Wednesday, March 26, 2014
(?:regex){1} (haterz)+
If you hate regexes as much as I do - which, honestly, seems scarcely possible - you should check out these regex preview sites which make like a little easier when you're trying to work out a particularly nasty one:
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
New tools watch: MARI
Lately - particularly since the demise of the late, lamented XSI, I've been increasingly worried about getting too locked in to any one vendor for my tools. I go way back with Photoshop - I once emailed a bug report directly to John Knoll on my Compuserve (!!) account. I was in the audience for the Maya launch at SIGGRAPH in, I think it was 1997.
Jeez, I'm really fricking old. But I digress.
The point is, I love those tools. They've been part of my life for a long time. But I don't like being too beholden to anybody, especially not an anybody who's a big public company that has to answer to shareholders and analysts and is not particularly worried about competition.
For that reason I'm actively looking for alternatives to supplement or even supplant the old standbys. And this GDC gave me some up-close and personal time with a very promising one: Mari, the 3-d painting app from the Foundry.
More after the jump.
Jeez, I'm really fricking old. But I digress.
The point is, I love those tools. They've been part of my life for a long time. But I don't like being too beholden to anybody, especially not an anybody who's a big public company that has to answer to shareholders and analysts and is not particularly worried about competition.
For that reason I'm actively looking for alternatives to supplement or even supplant the old standbys. And this GDC gave me some up-close and personal time with a very promising one: Mari, the 3-d painting app from the Foundry.
 |
| Lots of Mari work on Avatar |
More after the jump.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Back from GDC
Well, another year, another GDC.
An upbeat show - the combination of the indie/mobile tidal wave and a new console generation has breathed some much needed life into the old beast - the business center was bigger than I've seen it in years, and full of people hustling.
The absence of many familiar AAA names was still pretty striking - no lines around the block for the Activision/EA meat markets, no scores of kids waiting to show their portfolios to someone from Blizzard or whatnot.
There was, however, a booth from SpaceX. Someboedy told me they are hiring tech artists. See, we're conquering the world... from above!
And, there was an amazing bustle of activity from the indie-casual-mobile side. Tons and tons of booths, more than I remember ever seeing before. Most of them will probably be gone in two years, but it's still great to see people hustling around, coming up with plans, and trying to make something big after all the gloom of the last few years. Here's hoping the many friends and former colleagues who've been battered by business can make up some lost ground in this new gold rush. It's probably another bubble - remember when everybody wanted to hire a teal of 800 to talk on WOW? - but it's still better than sitting around moping.
All the movement has a lot to do with all the changes in the business that have broken the stifling rut of AAA juggernauts, sequel-itis, and me-too design that was hanging over us like a fog a few years back. All sorts of fun and interesting stuff happening.
Saw some cool tech too, which I'll talk about later in the week. In the meantime: so long SF!
Update: I did not see this talk, but this rant from Greg Costikyan does summarize neatly some things I am worrying about over the long haul...
An upbeat show - the combination of the indie/mobile tidal wave and a new console generation has breathed some much needed life into the old beast - the business center was bigger than I've seen it in years, and full of people hustling.
 |
| The floor was buzzing! |
The absence of many familiar AAA names was still pretty striking - no lines around the block for the Activision/EA meat markets, no scores of kids waiting to show their portfolios to someone from Blizzard or whatnot.
There was, however, a booth from SpaceX. Someboedy told me they are hiring tech artists. See, we're conquering the world... from above!
And, there was an amazing bustle of activity from the indie-casual-mobile side. Tons and tons of booths, more than I remember ever seeing before. Most of them will probably be gone in two years, but it's still great to see people hustling around, coming up with plans, and trying to make something big after all the gloom of the last few years. Here's hoping the many friends and former colleagues who've been battered by business can make up some lost ground in this new gold rush. It's probably another bubble - remember when everybody wanted to hire a teal of 800 to talk on WOW? - but it's still better than sitting around moping.
All the movement has a lot to do with all the changes in the business that have broken the stifling rut of AAA juggernauts, sequel-itis, and me-too design that was hanging over us like a fog a few years back. All sorts of fun and interesting stuff happening.
Saw some cool tech too, which I'll talk about later in the week. In the meantime: so long SF!
Update: I did not see this talk, but this rant from Greg Costikyan does summarize neatly some things I am worrying about over the long haul...
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Worst. CG. EVAR.
Anybody who has ever had to suffer through demo reel reviews will appreciate this:
This guy's Youtube channel is the Louvre of bad CG.
And yes, he is in on the joke. But he is looking for donations so he can raise enough money for a PC which can render shadows.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Unity 5 announced
So it looks like Unity is announcing Unity 5 a bit early. It's a bit premature, since they are not done with the much anticipated 4.6 release (I've been wrestling with the existing, awful Unitry GUI system for months and I can't freaking wait to push it over the gunwale!)
Tech notes after the jump
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Realtime GI... On my phone?!?!? |
If your Maya Python API is crashing
Check out this useful post from Cyril Fauvelle on the ins and outs of the dreaded MScriptUtil.
This kind of stuff is why I reserve API programming for only the knottiest of tasks. maya.cmds won't clean-exit your Maya session if you reverse two lines by accident. However, sometimes there's no alternative... Here's hoping API 2.0 matures quickly and we can all forget all of this pointless distraction.
This kind of stuff is why I reserve API programming for only the knottiest of tasks. maya.cmds won't clean-exit your Maya session if you reverse two lines by accident. However, sometimes there's no alternative... Here's hoping API 2.0 matures quickly and we can all forget all of this pointless distraction.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Sliders!
Although GDMag is no more, I still occasionally get interesting press releases from PR flacks who haven't gotten the bad news. This morning, one from MakeHuman caught my eye.
MakeHuman is a new open sourced parametric modeling / body morphing program written in Python. The overall use case is similar to Poser or Daz3d. It seems like it also incorporates some of the underlying ideas from the venerable FaceGen - particularly having a few high level sliders that correlate changes across many different aspects of a model.
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| Now with realistic back flab! |
MakeHuman is a new open sourced parametric modeling / body morphing program written in Python. The overall use case is similar to Poser or Daz3d. It seems like it also incorporates some of the underlying ideas from the venerable FaceGen - particularly having a few high level sliders that correlate changes across many different aspects of a model.
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