Life Wisdom #1: Never be Ahead of Your Time

Just found out (!) via watching the Disney TR2N screening footage that the original movie Tron (Walt Disney Pictures, 1982) was never nominated for best special effects. It’s mind-boggling. Academy said they cheated because they used computers instead of… I dunno, film processing machines?

And after this, somehow, all movie companies turned cheaters.

I sort of always assumed that naturally, it won all special FX movie awards there were. Not so among the fuzzy-logic uninformed rabble.

Please call it an “Academy” when the members have received some sort of “standard, SUB-standard” training

Call me MELman!

Today saw a foray into uncharted terrain – wonderful MEL-land. Well, wonderful and taxing. I tried to bend my brain around a problem that other MEL tools didn’t seem to have solved – a proper backface culling toggle, regardless of what you’re doing.

MEL is the scripting language of Maya which allows you to customize it and create extra functions useful for 3D work. I was too impatient to get started to ask in forums, and Maya Help didn’t answer my specific questions. But by experimenting and finding a very few sources of info on the net I got an inkling on how to proceed.

I spent a good two hours on said problem until I broke it down into three special cases and “ignoring component mode”, since Maya can go into vertex or whichever mode without ever going into component mode. I finally cracked it, and added some (for me, and perhaps others) useful functions.

It certainly will help me modeling. I’ll have a think again tomorrow. If I can make it really good I will upload it to highend3d or someplace. It was a big relief when it finally worked flawlessly, and a very satisfying session of ‘coding’. Maybe I can have some fun with this.

Whipping Out the Sharpener

Today was cause for celebration. For I was trusted to create a 3D character and animate it for a five second spot in a TV commercial! Time to clean the drawing board I used for drawing cartoons. Nip half a dozen fresh, clean paper sheets from the 500-pack and get started! Oh yes, and whip out the sharpener.

It really was a lot of fun getting aquainted with the tools of old. I discovered that if I made the sketches twice the size of my old cartoon characters, I had more control. I really enjoyed myself, inventing middle-aged men of all shapes while listening to 70s music on original vinyl

I’ve done about a dozen sketches so far, of which half will be presented. But I think I will continue tomorrow morning, to see if I can’t conjure up another good one.

I won’t do any 3D until I know which one is selected by the client, but I will experiment with making cartoon style eyes look good when rendered. I can’t believe how good the timing of all this was, with me learning rigging just in time!

^ I use one of those, only smaller.

Great, kooky Russian 3D art

Been a fan of Alexander Krasovsky ever since his picture ‘My Compik’. A very different take on CG, where many strive for maximum realism or simplicity in real-life objects. Not so with Mr. Krasovsky. Instead, surrealism that surprises you. Very refreshing to see in this world where almost all CG artists seem to compete to make the best version of the same motives. Link added to the sidebar. Use your keenest brain cells to navigate the Russian site to the good stuff.

The most perfect mouse for modeling

I’ve found an optical three-button mouse that is just a dream to use when modeling! I never liked Logitech mice except for the Dual Optical (for gaming), but this little one is perfect. It’s a quite ordinary, $12 mouse for any computer with a PS/2 jack, the Logitech OEM Optical Wheel Mouse.

What’s so good about it? Well, it’s not a bloated blob like the trendy mice of today, it’s not too small like laptop mice, it’s not flat and long like Microsoft Intellimice. It fits inside a normal palm, so it’s easy to pick up and reposition. The buttons are the best on any of the 30 or so mice I’ve tried. Responsive, clicky, a good solid feel.

My best pad combo is to buy an ordinary plastic desktop writing pad with a grainy surface. It works great. You find menus quickly and stop dead on them. I suppose it would be great for point and click games like Warcraft, too. Just enable (god forbid!!) mouse acceleration (“Enhance Pointer Precision”), up the sensitivity a notch, and you can keep all the action within the range of your wrist instead of gliding over the pad. It has relieved tension on my shoulder muscles.

I’m buying another one to bring to school.

Speed-modeling and Japanese tech gems

Ahhh, another summer over. Got a tan and shaved my beard. Back to school with new energy. Me and my friend Patrik’s 3D game got finished in time for 10 extra uni credits. Sold unwanted stuff and bought some collectible stuff on eBay, as well as a telescope which will come in handy on the dark (and cold) nordic nights. As soon as the moon shows its pesky (yes, pesky!) face…

Collectibles? Well, if you’re not nerd enough, Japanese wristwatches with built-in games from the late seventies / early eighties won’t turn you on. But they were one-of-a-kind and unlike vintage LED watches very little information can be found about them on the internet.

Top ten tips for debunking UFO footage

I’m not a UFO believer; nor the opposite. Certainly there are many unidentified flying objects out there – but to jump from unidentified to identify it as alien craft is a big leap. I’m sure even the most ardent UFO believer will agree that a UFO does not equal a flying saucer with aliens in it.

Most of us have had first-hand experience of an aeroplane, for example, or even flown in one. Therefore, we can pretty easily identify an aeroplane – even if it’s so far away as to be only a dot in the sky. But to say a UFO is an alien craft is based on WHAT knowledge of alien craft? (Usually by claiming that it moves like no man-made craft – which still requires that you know of all man-made moving things in the sky.)