Let me preface this by saying that I love the Open Source movement. I love Linux. I ran it for almost 10 years at home until my hardware dumped on me. I run a Mac now because I love BSD, Bash and Python. I have a passion for Open Source. I Open Source every script I write under the 3-Clause BSD License because I want to give back to a community that’s given so much to me. This is a big part of who I am and I am VERY passionate about it. So this isn’t going to be a nice post. Nor do I care. Repackaging Open Source projects and selling them without doing anything is ethically wrong and it’s bull. That being said, let’s move on.
In the past few months I’ve gotten quite a few mentions on Twitter from people trying to get me to buy this product called “Illusion Mage”. I refuse to link to their site because I will NOT add into their web traffic. However, I will point you to Blender.org where you can get the same exact product that Illusion Mage is trying to SELL you. Continue Reading…
Earlier in the day I had said I was going to be asking some questions from my game dev friends about stupid noobish things that folks who haven’t scored their first industry position (like myself) wouldn’t know. Below you’ll find a VERY lengthy thread that I managed to pull together from all the tweets. It looks ugly and I don’t have the heart (or the willingness) to format it, so read it as you will. It was an AMAZING conversation with all types of folks working in all different studios chiming in. If you’re not on Twitter… You’re an idiot. THIS is the power of Twitter. Not finding out where Justin Bieber is or posting about how you threw up on the lawn or you ate a bowl of Cheerios. This is the “Social” and the “Networking” all-in-one. I found a new friend out of it and I crammed as much knowledge as I could into my brain over a 5+ hour period. Some parts have been cut out, but if you’re really interested (none of it’s bad, just funny, but irrelevant) go to any of the following folks Twitter accounts (or my own @ArrantSquid) and troll through the data. I want to give huge thanks to the following folks: @Smapdi (Chad Moore), @JonLogsdon (Jonathan Logsdon), @Anim8der (Tim Borrelli), @cgbeige (Dave Girard), @bclark_cgchar (Brad Clark), @MeatPlowz (Randall), @yantor3d (Ryan Porter), @tweetBoucha (Suchan), @riggingdojo (Rigging Dojo), @bentllama (Nate Walpole), @whiskeypail (M C) and @lightbombmike (Mike Jungbluth). They all threw their time and expertise into the mix at one point or another and I am very blessed to have such awesome friends who are willing to throw out their information for me to take in. So without further ado: Continue Reading…
So in my last post on Houdini George had asked about whether or not I’d be getting more into Houdini. I really want to get into the rigging and skinning with it, but unless I can figure out why Houdini is constantly crashing I don’t know how effective I’m going to be. I also noticed that there are a fair bit of threads regarding Houdini crashing and I had a few folks tell me they stopped learning it because it was so crash prone (most had Mac’s as well so I’m wondering if it’s OSX specific), so I’m not the only one.
Alright. Let’s get to what this post really is about. I decided to jump on how to make a basic (and craptacular I might add) model in Houdini, layout uv’s and add a texture to it. I decided to see if a video tutorial would work and I gotta be honest, it’s a lot harder to tweak it out when your After Effects render takes 3 hours or if you screw something up or if it crashes or your kids are going to sleep, etc. I enjoyed doing it and I think it went well, but there are some addendums that need to be pointed out. Also, if you’re short on time, sorry. The video is about 45 minutes long. (The completed files can be found at the bottom.) So before you delve into it here’s what it is, isn’t and some extra notes. Continue Reading…
Let me preface this by saying that I love the Open Source movement. I love Linux. I ran it for almost 10 years at home until my hardware dumped on me. I run a Mac now because I love BSD, Bash and Python. I have a passion for Open Source. I Open Source every script I write under the 3-Clause BSD License because I want to give back to a community that’s given so much to me. This is a big part of who I am and I am VERY passionate about it. So this isn’t going to be a nice post. Nor do I care. Repackaging Open Source projects and selling them without doing anything is ethically wrong and it’s bull. That being said, let’s move on.