Playing with Virtual Cameras

You know how a camera shows things from a particular perspective? And that if you could move it around, you'd see things from a different perspective? And if you keep moving it around, everything seems to spin? Can you imagine who much fun I'd be to play with maybe 5 different cameras at once?

Well, you don't have to. Imagine it. Thanks to Thomas Glynn's interactive "dynamic bullet time," you not only can imagine playing with 5 different cameras, you can play with it. Virtually. Five different, virtual, movable and moving perspectives. Simultaneously.

And you not only get to play simultaneously with 5 different and movable virtual cameras, you get to play with probably the signature scene of the Matrix. You know, the famous bullet-dodging scenes. (After you click on this Official Matrix Reloaded link, click on the numbers at the bottom of the screen. There are three videos, the first is the Computer Generated Image (CGI) of the actor, the second of the bullets, and the third shows them combined.)

If you find being able to play with the very stuff of computer animation and CGI fun (and who wouldn't?), you'll probably find a quick dip into Jean-Marc Gauthier's remarkable Animation and interactive 3-D tutorials an immersion in a virtual sea of digital delight.

Proving once more that something as simple as fun can lead us to some remarkably deep places.