog Platform

There are many options for hosting a blog. The best way to go is finding a web host provider that utilizes PHP and MySQL that's used in most blog publishing software. While web hosting requires a monthly commitment of no more than $10 a month, there are blog platforms with provided hosting such as WordPress. It's a popular choice for bloggers of all levels and budgets on WordPress.com site, with a full client available from their.org site for self-installation on web hosting services.

There are additional blog platforms such as Blogger and TypePad. Both platforms offer similar features as WordPress, but as someone with several years of anime blogging experience, nothing beats the flexibility of WordPress. While there is more to explain on why WordPress is useful, I think it's best to leave one's curiosity on why this is so after publishing the first post.

Where to Find Inspiration for Content

To get an idea of what to write about, do a search of what other anime bloggers are talking about. Most anime blogs feature anime reviews, opinions of anime news stories, and reports of anime conventions. Don't forget about contests, the biggest draw to any website! For starting content ideas, write a review of a favorite anime or manga series. Introduce readers with a basic synopsis of the story, and why you like or dislike it. If it's a review for a singular episode of an anime, disclose the plot of the previous episode to catch readers up on the events. Be careful not to spoil too much of the story.

Promoting Your Anime Website

Promoting your anime blog is the same as promoting any other blog, though there aren't many websites specifically for anime webmasters to promote their content. A guaranteed option is joining and engaging on anime forums, where you can link back to your blog in your forum signature. However, there are forums that find this as a way to gain backlinks for low quality sites. Most communities make it where the member has to be registered long enough to use a signature to curb abuse.

Lastly, if you enjoy going to anime conventions, considering taking business cards. Cards can be printed at home, or purchased in bulk from printing companies online or locally. Hand out cards to cosplayers after taking their picture so they can find their photo after the event. Business cards can also be left at designated tables for fan organizations. Don't forget to include any links social network accounts, along with the blog's URL, of course!

BONUS: Attending Anime Cons as a Press Member

Another option long after your blog has taken off is gaining access to an anime con as a press member. Doing this allows you get free entry to the convention, and a chance for one-on-one interviews with industry guests, as well as early access to convention events. This works very well for both the event and yourself, as both parties will be getting free exposure for continued growth.

Create Your Cartoon With These Easy Steps

So maybe this is your first experience in creating your own cartoon using Flash. You are clueless about the idea, the characters and furthermore the story. It would be more complicated when you think about how to add sound and animation to your cartoon. To make the entire process gets easier, below are some steps you can follow. This might not the basic steps that work for everyone but at least it can help you figure out the important steps to do.

1. Finding the Idea 

Before opening your Flash to make the cartoon, idea is the first thing you have to find. It is important to decide whether you want to create a funny, serious or even sarcastic cartoon. You should also know the target of your audience.

2. Creating the Characters 

Before launching your cartoon, you must know the character first. You should know what and who they are, their personality and their background. People have different ways in deciding the character of their cartoon. Some people draw the character before creating the character while the others might think of the personality before drawing the character.

3. Develop a Setting 

Setting is another important thing in making a cartoon. You should have the ideas of the locations such as house or city. If you want to simplify the design process, you can have the same setting for your characters.

4. Writing the Story 

The next thing to do is writing the story. To make the writing process runs easily, think about the main idea first. Then, you can develop the story such as adding some conflicts and end it with the solutions.

5. Making the Storyboard 

Once you have finished your story, now you need to make the storyboard. A storyboard is just like a comic book, it helps you direct the cartoon. When making storyboard, you need to draw your characters and illustrate what they are doing in each scene.

6. Recording Dialogue 

It will be easier to record dialogue before animating your cartoon. This helps you to know where you want to add the dialogue and hence minimize any revisions on your animations.

7. Design Art 

You can add elements in your cartoon either by drawing them in a piece of a paper or using drawing tools in the software. To make the process gets easier, you can design the elements in each scene.

8. Pre-Plan Your Scenes in Flash 

Flash is a program that enables you to pre-plan scenes and add names. The benefit of doing this step is that you can copy similar frames to another scene.

9. Scan/Import Your Images and Audio 

Before you start animating, it would be easy to scan your image or audio files into the Flash document. Scanning these files and save them into one folder will simplify the importing process.

10. Add the Audio to Each Scene 

Once you have imported the audio and finished scenes lay-out, add your audio on each scene. Make sure that it flows well and there is no overlapping sound.

11. Animating 

When animating your cartoon, you can copy similar scenes to simplify the process.

12. Lip Sync 

Lip sync is the fun part in making a cartoon since your character will look more alive. You can use symbols for different mouth position and swap them for each sound.

13. Adding Sound Effects 

To produce good sound effects, make sure that you place them in the right scenes. Timing is the key to obtain the right sound at the right scene.

14. Edit and Publish Your Cartoon 

Before publishing your cartoon, you may need some editing process to make it more perfect. It can be adding more animations, sounds or dialogue. Once you have completed this finishing touch, your cartoon is ready to be published.

Digital Art and Technology Creating Beauty

Digital art has become very popular because this is the time of science and technology. People are using various tools and techniques to make artistic designs. It is a method that uses the digital technology for creating artistic works. In the olden days it is also known by the names like computer art and multimedia art and many more.

The latest ways of making digital art has brought a transformation into drawing, painting, music, etc. Those who use these processes to produce art are called digital artists. Today different types of applications are used in the formation of beautiful images and sceneries. They are created with the combination of discrete of discontinuous numeric value range. We can also understand it as a pixel that is very tiny constituent of an image. It consists of many dots and spaces and these are very tiny parts and they combine themselves to make a pixel and many pixels to a picture.

There are different aspects of producing the digital data like vector, digital painting, mixed media, fractals etc. In a vector technique some software like Corel Draw, Illustrator and some more, help the designer in making the graphics. Another important thing for the designer is to have some basic skills of sketching that helps a lot in this. Since these are created with the use of a computer the environment for them is virtual unless and until the prints are not taken out. We can put different colors and shapes to the desired image. Sketching skills also help the designer in making cartoons as well. Today there is a good demand of the people who are good in making sketches in the field of animation.

Another is fractal graphics; it is also going popular again these days. These types of images are formed by the use of specifically designed mathematical software that uses the mathematics formulae. The interesting thing is we can see the finer things of these images when we get it zoom. They are made very fine. The next one is mixed media and digital painting. Mixed media is the incorporation of sketching, photography and drawings to form the desired graphics or animation. It can easily be done with the help of Photoshop application. It is commonly used by the photographers to edit their photographs after shooting. In the same way we can use another form that is known as digital painting.

Here we can easily use the painting oils, colors, and charcoals, acrylic color shades etc. digitally using the computer. Here also we can use the specialized software for this. At an advanced stage different types of brushes, color, pencils and many more drawing tools can be used to create the images. Digitization has made the word of graphics creation a lot of convenient and user friendly.

Where to Find the Best Anime!

Think about it for a moment of how anime fans before the current generation of fans got their hands of the latest series. First generation fans watched anime on VHS from local fans all the way in Japan. Second generation fans were able to watch English dub anime right on their television sets. Then, the third generation of fans were able to watch a new episode as soon as they were released online.

With the popularity of anime higher than ever before, there are more and legal ways of watching anime on either a PC or on TV via a streaming device. Here are a few ways of finding where to watch the best anime series.

Streaming Services

Fans are making the switch to online streaming to watch their favorite shows without having to download multiple files that require various video codecs. There are streaming services such as Crunchyroll who offer recent and current season anime shows to free and paid subscribers. Paid users are offered new episodes just a few hours after airing in Japan, where free users will have to wait a week after to catch up. A bonus with streaming services like Crunchyroll is that the majority of shows offered are subtitled only, where there are a growing number of general streaming sites, such as Hulu, offering both subs and dubs.

On-Demand

On-Demand through a local cable or satellite provider is another option of finding new and popular shows. The model of on-demand offers shows on a rotational basis, meaning viewers have limited time to watch earlier or later episodes. Most episodes are free of charge to customers, but are also offered on a per-pay basis. It's a secondary option for those who are willing to find a new series on their TV by chance within a short amount of time.

Digital Rentals

Even with the cemented desire of more digital media, there will always be a demand for physical media. But when there no one desires either physical or digital versions, there are such thing as rentals. Stores such as Amazon for PC and Mac users, and respective stores for users of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 console, offer digital rentals of movies and TV shows, including a growing library of anime titles. When a movie or episode is rented, the user has limited time to watch it before it expires, usually within 48 hours. The concept is similar with most On-Demand content, as well.

Despite the options given, streaming is the best option of watching a good anime series. Of course, it makes the series more enjoyable by buying the complete series on DVD after finishing it online. Watching anime through online streaming is better as there is no money wasted buying a series that turns out to be no good.

If a particular anime series is not offered through legal means, avoid watching it on sites that offer free streaming or downloads. Not only is it illegal, but it does not benefit distributors that are working with the major services to bring the next best anime series for years to come.

Some History of Creating The Illusion of Movement

Creating the Illusion of movement has been the fascination of many throughout history. Early examples of this can be found in cave drawings and on pieces of pottery. However these really can't be considered animation in the truest sense of the word, even though the artists were trying to show some form of motion.

The first flip books appeared in the 19th century and were a little closer to what we would consider animation in today's world. These books consisted of drawing that would show the illusion of some sort of movement, when the pages were flipped quickly and in a coordinated manner.

True animation cannot be considered being born until the advent of the motion picture or what is known as cinematography. With the use of the motion picture animators could produce high quality animation such as stop motion and animated cartoons.

Animated cartoons became very popular in the early 20th century. They were often shown before full length feature films and were usually only six or seven minutes long. These types of animated films where know as cel animations and each frame had to be hand drawn. Each cel or drawing had a slight change in the characters position, which gave the illusion of motion. The completed cels where photographed one by one against a background picture. Warner Brothers and Walt Disney animation studios produced many high quality animation shorts of this nature during the 1940's and 1950's.

Today animated cartoons re no longer produced using this method. Computers and 3D animation software has taken over. There are many types of computer animation. They all have one thing in common, they produce digital imagines on a computer and take much less type to produce than hand drawn cels. Of course you need to known how to proficiently use the software and have access to it.

Introduction to Japanese Anime

"Whatever is happening now, it always has got to do something from the past."

The history of anime is notably broad, yes, and it will take hundreds of pages if I will make a chapter about it. I could, but it will take a year or more for me to compile it. My primary focus is not to present a chronological dissertation of anime history in its broadened sense, since it is, as I said, broad. But it is part of my cause to present to you, the readers, a simplified presentation of the anime history. So in this article, my cause is to give a simplified yet awakening view for us Christians about anime and its history. Knowing the history, of course, will not make us ignorant of today's sophistication. Furthermore, as Christians, it is important for us to know or to trace back the roots before we jump into temptations of any kind.

To begin with, the word "anime" is primarily based on the original Japanese pronunciation of the American word "animation." It is the style of animation in Japan. The Urban dictionary defines it stereotypically as: the anime style is characters with proportionally large eyes and hair styles and colors that are very colorful and exotic. The plots range from very immature (kiddy stuff), through teenage level, to mature (violence, content, and thick plot). It is also important to note that American cartoons and Japanese animes are different. The storyline of an anime is more complex while that of a cartoon is simpler. While cartoons are intended for kids, anime, on the other hand, is more intended for the adult viewers.

Although the creation of anime was basically due to the influence of the Western countries that began at the start of 20th century (when Japanese filmmakers experimented with the animation techniques that were being explored in the West) it was also inspired by the production of manga (comic) that was already present in Japan even before the production of anime.

Around the beginning of the 13th century, there were already pictures of the afterlife and animals appearing on temple walls in Japan (most of them are similar to modern manga). At the start of 1600's, pictures were not drawn on temples any longer but on wood blocks, known as Edo. Subjects in Edo arts were less religious and were often geographically erotic. Noting this, without a doubt, it gave me this insight:

"The explicit presentations of manga, that would later influence the industry of anime, were already existent in the 13th century. That's hundreds of years before anime emerged into view!"

Now it shouldn't be too surprising, right? There are many mangas (also known as comics) of these days that are too vulgar and explicit and if not, there will be at least one character in her showy appearance. I'm not saying that all mangas are full of nudities, if that's what you're thinking by now. But rather, this exploitation of eroticism (or at least a hint of amorousness) on mangas is not actually new. They already existed even before the World War I and II. They, however, advanced into something else. Manga, to a great extent, is a factor as to how and why anime existed. In fact, most animes and live actions are adaptations of mangas or comics.

Japanese cartoonists already experimented with different style of animation as early as 1914, but the glorious growth of anime nonetheless began shortly after the Second World War where Kitayama Seitaro, Oten Shimokawa, and Osamu Tezuka were pioneering as then notable Japanese animators. Among the pioneering animators during that time, it was Osamu Tezuka who gained the most credits and was later known as "the god of comics."

Osamu Tezuka was best known in his work "Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu)" the first robot boy with an atomic heart who had wished to be a real boy. His works were notable and his style of animation contributed a lot in the production of Japanese anime, such as large and rounded eyes. Tezuka's works did not only focus to entertain young viewers but he also conceived and initiated the creation of Animerama. It is a series of thematically-related adult anime feature films made at his Mushi Production studio from the late 1960's to early 1970's. Animerama is a trilogy consisting of three films: A Thousand & One Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladona. The first, A Thousand & One Nights, was the first erotic animated film conceived by Osamu Tezuka, the god of comics.

Although anime made its way, it was only in the 1980's that anime was fully accepted in the mainstream of Japan. Since then, more and more genres emerged into being. From slice of life, drama, mechas, tragic, adventure, science fiction, romance, ecchi, shounen-ai, shoujo and a lot more of genres. While most of the anime shows shifted from more superhero-oriented, fantastical plots to somewhat more realistic space operas with increasingly complex plots and fuzzier definitions of right and wrong-in short, anime in its broadened sense is simply complicated.

Additionally, later during the boomed experience of Japanese animation, a new medium was then developed for anime: the OVA (Original Video Animation). These OVAs were direct-to-home-video series or movies that catered to much smaller audiences. The OVA was also responsible for allowing the first full-blown anime pornography.

As Japanese animation further gained more audience and acceptance throughout the world, a subculture in Japan, who later called themselves "otaku", began to develop around animation magazines such as Animage or later NewType. These magazines became known in respond to the overwhelming fandom that developed around shows such as Yamato and Gundam in the late 1970's and early 1980's and during this period the mecha genres were prominent.

It all started from ancient paintings, wood block arts, artistic depiction of life, nature, and animals as early as the 13th century. Until these, nonetheless, evolved into moving frames when different experimentations of mangas and animation were made in the pre and post-wars era.

Even as early as 13th century, mangas on wooden blocks, known as Edo, were already existent not only for the sake of art but it was there I believe as a medium of entertainment... a form of art and entertainment that would gradually evolved in time.

In conclusion, the history of anime was broad in its sense and this article has not presented all of it. But the point is, we must know that anime itself carries a lot of genres and motives that can be alarming more than we can imagine.

As Christians, we should really consider the motives of the heart of the creators or the animators. We should do a background check and if we are convicted to stop watching a certain anime, let's not take it for granted.