Archive for December, 2010

Changes

Well, I had enough of b2evolution so now I’m moving everything to WordPress (including CMS for which I used Gallery2 until now).

B2evo was nice at first but it turned out to be a pain in the ass: WYSIWYG editors didn’t play well with certain plugins, video/flash embedding needed me hacking PHP shit and then juggling with page long embedding code snippets in every post, I had to delete autosaves manually after each publish and I could go on.

So I installed WordPress and now I’m in the process of manually recreating every single post there. Tedious, crappy job, but at least I’m forced to overview and restructure the site if necessary.

Since I managed fix this blog (at least it seems to be working at the moment), it will stay online for a few weeks, parallel to the new blog. After I’m sure the new works then the old goes bye-bye. Unfortunately then all links/bookmarks pointing to the old data will be broken. :\ Well, gain some, lose some I guess.

Written on December 29th, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized

Maintenance

The blog will be down for a day or two while I’m upgrading the blog engine, clean up the categories, add tags and update the static pages.

Any funky behavior, weird visual design or scary error message is normal.

EDIT: Pretty much everything went wrong with the update so embedded images and videos might be missing.

Written on December 26th, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized

Celebration

This year, as in every year, we celebrate again.
The time has come to express our love and respect.
To keep alive old traditions and honor the one without whom we would be nothing.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Written on December 23rd, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized

Luxology modo 501

Modo 501 has been released.

Until now buying any new modo version was a no brainer: the new features, the bugfixes and extra polish made them a day one purchase.

However this time around I was somewhat reluctant to shell out the money for the upgrade because the most broken parts of modo (the shader tree and the baking procedures) remain intact. No nodal shader system, no baking cages, no properly made bake setup management, tangent space normal baking is still a pain, bumpmaps still doesn’t affect baked normal textures.

But that’s strictly my point of view so other people in other industries will definitely find a ton of long awaited features.

Anyway, I did buy 501 because I felt that Luxology does deserve my support for everything they’ve done and they’re known to add new features later on (502, 503). Also the SDK is much more advanced now so third party plugins might scratch my itches in the upcoming months.

Written on December 16th, 2010
Categories: Software
Tags: modo

Chain of links

While I’m waiting for Motionbuilder to save a file, I watch Extra Credits (I ran out of Screenwipes). Very clever guys, I’m nodding so hard during the episodes that my neck hurts.

And here is a similar video: also clever guy also on gaming topics and I also agree with every word he says: Warren Spector’s PAX 2010 keynote. I have only the out most respect for him for making DeusEx come to life.

Speaking of which, the new DeusEx game has a viral marketing site with excellent design: Sarif Industries.

Similarly great industrial design sketches can be seen on Sketchology.

Also a graphics related blog but about characters: Character Design Blog. It provided huge amount of inspiration when I was researching character styles for my current project. The project where I animate that character in Motionbuilder.

And while I’m waiting for Motionbuilder to save a file, I watch Extra Credits…

Written on December 9th, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized

Motionbuilder 2011: Epic fail

The 2011 release of Autodesk Motionbuilder is one of the buggiest software I’ve ever used. It’s so full of massive, show-stopper bugs that I can’t comprehend how it got through QA.

Here are the worst issues I’ve encountered so far:

Problem: The manually changed order of takes doesn’t get saved.
I’m currently working with a scene which contains 295 takes, so their pseudo random order makes locating stuff rather difficult.

Workaround: The following script sorts the takes alphabetically.

SortTakes.py

Do NOT use it if any of the takes contain more than one animation layer!

There is a bug in the CopyTake() function which screws up multi-layer takes. I’m trying to find a workaround for that bug but no success so far.

Problem: In constraints, the “KeyControls/Animation/Take options” doesn’t work properly: there is no tick present at all, so neither the “Normal” nor the “Multi take” option is selected.

This makes all newly added constraint instantly affect all takes, whether you like it or not.

Workaround: The following script creates 0% weight keyframes for the selected constraint at time 0, in every take. (Existing keyframes are left alone.)

ConstraintWeightFix.py

Problem: Saving and loading FBX files takes an inordinate amount of time.

Currently MB saves or loads my 90 Mb scene just under 8 minutes.

Workaround: None available currently.
The best I could recommend is some entertainment. I watched Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, 8 minutes at a time.

All in all, Autodesk proved yet again that price and marketing budget has no relation whatsoever to the quality of the actual product.

Written on December 2nd, 2010
Categories: Scripts, Software