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sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

^^^ Thanks! That is really useful. Nice animated gif too!

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forelle
Oct 9, 2004

Two fine trout
Nap Ghost
Anyone else heading to Siggraph in a couple of weeks?

Just as a heads up, if you have film industry experience (at least 3+ years) and fancy a new job in sunny NZ, drop me a PM as we'll be interviewing while in LA.

balistic
May 3, 2002

I'll be there, likely just for one day (gotta work).

The Blur party will be Wednesday night (the 13th). Crystal Method will be playing. Haven't heard what the location is yet.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

I will be there on the 14th as part of a school field trip. Wish I could go on the 11th for the Houdini stuff but I can only manage the 14th because it is an official field trip.

Will be taking my Maya teaching certification soon. If anyone has any input or advice on certification, I am all ears. Unfortunately I have been forced to teach Max for the last 2 years, so my Maya skillsets are kind of rusty. I am frantically trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and I am realizing that avoiding MEL script was a bad idea and is now going to hurt me.

forelle: That sounds like a dream job!

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you
I really need to get to one of these at some point. For the next one I'll have almost finished my postgrad at SCAD, so I'll be hitting up all the recruiters booths to see where to go next.

And the parties you guys throw there sound loving good. It's fun explaining it to people "Yeah CG is pretty new, so there's no union, but there's this thing called SIGGRAPH which is the only group we really have. Yeah, we have a conference each year with 30,000 people."

ceebee
Feb 12, 2004
I can't wait to dive head first into the industry, even unemployed.

bigredbutton
Feb 22, 2006

The jolly, candy-like button!

Nap Ghost
I'm the "boob lovin' dude" who did the girl+flaming background render in Kirby's gallery post on the first page..

Here's a new render, still work in progress:


Click here for the full 1920x1080 image.


I'll have new renders with lots 'o CG boobies to show you guys soon. I have a reputation to live up to now!

PowerLlama
Mar 11, 2008

^^^^ That is badass.


balistic posted:

I'll be there, likely just for one day (gotta work).

The Blur party will be Wednesday night (the 13th). Crystal Method will be playing. Haven't heard what the location is yet.

I'm so pumped for that party I hear they're always awesome.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

forelle posted:

Anyone else heading to Siggraph in a couple of weeks?

Just as a heads up, if you have film industry experience (at least 3+ years) and fancy a new job in sunny NZ, drop me a PM as we'll be interviewing while in LA.

need 3+ years experience and filming in NZ? Hmmmm.....wonder what that could be.


Also I'm jealous Balistic...:colbert:. I haven't been to SIGGRAPH since 2000 in NOLA.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002

BonoMan posted:

Also I'm jealous Balistic...:colbert:. I haven't been to SIGGRAPH since 2000 in NOLA.

I really wish they'd bring it back down south again. I went to it in NOLA twice ('96 and '00), Orlando and San Antonio, but haven't been since due to the distance.

forelle
Oct 9, 2004

Two fine trout
Nap Ghost

BonoMan posted:

need 3+ years experience and filming in NZ? Hmmmm.....wonder what that could be.

It could be any one of the hundreds of high end VFX places in New Zealand that are about to start of an couple of interesting films :)

balistic
May 3, 2002

BonoMan posted:

need 3+ years experience and filming in NZ? Hmmmm.....wonder what that could be.


Also I'm jealous Balistic...:colbert:. I haven't been to SIGGRAPH since 2000 in NOLA.

Actually this will be my first SIGGRAPH since 2000 as well.

I did some demos at Hash's booth that year.

Man, it was hot as gently caress down there.

BoneMonkey
Jul 25, 2008

I am happy for you.

Something I was working on for my portfolio, I think some of them need relighting.
other than that what do you guys think?

//edit: oh the tri counts are horrible off now, I went back and fixed a whole load of the geometry.
so they are all a lot lower.

Lache
Dec 17, 2006
Why yes, your suffering does feed me
WIP textured version with basic 3 point lighting. The lighting setup isn't actually mine, I've been doing a file merge from a friend's file for quite some time because this is the best conditions I can seem to get. Any advice is greatly appreciated.


Click here for the full 1280x720 image.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

balistic posted:

Actually this will be my first SIGGRAPH since 2000 as well.

I did some demos at Hash's booth that year.

Man, it was hot as gently caress down there.

Yes it was and somehow late one night we ended up at a Sony party at 3 in the morning in some loving warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Surrealllllll.

edit: Oh it was 106 here the other day :(.

forelle
Oct 9, 2004

Two fine trout
Nap Ghost

BonoMan posted:

Yes it was and somehow late one night we ended up at a Sony party at 3 in the morning in some loving warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Surrealllllll.

edit: Oh it was 106 here the other day :(.

I was there in 2000 as well.

The Gold Lounge ate all of my money. Never trust any establishment that pays $100 to the Taxi drivers who take you there.

:(

The Sun robotic dolphin was the best bit. :)

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
I guess this can go here since you guys would know best :c00l:

I've been snooping around SH/SC because I'm in the market for a new rig (thank you, taxman). I'll mainly be doing things like sculpting and lighting/rendering, is it worth going for a Quad core instead of a Dual (I'm guessing an emphatic 'yes', but I need to make sure)?

pretty much looking at;

Quad/Dual Core 2 Duo
4GB Ram
8800GT (can I get away with a cheaper videocard?)

And perhaps a high quality monitor. I've been checking out the Dell Ultrasharps, but are they worth the extra $300?

Some suggestions/problems/specs you guys have would be cool. Also, if any of you australians have suggestions for good stores/sites to order from, that would be tops.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002
The extra $300 you're paying for an Ultrasharp is really only necessary if you're doing color-critical work. The larger Dell panels are just fine for normal use, especially after calibration.

In my opinion, a quad core isn't really necessary unless you're running a 64 bit OS and you plan on doubling your RAM.

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you

Kirby posted:

I guess this can go here since you guys would know best :c00l:

I've been snooping around SH/SC because I'm in the market for a new rig (thank you, taxman). I'll mainly be doing things like sculpting and lighting/rendering, is it worth going for a Quad core instead of a Dual (I'm guessing an emphatic 'yes', but I need to make sure)?

pretty much looking at;

Quad/Dual Core 2 Duo
4GB Ram
8800GT (can I get away with a cheaper videocard?)

And perhaps a high quality monitor. I've been checking out the Dell Ultrasharps, but are they worth the extra $300?

Some suggestions/problems/specs you guys have would be cool. Also, if any of you australians have suggestions for good stores/sites to order from, that would be tops.

No idea on the ultrasharps but the quad is definitely worth it. I often use http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/ as a good guide for whats out and then buy local since it's a bit cheaper. They are decent though if you buy from there.

Also, we just had a local SIGGRAPH presentation by Paul Debevec, it was awesome seeing some of the insane stuff he is up to now. Specifically some of the animated image relighting:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/RHL/

Go through the latest stuff on his site, it's loving nuts.
ninja: it's https://www.debevec.org

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe
The new Ultrasharps are pieces of poo poo too (unless they fixed something I wasn't aware of). The color shift and viewing angle were absolutely abysmal. We returned a bunch of them before settling back on CRTs for the time being. I don't know what they did but they hosed something up...hopefully it got fixed.


Anothing to think about is 32bit vs 64 bit. If you're using XP/Vista 32 then 4 gigs of RAM really won't help that much. In fact you'll most likely only be able to use 3gigs of it and ONLY (roughly) 1.6 gigs per process. A lot of people think that they can get more RAM and have Maya use it all, but that's not true. All 32 bit processes cap at about 1.6 gigs of RAM usage and you only need maybe a gig more to handle other extraneous processes.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002

BonoMan posted:

The new Ultrasharps are pieces of poo poo too (unless they fixed something I wasn't aware of). The color shift and viewing angle were absolutely abysmal. We returned a bunch of them before settling back on CRTs for the time being. I don't know what they did but they hosed something up...hopefully it got fixed.

When were those bad Ultrasharps from? I remember hearing a bunch of bad stuff about Dell for a while, but I thought they had everything fixed up again. At least at the higher end.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

DefMech posted:

When were those bad Ultrasharps from? I remember hearing a bunch of bad stuff about Dell for a while, but I thought they had everything fixed up again. At least at the higher end.

We got these maybe around feb-april? I can't quite remember, but it was around that time. We got some Ultrasharps and had seen on the web that some people were complaining about the color and sure enough, when they came in they had some major problems. Things that the normal user would probably be ok with, but it was absolutely unacceptable from a graphics point of view.

Several iterations have come out since then though so maybe they got everything wrapped up.

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
I was actually thinking 64bit so thats all good to know.

As for the monitor, good colour range will be useful for lighting, but all the poo poo I've been working on gets professionally graded elsewhere. So I guess it's not worth the cash.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

I also want to endorse the quadcore as they are very cheap and I love mine. Also, what was said earlier is true.
One SHOULD upgrade to XP64 if you want to make use of 4gigs of ram. 32bit systems really only utilize 2 gigs. Of course Vista is the big problem as I recently heard M$ has stopped supporting XP. I had to run Vista for a while due to HD DVD compatibility with my drive and it sucks donkeyballs.

Lache
Dec 17, 2006
Why yes, your suffering does feed me
I'll be needing a good workstation here in a few weeks before classes start up again, and I've been going back and forth between XP 64bit and Vista 64bit. Does Vista have enough going for it yet to be worth the upgrade or should I just stick with what's been (for the most part) reliable?

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you
Yeah just use XP SP2 x64, works a treat. There is apparently a ram limit of something like 3.3gb per process that windows sets (so I remember hearing somewhere), you can alter this with registry settings. It's never really been a problem for me though.

gently caress vista off for a while, you need something that will work all the time.

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
yeah a guy at the studio I'm at just upgraded to vista x64. took him 2 days to get his wacom tablet drivers working properly. Now he's having tonnes of issues getting zBrush up and running.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

sigma 6 posted:

I also want to endorse the quadcore as they are very cheap and I love mine. Also, what was said earlier is true.
One SHOULD upgrade to XP64 if you want to make use of 4gigs of ram. 32bit systems really only utilize 2 gigs. Of course Vista is the big problem as I recently heard M$ has stopped supporting XP. I had to run Vista for a while due to HD DVD compatibility with my drive and it sucks donkeyballs.

Vista is fine, Microsoft is still supporting XP and we don't do that "M$" poo poo here...just for future reference.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

I disagree wholeheartedly that "Vista is fine". How many studios have made the switch and why? I have had nothing but trouble with Vista and can't wait to put XP64 back on.
They even joked about people "brave" enough to run Vista at the last Gnomon workshop I attended. I have conflicting reports about the future of XP but engadget mentions support through 2014.

As for "M$" . . . Macintosh has and probably always will be more expensive, but 3d people love the power and DIY nature of PCs (at least I do). If anything I feel pro PC vs Mac. I just don't have the balls to run linux.
I am sure this thread goes into more detail but I didn't mean to annoy anyone with the Microsoft slight. I hate Windoze and Crapintosh equally but definitely hate Vista over XP or 2k. It took several years before I was convinced to move from 2K to XP and even then I was reluctant to do it. I suppose we stick with what works and get annoyed when we are forced to upgrade to an OS which by most accounts is far worse.

Passed the first half of my autodesk teaching certification! Woot. Now for the harder part . . . the 3 days of teaching workshops.

I assume everyone has seen this video on hacking the Wii-mote for motion tracking (?)

Amazing stuff.

I always knew the power of motion tracking for compositing but this application seems revolutionary to me.

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 31, 2008

Handiklap
Aug 14, 2004

Mmmm no.

sigma 6 posted:

I hate Windoze and Crapintosh equally but definitely hate Vista over XP or 2k.

2k = greatest MSOS of all time. I remember the days of yore when uptime on 2k was measured in months at my house.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

sigma 6 posted:

I disagree wholeheartedly that "Vista is fine". How many studios have made the switch and why? I have had nothing but trouble with Vista and can't wait to put XP64 back on.
They even joked about people "brave" enough to run Vista at the last Gnomon workshop I attended. I have conflicting reports about the future of XP but engadget mentions support through 2014.

As for "M$" . . . Macintosh has and probably always will be more expensive, but 3d people love the power and DIY nature of PCs (at least I do). If anything I feel pro PC vs Mac. I just don't have the balls to run linux.
I am sure this thread goes into more detail but I didn't mean to annoy anyone with the Microsoft slight. I hate Windoze and Crapintosh equally but definitely hate Vista over XP or 2k. It took several years before I was convinced to move from 2K to XP and even then I was reluctant to do it. I suppose we stick with what works and get annoyed when we are forced to upgrade to an OS which by most accounts is far worse.



"M$" and "Windoze" and "Crapintosh" are considered childish things to say around here..that's why they're looked down upon. Use them outsie of this thread and most people (especially SH/SC or GBS) will rail you.

Vista, I think, has received a lot of unfair praise at the hand of knee-jerkers, arrogant apple ads, and people who haven't used it at all or barely at all passing some sort of 'final judgement' on it. It, of course, suffered from any new OS hiccups that are expected to happen. It's a bigger tech change from XP to Vista than from 2k to XP since 2K and XP are on the same kernel. It's going to have problems at first.

But in my experience they were nothing major and Vista 64 is leaps over XP64 both in terms of performance and general support. XP64 seemed like it was going to be great and then just hit a brick wall mainly in terms of support. It was introduced too late into the cycle when devs were already a.) entrenched in XP32 or b.) looking ahead toward Vista.

This might be some unpopular opinion here but I don't put much stock in Gnomon. Them saying using Vista is "brave" is just another example of schlock that is thrown out by people that, most likely, haven't even used Vista extensively but are jumping on the "oh it's cool to hate Vista because the blogosphere told me it was."

Most people that are having trouble with Vista have incompatible hardware or things that have lovely devs who won't update the drivers properly.

Case in point is the Mojave project where Microsoft introduced the new Mojave OS to people who just gushed over how great it was...then they pull back the curtain and it's just Vista. It goes a long way to show the kind of knee jerk Vista hating action that's going on.

I'm not trying to direct this all at you but "Lolz Vista sucks" has just gotten tiring and most problems with it are pebcak.

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
I'm curious, can anyone recommend a good website for downloading stock Maya elements, whether it be (character) models or fully rigged characters?

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

You can check turbosquid.com for models and rigging101.com for rigs. There are tons of others but that is what I can think of offhand.

BonoMan:
I agree with you that the l33t slang is childish and apologize but I still disagree with you about Vista. It is inevitable yes, but I don't have to like it.
I have had too many issues with Vista and I don't find it stable at all.

It's a shame that development on XP64 stopped but obviously understandable when everyone jumped on the Vista bandwagon.

Funny thing is, I read an article in the paper a while back from a Microsoft guy. This article said that XP was put in a Vista update because the people were upset with Vista and Microsoft wanted to give the people what they wanted.
:bang:

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

sigma 6 posted:


Funny thing is, I read an article in the paper a while back from a Microsoft guy. This article said that XP was put in a Vista update because the people were upset with Vista and Microsoft wanted to give the people what they wanted.
:bang:

Oh it's cool not everyone has to like it, but what are you referring to here? "Xp was put in a Vista update?" That doesn't make sense.

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005
Finally have some work to show off, kind of:

Click here for the full 1280x1479 image.



Click here for the full 1055x2048 image.


Our beta went public today a little bit ago and we've got those out to explain the weapons and backpacks better.

I did all the weapon models/texturing, and did all the backpacks except the jetpack, and did the backpack rack.

tuna
Jul 17, 2003

Alan Smithee posted:

I'm curious, can anyone recommend a good website for downloading stock Maya elements, whether it be (character) models or fully rigged characters?

Doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot hache eye gee hache ee en dee three dee dot see oh em.

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 
Since we're on the subject of hardware, can someone recommend a good mouse for Maya? I'm using a generic cheap three button logitech, and having the middle button on the scroll wheel is an exercise in patience at times. It's incredibly awkward and hard to click without scrolling the wheel a little, dollying the camera. What do you guys recommend?

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
Get a wacom tablet. Way easier on the wrist, and it just makes everything a breeze when youre switching between maya/zbrush/photoshop like me.

left click on touch, right click on one pen button, middle click on the other. No wheel involved :)

EDIT: Ended up grabbing the Dell 2408WF after reading this review. Someone at the studio has one and it looks really nice :shobon:

Kirby fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Aug 2, 2008

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you
I'd have to disagree on that one, I find the wacom pretty infuriating for 3d- mainly since when you press the pen down to left click the cursor will move a tiny bit, making it hard to get at vertices etc.

Just go to your local store and try each mouse they have on display in your hand, tis the only way. Once you find the perfect mouse buy more than one to see you through any breakages. ATM I'm using a microsoft habu, works a treat but the scroll wheel isn't good for RSI.

Speaking of which, what chairs do you guys use? I'm thinking of getting an Aeron or something similar. I don't give too much of a poo poo about cost, I need something that encourages me to maintain good posture. I might take up pilates too. I also use one of these:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q3/smartglove/smartglove-1.html

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some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 
I can't really afford a bigger Wacom so the point is moot ;)

I'm sitting in an Ikea Jules chair because I'm a masochist :(

some kinda jackal fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Aug 2, 2008

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