Hi everybody and welcome along to another episode of LESA conference television I'm Colom Cronin from the Adventures in Advising podcast and today I am delighted to be joined by a stalwart Advising the Oscar Oscar, how are you doing today? I'm good Colom. How are you? It's really nice to see you again. How are you? It's good I love the fact that I get the opportunity to catch up with you at these various events and Oscars always doing interesting things But for viewers who mightn't be so familiar with you though I can't imagine there are many people watching this who don't know you can do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself where you're working and Your work with LBSA as well Yeah, so I'm I'm working with the University of Maastricht with at lab, which is the education innovation Institute And I joined that Institute about four years ago And there we look at ways to innovate and continuously develop education as we do it in Maastricht and One of the things that I'm focusing on there really is bringing notions like mentoring and advising But of closing closer to the curriculum We're looking for ways to do that to not make it some kind of remote Sort of side thing but something that's really connected to how students learn and and what they what they study And before I came to to at lab I was with the University College of Maastricht for a long time Where I taught humanities, but I also coordinated academic advising and that is really sort of that has been sort of the beginning of my my connection with with advising Which brought me into contact with a few really great organizations sort of one of them obviously being LVSA that I sort of joined I have to admit only after we Organized a conference on advising in Maastricht in 2013 an international conference But I've been active there. I've been on the board with LVSA and I'm currently in a working group that is looking for ways to Nurture and develop new contexts with with colleagues abroad So that is also really interesting now in the context of the UK and LVSA conferences happening at the same time by coincidence But a beautiful coincidence And I've I've been active in the Canada the global community for academic advising Which was relevant for me because in Maastricht we used the type of advising that was much more sort of similar to advising as it happens in the United States than maybe study advising in the Netherlands, but Yeah, just as in that sort of little bit of personal history I like the fact that that again now with the two conferences we have yet another organization UKEDS sort of Where I'm also sort of a little bit involved But representing yet another type of advising or tutoring or personal tutoring as they would say in the UK so Yeah, the opportunity to do things together to Enrich the perspectives we all have on what it means to advise students.  So Yeah, and that's that's also the one of the main sort of driving Forces has always been for me to be able to see those differences and how they lead to new stuff new ideas. I Think a modest summation of your career there Oscar I would see you as the Marco van Basten of the Dutch Academic advising world, you know with that when with a myriad of talents, but of course supported by a fantastic team around you At an institutional level, but also With LVSA and can you know this conference is obviously a little bit different this year with things being online But can you talk to me? I suppose a little bit about like that experience and a little bit The way in which I suppose people are you know It sounds from talking to to eris and others over the last few days that there's been a lot of input from members into the conference Yes, and and Yeah, the the interesting thing about the conference as it is now is that it is sort of new in two ways And one is that we are doing this all online the original idea was to have this conference a year ago in Maastricht and Obviously we couldn't and then you know, these were the days that we all thought this will blow over in a couple of months And we'll just do it sort of next spring And then in the fall it became quite obvious that that was not very likely either So then we had to decide to do this online Which comes with the obvious challenges I mean one of the great things and this goes for you get in the car and LVSA and I think any Professional organization of having a conference is that you run into colleagues and that you meet with them and and chat with them and that Also, if you diligently follow all the the sessions Sort of the magic usually happens in between sessions when you also when you have the opportunity to process ideas that you just saw with others so you And and it's just nice to be with people who do what you do where you don't have to explain or defend yourself You can just refer to things that they understand and all of that usually happens in The physical space of a conference and none of that is there So that that was one challenge and the other thing was that we decided I think also to be honest a little bit inspired by the example of Nakata and you cut that We wanted to create many more opportunities for members to present to Everyone does interesting things in in sort of in a thousand different ways That they are proud of that they are think are relevant and could be relevant to others But there aren't that many opportunities to share that beyond your immediate circle of colleagues. So LVSA has for many years organized what we call study days Where we would ask professionals from the field or relevant to the field to offer workshops Which were very successful, I mean our members really enjoyed it, but this element of Asking members what is it that you would like to share that you would like to present is it was it was a new sort of insight that that could be could be useful and There was a conference in Groningen in the north of the country now three years ago Where we did a little bit of that with posters and stuff and people really liked that So we thought okay. Let's take the next step and make this a proposal driven conference, which it is now But I can imagine that even though study advisors like Oak usually Presenting in a setting like this is is quite something else and not everyone may have done this very often yet And now it also needs to happen online so it's it was a bit too interesting challenges for LVSA also Yeah, we also sort of when we decided to move to this model. We thought okay. What's gonna happen? Are we going to have proposals at all? Unfortunately, we got many really great proposals. So But it's all and then okay, how do we do this whole online thing and others have also already talked about not just using zoom but also the advising hub on the on the Gettertown platform which We really hope people will attend because even though we also see it's two-dimensional. It's not the same It doesn't come with the smell of coffee But it is as close as being together. I think as you as you can be right now. So So those were challenges for us, but but I think it's also challenging for many of the presenters they have to to do this thing of Yeah, you're always a bit vulnerable when you're presenting And and particularly when it is You know, this is you're amongst Professionals which on the one hand is the one thing that really connects you but it's different than explaining a certain procedure to a group of students The critical questions that students may come up with will probably be of an entirely different nature than Potential critical questions, even if they're constructive that your fellow colleagues from other universities may come up with so Yeah, that's new. That's challenging and then you need to look at that camera all the time and Deal with the fact that people shut off their cameras and you're looking at names instead of people Which we hope by the way everyone that you will not that you will switch on your camera But yes, so that's those are two new things about the conference But I also think it's it's going to be a lot of fun to be honest Yeah Yeah, no, I've no doubt with some of the people involved It will be a lot of fun and I'm going to ask you maybe for some of the things that you're looking forward to I'll give you a moment to you know Mull over that and I will also give you what I'm looking forward to but why before we we jump into that just to let viewers know that There is a LinkedIn group that they can join and it is a joint LinkedIn group to chat with people from Netherlands UK and elsewhere and you can also see that there has been a Twitter Profile developed you can see the conference hashtag So do get involved if you are active on social media and keep the conversations going and Then Oscar if I was to ask you for just some of the things I sprinkling I know there are a myriad of things going to be happening But a sprinkling of some of the things you might be looking forward to over the next few days Well, I already mentioned the other town or the advising hub I really hope to be running into many colleagues there and that many people will visit The nice thing about the program when you look at the sessions is it's really diverse So there are many things that really have to do with competencies and skills particular sort of focus focus on Having sort of meaningful coaching conversations with students awareness of the needs of specific sort of groups sort of within the student population, but What I really like about the the the conference program is and and all of this submitted also by members There is a lot that is asking questions about the profession sort of what what is advising about why should we Or how can we make it more sort of visible and relevant but also what what does it mean to to do advising and to do it well And we measure it can we On the basis of how we evaluate our own profession also make a case for it So it's it's both about the personal development and growth as an advisor, but there are many sessions also about Advising as a profession. So I and I think that's very important because it and I think we've talked about this before column There is a there's a huge demand now sort of by institutions and students to address issues that have to do with stress and well being and things like And that there's an automatic reaction to say, okay, well, that's what advising is for And on the one hand, yes, we can play a role on the other hand, we cannot sort of supposed to be sort of the group Or the office that resolves issues that may arise somewhere else like for instance in the curriculum or in in university procedures. So Making a sense of this is what we're about and this is what we're not about and this is what should be taken care of elsewhere. I think that's important So that's why I like that there are many sessions that have to do with the nature of the profession What I also think really is a fun part of the program is that we have a few sessions for which you have to sign up There's no additional cost, but there's limited capacity having to do with improvisation theater online Team building online all of this done by improvisation by Vera Humberlo who is great at that And team building Iris Berks and Arif van de Lucht of Maastricht University who are sort of the perfect people to get people excited about that kind of thing There are what we call intervisie. So there is it's hard to translate. I think it's something like practice analysis, but simply sitting down with colleagues and discussing cases. So they're really in the in the in the privacy of being together with a small group Conducted by Andre Baers who is he's very well known. He's he's done the first LV as our webinar on the co the impact of COVID and advising during COVID. He is also the You would say the guardian of the LV as our course program and has done it for many years. So and but now he is doing these inter-visie sessions. You can still sign up As we speak now at least there are a few a few spots left so I would encourage people to do that. Another thing that I really like is that we will have a few sessions and opportunities together with you get So David David Gray and I will be presenting also on the nature of the profession. The team building one of the team building sessions that we host is also open to to you get members and will be in English. And there will be which is sort of not an LV as our event but there will be an LV as our element in the UK awards ceremony. Which has to do with the fact that in honor of Charlie nut the the executive director of Nakada. And I think here we are talking about sort of a real icon and sort of probably the young curve of academic I was going to save a perfect analogy. So in his in his in his to honor him you can an LV as I have created an award that will be sort of introduced during the awards ceremony and also sort of sort of be given to someone and I don't think I should reveal the name yet of that person. But and the idea is that we want to acknowledge the work that I would say ordinary advisors so not people who have been given the assignment to work on international relations. There aren't that many in advising anyways yet but international relations between advisors, but someone who has part of their regular day job, or any evening hours has gone out of their way to promote collaboration interaction between advisors. Or tutors or mentors or whatever name sort of they use across the globe and and I think yeah I see that as one of the highlights it will only be a small small part of the awards ceremony but I would encourage also many of our LV as our members to attend that that ceremony. So those are those are a few things that come up when you ask that question. Well, there is so much to look forward to and now that you have said that I do hope to speak to Charlie for the conference TV over the next few days I might ask him if he can demonstrate a Christ turn for the on screen. Also, if you will indulge me a moment that you know you have such wonderful insights and for any viewers who want to hear more about Oscars thoughts. I had the very good fortune of speaking to Oscar in depth on the Adventures in Advising podcast episode 18 find it wherever you get your podcast. So if you listen to podcast Apple podcast Spotify Stitcher and we talk for nearly an hour and it's a really wonderful conversation. But in terms of other things that I am looking forward to and there's so much packed into the next few days but the thing that I am really interested to see is what what you will doodle on this occasion Oscar because The last time we spoke Oscar is doodling led to the creation of a lunar lander and I still tell people about this because it was quite quite a feast that you it was really intricate and the little parts and Oscar managed to put it all together so I look forward to seeing what Oscar has created at the end of the conference. I hope so high sort of over the last few days when they had to sort of zoom calls actually you know it's going downhill I've been gradually tearing apart this little guitar pick so that's that's where I'm at now so Well maybe we can get you yourself and David Gray and you know we could do you know a transnational you know session perhaps that you know a jam session maybe that's what we need to do at these online you know conferences where we can have a you know an advising band from from around the world but An idea for the future perhaps there is so much to look forward to so again do check out the website do check out the conference schedule as Oscar pointed out there are some sessions that you have to sign up in advance for so make sure if you're interested in those sessions then they sound really interesting please do sign up And all that remains at this point is for me to say thank you very much Oscar to wish you all the best and the team all the best for the coming day I'm sure it will be fantastic and I look forward to speaking to you again in the not too distant future. So do I and listen to the advising podcast people. Not just mine but all of them they're great. Thanks.


Welcome to WTDC 17 here in Buenos Aires in Argentina, where I'm very pleased to be joining the studio today by Mr. Huling Zhao, who is Secretary General of ITU. Mr. Zhao, thank you very much for being with us today. Oh, it's a pleasure. Now, I'd just like to talk about WTDC 17 and how important is this event? I know it's important in ITU's calendar. It's one of the most important telecommunication development events. But in furthering ITU's objective to connecting people everywhere. You know, ITU's mandate is to connect people, connect the world. ITU was created in 1865, but the ITU's mandate focused on development really started from the 1990s. And we started there from 1992 to create a new sector, ITU telecommunicating development sector. And since then, we organized activities. We tried to work with our members to address the development issue. And the first World Telecommunication Development Conference was held in 1994. Exactly, also here in Buenos Aires. But then, we just tried to push the investment and support to ICT. Just imagine, 1994, what a situation of ICT connectivity in the world. Look at the city today. You see the importance of ICT to facilitate the socio-economic development. And people realize that ICT is enabled to facilitate all socio-economic development. However, the situation today is different compared with 1994. Therefore, this World Telecommunication Development Conference is quite important for our future. That ITU will make this opportunity a unique opportunity to invite our member states, our partners, our friends to work together to address the issue of the ICT development for next four years, for next 20 years. You know that we had United Nations Sustainable Development Goals approved in 1995. This is the first World Telecommunication Development Conference after SDG approved in 2015. So we will look at this issue to see how can we link our work with SDG. How can we make ICTs more developed with new technologies to bring the new technologies beneficial to our people, but also to bring these beneficial to everybody. Because today we still have, unfortunately, half the population not connected online yet. So these are major issues for us, and we will take this golden opportunity at a wider level to look at the ICT's future development to bring our wider population into the future with ICT's benefits. The focus last time was on broadband and broadband penetration. The theme of the conference this year is in fact ICTs for SDGs. And I wanted to ask you about ICTs in the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. During my discussion with Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kuterres, he fully recognized the value of ICT. He even put the word that ICT is important for all and every SDGs, 17 SDGs. This kind of recognition of ICT is really important. And it is also very good for our industry, for our business. And we see also ICT now moving not only with the ICT technology development, but also to go everywhere to help another ecosystem. And at this meeting, we will be able to see opportunities that the Secretary-General, Director-General of World Health Organization, will come to join us. We will talk about ICT and public health. And we have a lot of projects presented by our experts in their consultation with the other ecosystem at their level to see how can ICT help other ecosystems such as education, public health, agriculture, and everything you can think about today. I'm pretty sure that this conference will give us very good guidance that for next four years, for next 20 years, how ICT would better integrate with the other systems and facilitate the other development. Now, of course, we're going to hear a lot of exciting and stimulating conversation here over the next couple of weeks. What concrete actions do you hope will come from this conference? Of course, for such kind of conference, we needed to see some concrete result. We will set up some goals, implementable concrete, but also somehow ambitious, because if you don't have a dream, you will not be good in doing something useful and better. And here, I think that we like to see if we can have some kind of declarations by the family. We can have some kind of strategies, what we can do next four years. Of course, we also like to see some action lines. And those kind of things, I think that we already have some kind of preliminary discussions, and I think that this conference where finalized this, and here, I also like to take this opportunity to share with you good news that I was honored to be received by the Pope at the beginning of September. And during my discussion with him, and he also recognized the new technologies, ICTs, and he appreciated very much I.T.U.'s work, and he considered that I.T.U.'s mandate to connect the people, connect the world with new technologies, and not to leave everybody behind. Anybody behind is absolutely, you know, critical to the future of our population in the planet. He will also give us a message to show his support to I.C.T. I think that this kind of messages we encourage our family members, encourage our industry members, encourage our friends or partners that we have to, you know, to work hard to achieve the goals everybody is waiting for. Well, very much encouraging words. Thank you very much, Steve, for being with us in the studio today, and we wish you the very best for this conference and, of course, the future up to 2030 and beyond. Yeah, I'm very confident.


Here's a program that asks for your age in years and prints out your age in days. We're using three separate statements to create the output. The first two use print, not println, so the output will appear on a single line. Let's run the program and see that it works. That's a lot of work to create a single line of output. There must be a better way. One better way is to use a plus sign. Let's go into JShell, a tool that comes with Java 9 and above. It lets us try out Java expressions without having to write a whole program. We know that plus works with integers and with doubles. It also works with strings by tacking them together. So the string door plus the string bell results in the single string doorbell. What happens if I try to add a string and a number? For example, 2 plus the word space doesn't. It works. That's because Java converts the number 2 to a string and then tax on the word doesn't. Now that we know that this works, we can go back and modify our program. Instead of these three lines, we'll make one line and use a plus sign to join all the parts together. We need to put the blanks in ourselves to make sure they appear in the output. Let's compile and run and it works great.  Let's run the program with a price of $25. Looks good. Now let's run it again and this time put in a price of $20. That output isn't quite as lovely. And if we run the program with an initial price of $4.90, the output is really ugly. To solve this problem, to get exactly two digits after the decimal point, we need to use string formatting. Let's start investigating formatting by going back to the Agent Days program and change the output to this. Instead of println, we're going to use format and we're going to have one string that is about %d days. What's that %d? It's a format specifier. Whenever you see a % sign, think of it as a placeholder where a value will go into the string. The d specifies that we want an integer to fill in that placeholder. The letter d is used for integers for historical reasons, by the way. After the string, we give the variable that fills in the placeholder. Days will fill in this %d placeholder. Just like print, format does not give us a new line. So we have to explicitly give a new line character, which we write in Java as backslashn. Let's compile this program and run it and it works great. You can have multiple placeholders and specify multiple variables to fill them in. I can change my output to say placeholder years is about placeholder days and then provide the variables that fill in those placeholders, compile, run it again, and get my nicely formatted output, all without needing a plus sign anywhere. Let's return to the discount program. To build a format specifier for doubles, you use the f specifier and tell how many digits you want to the right of the decimal. Instead of println, we're going to use format. We're going to say % sign dot 2f, which says I want two decimal places in my double placeholder. We'll also put in our new line and there's one other thing we need to do. We don't want format to think that this % sign is part of a new placeholder. To tell format that this % sign is not part of a placeholder, that we really do want a % sign in our output, we need to put two % signs in a row. Now that we have our format string with its placeholder, we give the variable to fill in that placeholder. Let's compile that and when we run it with our $20, we get $17.00 and when we run it with the initial price of $4.90, we get $4.17, you'll notice that format has rounded the number for us. There are many other format specifiers and you can add information that tells how many spaces a number should take up. This lets you produce output where everything lines up nicely. Here's a URL where you can get the details about formatting.


Yeah. Hello, everyone. I guess we can start. So, hello. I'm Amélie from Le Fais Special and I'm going to present Grispensil Rules for Animation Productions. So, some of you may know Le Fais Special. Maybe you've seen my colleagues talk this morning about the making of of the Siren. But if you don't, it's an animation studio that's based in south of France and it's been founded in 2015 using Blender since the beginning and Grispensil since 2018. As for me, I'm a research engineer there. I started in January of this year and I've been working with Grispensil and developing tools for artists and animators there. Yeah. If I'm also occasionally contributing to Blender, the Blender code, and maybe you've seen me on the chat under the mysterious pseudo of Amélie. So, in this talk, I'm going to show to you some of the tools we've been doing this year, especially with Grispensil. So, there are two parts of this talk. In the first part, I'm going to focus on materials and colors and showing you some small and efficient tools that can be used for different purposes. And in the second part, I'm going to show you more experimental work we've been doing on strokes and surfaces. So, I don't know if you recognize these images. Maybe you've seen these characters yesterday in the animation festival. This is Tiny Keen. It's a video game for which we have done some animation sequences for the trailer and also some in-game sequences.  You can see the style of the drawing. It's a very clean, flat style of art. That actually, for each of these characters, there are lots of different colors that are used. And one of the challenges we had was to define all these colors very in a clean way so that many different artists can use the colors and don't make mistakes in the animation with these colors. Actually, in Gris Pencil, we use color as materials, 2D materials. So, the first thing you have to do there is to create all the list of material. And then, once you're drawing in Gris Pencil, you have to switch between them. As you can see in this screenshot, if the list is very large, it can be tedious to find which material you want to use. And so, many errors can be made and it's disturbing the animation process. So, we were thinking of another solution for picking material, a more visual solution. That's what I'm showing here. Basically, you have your list of materials and you're going to separate it in different color palettes that you are going to define and display in context with an image. So, that's actual screenshots. That's what you are going to see in the viewport of Blender when you're invoking the operator, the picker. So, let me show you. So, it's a demo of how it's working. I'm just going to turn quickly because I don't see the video. So, here you see how the materials are picked. You can also switch between palettes by pressing the tab key as I'm just doing this. And there's also an editor for palettes within Blender. So, you can move material across the wheel, add pick lines, add materials or remove them. And you can also create new palettes from scratch directly within Blender. It also comes with an import and export module to put it as JSON file so that other people can import your palettes and materials. I'm also going to show you a time lapse of one of our artists that's been working with it on this project. So, you can see how she uses it. So, she's doing first the lines and then the filler parts. So, what's really interesting is that she can work directly in the viewport, not switching between viewport and list of material on the right. And it's quite efficient to do it this way. Okay. So, it's perfect, right? No mistakes except for maybe this little guy. So, here this character named Nebus was drawn with the wrong materials actually. So, we had to change it. And it's quite tedious to do this actually because you have to go in edit mode and change every stroke of every frame of the animation. So, we developed a fix up tool for those cases. So, the idea is that you're also going to go to edit mode, select a stroke and tell the tool what's the range of frame you want to affect for this new assignment. So, what it's going to do is going to take your reference stroke and look in all the other frames, another like the closest stroke it finds within the same layer with the same material. So, to compute the closest stroke, we are using a measure distance called observed distance which is really standard measure for curve distances. But maybe it can be improved because as you can see here, so I've assigned from the first frame on the left the material and it automatically assigned all the other ones. But as you can see like the last one is not really correct. So, this is caused by the observed distance and I think it can be improved but still we have this tool is useful and if you want to change the distance, now it's quite easy, you just have to change the measure. So, once we've done this work on material management, creating palettes and switching between them, we wanted to work on color exploration. Like, how do you do to, you have your palette, you have your character and you want to try out other colors. But you don't want to affect your existing materials. You don't want to distract to kill your own work. So, we've been working on a tool called Color Mapper in which you can add alternative color palettes into your list of materials. So, it can be used for many purposes. For example, if you want to create variations of one character or if you want to maybe adapt your character to another lighting environment or also maybe if you want to change the level of details in your drawing. For example, if you, in one of the drawings, it's your character is really far away, then you may want less details in your drawing. So, how does it work? Here's a screenshot of the tool. So, the tool is displayed in the middle. Actually, you have this list with one line per material. On the left, you have the color of the actual material. And on the right, you have the color to which you are going to map it. And actually, the add-on is creating modifiers, grease pencil modifiers, which is good because it works in a non-destructive way. You're not going to affect your materials. And for example, if you're using linked materials, it works the same because you're not affecting the actual material. But, yeah, the issue we had, like, it works really nicely. But it's not perfect in terms of interface because still you have to enter each material one by one and then choose each color one by one. And you're doing it in the list on the right side of the viewport. And so, it can be a bit disconnected and not intuitive compared to the drawing at the viewport. So, the first thing we tried to change the interaction is to use presets. It's the first idea. So, the idea is that you have a list of material and you're going to create a mapping by applying the same function to all of the colors. So, I'm showing it on a really simple example, which is grayscale. So, no, sorry. Sorry. That's the demo of the mapper. So, that's what I was saying before. You add each material one by one and do the mapping one by one. Yeah. So, then you can hide it and you can change the mapping that you've done. Sorry. And now is the preset. So, here I'm applying a grayscale. It's like a filter, but you're just working with your list of material and it maps every color through the grayscale function. Of course, for grayscale it's not really interesting, but you can think of other functions, more complex functions that you may want to apply. Another thing we did to improve interaction was to be able to pick directly in the viewport the material that you want to modify and you want to map, add mappings and also modify them. So, that's here a demo of how this works. And actually, to do that, we had to do a bit more of a development than expected because I think some of you are familiar with Python API. There's a ray tracing function that's doing exactly that, like picking what's under the cursor in the viewport. But unfortunately, it doesn't work for grayscale object. So, I had to just redo this. So, we released it as a standalone add-on as well because I think it's really useful for other things. So, in this eyedropper add-on, we are going to just go over the viewport and see what's under the cursor. So, what is the object, the grayscale object, layer and material. So, there are two modes in this eyedropping. The first one is on fly. So, it's in the top here. In this mode, you just go along with the cursor and it automatically shows you what's directly under the cursor and visible. And if you click on it, it selects the object layer and material that's under the cursor. And in the other mode, what I call onclick mode, you click in the viewport and then you can see all the list of stuff that's under the cursor but also what's hidden. And you can see it in the order of visibility in the viewport. And here you can change visibility of layers, select materials, layers and everything. So, that's it for the first part of my talk. Here I sum up all these add-ons that I've been showing to you. They are all in our GitLab. The code is available. You can look at it, download it. Please, you can send us a message if you use them and if you find any issues. The GitLab is here for that. So, now for the second part. I'm going to talk a bit about some more experimental developments that we've done. So, the first one is about strokes. So, here we are going to... We are working in another project which is animating this really cute character which prefers to remain anonymous. So, please respect its privacy. So, yeah. So, actually, this animation is done with 2D rig that was developed in the studio as well. And we were wondering if it could be possible to add some patterns in the dress of this character and what would be the best way to do so using Chris Spencer. So, we don't want to do it by hand frame by frame because it's really tedious. So, yeah. So, the idea is that we can't really do UV mapping in the same way that in 3D because you have these strokes that are 2D, essentially. And so, we came up with a solution that looks a bit like UV mapping but is really redrawing strokes in the character. And it's based on these deformation grids that are computed per frame in the animation based on the dress control here. So, how do you compute this grid? So, the idea... We are in the very specific case of a cone-like shape which has four boundary curves. Two of them correspond to silhouettes and two of them correspond to border of the patch. So, we are going to simply swipe the silhouette curves along the border once on the left side and then on the right side as I'm showing here and then interpolate the two grids that we have. So, it gives us one grid per frame which have a specific topology which is guided by the resolution like just the number of lines and the number of columns that you have in the grid. Then, the idea of this... What I call the mapping is that this cone-like shape can be interpreted as a projection of an actual cone that will be in a 3D space but we don't want to explicit this 3D space. You don't want to create this cone geometry but actually this cone is the developed version of a template. It's like if you had a fabric on which you can draw patterns and then it's developed and that's what you're sketching. So, we are going to explicitly define this template flat shape, draw patterns on them and then put it into the sketch. To do that, we are going to also compute a grid on the template space that I'm showing in the right side. It's actually quite straightforward. So, the template has a dimension as you can see the whole shape has a specific dimension but within it there's a visibility range. It's just what is visible from the cone in the sketch and this during the animation it can change depending on how the character moves and stuff. This visibility range can change. It's represented here with purple lines. So, once you have those two grids, the correspondence between them is actually also quite straightforward because they have the same topology and you can just map all the coordinates of the strokes from the template space to the sketch. So, actually what we are doing here is not like a texture mapping, it's really we are taking all the coordinates and redraw strokes in the sketch space and it's useful because then you also have a grisp pencil stroke and you can edit them in the same way as any grisp pencil stroke. So, for the purpose of illustration I'm showing this on a really coarse grid but actually for the in the sequence we use a higher resolution grid so that it's smoother. So, what kind of animation can we do with this? I'm going to show you four kinds. So, the first one I call squash and stretch. Sorry. It's basically you don't change the visibility range of your pattern, you just redraw another frame and it has a different shape than before. So, it's going to squash and stretch like with the grid deformation is going to move the patterns this way. The other one is what I call rotation. So, it happens when the character turns around in the cone axis and here you're just moving the visibility range in the templates. So, that's that's one example. The other one is what I call a very simply visibility change. Here the character raised her arm and shows a bit more fabric than before. So, you're not really turning in a thermal rotation but you're just expanding the range of what's visible in the pattern. And the last one it's also a visibility change but in the other direction I'm showing I'm showing it in this example of with a sleeve. First she has her arm like this so we can see the whole length of the cone in this way. But then when she has her arm like this only half of it is displayed. So, that's another type of animation. Let me show you some results. Yeah, so that's the first animation. Another one with more complex motion. And for the last one I've been I'm going to show you. I've been attempting not repetitive patterns but really putting buttons pockets and drawing behind just to see if the location remains consistent. In the last one I'm just going to see if the location remains consistent through the animation because that's something that we want to have and we can't really see it with the repetitive patterns. So, all the buttons pockets and drawing behind is done in the template space. Yeah, so the result is not perfect but still we have some really good improvement in terms of rapidity like quicker. Yeah, you don't have to do it every single frame one by one so that's good. Okay, so the last work I'm showing you is now 3D animation. Here you also may have seen this character for those of you that were in the animation festival yesterday. So, it's a 3D animation and it's the style is very realistic but also kind of stop motion like. So, there are a few frames per sequence and we wanted to add some smear and ethics elements in the animation but we wanted to keep this style specifically that is stop motion like. So, we came up with this idea to draw these elements in grease pencil directly in 3D space and then have a tool that just combines that to surfaces and especially for this project felt like material surfaces with sickness as you can see here on the right. So, how do you do that in Blender? So, the first thing you can try is convert grease pencil to a path so that's an operator in Blender and then you can have it filled but the problem we came across with this first is that the triangulation is not really topologically clean as you can see there and also it only works with planar curves. So, if you have a curve actually in 3D space it's going to just flatten it and it's not really a result that we want. Actually, there's another way to do like this with a bit of scripting you can use the inner triangulation that's on the grease pencil objects. So, that's what I'm showing here. You can see that the triangulation is still a bit topologically not clean especially because it doesn't add vertices inside the shape and as for 3D curves it has a result that is 3D as you can see there but still the topology is not really neat and shows some geometry discontinuities. So, we developed another algorithm to create a triangulation in 3D space. So, I'm showing just an overview of the pipeline. It's based on really standard methods but we just implemented in Python. So, the first step is to compute a plane to which you are going to project the coordinates of the stroke tool so that you work actually in 2D in the first place. So, it's yes standard method to compute this plane with the covariance matrix of the coordinates and for this I used NumPy which is already I think in the blender Python. Then I'm using an external library which is triangle maybe some of you know it and it computes meshes in particular deloni meshes for 2D curves. So, it creates a triangulation in 2D and then you have a last part of lifting that's in 3D and for this I implemented an optimization that's using the boundary as a constraint like you're going to move your vertices in 3D use the boundary as constraint and then trying to minimize the curvature of the surface. I'm putting here the reference of the research paper that explains the method. It's called Laplacian minimization. So, here are some results on the right side you can see our triangulation here. For the other shape also it works well. There are more triangles than with the inner triangulation of course but it's more regular and then for the 3D curve. The only thing is that this last step of optimization it's quite expensive is using also NumPy a linear algebra library and so it's smarter to only perform it if the curve is actually not planar because otherwise you're just wasting time. The last steps are to add some thickness maybe some bevel and the materials that we want for the felt we also added some particle or system to put some hair kind of hair on it but that can be done with like modifiers and materials. Some results that we have it's like a smear like elements. You can see in the first row what was drawn with a grease pencil and in the last row what was output by the algorithm. What's interesting here is that the elements actually are really blended in the 3D space they cast shadow on the character and they react well to light. So yeah that's for the ongoing work because there are many many things to see to still work on with these two works. For example for the stroke mapping I'd like to expand it a bit because I wanted the user to be able to draw directly actually on the sketch and then map it back to the template. I think it would be a better user experience. Also we have this project of extending it to other kind of shapes. We were thinking for example to faces so that we can add marks in the face and just follow the animation. And for the triangulation part we still have some some things to fix in particular for shapes that have holes that are not really taking well into account for now. So thank you for this. I'm just if you want to stay tuned of the development we are doing I'm just putting the links of La Cuisine or technical blog which is supposedly going to be more active in the next few months. And also you can check our GitLab repo because we put all the code in it. We also have a Twitter account if you want to follow us and yeah thank you for attending. So I think I went a bit fast so if you have questions I think we'll have some time. We did an animation for this but the question is where are we in France? Montpellier. I guess that's it then.


Luke writes then the disciples of John reported to him concerning all these things and John calling two of his disciples to him sent them to Jesus saying are you the coming one or do we look for another when the men had come to him they said John the Baptist has sent us to you saying are you the coming one or do we look for another and that very hour he cured many people of their infirmities afflictions and evil spirits and many who were blind he gave sight then Jesus answered and said to them go and tell John the things you have seen and heard that the blind see the lame walk the lepers are cleansed the deaf hear the dead are raised the poor have the gospel preached to them and blessed is he who is not offended because of me the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ was not performed in a vacuum by and large his works were done in the open so that people could not only see the works that he was performing but also judge those works later on when Jesus is standing in in trial in John 18 verse 20 Jesus says I spoke openly to the world I always taught in synagogues and in the temple where the Jews always meet and in secret I have said nothing and so Jesus's works and his words were open for public display and people would view him and judge concerning the things that he did and the things that he said so amongst those who would be witnesses of his works and those who heard his words would have been the disciples of John the Baptist now we know that John the Baptist had been sent by God to be the forerunner of Messiah in chapter one of the gospel of Luke in verses 70 76 and 77 his father Zacharias had said to John you child will be called the prophet of the highest for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the remission of their sins and so he was to go before Messiah he was to go before him in order that he might prepare people to meet their Messiah and so he went all about that region around the Jordan preaching a baptism of repentance and when you study the message of John the Baptist the message is very simple and it was to the point it was a message simply of the word repent repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand now this message that he was giving of repentance was directed to everyone from the lowest to the highest from the peasant to the king and ultimately he was imprisoned he was imprisoned for two basic reasons one for political reasons because Herod didn't like the fact that he was having influence on the common people and two he was imprisoned because he was preaching against the sin that was practiced by Herod himself which was the sin of adultery and so now as we are looking at this particular story here found in the Gospel of Luke now we find that John has been imprisoned he's in a fortress there in the south an area near the dead sea the fortress is called Makairis and some of his disciples are now paying him visits and and they're telling him concerning Jesus Christ the things that he's doing now he'd probably already heard some of these things because he had spoken often to Herod and according to Mark chapter 6 verse 20 when Herod would hear him well he would do many things and he would hear him gladly so undoubtedly there were times that that Herod would speak to him concerning the works of Jesus Christ and so John is aware of those things that Jesus is doing and so what happens now is there and according to verse 18 the disciples of John report to him concerning all the things that Jesus is doing and so in verse 19 John calling two of his disciples to him sent them to Jesus and they have a question are you the coming one or do we look for another what seems to be occurring here is John may be suffering from doubt there are those who say well perhaps he's simply growing impatient some would say well maybe he's just telling Jesus to be more public in his ministry that you need to be open and and John is an impatient kind of guy just waiting for the Lord to do what John thinks he's supposed to do and Jesus has not revealed himself in the way that John perhaps thinks he should and so there are some who say well perhaps he was like Jesus's brothers because Jesus's brothers didn't believe in him and and yet pushed him to to reveal himself you remember it's found in John chapter 7 verses 3 and 4 where it says his brothers therefore said to him depart from here go into Judea that your disciples also may see the works that you're doing no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly if you do these things show yourself to the world so it may be that he has a similar kind of impulse maybe he's saying to the Lord Jesus Christ get on with the work go and do the work I I recognized you as Messiah declared you to be so and perhaps he's just impatient but I don't think so I think at this point what we're dealing with and we're going to be looking at this today is the disciple doubting and what we're going to be looking at as we begin our study is dealing with doubt because I believe very strongly what is taking place here is that he is doubting something about the ministry of Jesus Christ appears to have unsettled John the Baptist now if indeed he is doubting that's understandable this is a man who's about to get his head cut off and so I can understand if he might be saying listen I just want to make sure that I get my head cut off for the right reason I would like to make sure that that if I'm going to lose my life it's it's for you know speaking the truth and anointing through baptism at least visibly demonstrating who Messiah is through my baptism I would like to know for sure that that I didn't make a mistake and so we can understand that all of us go through times of doubt all of us as believers can go through times of discouragement and I think that we can sympathize with him and understand that to a degree but let me say something very briefly but but very firmly here God does not condone doubt nowhere in the Bible does he ever condone it though I understand it God doesn't condone it and let me tell you one reason why he doesn't because when I doubt the Lord I'm doubting his goodness when I doubt the Lord I'm doubting his faithfulness and God does not want me to doubt his goodness and faithfulness to me in Deuteronomy in chapter 7 verse 9 the Bible says no therefore that the Lord your God he is God the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations God is known as the faithful God and so when I'm doubting him I'm saying basically you're not faithful to your word in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 3 Paul said the Lord is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil and so we know in the old as well as the New Testament that God has declared to be the faithful God and so when I doubt him when I live in doubt when I experienced out it's not that he condones it though I'm certain he understands it but in reality what I'm doing is I'm saying you are not faithful to your word you have made promises that you're not going to keep and so John undoubtedly is going through his time of trial right now and is beginning to wonder what is going on what could have contributed to John's suffering doubts about Jesus let me give you three basic things that might very well have done so three basic things one we know that he and Jesus had had no personal contact for about a year and it may be that he's at this point being alone in isolated experiencing a sense of abandonment if you don't spend time with the Lord if you don't have a personal one-on-one with him daily I guarantee you ultimately you're going to experience a sense of being distant it's not him being distant to you is that you are growing distant from him listen if you run a small rowboat off the shore and you had a rope that was tethered to the shore and tethered to the boat and you took a nap and as you took a nap that small boat that rowboat began to just drift and ultimately comes to the end of the rope and you wake up and you see that you have traveled the distance of that rope from shore and you don't have any oars or anything so you grab hold of the rope and you begin to pull on that rope I guarantee you you get closer to the shore but is it the shore that's moving or is it you the Lord doesn't move but we can drift away from him in doubt and if I'm not in fellowship with him if I'm not spending time quiet time devotions prayer time fellowship time with him I can begin to sense isolation in the case of of of john he's been in prison for about a year he has not had personal contact with the Lord and can have at that point begun to feel abandoned it reminds me of the psalmist in Psalm 22 verse 1 how the psalmist said my god my god why have you forsaken me why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my groaning and so on the one hand he may be feeling abandoned because he hasn't had personal contact for a while second he may have a misconception concerning messiah Jesus didn't act in the way that john and others were expecting the messiah to act during the day of Jesus Christ they believed that messiah would do a variety of things they believe that the messiah would free israel from foreign bondage that he would banish all disease and affliction hunger and pain they believed that he would immediately establish a messianic kingdom that was filled with wealth and health and continual happiness but Jesus was not doing that and it's possible that he simply had a misconception concerning the messiah and then third Jesus didn't fit into the picture that john had been proclaiming according to Matthew chapter 3 verses 11 and 12 he must have pictured messiah as basically being kind of like a health fire and brimstone preacher bringing fire and judgment but instead of bringing judgment Jesus is ministering with compassion and grace and it's beginning to confuse him remember with me the first message that is recorded in Matthew that that john was speaking was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand and then when we see the the first message that Jesus is recorded speaking it's the same message repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand and so he's got this mentality that messiah is going to preach in a certain way and yet he's not and so there he is sensing perhaps an abandonment with a misconception concerning messiah seeing that Jesus doesn't fit into the picture that he had been portraying him and proclaiming him to be and so what happens is he begins to have some doubt and some concern so what does he do he he wants to resolve his concern and he does so according to verse 18 by sending two disciples to speak to Jesus Christ i think that that's very very wise by the way instead of stewing in confusion he sends some people to speak to him and they come with the question and the question that they bring to him verse 19 is are you the coming one or do we look for another are you the coming one now the coming one is what is called a messianic title and and when he says or do we look for another looking for another emphasizes a sense of expectation are you the messiah that we have expected to come you see in the old testament you have this picture of messiah who is to come and you're to have an expectation to see him and receive him in the old testament book of malachi chapter three verse one god said i send my messenger he will prepare the way before me the lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight behold he is coming say at the lord of host and so there's this expectation for messiah to come Psalm 40 verses 7 through 9 this is in this is messiah actually speaking i i said lo i come in the volume of the book it's written of me i delight to do your will oh my god yes your laws within my heart i've preached righteousness in the great congregation law i have not refrained my lips oh lord you know or Zechariah 9 9 behold your king is coming to you he is just and having salvation lowly riding on a donkey a cult the full of a donkey and so the coming one is is messiah and the mentality is expectation are you the coming one or should we look for another is what they ask and so verse 20 when the minute come to him they said that john the baptist has sent us to you saying are you the coming one do we look for another that very hour he cured many people of their infirmities afflictions and evil spirits and to many who are blind he gave sight and jesus answered and said to them go and tell john the things you have seen and heard that the blind see the lame walk lepers are cleansed the death here dead are raised poor have the gospel preached to them now as they arrive on the scene jesus is busy performing works of mercy and compassion he was performing the work that he had been sent to do he was busy about his father's business Matthew tells us in chapter 8 verses 16 and 17 when evening had come they brought to him many who were demon possessed and he cast out the spirits with a word healed all who are sick that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying he himself took our infirmities bore our sicknesses so jesus who had compassion and mercy is busy performing the work that he had been sent to do as these men arrive on the scene that's what it says in verse 21 that very hour he cured many people of their infirmities afflictions evil spirits the many who were blind he gave sight and so as this is all taken place jesus answers in verse 22 and he says and i want you to notice this go and tell john the things you have seen and heard i want you to notice that his answer to them was not a yes or a no because a yes or a no answer would not have satisfied john completely what he's doing is works his works of mercy and compassion and he's performing works that require love and he's pointing to that he's not bringing at that moment judgment he's not bringing destruction what he's pointing them to is what messiah actually is intended by god to do which is to reach out to those who are hurting and minister to them there is a time of course for judgment but as jesus was there walking on the face of the earth he is busy ministering to people and caring for them and showing the mercy of god and and what he does is he wants to point out what the lord does and that's why he says for them to go and see go and say what they're seeing and what they're hearing notice how verse 22 he says go and tell john the things you've seen and heard the blind see the lame walk lepers are cleansed the deaf hear the dead are raised the poor have the gospel preached to them go and tell them what you're seeing and what you're hearing seeing and hearing there's a big debate going on in the church today i'm not going to get you involved in it tonight but there's a big debate going on not in this church by the way when i say the church i mean the church universal in the body of christ especially here in the united states there's a big argument concerning two things one is concerning the words of the gospel and two concerning the works of people one group of people is arguing basically that you need to make sure that you remain faithful to the word of god and you preach that in such a way that people can actually hear what the word of god has to say and begin to learn what the word of god has to say through studying the bible and others are saying that's not enough others are beginning to argue in today's saying that if you're going to really be a witness it's not what you say it's what you do and so they will say every person has a story and the story is more valid in some senses they will say then the just the reading of the word of god and so on the one hand you have some will say listen you have to give a verse by verse word for word teach him god's word because it equips the saints for the works of ministry well the others will say well what good does that do because you're just equipping them with intellectual knowledge and they're not performing the things that they're told to do and so if you're going to be a true christian you need to clothe the the naked you need to feed the hungry you need to visit the prisoner in jail you need to live a life that demonstrates that you actually have been bought with a price and i see that there is actually two sides of a similar coin but the bottom line is is this is if i truly have a relationship with the lord then i am going to do those things i am going to care about the poor i am going to care about the hungry i am going to care about those who are homeless i am going to care about them because jesus cares about them and so what we're ending up with today is a big argument that i think is really just it's just an inappropriate argument because if the word of god is rightly divided it's not only going to be heard it's also going to be seen and that's why jesus said tell them what you're seeing and what you're hearing you're hearing the message and you're seeing its fruit you're hearing the message and you're seeing the works because listen here in verse 22 when he says to them the blind to see the lame walk the lepers acclint the deaf here dead or raised poor have the gospel preached to them he's not just saying that in isolation he's actually giving to them insight into what the prophets had said messiah is going to do and in other words in other words the works that he points to that validates his ministry are found in the book of isiah he's saying isiah and his prophecies are coming to pass before your very eyes you're seeing god's word being lived out that's the point he's making you see in isiah 29 18 and 19 in the old testament book of isiah it says in that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll and out of the gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see once more the humble will will rejoice in the Lord the needy will rejoice in the holy one of israel or isiah 35 verses 4 and 6 say to those with fearful hearts be strong do not fear your god will come he will come with vengeance with divine retribution he will come to save you then the eyes of the blind will be opened the ears of the deaf unstopped then the lame will leap like a deer the mute tongue shout for joy water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert or isiah 61 verse 1 the spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor so jesus when he's saying go and say tell john what you have seen and what you have heard he's simply saying isiah prophesied these things and you're seeing them before your very eyes and so listen when when god really grabs hold of my heart when he really gets hold of me it's not just what i say it's going to be what i say and what i do and it's a combination and my words and my works are not going to be in conflict i was reading a quote about a gal who was talking to a a modern author who's very well known in some circle city he's a christian author and she's speaking to him and this is basically a quote his paraphrase i just read it tonight though i found fascinating she said to him you know she says i appreciate your writing and this is one of the fellows who are saying you need to take the word of god and not be concerned about memorizing it so much as doing it she says i've been i've been you know uh reading your book i bought 13 of those books and i've given them away i think they're great books she's telling this author she says i give them to my friends and she says and i think it helps us to understand what christianity really is and then she says i'm a jesus girl this is a quote i'm a jesus girl but i like my tequila shots and i found that interesting now some in this room might say yeah me too amen praise god that's the best message i've written a long time i don't want to come off like a judge and sometimes it appears that i am i just want to be practical that's really all i want to be practical see one of the things that i'm concerned about it basically just living out the word of god there's something in the scripture that says in first peter it says therefore be holy for i am holy you know and i for some reason as i study the scripture don't see jesus at it you know at a bar down in tequila shots no i did that as an unbeliever but as a christian i left that behind that's the old way of life that's the old way of being and yet this gal saying i'm a jesus girl interesting way to phrase that i'm a jesus girl but i like my tequila shots jesus would say no sweetheart no it doesn't work that way you see if you taste of the new wine tequila comes off flat if you if you tasted the new wine of the spirit of god then then then who needs the old wine if you've got the lord working in your heart and he delivered you from that then why are you going to return to that and say now that i'm saved i can go back and i can drink from that again doesn't work that way guys the lord saves us from our sin you see and his word tells us what he desires and then we by faith appropriate that and live it and so jesus could say listen john wants to know if i'm the coming one or should he go out and look for another well you let john know what you've seen because what you have seen is a fulfillment of the prophecies of messiah that you find in the book of isiah the prophecies that relate to how it's going to be when messiah comes where the blind do see when the lame do walk when the leper is cleansed when the deaf has his ears ears opened up when when when the dead are actually raised and and the poor have the gospel preached to them you go and you let them know what you have seen and then he goes on in verse 23 it's one of the most powerful scriptures i love this scripture by the way blessed is he who is not offended because of me what an interesting insight that jesus gives to us at this point you can get saved and because because you're human being because we're human beings you get saved god does a tremendous work in your life and you begin to read the bible but you're reading the bible through the the eyeglasses of your experience there are some things that that you just know that that were just not good for you it may have been things like dancing or drinking it may have been drug taking whatever those are things that are not good for you it may have been that you were a gossip and and you spoke about people all the time and tore them up and it may be that you were sexually promiscuous or or that you had an an anger problem and you get saved and as you get saved you begin to notice scriptures that say things like like you shouldn't sleep around or or you can have self-control and not grow angry or you don't need to drink anymore or whatever and and you discover and these these are the scriptures in the beginning of your walk that become very important to you you might even memorize them you you know basically where they're at in scripture because you got saved to read in the bible and and you're discovering some things about god and and what happens is you put god in a little box and he's always going to be this way and so you start to think that you got you've gotten to know god in a certain way and you start having a worship relationship with him as you know him when you first got saved but the problem is is you kind of keep him there and you kind of think that because it feels good to believe this that he must agree with you 100% and you've got full-on understanding of everything and then later on something occurs in your life where where you meet somebody and and they may have a disagreement with you on that area and and you think for sure that that they're wrong and you're right and then you find out well maybe you're not as right as you think and maybe they're not as wrong as you thought and and what happens is you begin to discover some things you begin to discover that you can't put Jesus Christ in a little box and and just keep him there controlling him because he's a lot bigger than what you think he is I believe strongly that John the Baptist had this concept of Christ that was limited to his basic understanding and expectations and when Jesus was not performing in the way that he thought that Jesus should he was stumbled I've been that way I've been disappointed in God not doing what I thought he was supposed to do I've had those times of prayer especially as a young believer where I've I've been hurt with God because he disappointed me because I thought for sure that he wouldn't allow this to happen in my life and he did and why and how could good come from this Lord you know what I wanted and and how could you've allowed the opposite to come into my life I don't understand you Lord I believe that every every believer gets to that point where they begin to discover that God is not going to be in our little little box of beliefs and one of the things that the Lord has given to me that I want to give to you tonight in a practical way that has helped me is it has all boiled down to to one thing that I've come to believe and that is that God loves me no matter what and he's just he loves me and he's just he'll do the right thing neuteronomy 32 verse 4 says he is the rock his work is perfect all his ways are justice a god of truth and without injustice righteous and upright is he the one thing that is necessary for all of us is to just trust him when I don't understand something the best thing for me to do is fall on that which I do understand and what I do understand is that God loves me and that God would not allow a thing into my life that is going to destroy me and I believe that he would never allow something into my life that'll destroy me anymore then I would allow something into the life of one of my children or my grandson that would destroy them now if I would not want my children to be harmed or my grandson to be harmed why would I think that God wants me to be harmed and so one of the things that john has to learn is that that he has a certain idea of who Jesus is but his idea of who Jesus is is not necessarily who Jesus actually is and that's why Jesus can say to him you go back and you tell him the things that you've seen and the things that you heard and these are the things that you've seen and you go back and tell him and then you tell him this blessed is the one who is not offended that word offended stumbled because of me because ultimately what I have to do is just trust him for who he is it's the wisest thing that I can do he loves me he's just he'll take care of business in the right way there have been times when I've been like Jeremiah when I've said to the Lord oh Lord I would like to speak to you concerning your judgments I'd like to give you some counsel now I realize you didn't call me up and ask me for some counsel I understand that but Lord I know that you're busy in the universe there's so many people and so many problems perhaps you haven't taken notice of something and therefore I'm certain you're grateful that I'm on the job to let you know that these things really ought to be done this way you know that guy who just cut me off Lord I really think he needs to die I mean there are things that you can do Lord that person harmed me therefore you know I want to speak to you concerning your judgments when the Lord would say who gave you permission to make those judgments see God takes in all things he considers all elements and it's always tempered by his mercy and compassion ultimately his justice will rule but the bottom line is that he is always merciful and compassionate and he gives people opportunity to the very end for them to ultimately come to him and so he says blessed is the one blessed is he who's not offended because of me now verse 24 when the messengers of John had departed he began to speak to the multitudes concerning John what did you go out into the wilderness to see a reed shaken by the wind but what did you go out to see a man clothed in soft garments indeed those who are gorgeously appareled and live in luxury are in kings courts but what did you go out to see a prophet yes I say to you and more than a prophet this is he of whom it is written behold I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you for I say to you among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist but he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he and so Jesus speaks to them to offset the impression that John was a double-minded man I mean he has his men asking him are you the coming one and so he wants to offset that impression and so what he does is he gives to them qualifications for kingdom greatness and he uses John as the example notice verse 24 the question really is what do you think a man of God is what do you think a man of God is like and what you see in the life of John and you can write this one down is conviction this is a man who had conviction conviction is the key he says did you think he was a reed in other words did you think he was spineless do you think that he would move with every wind of man's opinion that he would vacillate constantly remember with me he'd be saying to them he's in prison because of his non-compromising preaching this isn't a person that is going to be moved by the slight cunning of men he's not going to be joining in the latest philosophy he's not going to be sticking his his spiritual finger into the air to test the the the climate to see where the wind is blowing so that he can flow with that wind this is a guy who speaks with conviction who knew that God had given him a message and it's a message he has to deliver and he was a man with conviction and went to God that we had more men and women who were moved by conviction rather than opinions that people have you know when Paul was writing to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 3 and 4 he said the appeal we make doesn't spring from error or impure motives nor are we trying to trick you on the contrary we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel we're not trying to please men but God who tests our hearts he was saying listen I want to speak to you the truth and even if it causes me to lose my life and that's how John was that's why John could say Psalm 62 6 he only is my rock and my salvation he is my defense I shall not be moved so here's a person of conviction what is a man of God like what is a woman of God like they have convictions so he says in verse 25 what did you go out to see a man clothed in soft garments well when he speaks of soft garments that speaks of people who surrounded the king and what it really is a picture of his self-indulgence John was not such a man he was a common man and he ministered with humility according to Matthew 3 John wore a garment of camel's hair a leather bowed around his waist his food was locus and wild honey and so Jesus is saying he's not a self-indulgent man because a self-indulgent man will not make the sacrifices that this man has made because if you're going to serve the Lord you have to be willing to lay down whatever rights you think you have to pick up that cross follow him daily and to live in a in a in a way that may be less than you think you deserve he said John's that way then he goes on he says in verse 26 what did you go out to see a prophet I say to you more than a prophet not only was John a prophet which indeed he was but he was an object of prophecy because the word of God had spoken concerning Malachi chapter four verses five and six I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes he'll turn the hearts of the fathers to their children the hearts of the children to their fathers or also come and strike the land with the curse so Malachi had closed with a curse speaking concerning that there would be one who came who would be the forerunner of Messiah now Luke tells us in chapter one verse 17 that John fulfilled that because it says he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous to make ready of people prepared for the Lord and so this is a man this is a man with conviction this is a man with humility and this is a man who is not only a prophet but subject of prophecy and therefore is a great great man he says in verse 28 I say unto you among those born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist but he who is least in the kingdom of god is greater than he there's not a greater than John the Baptist now when he speaks in verse 28 of those born of women that's a way of speaking about his humanity positionally where mankind is concerned there hadn't been born one greater than he but there is one greater than he and that's the one who is least in the kingdom and the one who is least in the kingdom is Jesus himself so the one who is the greatest in the kingdom is Jesus you see in Matthew 23 11 Jesus said he who is greatest among you shall be your servant so Jesus Christ is the greatest servant therefore is the greatest in the kingdom but John was the last of the Old Testament prophets and he's the one who ties together the Old Testament and the prophecies relating to the Messiah with the New Testament when Jesus Christ has come and so as he's speaking here verse 29 when all the people heard him even the tax collectors justified God having been baptized with the baptism of John but the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God for themselves not having been baptized by him I want you to see something here guys the different attitudes of the religious elite when it says Pharisees and lawyers there in verse 30 the lawyers are the experts in the law of Moses that's who is being referred to here experts in the in the mosaic law Pharisees are religious people a religious sect during the time of Christ but what you have is you have a contrast you have all the people hearing him tax collectors justifying God and notice in verse 29 they had been baptized with the baptism of John but the Pharisees Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God for themselves not having been baptized by him the different attitudes are revealed by one common thing had they or had they not received a baptism that reflected repentance the ones who had were ministered by the Lord Jesus Christ but the ones who had not received the water baptism which symbolized it re symbolized repentance rejected him so as a result the Pharisees and religious experts rejected the counsel of God what was the counsel of God the counsel of God was repent because that's what John had said remember repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand so the tax gatherers who were greatly hated by the Jews at that time actually were entering into the kingdom of heaven because they had repented but the religious individuals the Pharisees and the religious scribes rejecting the counsel of God did not receive the baptism of repentance and thus were sealed in their sin in rejecting God's counsel they were left to their own see in the bible in the new testament it makes a very very plain for us in the bible there's one way into the kingdom of God that's through Jesus Christ but to have a relationship with Jesus I have to repent and when I repent I am actually literally changing my mind about something the word repent in the original language is the word metanoia it speaks of a change of mind it's not simply an emotion it's a decision of the will and so when I hear the message of the cross when I hear that Jesus Christ came God in the flesh and died on a cross for me I'm hearing the message as I hear that message and he calls me to relationship with him he says but your sin has made a separation between you and me so there's an issue that needs to be dealt with and that is called your sin sin makes separation what you're to repent from is my mentality that I can enter into the kingdom of God through my own works and efforts what I repent from is the things that are keeping me from God but first and foremost it's my mental attitude towards him that somehow thinks that I can justify myself and so when I hear the message that says I'll have sin and fall short of the glory of God when I hear the the message that says the wages of sin is death then I begin to understand that and then by faith embrace that then I can say God be merciful unto me I'm a sinner because it's not by works of righteousness which I have done but according to your mercy you saved me through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit for it's by grace that I'm saved through faith and and that not of myself not by works lest I should boast so you mean I am to embrace by faith the price that's already been paid through Jesus Christ and I'm to repent from the life that I've lived and my ideas of how to enter into heaven and ask you to be merciful to me and the answer to that biblically is yes that's how you enter into the kingdom of God and so I say that sounds too easy and God says it's not it cost my son every drop of his blood what makes you think that was easy and so I say God forgive me because I have really I have made light of the of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and I have reduced it to almost nothing as if it was his job to do that and in this I am greatly sorrowful and I ask for your forgiveness or you can say no I'll just keep doing what I'm doing I'll do the best that I can and I'll get in one way or another by my own efforts that's the problem but when you do that the bible says you're rejecting the counsel of God because God has given you his counsel and said this is what you need to do if you do it you'll be blessed my sons as they were growing up and they still are growing up frankly but as my sons were growing up as young boys growing into young men and even to this day as a matter of fact I was having a conversation with both of my sons on different days just this last week and they will come and they will share with me some things they'll tell me you know dad this is what I'm thinking and this is how it's going or whatever they'll they'll say things to me and on occasion not all the time not every time we talk on occasion once in a blue moon I'll look at them and I'll say something like this this is something like I said just this last week to both of them in one way or another I said you know I understand that been there and son if you want to hear some advice I'm not saying you have to follow it you're a man you can decide to do what's right but if I were you this is what I would do this is how I would do it one of my sons was talking to me about a professor a professor who just this last week was standing up in class my son's going to college and and said that the Christians are responsible for all the evil in the world and that the gospel and Christians is absolutely worthless and he said that in class and my son came in and spoke to me was pretty upset and I said well is that right he says yeah and I said you know son Christians are responsible for all the evil in the world we've overwhelmed all these nations and we've destroyed them he said that's what he's saying he said I got so angry dad he said I got so angry I got up and I walked out I walked out of class he said that probably wasn't a good idea huh I said probably wasn't son I said but you know been there done that I said when I was 25 years old and I was going to college and my professors would say some boneheaded thing I said one thing you need to remember is your pain your tuition and paying their salary so you can talk to him I said no I would I said and the way I would do it is I would wait until after class and everybody had pretty much filtered out and he's lost his audience that he can be so brave in front of and then I would talk to him politely and respectfully and I said and with your professor what I would say to him is um do you know any born again Christians and I would say to him you know my father and my mother are Christians and they're nothing like what you're saying and I would say to him well what good did you do when the tsunami hit well the church I go to gave over a hundred thousand dollars in in relief and aid what good did you do personally what good did you do when Katrina hit my church gave over a hundred thousand dollars to help those people we've gone and we've sent teams to rebuild homes that were destroyed we send people into Mexico to minister to the poor we do quite a number of things I would like to know on a personal level what you do besides stand up in class and talk about Christians do you know any and that's how I would handle that and I would respectfully tell him you're a bonehead but I would say it nicely I'm just playing with you I would say that stupid yeah bonehead no no and I've done that I said son I've walked him to the car I've walked with him to the car and I said you know if you mind if I and I would share with them and I would talk to them and I'd say do you know any Christians no well my name is David and I'm a believer in Jesus Christ and so now you know one because a lot of times these fellas or these ladies don't have a single Christian person that they know I said so it's easy to stand up in front of class and be real brave and say all of these things because you think everybody's in agreement with you I said just take him alone outside be respectful introduce yourself to him I said and if you'd like I said I'll talk to him I wouldn't mind speaking to your professor and asking him why he thinks that he should use taxpayer money to destroy Christian faith I'd like to know it'd be all right I said let him know because you want to know something because I believe I believe that the word of God is true and I believe the counsel of God is to be listened to and so I told my son that I said son I'm giving you counsel now he can do what he wants with it eternity is not at stake in this case but I know what it's like to give counsel as well as to receive it to give counsel that is not received or to have counsel given to me that I didn't receive but when it comes to eternal things you need to receive the counsel of God and that's what he's talking about when he says the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God for themselves not having been baptized by him they rejected God's counsel which is repent if you repent you can enter into the kingdom of heaven if you do not you will not enter in and that's a very simple phrase there but as a result what they did is they rejected the counsel of God the Pharisees and religious experts when those who at one time were hated the tax collectors well they justified God why they were baptized with the baptism of John you can receive counsel or you can reject it and even as I shared with my sons both of them you can hear my counsel or you can reject it but if you do it your life will be blessed if you don't then you're going to learn in a different way and sometimes even harder way now that's just general life but when it comes down to the counsel of the word of God you'd better hear it because that's the only counsel that really matters