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User: LetterRip

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  1. Re:Either you pay the editors, or it's crap on To Search Smarter, Find a Person? · · Score: 1

    If you want to find out how we got into the subprime mortgage mess or what to do about it, Wikia search is totally useless. Hmm the article at wikipedia on the topic looks to provide information on 'how we got into' it, why would you expect it to provide information about 'what to do about it'?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

    LetterRip
  2. Re:Kids have it lucky these days on Google Announces Summer of Code 2008 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Granted pretty much nobody in high school will write quality code (even if they honestly think they do, like I once did), the chance to get paid experience and a mentor to help you improve is fantastic.

    Actually Nick Bishop who did SoC with Blender 2 years ago, and with Inkscape (I think?) last year, had pretty good code quality already as a high school student.

    LetterRip

  3. Re:Thank God. on Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Bid · · Score: 1

    "Someone over there has finally woken up. I have been teaching Office 2007 and for god's sake it's a great product"

    For Excel 2007 they've made adjusting charts extremely painful and non obvious. To me that is a huge downside - the rest of the changes I'm fairly neutral on. Spreading the Blender interface to more programs is great of course (Ribbon is essentially a port of the Blender buttons interface).

    LetterRip

  4. Re:This just in... on Hostile ta Vista, Baby · · Score: 1

    [quote]But to this day I've never heard an answer to one question: Since even Linux advocates admit that it's harder to use, what can you do with Linux that you can't do with Windows, to make it worth switching over to?[/quote]

    Once click install of completely free software that is useful for my needs - I need to do complex 3D graphics? Applications>Add/Remove Software>Graphics>Blender I need to do music composition? Sound and Video > Ardour or Sound and Video > Rose Garden need to do flow diagrams for a class? Graphics > Dia

    Essentially any task I need to do I have software right at my fingertips to accomplish it within a few clicks - whereas for windows - I either need to spend substantial amounts of time to find free equivalents (many of which are not available at all on windows). Or I need to spend substantial amounts of money. Neither are options that the average user finds appealing.

    Advantage 2 - efficiency of hardware usage

    Advantage 3 - free upgrades

    Disadvantages - some things are still clunky (find interfaces are still really annoying and limited unless you use command line compared to XP); some out of the box hardware support is still lacking (ie my volume wheel I still can't use to control my speaker volume even after extensive searching... grrr); and media usage out of the box is painful (yes I'm aware of the patent issues). Also for unskilled users there isn't the 'son and grandson support' that is available for windows.

    LetterRip

  5. Re:Blender on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    We desperately need a higher-level file format which captures rigging, animation cycles (such as walk cycle) and automatic things like blinking and breathing, as well as unconscious gestures, body language and such. In short, a file format to describe a digital actor. The current stuff is the equivalent of assembly, and about as efficient for large projects: good for the CPU, horrible to anyone who has to do anything with it. See the Collada and FBX formats which support all of that, Collada is an open exchange format, FBX is a closed exchange format.

    LetterRip
  6. Re:Youtube on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 1

    Maybe he hasn't made a film because, like the Elephant's Dream team, he's not very good at making films. However, unlike the Elephant's Dream team, he had the good sense not to blow the first chance Open Source had to make headway in content creation. The chance wasn't blown. ED was well recieved among art houses. It was done in collaboration with a Art Instititue thus, targeting a mainstream story wasn't a possibility.

    They entered it into every "proper" film festival and got nowhere. The animation industry isn't taking the film seriously at all. To my knowledge it wasn't submitted to any but a handful of festivals (Most festivals have rules that prevent the film being released prior to submittal). It was in a few festivals and won a few awards. It didn't have amazing success, but it wasn't expected to. The animation industry took the film seriously, and a lot more 3D artists are giving consideration to adding Blender to their pipeline. Blender is no longer seen as 'the 3D software you get if you can't afford "real" software', but instead as a reasonable replacement for other midrange and high end 3D software suites. Of course most large software houses already have well established pipelines, and they also like the comfort of having support contracts, so there is little incentive to them switching over to Blender. However small studios have a lot to gain, and Blender is slowly gaining a larger share of professional animators.

    The only "success" they had was to identify faults and shortcomings in the software when used to make a short film. They were beta testers. The Blender community looked up to them, and were ultimately disappointed. They discovered features that they wanted and needed to make the process of movie making more productive and got those implemented. They produced a quality short animation that demonstrated to professional animators that Blender has the capabilities of achieving high quality animation and renders. There were plety of indivudals who enjoyed the movie.

    I'd say Elephants Dream was a significant accomplishment and a success.

    LetterRip
  7. Re:Anyone doing a less "artsy" project? on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now I'm curious to see if the ground breaking work can be used to create something with a bit more mainstream appeal, that the wider press could pick up and promote with the expectation that most viewers would be entertained. Peach http://peach.blender.org/ , the second open movie being done by the Blender Foundation is targeted at mass market appeal - it will be cute, funny, and furry.

    So I think it has a good chance of meeting your hopes and expectations.

    LetterRip
  8. Re:Success? on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 1

    I'm probably not alone in that I've never heard of this movie nor studio. Not saying that I alone am a good measure of a movie's success, but I'd like to know the criteria by which this is being judged a success. Sony Pictures will be distributing it, and apparently it has a lot of good publicity for it in Argentina. You probably haven't heard of any but a handful of US animation studios (Pixar, Dreamworks), so your not having heard of the studio isn't a surprise.

    It is unclear whether US distribution is going to happen so it is unsurprising that you haven't heard of it. None the less, it will be a complete feature film, with excellent quality animation and a good story (at least from what I've seen of previews). It also has some well known talent (for Argentina) for the lead characters so it is likely to prove successful commercially.

    LetterRip
  9. How Blender compares on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 2, Informative

    I used Blender for about 3 years back in high School. How long ago did you use it - it sounds like 2 years ago or so? Back before Elephants Dream, it had a fair number of rough edges, especially in the animation and rendering department. And a few releases prior to that (ie when it sounds like you were using it) it didn't have undo for most things, so if the last release you used was quite a while back, then it isn't a reasonable basis to judge the productivity of Blender.

    It is quite comparable in feature set and productivity to most high end 3D apps now (a few rough edges still - ie lack of a fast materials preview using OpenGl acceleration). Its modifier stack, SDS, sculpting, compositing tools, have recieved accolades from users of other software users. With the current SVN builds we have cutting edge animating, skinning, and rigging tools, and a pretty high quality particle and hair implementation. Also the rendering system is getting some really cutting edge stuff as well - see Brechts post about approximate ambient occlusion - http://peach.blender.org/index.php/approximate-ambient-occlusion/ .

    Anyone who has failed to be impressed with past versions of Blender, should really consider giving the next release a try, I expect that you'll be 'blown away'.

    LetterRip
  10. Re:Youtube on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 1

    That said, I have no idea if Blender's UI is fast, slow or average; I couldn't make sense of it when I last tried it, and have resigned to doing my modelling with Povray scripts. I guess that tells something about the user friendliness of Blender :(... You might want to read 'The Essential Blender', reviews suggest that learning from it is fairly straight forward (although there are definite gripes about the screenshots...)

    http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=96

    Of course I might be biased since I contributed the sculpt chapters :)

    Another book I've heard good things about is Tony Mullens 'Introducing Character Animation With Blender'

    http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=95

    LetterRip
  11. True open source coming to the Big Screen soon on Open Source On the Big Screen · · Score: 4, Informative

    The movie Plumiferos http://www.plumiferos.com/index-en.php will be coming to the big screen some time early next year. A feature length movie done entirely in Blender (modeling, animating, rendering, non linear editing, etc.)

    LetterRip

  12. Re:But.... on Apple Announces MacBook Air · · Score: 5, Funny

    does it blend? Yeah Blender works just fine on OS X Leopard, thanks for asking though :)

    LetterRip
  13. Re:I'm underwhelmed. on Computer Scientists Grow a Better Virtual Tree · · Score: 1

    Because I see this as not an end result, but as a beginning. I've often thought that the entirety of all human faces could be described by a similar, discrete set of variables. Know the variables, know the values for a person's face, and voila, you can recreate a particular person's face from a simple database. This is already 'ancient' tech :)

    Have a look at http://www.facegen.com/

    And therea re a dozen others too,

    LetterRip
  14. Blender Treemaker on Computer Scientists Grow a Better Virtual Tree · · Score: 4, Informative

    As noted aobove, tools for creating trees are pretty common, ie Blender now has a fairly powerful treemaker that is being used for the Peach Open Movie,

    http://peach.blender.org/index.php/trees/

    The author does mention that Dryad is 'easy to use', but there are a fair number of easy to use tree making tools already so not sure how 'revolutionary' it is.

    LetterRip

  15. Re:Jesus, another one? on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 1

    long rant short, completing a commercial-quality game today (i.e. one that people might actually play) takes 100 man years of work, and a minimum of 2.5 elapsed years. Of course, nobody actually believes that, or else community projects would never get started. Your typical 'open source game' is an all volunteer effort with rarely anyone having project management skills, nor has anyone on the team typically completed a previous large scale endeavor. Also they tend to not have anyone who is able to contribute full time.

    Apricot has Ton and Jorrit who are the leads of Blender and Crystal Space respectively, both (and especially Ton) have a great deal of experience with accomplishing major projects. Elephants Dream, and now Peach, already show Tons leadership skill in accomplishing artistic creative endeavors on a tight schedule that have high demands on the technical side. Each of the members selected for the team have histories of completing their own artistically demanding projects.

    Also this is 5 people being funded for the team, plus the individuals who were already funded by the Blender Institute. Additionally if needed there is a huge pool of programming talent and artistic talent available via the Blender community.

    Also this game will start with finished assets developed for Rabbits Revenge (the Peach project), so six months worth of art and concepts will be created in advance.

    These are resources beyond the dreams of they typical open source game, and indeed in some respects beyond the resources available to many 1st Tier commercial games.

    Of course the Apricot Teams game is not going to have the scope or depth of typical commercial game, but it should be fully expected that it will have high production values, and give an enjoyable and polished result.

    LetterRip
  16. Re:Also post your wishes for Blender at Peach site on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 2, Informative

    Doh! So used to typing peach that I typed the wrong project. I meant that if you go to http://apricot.blender.org/ [blender.org] one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

    LetterRip

  17. Re:Design by Committee Equals Bad Game on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 1

    The project site makes it pretty clear there's no design document for the game, no central vision of what it will be. They're going to design it once they've got the people together, so it's going to be one of those designed-by-committee games. The team has been in discussion for a month or two and have another month they can use for discussion before they come together in Amsterdam. Project Peach isn't 'design by committee' so I sse no reason why Apricot would be. Also both the artwork, and the snippets of story that have come thus far from Peach have been excellent, so I don't have any fears that it will be low quality. Also since Apricot is going to be based on the Peach assets it will have a built in characters and back story which will constrain some choices and make other game design choices 'obvious'.

    LetterRip
  18. Re:Push Linux gaming; use the LGPL (or similar) on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 2, Informative

    The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting. The game content and logic are planned to be released under Creative Commons Attribution I believe (as were the Elephants Dream assets) - improvements to Blender will be under GPL, and improvements to CrystalSpace will be under LGPL.

    LetterRip
  19. Re:This project needs funding? on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If everything is going to be open source, why exactly does this project need funding? Are the developers going to be working on this full-time? Full time artists and full time developers are going to be funded for both Blender and for CrystalSpace. These projects (Orange, Peach, Apricot) serve a few purposes - to prove the quality of these particular open source tools for professional usage (ie pulling together very high quality art work, game assets, game design and logic, and game environment in a very short period of time) and as a major side benefit provides excellent functionality for the current and future users of both projects (ie Blender has had huge leaps in functionality improvement during both Elephants Dream (Orange) and during Rabbits Revenge (Peach) as the artists wishlists were met by both the developers paid to work for the project and the rest of the Blender volunteer team).

    LetterRip
  20. Re:Do we really need more FPS? on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 1

    So the Free Software community is going to produce another FPS. Well, maybe that will make Free Software look like it's got it together, able to coordinate the efforts of many volunteers for a quality product. Actually it is not planned to be a FPS according to Ton (leader of Blender and the projects) , "[W]e will re-use the peach project assets [] so it's not likely to be a FPS".

    http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12399

    The official game style is yet to be announced; but I believe the team is leaning towards minigames.

    LetterRip
  21. Also post your wishes for Blender at Peach site on Apricot Team Selected For Fully Open Source 3D Game · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you go to http://peach.blender.org/ one of the recent stories is a request for feedback of what you want added or changed about Blender to improve it for game content creation.

    LetterRip

  22. Re:Put a stop to this one early... on AT&T Playing Hardball With Apple? · · Score: 1

    But the press release also made another thing quite clear: their application does not include any partners. So. No partners means no Apple partnership, which means that there was nothing for AT&T's CEO to find out.

    You misread the summary. By "joining Google in bidding" the poster meant that Apple will also be bidding on the 700MHz spectrum--not that they will partner with Google in bidding for it. This isn't a partnership--it's the two going head-to-head for something they both want.

    I'm not familiar with the FCC bidding rules - but it could also be a behind the scenes partnership that if Google wins, then Apple is going to guarantee a loan for Google or promises to purchase n amount of bandwidth from them, etc. Ie they can make it so that Google can go much higher much more comfortably than they otherwise might.

  23. Re:it's all in the details on Blender Compared To the Major 3D Applications · · Score: 1

    ie. hobbiests, occasional users etc. There is nothing wrong with that, it's a valid market. It's not the main commercial market though.

    Actually freelancers are the market I was refering to, we have a fairly large number of users who use Blender professionally for freelance work. Large and medium studios make up only a portion of the total market.

    I said "Most" You picked probably the most complicated and difficult example. For your information, while I am a 3D artist, not a professional coder, I have implemented a cloth solver and several modeling tools amongst other things

    Fluids is the most complicated example, modifier stack, fast SDS, good constraints system, multiresolution sculpting, the hard body dynamics system, the particle system, uv unwrapping, etc. are all many man month to many man year projects. Also for your own cloth solver do you mean 'cloth falls on sphere' or 'cloth can do self collision, collision with other cloth objects, collision with non primitive objects, with deforming objects, the cloth deformations can be baked, has a usable interface, etc. Blenders tools are fairly robust professional tools used in production environments. There are minor features that can be implemented in a few hours hacking but any of the big features have been non trivial investments of developer resources.

    I could probably build a house with a leatherman and a rock given enough time.

    Plumiferos has had a three year production schedule (I think?), with a modest staff of modelers/riggers/animators/TDs etc (10-20 in total I think?) - Ie similar production schedule to any 3D feature animated film, with a smaller staff than average. You apparently have never used Blenders tools and yet feel free to insult them as being low quality.

    How about a 3D artist who actually makes 3D rather than going around comparing apps?

    He does 'actually make 3D' - he also happened to make a quite useful comparison of the major 3D renderers and explained why all but a handful were not suited for professional usage. If you want the opinions of other fairly well known professionals - reviews by CGTalk and Subdivision Modelling are coming out soon. Also a number of prominent proffessional 3D artists have made complementary statements about Blender - fluids, cloth, hair, our modifier stack, sculpting and compositing, frequently get envious comments from users of our 3D competition (of course not all are praised by the same people). Often they personally don't have a compelling reason to swith to Blender (although they will sometimes use it to shore up a lack of their current 3D tool, ie use Blenders UV unwrapping, or fluids, or hair, or animation system, or compositing) since they already have a well established workflow with their existing toolset.

    LetterRip

  24. Re:it's all in the details on Blender Compared To the Major 3D Applications · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comparison lists like this are very misleading. The devil is in the details. It's not about how many buzzword columns an app can check, it's about whether the app has had a userbase that has thrashed the software through years and years of real production work and had the software evolve into a powerful tool.

    The professional user base for Blender is fairly large, it is just a different target market.

    It's very easy to add a feature in a 3D app. Most interested hobbiest weekend coders could whip up most functions found in any given 3D app.

    The fluid dynamics was a number of full years of developer time. You've clearly never developed any significant feature for a 3D application.

    Whether that feature is production ready is another story.

    All of the features listed are used in production environments, the feature animation movie Plumiferos made use of pretty much every feature including fluids, cloth, the particle system, etc.

    Going by the list it would seem that something like Blender of C4D is on a par with Maya and Max. They're not. They don't have the huge in-depth expert user communities and the benefit of thousands of users pushing them to the limit day in and day out.

    Actually Maya and Max don't have that either - the number of users for the advanced features for all of the 3D applications is quite small. For fluids people will tend to switch to RealFlow, for Cloth people will tend to use Syflex

    If you're choosing a 3D app, talk to some real 3D artists who have been in the industry for years and depend on their 3D application system for their living. Don't compare checkbox lists.

    Here is what 'real 3D artists who have been in the industry for years and depend on their 3D application system for their living.' actually say

    "Blender has grown up, and fast! Today Blender rivals Maya in many ways---especially in toolsets. The interface isn't the easiest to learn, so if you choose this route you'll need to promise yourself to stick with your learning of it in order to give Blender a fair chance. Not only can Blender do NURBS, SubDs, Polygons, particle physics, and more, it also includes hair and fur tools that you'd have to pay $7k for in Maya Unlimited. Truth is, I'd personally be tempted to go the Blender route myself if not for my obsession with Pixar's RenderMan which is world's best for animation quality. But, since you don't really need that extra fine level of quality in animation that Pixar gives you, Blender may be your best choice at all.

    zaon

    the post is by ZaonDude who is famous (among 3D artists) for comparison of high end 3D renderer quality.

    LetterRip

  25. Re:It's the UI that kills it on Blender Compared To the Major 3D Applications · · Score: 1

    I've always thought Blender to be a solid but completely useless application because for whatever reason, the developers created the most heinous god aweful UI known to man. It's a freakin eyebleeding headache that leaves one happily shelling out the hundreds or thousands of Dollars for a modelor with a usable GUI.

    If instead you shell out 50$ for Essential Blender, you will find that Blender is fairly easy to learn and has a quite usable GUI. As pointed out in the review the majority of 3D applications have a similar learning curve to become productive. (Although high school students taking a couple day summer camp course have done complete animations including, modeling, texturing, rigging, animating and lighting in that time period - so I think the time needed is greatly exaggerated).

    If you are interested in supporting Blender you might want to purchase the Peach DVD. Also the UI is getting a rewrite and hopefully will be ready for the next major release. So purchasing the DVD will support that effort. /p LetterRip