| (no subject) |
[Nov. 26th, 2006|01:09 am] |
i suppose at least id like to know where i went wrong so i dont make the same mistake next time.
i think this qualifies as slobbering drunk.
im surprised i made it home tonight.
i would have rtammed the guy in front of me if his kids werent with him.
i hate myself.
thousands, hundred thousands of people die of aids cancer other horrible afflictions.
still i live.
our god is vengeful not merciful.
please.
kill me. |
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| All blogs point to here |
[Oct. 7th, 2006|05:12 am] |
sethlab
If you're really curious as to what i'm up to next, all such info will be found at the above link from now on. See you on the b-side. |
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| Gray sunday afternoons, my APLS presentation, and the ORT framework |
[Oct. 1st, 2006|12:49 pm] |
Gray sundays are the best days for staying in and getting work done. It's so much harder to stare at a monitor when the sun is streaming in through someone's window.
As much work as putting this presentation for the UW Animation Production Lecture Series is/has been/is still going to be, it's actually alot of fun. I've never really had to sit down and qualify/quantify my job (since i never worked for EA or Blizzard thank god), and it makes me realize how much stuff i've learned in the past couple years, but at the same time how much stuff i still want to learn. Hopefully i'll have some useful stuff to present to the kids, although nowadays animation students probably know more already than i do, which is always an intimidating thought. I will admit this whole thing is a slightly full-circle/closure/mindlessly self indulgent thing for me too since i flunked out of the UW quite a few years back:) No ill tho, things happen the way they happen. I really dig seattle also, if all goes well maybe i can take a long weekend and have some time to hang out. Lots of folks i should go see since i'm not at batizado this weekend for instance.
Did a little bit of at least preliminary research for the ORT framework last night, it's kinda weird as it entails alot more planning than i'm used to, as well as wondering which functions i'm going to end up throwing out or having to make more general purpose/special case/whatever. This is cool though because it serves as a prelim exercise to writing an engine, so yay for ORT. Having said that i should probably get done at work and get onto the gym so i can get back home and continue work on that. . .and so forth and so on. |
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| ORT |
[Sep. 30th, 2006|05:27 pm] |
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Open Rigging Toolkit it is i guess. Ort. . .that sounds like it needs some sort of cartoony mascot, suitable for a DS or web game. Alright so i guess i'm designing a framework for the ORT this weekend and porting my tools over to it. Fun fun. This project just got bigger than i thought it was going to be. Good thing i have tons of free time. |
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| If you want peace. . . |
[Sep. 30th, 2006|01:32 pm] |
Scripts in some form of development
These are mainly simple rigging stuff that may or may not make it into ORT. No download links just yet, i'll probably compile everything and do a for fun release type thing. I figure keeping a log seems to work for my workouts, why not to keep me on track with my scripting and programming?
- arP_applyAttr - Allows application of an attribute to multiple objects. Accounts for different datatypes.
- To Do:
- Add a UI
- Add support for multiples (one value to multiple attribute, multiple discreet vals to multiple attrs)
- arP_Batcher - Applies a specified list of commands to a file tree.
- To Do:
- Make sure file tree selection is clean.
- Add error checking/catching
- arP_createChains - Creates a joint chain along a curve. Does some stuff Maya's doesn't, i forget what.
- To Do:
- Check for modularity so it can be integrated into a spline ik creation solution.
- Add a UI (?)
- arP_createDistanceRatio - Creates a distance node or arclen based ratio (for use in things like stretchy iks).
- To Do:
- Finish arclen creation section
- arP_CreateIKFKVis - Creates a visibility control attached to an IK/FK Blend system.
- To Do:
- Allow for driver attribute specification
- Make it more generic (for inclusion in ORT?)
- arP_createZeroIk - Creates a null parented ik handle.
- arP_fkChainUI - Adds parented shapes to an fk chain for easy selection.
- arP_renamer - Adds a specified prefix to a selection or hierarchy.
- arP_shapeParent - Parents a selected transform's shape under a selected joint.
- To Do:
- Add a naming option (so weird things like curveShape1 aren't parented under a joint)
- arP_createIkFkBlend - Creates a constraint based IK/FK Blend system off of a selected joint chain.
- To Do:
- Integrate arP_fkChain and arP_createIKFKVis
- Add support for adding multiple handles to one chain (make some assumptions here)
- arP_createOrientController - Creates an orient controller for a given joint (like a wrist for instance)
There's probably something to be said for encapsulating all these in a nice UI, but that will probably get superceeded by ORT, so the prospect of wasting time and energy on maya's crazy UI creation stuff just doesn't fill me with alot of excitement:) |
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| Up off the floor |
[Sep. 30th, 2006|12:04 pm] |
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The Open Rigging Toolkit forum is up, for now i think it's going to stay on the dl until we get a little further into the development. In related news, I'm starting to collect and "remix" if you will all my old MEL scripts that i think might still be relevant or useful. Some of these may end up in the ORT, or at least somehow be friendly with it. We need a better name than Open Rigging Toolkit though. |
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| Tips For TAs |
[Sep. 30th, 2006|10:58 am] |
I've been interviewing technical artists pretty constantly for the last 5 or 6 months and I'm noticing there's a glaring deficiency between what TAs currently are (or at least what people think passes for a TA) and what we'd like them to be. So interspersed with my musings on rigging, shader creation, tool writing, and all my other TAly duties, i figure i could drop some hints about some desired skills for TAs.
Technical artist and character rigger are not (or at least should not be) interchangeable. Granted character riggers are technical artists, but there's so much more to being a technical artist than building character rigs and writing character focused mel scripts and tools. Character rigging is a subset of technical artistry, but to truly be a character technical artist and not just a character rigger, one needs to be versed in all aspects of character creation and know how to support them both hands on and in script. This means knowing the tenets of modeling and uv layout for good deformation, which is something any good character rigger probably is versed in anyway. It's probably not necessary for a character ta to have production experience as a modeler or animator, but it certainly helps, and at the very least it's something character tas should have done fairly extensively even if just as a side project. Another area character tas should be versed in is shaders. Next-gen platforms give us the opportunity to do really neat things with lighting and shading, beyond just the usual color map, normal map, spec map, and it's the character tas job to be able to sit next to the art director and character concepter, spec out how the character is going to look in game, and implement that at a shader level. This means not only creating the shader, but setting up some method for the artists to be able to tweak the shader parameters without the character ta having to look over their shoulders. This is another reason character tas should be versed in shaders and shader workflow, it will allow them to spec out the tools and be able to communicate those requirements to the tools programmers.
Programming knowledge, while probably not required beyond mel or whatever native scripting the dcc app of choice uses, is definitely helpful. Knowledge of languages such as lua, python, c#, and other scripting and managed languages is probably a good idea. Scripting and managed languages are quite a bit more non-programmer friendly than say c/c++, but at the same time afford the user quite a bit of power, especially given all the libraries/apis that are being developed for many of these languages.
That's it in a nutshell for now, it all sounds pretty elementary i know, but one would be surprised at how unprepared alot of tas are when it comes time to interview. Aspring tas take note, some of us have been doing this for a while now, and we're the ones who are going to be interviewing you, so it takes a little more to impress us than the average art director;) Good luck! |
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| Official Release |
[Sep. 23rd, 2006|04:04 pm] |
. . .And Darkness Fell
mixed by djTomServo
DOWNLOAD (~100M mp3, RightClickSaveAs)
Act I: Sun Rise
- Claustrophobia - Serart
- Farenheit - Lights Of Euphoria
- A Step Away From. . .- Stromkern
- The Color Of The Fire - Boards Of Canada
- (R*) - This Morn Omina
- Airlock - DJ?Acucrack
- Zero Sun - Headscan
- Plastic Christ - Suicide Commando
- Counting Bodies Like Sheep - A Perfect Circle
- Silent Ceremony - Frontline Assembly
Act II: Sun Fall
- Second Skin - VNV Nation
- The Irreparable - Glis feat Jean-Luc de Meyer
- East (Meaningless Life Mix) - Velvet Acid Christ
- The Flight Lux - Edge Of Dawn
- Permafrost - Headscan
- Schema - Negative Format
- Recognition - The Parallel Project
- Scorpio - Imperative Reaction
- Aberracion En Tu Voz - Amduscia
- Dissent - Pride And Fall
I know, I'm a week late with the release. . .blame it on work. |
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| Whew! |
[Sep. 5th, 2006|11:43 pm] |
So the final tracklisting ended up being:
Act I: Sun Rise
- (R*) - This Morn Omina
- Airlock - DJ?Acucrack
- Zero Sun - Headscan
- Plastic Christ - Suicide Commando
- Counting Bodies Like Sheep - A Perfect Circle
- Silent Ceremony - Frontline Assembly
Act II: Sun Fall
- Second Skin - VNV Nation
- Contact - Seabound
- Permafrost - Headscan
- Schema - Negative Format
- Recognition - The Parallel Project
- Scorpio - Imperative Reaction
Yeah Live is way too much fun. . .may be time to ditch turntables. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 26th, 2005|11:08 am] |
Taxi!
Where to, Mac?
To The City
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 16th, 2005|06:18 pm] |
"cordas should not be the focus of your training, they should be the results of your growth."
-Mestre Vaguinho
an appropriate thought. . .ive been thinking alot about growth. more after class. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 8th, 2005|11:21 pm] |
"Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 26th, 2005|08:56 am] |
"why do it tomorrow when you can do it today? we don't know if you're going to be here tomorrow, so do it today. tomorrow there will be a chance to go back and replay, but never miss an opportunity to do a little bit now."
-Mestre Vaguinho, Capoeira San Jose |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 24th, 2005|04:58 pm] |
"Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open." Pauline Kael
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| morning after |
[Jul. 19th, 2005|07:42 am] |
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even 3 years later i still get amazed by the feeling you get the next morning, like your body is totally destroyed but you could do it all over again. you grow stronger one class at a time, you get better one game at a time. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 12th, 2005|10:41 pm] |
i do not hurt myself anymore to see if i can still feel.
rather i choose to love so i remember why i want to keep feeling.
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 8th, 2005|09:39 am] |
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somewhere along the line everyone but me stopped liking queensryche, dunno why. there's all this stuff of theirs i haven't heard dating back a while, which is pretty cool. even operation:mindcrime is sick still. . .im diggin it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 6th, 2005|11:23 pm] |
"i have a will but i'm lost inside your time"
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