Facades

Today I dropped off David's cabinet of tapes at Ben's house (he calls it the cabinet of Dr. Caligari). I painted it a bluish green. If you look at the photo in the previous post note that the cabinet looks chock full of tapes. That's just a facade! Actually the tape is mounted on cardboard which gives it an illusion of depth. I was actually delighted to discover this since I really like facades, you know like those old Western towns that are just flat hotel and store fronts. I've also been thinking about digital facades. One of the things that separates visual effects from traditional computer simulation is the emphasis on appearance and computational efficiency over accuracy. That is, it's not important whether a wave or hurricane is accurate. What's important is whether it looks right and whether it renders quickly—a movie facade for the digital age. Actor/Programmer Masi Oka describes visual effects programming (from WIRED magazine):

"The key to digital effects is to do things that are visually accurate but done cheaply and approximated," said Oka. "I would simulate viscosity or advection, things that are specific to the way water moves. We'd do a cheap simulated effect for these movements and they were used for things like the spray and wakes in The Perfect Storm."