UFOs and the bible

[fester30]

A most bizarre thread! With the exception of The Magic Pudding, every poster confessed faith in extraterrestrials. This one confession is closest to blind faith:

My stance on aliens is that they exist, but it is really unlikely that they've visited us. We probably wouldn't even be a blip on the radar of a starfaring race, we'd be nothing more than a curiosity at best. What's much more likely is that we'll stumble across them once we start extrasolar colonization/exploration.

Atheism shows keeness of spirit and a desire to question received notions, I'll grant you that. But replacing religion with goblins from another planet requires a remarkable lack of discernment.

Except that believers do not worship UFOs, but trying to figure out what it is rather than just conveniently saying it is just another fairy tale. How would UFO same as myth like goblins? Does Goblins have UK National Archive to support the evidence?
No one knows UFOs are, and no one claims to know. For all I know it might not Alien, but phenomenon exist, and worth the investigation. Being an Atheist doesn't mean we have to deny everything in default, reject anything relate to the idea of "believing."
I'm a man of evidence, and I believe UFO phenomenon exists, and Alien exists.

The problem with the UFO/E.T. thing is the believers take on religious fervor.  There still is not any evidence that has passed scientific muster, yet there are plenty that will take archaeological items and lie about them to promote their ideas.  Just watch Ancient Aliens on the History Channel, then look up what they call "evidence" on websites that show the real archaeology behind the items.  You'll see people like Erich Von Daniken make stuff up.  If scientists lie so boldly they're ostracized in the scientific community.  These people have a voice because of the enthusiastic, uneducated followers they've managed to dupe; people who don't do simple things like looking up the information to see if it's the truth.  The idea that we look at an object that is UNIDENTIFIED, meaning we don't know what it is, and assume that because we don't know what it is it must be extra terrestrial, is argument from ignorance.

There are UFO's, but they're called that because they're unidentified.  Until they are identified, we don't know what they are.  There may be alien life out there somewhere.  To assume aliens are the source of the UFO's, however, is to me like assuming a bouncing light on a set of train tracks must be a ghost.

[Stevil]

A most bizarre thread! With the exception of The Magic Pudding, every poster confessed faith in extraterrestrials. This one confession is closest to blind faith:

Given that life exists on at least one planet and given that it is estimated that there are 300 sextillion stars in our Universe alone. And possibly a number tending towards infinity of Universes within Space. To me it would seem somewhat ridiculous to suggest that earth is the only planet with life.

[ThinkAnarchy]

I think most of the sightings we hear about are nothing more than unidentified flying objects, it in no way means aliens are behind the controls. When it comes to abduction stories, it appears the people are delusional. Belief in alien life tends to be overzealous, much like a belief in god.

With that said, I think there is a very high probability of their being alien life somewhere. I also doubt they have discovered us yet.

[fester30]

I think most of the sightings we hear about are nothing more than unidentified flying objects, it in no way means aliens are behind the controls. When it comes to abduction stories, it appears the people are delusional. Belief in alien life tends to be overzealous, much like a belief in god.

With that said, I think there is a very high probability of their being alien life somewhere. I also doubt they have discovered us yet.

That was my point... the abduction stories make me laugh.  It's never someone like the President, Warren Buffet, Jack Nicholson, Stephen Hawking, etc.  It's always somebody that wears overalls for a living.  If you were E.T.s that just traveled so far to find a planet like Earth, wouldn't you want a true representative sample of the population if you were conducting human research?

[xSilverPhinx]

I think most of the sightings we hear about are nothing more than unidentified flying objects, it in no way means aliens are behind the controls. When it comes to abduction stories, it appears the people are delusional. Belief in alien life tends to be overzealous, much like a belief in god.

With that said, I think there is a very high probability of their being alien life somewhere. I also doubt they have discovered us yet.

That was my point... the abduction stories make me laugh.  It's never someone like the President, Warren Buffet, Jack Nicholson, Stephen Hawking, etc.  It's always somebody that wears overalls for a living.  If you were E.T.s that just traveled so far to find a planet like Earth, wouldn't you want a true representative sample of the population if you were conducting human research?

Nah, I'd want one that when he opened his mouth to say he was abducted, nobody with half a brain would believe him!

[Davin]

Yea, Toy Story was the first.

There are plenty of other studios making them now, of course (most notably DreamWorks), and you can make one on your own if you have enough free time, assuming you have access to a computer. Spend enough hundreds of hours fiddling with a scene and you may even produce something of the same level of quality as Pixar has.

Maybe it's just me and the people I've been teaching, but it's not as easy as you make it sound. At least if you want some high quality work. I'd be willing to wager that without learning from other people who have learned from other people and learned a great deal themselves, that it would take more than hundreds of hours just to make one model of Buzz or Woody. Because while there may be several good ways to do something, there are so many more wrong ways and the wrong ways are very noticeable.

Once you have the model done, texturing is another beast that takes a lot of work. U|V mapping alone would take a newb days, let alone doing it correctly so there is no tearing or warping.

After texturing you have lighting the scene, which takes either hundreds of renders of trial and error when one doesn't know what they're doing or much less trial and error when one does know what they're doing.

If you wanted to pose the model then you'll either have to model the model in that pose or rig the model, and rigging a model is another bitch of a job that an unskilled newb will mess up a lot or simply not be able to do. And doing it right without thousands of hours practice and/or learning from people that know what they're doing to is extremely unlikely.

So I'd put a lot of money down on a newb taking much more than thousands of hours to be able to produce just an image of the same quality as a frame from a Pixar movie, and even throw in never because most give up after finding out how much more difficult it is than what they thought it would be (I mean the computer does all the work right?). I've seen and known many people think it's easy, but I've yet to meet a person that thinks so after learning how to do it.

I do think anyone can do it, but please look for tutorials and examples before you just dive in and expect that just hard work and time will get you to your goal. Also expect it to be a lot more difficult, take a lot more knowledge, take a lot more skill and take a lot more time than it seems.

[Heretical Rants]

I think most of the sightings we hear about are nothing more than unidentified flying objects, it in no way means aliens are behind the controls. When it comes to abduction stories, it appears the people are delusional. Belief in alien life tends to be overzealous, much like a belief in god.

With that said, I think there is a very high probability of their being alien life somewhere. I also doubt they have discovered us yet.

That was my point... the abduction stories make me laugh.  It's never someone like the President, Warren Buffet, Jack Nicholson, Stephen Hawking, etc.  It's always somebody that wears overalls for a living.  If you were E.T.s that just traveled so far to find a planet like Earth, wouldn't you want a true representative sample of the population if you were conducting human research?

Nah, I'd want one that when he opened his mouth to say he was abducted, nobody with half a brain would believe him!

Yea, me too.

Yea, Toy Story was the first.

There are plenty of other studios making them now, of course (most notably DreamWorks), and you can make one on your own if you have enough free time, assuming you have access to a computer. Spend enough hundreds of hours fiddling with a scene and you may even produce something of the same level of quality as Pixar has.

Maybe it's just me and the people I've been teaching, but it's not as easy as you make it sound. At least if you want some high quality work. I'd be willing to wager that without learning from other people who have learned from other people and learned a great deal themselves, that it would take more than hundreds of hours just to make one model of Buzz or Woody. Because while there may be several good ways to do something, there are so many more wrong ways and the wrong ways are very noticeable.

Once you have the model done, texturing is another beast that takes a lot of work. U|V mapping alone would take a newb days, let alone doing it correctly so there is no tearing or warping.

After texturing you have lighting the scene, which takes either hundreds of renders of trial and error when one doesn't know what they're doing or much less trial and error when one does know what they're doing.

If you wanted to pose the model then you'll either have to model the model in that pose or rig the model, and rigging a model is another bitch of a job that an unskilled newb will mess up a lot or simply not be able to do. And doing it right without thousands of hours practice and/or learning from people that know what they're doing to is extremely unlikely.

So I'd put a lot of money down on a newb taking much more than thousands of hours to be able to produce just an image of the same quality as a frame from a Pixar movie, and even throw in never because most give up after finding out how much more difficult it is than what they thought it would be (I mean the computer does all the work right?). I've seen and known many people think it's easy, but I've yet to meet a person that thinks so after learning how to do it.

I do think anyone can do it, but please look for tutorials and examples before you just dive in and expect that just hard work and time will get you to your goal. Also expect it to be a lot more difficult, take a lot more knowledge, take a lot more skill and take a lot more time than it seems.

I wasn't really talking about modeling, (more the animation process itself), the first few hundred hours would obviously be spent learning and pulling hair, and "enough hundreds of hours" includes tens of hundreds

I've played with Blender before for modeling and made some paths based 3D animations, it's really not all that bad. I'm not going to bother doing it seriously, either, but that's just because I prefer other media for my work.

An amateur animation that I rather like, basically produced by one person: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs
Something a bit more skillfully crafted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ePWK0qfisE

[xSilverPhinx]

An amateur animation that I rather like, basically produced by one person: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs
Something a bit more skillfully crafted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ePWK0qfisE

Those were done with Blender?

[Heretical Rants]

An amateur animation that I rather like, basically produced by one person: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs
Something a bit more skillfully crafted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ePWK0qfisE

Those were done with Blender?

Eh, probably not, but if you're surprised because of any level of quality, here are some examples of things that WERE made in Blender:

[xSilverPhinx]

Those are quite stunning actually. And just to think about 5 or more years ago I was contemplating taking a course in Macromedia Flah animation.

Blender is free to download, but it's tricky as hell, at least for me.

[fester30]

Those are quite stunning actually. And just to think about 5 or more years ago I was contemplating taking a course in Macromedia Flah animation.

Blender is free to download, but it's tricky as hell, at least for me.

We got Blender from the UFO that crashed in Roswell.  Or we didn't.  It's one of those.

[xSilverPhinx]

Those are quite stunning actually. And just to think about 5 or more years ago I was contemplating taking a course in Macromedia Flah animation.

Blender is free to download, but it's tricky as hell, at least for me.

We got Blender from the UFO that crashed in Roswell.  Or we didn't.  It's one of those.

LOL