in case you are wondering

This is what I do now :)

vacation.. six weeks... ahh...

So it has begun :) My six weeks of vacation. The first two weeks is
actually 2 weeks with my daughter, the following four weeks are
vacation.
Still learning Houdini, going to tackle the rendering bit right now
and see how that goes. Never really done anything with mantra, so it's
going to be fun to check that one out. Also started to study some
video tutorials with how to use Python and Houdini.

I'm might read a few books :)

/stefan

houdini, my new friend

Just learned about 'Object Merge' and how to fully use 'Groups' in
Houdini. That alone with all the info you get about local variables
are just plain amazing...
As soon as I have something better than my tests I'm gonna show it. So
far it's just been a big "murder" with grids, sphere's and a few torus
objects :)

So the plan is to experiment a bit more with this and then try to
render something coooooool.

Anyhow, I'm having a blast and it's been a long time since I felt like
this about learning a new application.

the light in the tunnel

It's quite amazing how you always kind of knew the light was there,
but you were stubborn enough to look the other way :)
So I'm looking at it right now, and I haven't arrived to it yet, but
my journey has begun. And it's not all about learning Houdini, it's
slowly accepting for myself that I will try and concentrate on being a
TD more than an animator. It's not an easy decision to make and
shouldn't be taken lightly. Though I also don't really like having
titles, so... it's a good thing I call myself a 'pixel abuser' instead
of 'animator' or 'vfx supervisor'. Being a pixel abuser opens up the
doors for doing just about anything.

First thing I need to do is to get my math skills in order. I know
quite a lot, but I really need to be better at figuring out formulas.
And for this I thanks the big gods of the Wiki heaven. Doing a few
search here and there on google you'll soon notice that *everything*
that has to do with math is on wikipedia.
The first this I looked up as how to normalize a vector. I used to
know this a loooooooooooong time ago and wikipedia showed me the
answer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector

This is useful to figure out a direction of a normal or a particle
or... something else :) In a way its fairly basic math, and once you
start to understand it you can hopefully apply it into your programs.

Another good site is http://www.mathwords.com, they give you simple
explanations to words that you might have heard but don't know what
they are.

Anyhooo... the journey has begun.

stefan a.k.a pixel abuser

applications... will there never be an end to it??

Just started a few weeks back learning Houdini ( http://www.sidefx.com
). It's one of those 'holy grail' that exists in the 3d community.
Everybody just *knows* that Houdini is capable of everything, but it's
difficult to learn and quite expensive for most studios, and when the
userbase is so low I can undertstand why most people or studios tend
to stay away from houdini.

But.... why stay away from something that could make your life easier
or let you create even more stunning imagery? I decided to put blind
folds on me and totaly disregard the fact that I would probably never
use it in production... So here I am, yet again learning a new
application and the quirks that surrounds it. And I'm having the time
of my life! :) I love being in new situations and learning new things.

And at the same time... it feels like I am a TD coming out of my
closet... been hiding inside that Animation closet for a long time
now. Perhaps Python coding and technical challenges is my thing??

We'll see what the future brings.

/stefan

the importance of references

I can never stress enough the importance of getting references. A lot of times in my work when I encounter people who doesn't have that much of experience they often start working without checking references enough. And sometimes they even tell me that they have done a internet search, which basically means that they have downloaded three images and used one as a texture.

So here comes a little check list.

• Download at least 50 images for each item
• Put them into category of a style or an era
• Check with the supervisor which of the images that he/she likes
• Download more images that resembles the once that were chosen
• pick 5 favorites
• draw some thumbnails of specific features
• draw basic volumes of the item
• print out some of them and draw on top of the paper (don't do that in photoshop)
  

The reason I like to draw on paper is because you get a feel for the item without using a computer. You brain starts to connect the dots and you in a way solve a lot of problems before you start modeling.

If you are doing some modeling on your own just for the sake of it, you should follow the same list but add a few check points.

• Who owns this item?
  
• What is the story behind all the features on the item
• What's the story behind the item itself
  

If you follow these steps you will end up with a much greater design than what you would if you were only doing everything without references. You can do these steps also with texturing, or rather "you should do these steps with texturing".

I'm attaching an image to this little 'article', it's a work in progress that I'm doing in my spare time (for my shortfilm).
It's an old TV which the person who owns it didn't have money to upgrade it. But he did upgrade it himself, he made it a stereo tv (even though it only outputs mono sound).
I did my research here with the TV and the speakers. But rushed away with the furniture that it sits on. So you can clearly see that the TV furniture isn't as well thought of as the rest, so I need to redo that one. But it's a good example what happens when you don't follow the steps. And that you need to keep reminding yourself that you SHOULD FOLLOW THE STEPS!! I need to do that all the time.

all the best
stefan

Bohmation Meet

May 6th, 2009
Location: secret

the GUI battle...

My last post about Gimp was as I suspected. And what happened was that
after a few posts, the constant battle of GUI's came up. It's funny
how certain things are constant, and how reluctant some people are of
learning a new interface for some things (while sometimes it just gets
accepted).

A few situations the interface is blocking because

1.) It's so off from what others are doing
2.) It goes against all logic

I've only found 2 application that actually has these two points (in
their own way).

Blender
It's "off" because of how you interact with objects. No other
application in the world has this kind of behavior. While you can over
come it, it's still blocking and not a very intuitive way of working.
Blender users might disagree, but as a user of many programs I must
still say that it is NOT good for anything. You can change the
behavior in the preferences, but it is STILL a far cry from how others
are doing it. And there is a good reason why others have it as they
do. Picking and Selecting things should NOT be an issue. The rest of
the GUI is fine, it's different, but so are other applications. While
INTERACTION should never be different.

I have high hopes for 2.5 since I can then convert even more people to
blender. I still love to work in blender, but I would really like to
see them change the interaction part. It's off, and it is what every
new user is complaining about.

Z-Brush
Goes against all logic. Sorting menus by alphabetic order?? gimme me a
break... And that you have to read tutorials about how to export
displacment maps to various programs... And this is by far my
favorite, the displacment map is actually the alpha that you export.
And the "viewport" you have is a document, so you can't really zoom in
and out but you scale the model.

As you can see Gimp is not amongs them, because the GUI actually
follows the common guidelines of what a application should look like.
When people said that it "should look and act as photoshop" I think
those people are narrow minded fools, and my follow up question would
be "so which version of photoshop should the aim for then?".
If you look at Photoshop 4.0 and Photoshop CS4 they are quite
different. So just tell me which version it is. And if the answer is
"shortcuts", just google it....

So people... let me know what you think!

learning Gimp impossible?

Over the years I've been amazed that 3D Artists while being able to
use 3-5 various rendering engines and at least 2 3D applications (and
in some cases also learning 2 scripting languages ) they are not able
to use Gimp instead of Photoshop.

I just don't understand it.

It would be one this if the artist is a "photoshop pro", but 9 out of
10 times the user mainly does only do this

1.) Color correction
2.) Copy/Paste
3.) Clone
4.) Removal
5.) Paint

I haven't used Photoshop for years now, and apparently to some
users... I haven't been able to work freely. Imagine that... I never
knew that...

Here is a link to speed up the process of using Gimp. And it will also
help your company to save a few bucks.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/03/8-handy-tweaks-to-make-gimp-replace-photoshop/

I do recommend though that you keep 1 updated copy of photoshop and
illustrator to be able to convert files that you get from your
clients.

All the best!
/stefan

I totaly flunked out on this one

watch it...