Metroid, without a doubt. It's gone from being an atmospheric space adventure that places you alone in an unfamiliar environment, with a focus on exploration and survival in the face of a hostile local ecosystem, to yet another exposition-heavy FPS.
With rising costs of fossil fuels (and by extension, manufacture and transport, and by extension, materials), the costs are likely to rise even further before it's completed. Which is why it would be so essential to get ITER done on time -- we're lucky to get even one shot at developing fusion power, before industrial civilization beings to creak at the seams because of a shortage of cheap energy.
It's worth noting that the 920AV mentioned are not stereoscopic -- they're just displays that attach to your head. Using HMDs for 3D modelling doesn't sound like an idea of that much use, to be honest, and especially so if it doesn't enhance the 3D perception in any way.
I've been looking into HMDs out of an interest in using VR for various art projects, and the Vuzix VR920 model, with stereoscopy and head tracking, seem far more interesting. The main problem seems to be that as far as I can tell, they rely on nvidia supplying drivers, which they are pretty lazy in maintaining.
Same. I set up Ctrl-Z/Ctrl-Shift-Z to step backwards and forwards through the history on basically every machine I use Photoshop on. This doesn't work in some special cases, like during a free transform, though.
I did say the History system was better. It's so much better I think it should be the only form of undo.
One thing I like about Gimp that Photoshop does in a confusing way is the way it presents alpha channels to you. In both apps you have a Channels palette. In Photoshop it contains R, G and B channels for the whole image, plus whatever extra channels, active masks etc you might be working with at the moment. If you want to save an image as partially transparent, Photoshop will in some cases, like when saving a.png, understand that transparent areas of the canvas should be given an alpha value of zero. In other cases, such as when saving a.tga, you need to select all the opaque areas manually and paste the selection as an alpha mask in the channels palette. What Gimp does is that it continuosly keeps an alpha channel in the channels palette, in addition to red, green and blue. This corresponds to the transparency of the entire image with all layers, just like the other channels correspond to the combined values of the entire thing. No confusion arises.
I also like the fact that Gimp has a sensible, single undo system instead of the undo/redo-history state duality in Photoshop. Granted, the history does offer some stuff like multiple states, history brush etc that afaik isn't in Gimp.
I'd probably find Gimp too limiting to go back to, now that I'm used to Photoshop, especially since X11 seems kind of iffy under OSX. If I didn't have Photoshop I'd probably use Pixelmator, but that's Mac only, so probably not an option for most.
As an extremely casual follower of the gimp-dev mailing list, I also feel a certain amount of antipathy towards the developers, who a lot of the time seem to make things different from Photoshop just because they can. Like it or not, Photoshop is the de facto standard for image editing, and what many of your potential users will be familiar with. If someone complains that say, the controls for the unsharp mask filter are hard to use compared to what he's used to, the correct response should be to help him out, and maybe think about how you can make them easier, not flame him.
On the other hand, people like the Pixelmator devs, the core Blender developers (who admittedly do get a lot of, in my opinion misguided, flak for the user interface of their program..) and yes, Adobe too, all seem to understand that if their apps are to function as tools for artists, then they should see themselves first and foremost as servants to the artists.
That's pretty good, though it should probably be pointed out that this case will go through all three levels of the Swedish courts, and it's likely to take years for the final decision to come about. A guilty verdict would require proof of intent, which isn't impossible. The amounts they are suing for are likely irrelevant, however, as Swedish law only allows to sue for actual damages. The lawsuit lists specific albums, movies, games and so on, and it's unlikely (to say the least) that the prosecution will be able to produce proof that their losses from those add up to the amount they're suing for.
Anyone interested in Swedish law as relating to this case should check out this, btw: the former Swedish minister of justice is believed to have ordered the raid on TPB under pressure from the US/media industry. This would be, under Swedish law, highly unconstitutional.
Not sure what your definitions of "quality" or "cross platform" are, but you come across as the delusional one to me.
Blizzard are multiplatform in the sense that there are both OSX and Windows versions of their games, but haven't made a console port since the PS1 (and even those I don't think were made internally). I haven't played WoW, so I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but it seems to me its popularity is down to the ability to cause addiction in large groups of different types of people, rather than any inherent quality in the gameplay itself.
If you look at the games people tend to remember from recent years, it's almost all games exclusive to a particular format (PC or one console), or games that received a port as an afterthought: Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Katamari Damacy, Guitar Hero, Halo, Resident Evil 4, Half-Life 2 etc.
As for FFXIII, I'm hardly alone in the opinion that Square dropped the ball long ago, what with basically leaving gameplay unchanged since at least the mid-90s, improving just the graphics each time. XII was an attempt at stepping off the beaten path, and the man responsible for that got taken off the project before its completion and is no longer with Square-Enix. It's pretty safe to say it will sell in huge numbers while the quality is likely to be average, but the latter part has nothing to do with what platform it's released on.
Nice changes to be sure, and everything listed in the article is very welcome. I'm having no problem thinking of further Photoshop features I wouldn't mind seeing in the GIMP, though (better, or at least faster, brush engine, snappier redraw when working with large files, free transform, adjustment layers...).
However, what I'm really waiting for is for someone to take the next step and implement a proper realtime, non-destructive, node- or stack-based image editor. Something that lets you take an image and add filters, effects, paint operations etc that you can mix, match, add and remove later on. Computer hardware has progressed to a point where it would be possible to do filter operations using shaders on the graphics card, then render them out in the background using spare cycles (or spare CPU cores..), store multiple versions of the same image in memory for quick undo, and so on.
I'm not really expecting Adobe to be the ones to do it, at least not with Photoshop -- there are too many Photoshop users whose livelihood depend on knowing the quirks of the interface by heart for Adobe to risk making any major changes. Ironically, Adobe's own After Effects, though it completely lacks paint tools, among other things, is in many ways fairly close to what I have in mind, and for things like colour adjustments, blurs and effects it's actually a lot smoother and more flexible than Photoshop, even when working with stills.
For what it's worth, I remember seeing a plastic mockup/concept, made by Nokia and exhibited at a Finnish science centre, of an internet tablet about a decade ago. It basically showed a web page, news headlines, was supposed to have a touch screen and wireless internet etc. This was in 1996 or 97, when mobile phones and dial-up internet connections were just breaking through into the mainstream, but Nokia basically followed it through to a hundred percent.
Granted, this seems a fair bit more cutting edge, with what appears to be reliance on technology that at the moment presumably is purely theoretical, and I don't believe for a second they can translate the concept into real life in seven years (which technically isn't what they're saying, just that they'll have something incorporating the technology), but I don't doubt that they're completely serious about pursuing this, either.
I'd like to know how many of you complaining are actual 3D artists (of some sort, be it pro/student/hobbyist) of even an intermediate skill level, who actually made an honest effort learning Blender. No, opening it up, finding your left and right mouse buttons swapped, then giving up and going back to your pirated copy of Maya doesn't count.
I _HAD_ to learn Blender for an animated short I worked on over the summer. I had about 9 months of 3ds max experience behind me, and grasping the basics in Blender took me less than a week, using Tony Mullen's book Introducing Character Animation with Blender as well as whatever tutorials could be found online. Yes, the documentation is sometimes lacking (nothing new there, considering it's free software), but that mostly applies to more advanced features (NLA editing, linking animation files together, stuff like that) where you end up having to discover many things by trial and error (which is horrible if you're working to a deadline to be sure). In my experience there's no shortage of resources targetting beginners though. Just don't expect to become a master sitting around reading tutorials -- the reason 3D graphics in general and animation in particular is hard is because IT IS HARD. And it's hard even after you've mastered whatever application you're using. Getting past the user interface is the easy part.
At this point the only thing I could say 3ds max is outright "better" at is pure modelling, since Blender lacks n-gons, and even then I'd rather use Blender because the interface is just that much nicer. I haven't really used hair and fur much in 3ds max, but my understanding is that it's a fair bit more advanced than what's currently in Blender as well, although you can expect that to change soon as the Peach project gets underway. Textures, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing are all things I find much easier to do in Blender.
Yes, the Blender interface is "unintuitive" in the sense that it doesn't look like anything else, but compared to the hodgepodge that is max it's a shedload more consistent and logical. Once you grasp the basics (A selects/deselects all, B border selects, G moves, R rotates, S scales...) all 3D windows, node views, curve editors and what have you work exactly the same way which is just lovely. Add to that a completely customizable workspace layout and completely zoomable/pannable windows. I cannot tell you what a shock it was to go back to 3ds max and discover that to move and zoom the timeline you had to use combinations of ctrl, alt and mousebuttons, when you're used to doing all of that the same way you zoom and pan 3D windows: scrollwheel and middle mouse button. Or that the damn thing loads for a minute and a half even on a top of the line machine, while Blender takes about 2 seconds to start.:)
That's not to say the Blender interface couldn't be improved. The default keyboard shortcuts are WEIRD -- Ctrl-W to save, anyone? -- and more importantly, not customizable. The default view control options are pretty confusing as well if you're used to basically anything else ever, but these can at least be changed. I think changing the defaults (but making it easy for advanced users to change back) would go a long way towards improving Blender's image at large, but I'm not so arrogant as to assume that the Blender developers (who btw are excellent, pay attention to users needs and release new features at a mindboggling rate) aren't aware of these things.
(Struggling with the formatting here -- first post, sorry.)
Slashdot Mirror
Corporatism doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism
Advertisers on Facebook like to use translation services too, with similar unintentionally hilarious results.
(Well, there are many but..)
Metroid, without a doubt. It's gone from being an atmospheric space adventure that places you alone in an unfamiliar environment, with a focus on exploration and survival in the face of a hostile local ecosystem, to yet another exposition-heavy FPS.
Hence, the GP's joke retains its original humor.
Too bad it still isn't funny.
With rising costs of fossil fuels (and by extension, manufacture and transport, and by extension, materials), the costs are likely to rise even further before it's completed. Which is why it would be so essential to get ITER done on time -- we're lucky to get even one shot at developing fusion power, before industrial civilization beings to creak at the seams because of a shortage of cheap energy.
It's worth noting that the 920AV mentioned are not stereoscopic -- they're just displays that attach to your head. Using HMDs for 3D modelling doesn't sound like an idea of that much use, to be honest, and especially so if it doesn't enhance the 3D perception in any way.
I've been looking into HMDs out of an interest in using VR for various art projects, and the Vuzix VR920 model, with stereoscopy and head tracking, seem far more interesting. The main problem seems to be that as far as I can tell, they rely on nvidia supplying drivers, which they are pretty lazy in maintaining.
Same. I set up Ctrl-Z/Ctrl-Shift-Z to step backwards and forwards through the history on basically every machine I use Photoshop on. This doesn't work in some special cases, like during a free transform, though.
I did say the History system was better. It's so much better I think it should be the only form of undo.
One thing I like about Gimp that Photoshop does in a confusing way is the way it presents alpha channels to you. In both apps you have a Channels palette. In Photoshop it contains R, G and B channels for the whole image, plus whatever extra channels, active masks etc you might be working with at the moment. If you want to save an image as partially transparent, Photoshop will in some cases, like when saving a .png, understand that transparent areas of the canvas should be given an alpha value of zero. In other cases, such as when saving a .tga, you need to select all the opaque areas manually and paste the selection as an alpha mask in the channels palette. What Gimp does is that it continuosly keeps an alpha channel in the channels palette, in addition to red, green and blue. This corresponds to the transparency of the entire image with all layers, just like the other channels correspond to the combined values of the entire thing. No confusion arises.
I also like the fact that Gimp has a sensible, single undo system instead of the undo/redo-history state duality in Photoshop. Granted, the history does offer some stuff like multiple states, history brush etc that afaik isn't in Gimp.
I'd probably find Gimp too limiting to go back to, now that I'm used to Photoshop, especially since X11 seems kind of iffy under OSX. If I didn't have Photoshop I'd probably use Pixelmator, but that's Mac only, so probably not an option for most.
As an extremely casual follower of the gimp-dev mailing list, I also feel a certain amount of antipathy towards the developers, who a lot of the time seem to make things different from Photoshop just because they can. Like it or not, Photoshop is the de facto standard for image editing, and what many of your potential users will be familiar with. If someone complains that say, the controls for the unsharp mask filter are hard to use compared to what he's used to, the correct response should be to help him out, and maybe think about how you can make them easier, not flame him.
On the other hand, people like the Pixelmator devs, the core Blender developers (who admittedly do get a lot of, in my opinion misguided, flak for the user interface of their program..) and yes, Adobe too, all seem to understand that if their apps are to function as tools for artists, then they should see themselves first and foremost as servants to the artists.
That's pretty good, though it should probably be pointed out that this case will go through all three levels of the Swedish courts, and it's likely to take years for the final decision to come about.
A guilty verdict would require proof of intent, which isn't impossible. The amounts they are suing for are likely irrelevant, however, as Swedish law only allows to sue for actual damages. The lawsuit lists specific albums, movies, games and so on, and it's unlikely (to say the least) that the prosecution will be able to produce proof that their losses from those add up to the amount they're suing for.
Anyone interested in Swedish law as relating to this case should check out this, btw: the former Swedish minister of justice is believed to have ordered the raid on TPB under pressure from the US/media industry. This would be, under Swedish law, highly unconstitutional.
Does that mean you'll change your sig to the human genome?
The bottleneck is this: there's no 64bit OSX version of Blender, because the port currently relies on Carbon.
Not sure what your definitions of "quality" or "cross platform" are, but you come across as the delusional one to me.
Blizzard are multiplatform in the sense that there are both OSX and Windows versions of their games, but haven't made a console port since the PS1 (and even those I don't think were made internally). I haven't played WoW, so I'll give that the benefit of the doubt, but it seems to me its popularity is down to the ability to cause addiction in large groups of different types of people, rather than any inherent quality in the gameplay itself.
If you look at the games people tend to remember from recent years, it's almost all games exclusive to a particular format (PC or one console), or games that received a port as an afterthought: Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Katamari Damacy, Guitar Hero, Halo, Resident Evil 4, Half-Life 2 etc.
As for FFXIII, I'm hardly alone in the opinion that Square dropped the ball long ago, what with basically leaving gameplay unchanged since at least the mid-90s, improving just the graphics each time. XII was an attempt at stepping off the beaten path, and the man responsible for that got taken off the project before its completion and is no longer with Square-Enix. It's pretty safe to say it will sell in huge numbers while the quality is likely to be average, but the latter part has nothing to do with what platform it's released on.
Nice changes to be sure, and everything listed in the article is very welcome. I'm having no problem thinking of further Photoshop features I wouldn't mind seeing in the GIMP, though (better, or at least faster, brush engine, snappier redraw when working with large files, free transform, adjustment layers...).
However, what I'm really waiting for is for someone to take the next step and implement a proper realtime, non-destructive, node- or stack-based image editor. Something that lets you take an image and add filters, effects, paint operations etc that you can mix, match, add and remove later on. Computer hardware has progressed to a point where it would be possible to do filter operations using shaders on the graphics card, then render them out in the background using spare cycles (or spare CPU cores..), store multiple versions of the same image in memory for quick undo, and so on.
I'm not really expecting Adobe to be the ones to do it, at least not with Photoshop -- there are too many Photoshop users whose livelihood depend on knowing the quirks of the interface by heart for Adobe to risk making any major changes. Ironically, Adobe's own After Effects, though it completely lacks paint tools, among other things, is in many ways fairly close to what I have in mind, and for things like colour adjustments, blurs and effects it's actually a lot smoother and more flexible than Photoshop, even when working with stills.
For what it's worth, I remember seeing a plastic mockup/concept, made by Nokia and exhibited at a Finnish science centre, of an internet tablet about a decade ago. It basically showed a web page, news headlines, was supposed to have a touch screen and wireless internet etc. This was in 1996 or 97, when mobile phones and dial-up internet connections were just breaking through into the mainstream, but Nokia basically followed it through to a hundred percent.
Granted, this seems a fair bit more cutting edge, with what appears to be reliance on technology that at the moment presumably is purely theoretical, and I don't believe for a second they can translate the concept into real life in seven years (which technically isn't what they're saying, just that they'll have something incorporating the technology), but I don't doubt that they're completely serious about pursuing this, either.
I'd like to know how many of you complaining are actual 3D artists (of some sort, be it pro/student/hobbyist) of even an intermediate skill level, who actually made an honest effort learning Blender. No, opening it up, finding your left and right mouse buttons swapped, then giving up and going back to your pirated copy of Maya doesn't count.
I _HAD_ to learn Blender for an animated short I worked on over the summer. I had about 9 months of 3ds max experience behind me, and grasping the basics in Blender took me less than a week, using Tony Mullen's book Introducing Character Animation with Blender as well as whatever tutorials could be found online. Yes, the documentation is sometimes lacking (nothing new there, considering it's free software), but that mostly applies to more advanced features (NLA editing, linking animation files together, stuff like that) where you end up having to discover many things by trial and error (which is horrible if you're working to a deadline to be sure). In my experience there's no shortage of resources targetting beginners though. Just don't expect to become a master sitting around reading tutorials -- the reason 3D graphics in general and animation in particular is hard is because IT IS HARD. And it's hard even after you've mastered whatever application you're using. Getting past the user interface is the easy part.
At this point the only thing I could say 3ds max is outright "better" at is pure modelling, since Blender lacks n-gons, and even then I'd rather use Blender because the interface is just that much nicer. I haven't really used hair and fur much in 3ds max, but my understanding is that it's a fair bit more advanced than what's currently in Blender as well, although you can expect that to change soon as the Peach project gets underway. Textures, rigging, animation, lighting, rendering, compositing are all things I find much easier to do in Blender.
Yes, the Blender interface is "unintuitive" in the sense that it doesn't look like anything else, but compared to the hodgepodge that is max it's a shedload more consistent and logical. Once you grasp the basics (A selects/deselects all, B border selects, G moves, R rotates, S scales...) all 3D windows, node views, curve editors and what have you work exactly the same way which is just lovely. Add to that a completely customizable workspace layout and completely zoomable/pannable windows. I cannot tell you what a shock it was to go back to 3ds max and discover that to move and zoom the timeline you had to use combinations of ctrl, alt and mousebuttons, when you're used to doing all of that the same way you zoom and pan 3D windows: scrollwheel and middle mouse button. Or that the damn thing loads for a minute and a half even on a top of the line machine, while Blender takes about 2 seconds to start. :)
That's not to say the Blender interface couldn't be improved. The default keyboard shortcuts are WEIRD -- Ctrl-W to save, anyone? -- and more importantly, not customizable. The default view control options are pretty confusing as well if you're used to basically anything else ever, but these can at least be changed. I think changing the defaults (but making it easy for advanced users to change back) would go a long way towards improving Blender's image at large, but I'm not so arrogant as to assume that the Blender developers (who btw are excellent, pay attention to users needs and release new features at a mindboggling rate) aren't aware of these things.
(Struggling with the formatting here -- first post, sorry.)