More Lightwave praise… I’m not kidding, this is going to be Good!

I’ve ben praising Newtek and their 3D Suite “Lightwave” on a couple of occasions. This time I want to point the ones in doubt onto a track of future optimism and, hopefully, a shitload of fun.

The upcoming Lightwave Core, scheduled for Q4 2010, will incorporate seamless connectivity against the most promising standards out there, and will eventually include support for components mentioned in this text.

I’ve received questions by artists, or say, budding artists, that is in “serious” doubt about the big changes between the current (open beta) 9.6.1 64-bits Mac/Win release that uses the separation between the Modeler application (modeling) and Layout (everything else). Core will by default merge the different tasks into one application by dividing the UI into “workspaces”, without the need of “The Hub” for synchronizing data layers and plenty of other stuff. No more F12 for switching apps.

BUT, you can if you insist use the same workflow as in LW 9.x, this is a matter of preference settings. So no worries, your training won’t be “outdated” in a year.

The following workspaces will be available:

• Model

• Surface

• Setup

• Animate

• Render

• Composite

In addition to the above, the following items are also presented as aspects of the Animate workspace:

• Creation Tools

• Deformation (Subset)

• Transforms

• Dynamics (Collision Detection, Etc.)

• Constraints

• Scripting

Rendering:

LightWave 3D with CORE technology offers two different flavors of rendering: Viewport Preview Rendering (VPR) and CORE rendering.

VPR

The CORE viewport rendering engine allows for direct interaction with elements in the rendering, from the rendered view. Any viewport can switch to VPR, and even portions of viewports can be specified for viewport rendering.

VPR is essentially the CORE rendering engine operating in an iterative, interactive fashion. Whatever CORE can render, VPR can also render. The results will be virtually identical, with some exceptions, as VPR does prioritize to deliver on speed and interactivity.

As VPR is a complete version of the CORE rendering engine, not a subset, it can render global illumination interactively, however, with less interactivity due to the amount of performance required to produce GI renderings. Fortunately, the CORE rendering engine is fully multithreaded, another benefit leveraged by VPR.

The more processors you have available to you, the faster VPR will render.

Now, to the juicy stuff:

The Composite workspace in CORE is capable of image manipulation and compositing via a selection of internal tools, as well as available third-party plug-ins that support the OpenFX standard (OFX). OFX is an open source plug-in standard for developing 2D digital visual effects.

The Foundry (http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/), Re:Vision Effects (http://revisionfx.com/) and GenArts (http://www.genarts.com/product/sapphire/ofx/fxlist) and several other prolific plug-in vendors offer a variety of image processing and manipulation plug-ins in OFX format.

Core uses the industry standard file format Collada for scenes, as it handles cross pipelines, and the Collada format offers all the structures a combined application needs.

The optional Modifier Stack (Lightwave finally has memory!)

The CORE modifier stack is an attribute of each mesh item. Every CORE mesh item has a modifier stack behind it. The modifier stack is a living record of all of the geometric operations applied to a specific object. Operators in the stack can be rearranged (doing so can produce notably different results), enabled, frozen (so as to be un-editable or “flattened”), muted and deleted on command.

Scripting:
Every expression in Core are Python based.

Industry-standard Python forms the basis of the scripting in CORE (currently version 2.6). The Python implementation is layered into CORE via SWIG. SWIG is a language-interfacing layer that allows the CORE SDK to be accessed through languages other than the factory Python language that ships with CORE.

Now to the really Juicy stuff:

CORE integrates the popular Bullet Physics Library (http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/)

into the CORE unified dynamics solver. Bullet supports both rigid body and soft body collisions. Bullet plans to offer OpenCL support in the future, which fits with the development of CORE.

The Bullet Physics Library offers the following benefits:

• Open source C++ code under Zlib license and free for any commercial use on all platforms including PLAYSTATION 3, XBox 360, Wii, PC, Linux, Mac OSX and iPhone.

• Discrete and continuous collision detection, including ray and convex sweep test. Collision shapes include concave and convex meshes and all basic primitives.

• Fast and stable rigid body dynamics constraint solver, vehicle dynamics, character controller and slider, hinge, generic six degrees of freedom and cone-twist constraint for rag dolls.

• Soft Body dynamics for cloth, rope and deformable volumes with two-way interaction with rigid bodies, including constraint support.

In CORE, you can use dynamics for simulation, modeling, or interaction with scene items. Animation created in CORE can be exported into LightWave Layout (and other applications) via the MDD file format.

Modeling with dynamics example: Consider an alley scene with crates. You can choose to place the crates (and other debris) by hand, or you can choose to use the dynamics tools to help streamline the process.

TRUE MULTI PLATFORM SUPPORT

CORE is written in C++, and designed as an object-oriented application. CORE uses several different technologies and libraries to deliver state-of-the-art performance. For the user interface, CORE uses the Qt libraries from Nokia. The Qt environment is fast becoming a standard throughout the software development industry. It is available on all platforms, allowing for a single codebase development process, which is very important when you have more than one host operating system to support. By using Qt, Newtek can offer LightWave CORE for Linux as well as Windows X and Mac OS.

Lightwave is capable of every stage of production, from modeling to physics and animation. It’s priced at a fragment of other products that can deliver the same feature set. This makes it a perfect mach for wallets, individuals and small to medium studios.

Did I mention the 999 free network render nodes?

Need I need to say more?

Go get it!

The neverending Question: Should I learn C before…

I read plenty of forums. Hell, what’s the net without forums? Ok, porn, but that’s another story. And, off course I need Google.. And Wikipedia.. Well I guess the net has more than forums, but anyway…

One question that never ends without a looong thread is the question about what programming language to learn first. It’s like a C vs. C++, C++ vs. Java, vs. you name it.

Especially the question about learning plain old C before learning a newer more modern language, that has OOP, a pre-written GUI library, and a drag and drop designer IDE.

The question is without doubt a matter of conquest. What is it you want to master? What will you do with your programs? Is it GUI based, windowed applications? Console based? Services / Deamons? A new mp3 player? A conversion application for decoding or encoding?

If you’re goal is to write Cocoa based Mac Applications with Objective-C, why learn C? I’ll give my thoughts on that a little later. If you’re gonna write QT applications for Smart Phones, do you need C? It’s better to jump right into the polished GUI based IDE of choice, than it is running apps in a console window, right? I’m not that sure.

This post is targeted at novices, that probably has started “learning” three or four languages, but still, cannot produce much with either, because they don’t understand the elementary pieces of logic that goes into programming as a whole.

My point of view in the C vs. [insert_language_here] is that programming isn’t something you’re going to master any time soon, no matter how you try. Sure, you can use a drag and drop IDE, then punch in some calls to pre-defined methods, that you don’t even understand how is possible, how does this stuff you’re getting intellisensed and autocompleted really works behind the curtains. Your program might even run and do something, but honestly, you didn’t make it. You’re capable of finishing the puzzle (given there aren’t too many pieces), but you could never make the puzzle pieces yourself.

Who wants to make puzzle pieces? None I know, but given this scenario, it is more to the story. When, and I do say WHEN not IF your program breaks, chances are, you ain’t gonna be there to fix it.

In my example I’m actually using a question based on programming for the Mac, and a guy on this forum asked this question about to C or not to C before Objective-C.

If you jump heads on with Objective-C, the IDE will off course make you more productive in shorter time than if you want to go through the nuts and bolts of C first.
But, the thing is, chances are you’ll be producing bloated, slow running, crash-prone, badly designed application logic, but the GUI will look like a thousand bucks, because Apple engineers did the work with the GUI components.

The one important thing to learn, is that, it is all in the logic. The efficiency requires thorough planning and heaps of experience.
To program efficiently in a object oriented language like C++ or Objective-C is a seriously hard task to master. Programming efficient in C is so much simpler. The top to bottom, linear way of thinking, concentrating on the most efficient method for solving each tiny bit of the application’s workflow, and seeing your functions and methods working as a charm, that is the art of programming.

And in Objective-C as well as in C++ you are totally allowed to directly call C library functions. Stuff you’ve made or from the C standard library.

Most pieces of efficient code (and I’m talking about ALL CODE PRODUCED) is written in C these days. Python is written in C, Perl, as well as many other “interpreted” languages.
C is the core of C++ and Objective-C. Java is something I’d rather not discuss. Same goes for C#.

So, YES. Learn C. It won’t take more than a year to get sufficient knowledge before moving on. If you don’t have time for that, it is up to you. But, mark my words:

C is a relatively simple language. Learning C will make any other programming language much more understandable later.

Higher level languages are abstractions from the lower level structures that drives them.
If you know these lower level structures, you don’t have to spend time learning how to use some abstraction, be it in form of a framework fragment or whatever. Just write efficient code in C, and call it from the higher level languages.

Its only possible to create anything if you know how to make it.

So do you need to learn C before Objective-C? No, but I would.

Else I would feel like a man that calls himself a car mechanic, but actually he only knows how to fix the brakes, because that’s what they do at his garage.

Autodesk Releases White Paper on The New Art of Virtual Moviemaking

Might be worth the read… Or maybe not. You decide… It’s 19 pages.

here it is anyway…

via CGW.com.

This one is more in-depth in regards to the stereoscopics: http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/stereoscopic_whitepaper_final08.pdf

Why care about Open Source Software? Isn’t that for “geeks only”?

Why care about Open Source Software? Isn’t that for “geeks only”?

Well, no. And even if YOU don’t see the point, or have the knowledge needed to examine source code, rest assured, somebody does. Both the good and the bad guys… Do YOU want your personal information broadcast on the net without your knowledge?

What’s nice to know, is that there are thousands of extremely talented developers, working around the clock, around the globe to counterattack the fascist software regime of todays computer world.

This might sound strange, but many of those does this without even getting paid (as in money).

I’m not the person that generally sponsors anything or anyone. There are two exceptions when it comes to foundations or organizations, namely The Salvation Army (they do lots of great stuff for many good people) and The Free Software Foundation, FSF.

What does FSF do for me? Well, they are part of a critical scenario, that I believe will come upon us in a not so distant future. And in this scenario they, or “we”, are the enemy, but not the bad guys.

I want to be able to inspect each tiny little part of the machinery that houses all my documents, pictures, personal information, my on-line communication, I think you get the picture.

Without sounding paranoid, I’m pretty sure that the US government, as well as many others, supports a large operating system and software company, located somewhere around Redmond.
The fact that their products are installed on roughly 93% of all personal computers might be a reason for this.
It then comes as no surprise, that this all too common operating system, actually stores personal information in the most peculiar places, and that the code that runs it, is closed source, binary files.

It is able to do whatever the developers want it to do, and do so without respect of the users that runs it. Anything can happen behind the scenes.
Add to that poor implementations of both file and user account security mechanisms, and you’ve got yourself a real deal!

Your personal computer could be a broadcaster of personal information. Then comes viruses, spyware, nagware and bluescreens with memorydumps.

I don’t want these developers to do what they want with my data. I don’t believe in closed source software.
I don’t like the scenario, where all computer users, indirectly, lives under the laws of a strange sounding dictator software company. I mean, there are reasons why the guys that sits on REALLY classified information uses only open source software…

So, please, head over to The Free Software Foundation, and give a donation. It might be worth it.

Howto: Convert .nrg to .iso from the Terminal (OS X)

I’ve seen so many strange solutions for a pretty simple problem.

People are going through all sorts of frustration, just to turn a .nrg (like a CD/DVD burned with “Nero”) made in Windows into a mountable .iso to feed to the image-mounters mouth.

Well here is the drill:

1. Open Terminal.app (Thats just Terminal for those that don’t like complete filenames)

2. Type nrg2iso <source_image.nrg> <destination.iso> and hit enter.

You wish things where that easy eh? Well, it is, but for tasks like this one, at times you need some good’old Unix command-line utilities, not limited to those already included in the Mac OS.

For that we need 2 things. To get, and install these for the first time, there are some minor pain involved, possibly hitting those that hate computers slightly, but I can promise you, if, or when, you discover the possibilities with Mac OS + MacPorts, it will be worth it:

1: Install the Xcode package included on the secondary Mac OS install DVD an “additional installment”.
If you don’t have the DVD with Xcode, or if you want the latest version of Xcode (A superb programming IDE for anything from developing dashboard widgets, iPhone apps to full blown native 64-bit Mac OS apps that uses the latest OpenCL technology, and it’s free as in beer) you will have to register for an Apple Developer Account through the AppleDeveloperConnection, ADC, located about here: (this is where the pain comes in) http://developer.apple.com/mac/

2. After completing the registration and / or the installation of Xcode, install MacPorts from the downloaded installer .dmg.

MacPorts! Head over and install:

http://www.macports.org/install.php

Chose the installer for your version of Mac OS and run the installer.

Then open a Terminal and type in:

sudo port selfupdate -v

Enjoy the incredible ammount of fast flowing gibberish, as MacPorts sets up some RSYNC connections and comparing merchandise.

Then install nrg2iso, that was introduced in this post with the command:

sudo port install nrg2iso

This is a nifty tool written by a guy called G. Kokanosky. It does exactly as it is named:

First enter the source .nrg image you want to convert to a mountable .iso on your Mac, then some name of choice, with the extention .iso, as in:

nrg2iso mydownloaded.nrg myconverted.iso

That’s it.

This may seem like bloaty overkill for this one task, considering that applications exist, that does this without the hassle of installing Xcode and MacPorts.

And, it is absolutely correct. But, it does not give you one tool. It gives YOU the opportunity to MAKE the tools, if you so wish, but more important to begin with, it gives access to a wealth of incredible useful, solid, tested tools that executes a lot faster than a possibly badly written hobby cocoa application downloaded from the net.

Read more at http://www.macports.org/ for information regarding existing tools.

Read about developing for the Mac (ADC is possibly the best programmer community out there) at:

http://developer.apple.com/

Madman (late, weed, sleep… ahem! not that second one!)

Calibrated ICC profile for MacBook Pro rev.5 (late 2009)

I’ve created a color profile for the LED displays on most recent macbooks.

I think it works a lot better than a standard RGB (too cold) or a Generic LCD (way to hot).

So this is basically a custom sRGB IEC61966-2.1 D55 ish profile, that I find gives natural and rich color for photo work and other CG activities.

It’s right about here:

http://www.mentalhub.com/snaps/SRGB_Custom.icc

Obama turned down lunch with The King Of Norway

Just to make one thing clear: I do not follow international politics much. I’m more of a philosopher, as I must say that this democracy is a joke. If change is your thing, the steps needed to turn is vast and unreachable. So what is democratic about that? I would like it if decisions concerning the reputation, future and well-being of the country in questions where polled from the actual human beings LIVING in the SOCIETY, not by a choice group of suits living in a concubine of artificial safety and total isolation from reality.

Enough politics. I think the reason that President Obama turned down the invitation for lunching with the King Of Norway had to do with the fear of getting served a traditional dish from Norway called “Smalahove”.

Smalahove

For those that immediately felt the urge to try this, I can guide you to the Smalahove Portal:

http://www.smalahove.no

All the best:

MadMan

New Maya 2010 Debian/Ubuntu based Install Guide?

I’ll try not to get to get off-beat or totally far-out, but I’m in the creative writer mode. You’re hereby WARNED.

I read a comment at my Madman blog today, that made me feel all warm and cozy on the inside.

That might be slight an exaggeration, but, anyway it was nice to get positive feedback. It went something like this:
(Hope you don’t sue me for quoting you, PaulN!)

“We really appreciate your helpful guides for getting Maya to work with Ubuntu around here – any chance you can document how you got 2010 working? We are quite stumped by this version. Specifically Autodesk seem to have invented the most ass-backwards license setup _ever_ for this release.”

Second, don’t expect this post to include a new guide for Maya 2010, this time + licensing tips for the Version 2010, that’s part of the Autodesk Entertainment Bundle 2010, I use This! that includes:

Maya 2010
Mudbox 2010 *MS/Mac OS 10
Softimage 2010 *MS
3DS Max 2010 *MS
MotionBuilder 2010 *MS

+ a bonus application. I got “Sketch book Pro 2010″ without cost, that runs on my Mac Book Pro. No Linux guide on this one either, as it is a Intel Mac + OS 10 and MS  only app. I don’t care much about virtualization or emulation of operating systems, so for me it’s “native or I don’t”…

Moving on… The thing I was topic-flamer for, this post. I know there are many out there that would go far to get a real, no fuzz .pdf to print and follow with pictures and all, while GETTING MAYA TO RUN on their GNU/Linux machine calculating and crunching ones and zeros with a Q7 64-bits QuadCore CPU, mounted on a motherboard with 3K*Mhz FSB, dual CPU slots, so you’ve decided to buy two, giving you 8 Cores for lightening fast bit-crunching while rendering  the latest reel. Topped with the latest NVIDIA® Quadro® Plex 2200 S4 dedicated visual computing system (VCS) humming in the closet.

The thing is, Maya 2010 isn’t 1 application anymore, it’s three separate packages, semi-crossed and stress-developed (by underpaid programmers, working in polluted office environments) to work seamlessly.

So, naturally, the conversion from .rpm, involves some knowledge about how to read the package descriptors in the .rpm’s, and possibly creating a specialized script for creating the .deb installers using Alien as the back-end, so that they wil place and link the package correctly. Things might seem to work until you try rendering in MR with a new option, causing the application to SEGFAULT.

I think I know why Autodesk decided to merge Maya (Unlimited) Toxic, and Matchmover into one package:

It’s not the correct use of the words “Complete” or the word “Unlimited”, as a way to describe escalating possibilities between two products.

Here, it is used to “Identify feature levels” with words, cleverly hatched out from the sub-department in R&D, set out to form a naming convention for their flagship line of (hijacked) products…

If a thing is “complete”, it has (according to a trustworthy dictionary/thesaurus) the following qualities:

“A state of being, often used as descriptors of either a psychological achievement as in: “Fulfilled”, meaning there is nothing more to strive for. Products, where it’s meaning often is synonymous with “Accomplished” and indicating from the stem word “complete” that concludes something, there is nothing more to add.”

I suspect this naming convention to be the problem here.

Boss says: “Hey!, I’ve looked up the word “complete” and “unlimited” in a thesaurus this weekend. We need to re-brand, and we need to do it fast!!
The words actually summons the same in all but the slightest context digressions! The word “complete” means, like, “nothing more to add”, “finito”, nothing more to add.
But we’ve made an “Unlimited” version as well as “Complete”, and it adds stuff. A lot!
This is insane! I’ll fire the 200 people employed with marketing, and the rest of you: think fast! We need ONE version of Maya, and this time, we’ll prefer the safe way. Let’s just call it “Maya”, plus maybe, hey, 2010 is coming up right? Let’s call it Maya 2010, and release it in 2009! That’s more like it! Nobody is going to make us look like illiterate fools!

The thing is, there is actually, besides from some statically linked lib files that needs to be updated to newer versions, not much keeping you from installing the Binary, closed source software, using a package scheme converter like Alien.

These days, the developers of new software rides on the widespread wave that have done the switch to either a new version of the GNU C[your language here] Compiler suite, a different multi-threading framework, or they’ve jumped on the “Let’s do OpenCL and Cuda development” wagon. Possibly a “Nokia/QT path” for cross platform development as well…

This doesn’t directly touch the users of the software, because, as in the case with Autodesk, the software is delivered in installable packages, that places statically linked lib files along with the binary ones (so they know that the client will be using the right version when upgrading their operating systems, something that makes relying on native language and library support impossible.

But, these are just packed with different package format schemes, and those are not binary. The content is.

If you find a way to extract the files from a .rpm package and then into a .deb package that in turn does the same thing, placing files where they belong, and creating different links, etc (also known as “Installing”). I wouldn’t consider myself a deep level hacker to make use of tools that are readily available for these tasks. But, then there is a problem. You need to do all this “by hand”!
A roll-your-own-spliff software installation, and it needs to be punced in as “commands” in a shell environment!

Hmm… (scratches head). “Lets search Google!”

What I’m trying to say is that with a LPI level 1 GNU/Linux knowledge under your belt, you should be able to decipher this task at hand.
BUT.

If you try to follow exact step-by-step instructions, without having a clue what or why you’re issuing these cryptic looking commands, you’re most likely to fail. There is no such thing as an identical system. You might get a kernel panic, after you ruthlessly renamed or moved an actual system-file, (“Hey, the name was ALMOST the same!”) as in the guide! But the file wasn’t statically linked, but the actual code containing instructions for reading the instructions to operate your graphics card.

So, a Guide, could mean success or failure, or the difference between a stable system and a kernel panic…
I must say that most of the problems I’ve seen reported and tried to answer on this post, is a result from, and belongs to the mentioned kind of “misbehavior” against your darling computer.

So, if I’m going to write a complete hands-on guide for installing Maya 2010, it will take plenty of time and effort, not to mention installing the thing on different versions of GNU/Linux distributions.
So, I will not make a guide for free, covering the ins and outs of this process.

There are three applications involved, and a slight error in one install, might corrupt another.

BUT, If there are enough people out there willing to pay me $5 each for doing this, I’d consider doing it. Then it would be a labor, and the quality of the guide would be accordingly.

So. If that is something you would like to purchase, please send me a Gmail containing the words MAYA PDF as subject in the message. Then, I’ll get to it.

Madman

Why do I call myself “The Madman”?

Well, obviously because I believe I am mad. I think there is more mad people in this world then there are sane people.

Most people I see around me are wearing masks. These masks is bought in the “house of artificial happiness”, and it was purchased in a unconscious state of mind, by someone unknown, while they grew up.

If you look at the world we live in, it would be a strange thing if one could live happily.

Sure, I have pleasures in life, but is that the same as happiness? As a whole, it’s really more too it then just momentary states of enlightenment. When I meditate (yes, I do Vipassana meditation), I see things clearly. All the work that must be done.

I try to to live as if there was no tomorrow, but that has side effects. Like two weeks ago, I purchased a Mac Book Pro, which I really couldn’t afford. So my mortgage payment is now overdue. But that was a materialistic, and selfish example.

This might have to do with my bipolar depression, I don’t know.

Anyway, try not to inhale dry cheese crackers. It will not do you good.

Network Licensing Maya 2010 on the Linux client

I recently received a question about licensing via a network server running Windows on the network.

I’m definitely no licensing expert, but this MIGHT give you a push in the right direction. (Or get you totally far out) ;-)

So, the guy that contacted me had a problem regarding the license utility not showing up when starting Maya.

Autodesk support had turned him down, as the platform (or rather the distribution) used was not “supported” by the giant.
This should not be a barrier, and I seriously think that Autodesk should be able to offer SOME sort of support to paying network licensees that pay $$$ an mas for their overpriced products, no matter what Linux distribution they choose to use. (hopeless).

So here it goes:

Well, the license utility usually pops up on the first launch of Maya.

The error:

Tried Maya Unlimited 2010 (657B1 2010.0.0.F), error 41

The F (657B1 2010.0.0.F) in the error stands for floating license I think.
The FlexLM errorcode 41 stands for “Feature was never checked out”

You obviously should have access to the license file and that this is registered with AD and in order, as the
licensing works on the Windows clients. This is done using the LMTOOLS on the
Windows licensing server.
So, on the client side:

First find out where the lmutil executable is installed on your local machine.
I think what you need to do is to first locate the licensing server with:

./lmutil lmhostid -hostname

This should show the servername.

Then you need the License server ID, to get this:

./lmutil lmhostid

The twelve-character host ID should show up.

So with this information you should be able to get the same interface to licensing
on the Linux box with the license tool “lmutil” located somewhere in /opt/Autodesk/Adlm/ path.
(if this is where you installed).

Do a search for the file if you dont find it.
This is the executable license utility that looks the same on all platforms.

But, if you cant get by with this, I must wave the white flag, as I’m no licensing expert!
;-)