I have a USB drive that is actually a 1-inch hard drive, NOT flash. Because magnetic is cheaper than flash, I managed to get a 1.5 GB drive for $170, a price range unheard of for flash.
Nah, I was just having a little fun with the idea of having 255 tracks to play with, with a slight reference to Space Quest 4, where there's a shop that advertizes a "dodecaphonic around-sound system" (In front, behind, left, right, four midpoints in between, above, below, inside, and from the upstairs neighbors!). I know that as a musician it would be handy to be able to encode some in-progress studio work to a however-many-channel FLAC file and bring it home to do some mixing.
Even if raytracing is used to do a lot of the effects, it will still be faster to fake certain things with scanline methods. Being able to fake the stuff that can be scanlined reasonably well leaves more CPU time to better graphics in other areas. If you can simply "project" the model from the light source onto the ground to do the bulk of a shadow and just raytrace around the edges of the shadow to soften it (or even figure out a way to fake a true soft shadow, with the shadow getting softer as it moves away from the object casting it), you leave more CPU to do better grahics in other areas.
Real time raytracing, yes, but only for the things that it's really necessary for.
Let's see, what to do with 255 tracks... 27 channel surround, the corners, edge midpoints and face midpoints of a cube around the listener, including one inside the listener for those subliminal message effects. Plus a ".1" sub channel at each of those points. And heck, a tweeter channel at each of those points as well. And... umm, every single instrument in the mix gets a separate channel so you can Mix-It-Yourself (tm).
That's strange, I didn't know it also had a channel that sounded like it was coming from the upstairs neighbors...
What are you talking about, Vorbis is the best-sounding lossy format I've heard. I get transparent results at quality level 4, which typically averages out to around 120 kbps, beating MP3 hands down. Even when Vorbis has artifacts, they sound much less distracting than MP3 artifacts.
When the game engine got implemented, the rendering side was completely ignored until NaN went bankrupt. I didn't say that it caused a lack of innovation, Blender went from 2.0 to 2.25 before NaN quit. I'm saying that the focus of development shifted away from its core functionality, rendering, and because of that the people who used it for rendering (i.e. everyone who used it before 2.0) got sick of being ignored and left, causing NaN's bankruptcy.
The more proper Linux Kernel metaphor would be more like, ever since they implemented IA64 support, x86 support was completely ignored for the next year. When Blender got the gaming features, the rendering side was completely ignored until NaN went bankrupt.
Do you honestly think I didn't know that? Of course I knew Blender had added raytracing. The point of my post, since apparently you're illiterate, was that completely replacing the scanline techniques Blender uses with a 100% raytraced approach would be a bad thing.
Raytracing is slower than scanline rendering. Period. No exceptions. If you can come up to an exception to this, I would love to see the renderer that can raytrace a scene faster than Blender could render it.
Replacing the built-in render with a raytracer would be the worst thing they could possibly do. Raytracing is SLOW. The built-in scanline renderer puts out great images in a minimum of time, which is necessary when an animation needs to be done by yesterday. (I make graphics for television).
Since I made that post I looked around the Blender site and checked out the new features. I take it back, the game engine is the least of what's been introduced in the latest version. I love the reworking of the material system. Given all the amazing stuff I've been able to do with just clouds I can't wait to try out the new texturing modes.
It has plenty of good documentation online. Just open your eyes.
As for people who complain the docs aren't current, I haven't read any actual docs since I bought the 1.5 manual. After you get the hang of it, everything is self-explanatory.
There is full undo capability (as many steps back as you have RAM for) in mesh edit mode. In the 5 years I've been using Blender, I've never needed any other undo.
I firmly believe that shifting the focus of Blender to the gaming engine at the expense of the rendering engine is what killed NaN in the first place. When Blender went OSS and the game engine had to be taken out, Blender took on new life as new features were added to the rendering engine including the much-requested raytracing. Now that the gaming engine is back in, I fear that Blender will soon fail again.
I dunno about you, but most parking meters I've seen have been made out of nice, solid metal to keep people from breaking in and taking out the change. I think these meters would be built the same.
Also, they would probably have batteries to keep them running during periods of no sun... Otherwise, free parking on cloudy days, or you put in your money, come back and have a parking ticket because a cloud passed over the sun and reset the meter.
I remember an old racing game for the original playstation that let you play Space Invaders while it was loading. If you destoryed all the enemies during the short loading time, you could unlock a new car.
Your sig should say "Karma: Insanely Great, because I work at NASA and deserve it."
Stuff like what you guys do is why every kid wants to be an astronaut until the school system beats all their creativity, curiosity and ambition out of them.
DANGER, LOGICAL FLAW. People denounced Classical, then Jazz, then Rock as too noisy when they came around, therefore anything that someone says is too noisy will become the new form of popular music. If this happens, I will seriously kill myself. Rap was bad enough, but strange clicking and humming noises blasting from car stereos? Maybe Dr. Kervorkian had it right after all.
If making great money as a session player is wasting my time, I would hate to see what creating crap "music" is.
following in the footsteps of long-dead musicians.
They may be long-dead in some cases, but at least they were musicians.
Don't get mad at people who listen to truly new music.
I *create* truly new music all the time, it's called a "jam session." You should listen to one some time.
Notes, shmotes.
I suppose off-key singing in a karaoke bar is artistic and not simply lack of vocal control. Maybe you collect tapes of bad karaoke so you can hear their brilliant dissonance. Or maybe notes are actually important because they're the foundation upon which music is built.
This is Slashdot, not old-fogey (in mind, anyway) central, shouldn't you be more openminded?
At 19 years old, I'm not exactly an "old fogey." I am openminded about new forms of music (and have even played some of them), but you have to draw the line somewhere.
I'll sometimes resort to MIDI when I'm recording demo stuff and I'm not a good enough guitarist to pull it off (I'm primarily a bass player/drummer) or when I don't want to wake people up with drums, but I hate doing it just because the feel is so horrible, especially on the drums. In order to put in the feel that comes naturally to me playing live, I have to mess around with the velocity of every single note, and even then you don't quite get that subtle "behind the beat" feel that makes it funky.
That was my band in high school, and it's some kind of law or something that high school bands have to suck. I'm a much better player now, playing in a much better band (ironically, a former electronic project), but we haven't put anything on tape yet.
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I thought it said "Build a dot-com that will scratch in 24 hours." I didn't know it was possible to go out of business that fast!
I have a USB drive that is actually a 1-inch hard drive, NOT flash. Because magnetic is cheaper than flash, I managed to get a 1.5 GB drive for $170, a price range unheard of for flash.
Your sig is a Flaming Lips song.
Nah, I was just having a little fun with the idea of having 255 tracks to play with, with a slight reference to Space Quest 4, where there's a shop that advertizes a "dodecaphonic around-sound system" (In front, behind, left, right, four midpoints in between, above, below, inside, and from the upstairs neighbors!). I know that as a musician it would be handy to be able to encode some in-progress studio work to a however-many-channel FLAC file and bring it home to do some mixing.
Hey, that's pretty cool. How's it work?
Even if raytracing is used to do a lot of the effects, it will still be faster to fake certain things with scanline methods. Being able to fake the stuff that can be scanlined reasonably well leaves more CPU time to better graphics in other areas. If you can simply "project" the model from the light source onto the ground to do the bulk of a shadow and just raytrace around the edges of the shadow to soften it (or even figure out a way to fake a true soft shadow, with the shadow getting softer as it moves away from the object casting it), you leave more CPU to do better grahics in other areas.
Real time raytracing, yes, but only for the things that it's really necessary for.
Let's see, what to do with 255 tracks... 27 channel surround, the corners, edge midpoints and face midpoints of a cube around the listener, including one inside the listener for those subliminal message effects. Plus a ".1" sub channel at each of those points. And heck, a tweeter channel at each of those points as well. And... umm, every single instrument in the mix gets a separate channel so you can Mix-It-Yourself (tm).
That's strange, I didn't know it also had a channel that sounded like it was coming from the upstairs neighbors...
What are you talking about, Vorbis is the best-sounding lossy format I've heard. I get transparent results at quality level 4, which typically averages out to around 120 kbps, beating MP3 hands down. Even when Vorbis has artifacts, they sound much less distracting than MP3 artifacts.
When the game engine got implemented, the rendering side was completely ignored until NaN went bankrupt. I didn't say that it caused a lack of innovation, Blender went from 2.0 to 2.25 before NaN quit. I'm saying that the focus of development shifted away from its core functionality, rendering, and because of that the people who used it for rendering (i.e. everyone who used it before 2.0) got sick of being ignored and left, causing NaN's bankruptcy.
The more proper Linux Kernel metaphor would be more like, ever since they implemented IA64 support, x86 support was completely ignored for the next year. When Blender got the gaming features, the rendering side was completely ignored until NaN went bankrupt.
Do you honestly think I didn't know that? Of course I knew Blender had added raytracing. The point of my post, since apparently you're illiterate, was that completely replacing the scanline techniques Blender uses with a 100% raytraced approach would be a bad thing.
Raytracing is slower than scanline rendering. Period. No exceptions. If you can come up to an exception to this, I would love to see the renderer that can raytrace a scene faster than Blender could render it.
Replacing the built-in render with a raytracer would be the worst thing they could possibly do. Raytracing is SLOW. The built-in scanline renderer puts out great images in a minimum of time, which is necessary when an animation needs to be done by yesterday. (I make graphics for television).
Since I made that post I looked around the Blender site and checked out the new features. I take it back, the game engine is the least of what's been introduced in the latest version. I love the reworking of the material system. Given all the amazing stuff I've been able to do with just clouds I can't wait to try out the new texturing modes.
It has plenty of good documentation online. Just open your eyes.
As for people who complain the docs aren't current, I haven't read any actual docs since I bought the 1.5 manual. After you get the hang of it, everything is self-explanatory.
There is full undo capability (as many steps back as you have RAM for) in mesh edit mode. In the 5 years I've been using Blender, I've never needed any other undo.
I firmly believe that shifting the focus of Blender to the gaming engine at the expense of the rendering engine is what killed NaN in the first place. When Blender went OSS and the game engine had to be taken out, Blender took on new life as new features were added to the rendering engine including the much-requested raytracing. Now that the gaming engine is back in, I fear that Blender will soon fail again.
It was nice having it while it was around.
I dunno about you, but most parking meters I've seen have been made out of nice, solid metal to keep people from breaking in and taking out the change. I think these meters would be built the same.
Also, they would probably have batteries to keep them running during periods of no sun... Otherwise, free parking on cloudy days, or you put in your money, come back and have a parking ticket because a cloud passed over the sun and reset the meter.
That was it, thanks.
I remember an old racing game for the original playstation that let you play Space Invaders while it was loading. If you destoryed all the enemies during the short loading time, you could unlock a new car.
Your sig should say "Karma: Insanely Great, because I work at NASA and deserve it."
Stuff like what you guys do is why every kid wants to be an astronaut until the school system beats all their creativity, curiosity and ambition out of them.
DANGER, LOGICAL FLAW. People denounced Classical, then Jazz, then Rock as too noisy when they came around, therefore anything that someone says is too noisy will become the new form of popular music. If this happens, I will seriously kill myself. Rap was bad enough, but strange clicking and humming noises blasting from car stereos? Maybe Dr. Kervorkian had it right after all.
Sorry if you're bitter about wasting your time
If making great money as a session player is wasting my time, I would hate to see what creating crap "music" is.
following in the footsteps of long-dead musicians.
They may be long-dead in some cases, but at least they were musicians.
Don't get mad at people who listen to truly new music.
I *create* truly new music all the time, it's called a "jam session." You should listen to one some time.
Notes, shmotes.
I suppose off-key singing in a karaoke bar is artistic and not simply lack of vocal control. Maybe you collect tapes of bad karaoke so you can hear their brilliant dissonance. Or maybe notes are actually important because they're the foundation upon which music is built.
This is Slashdot, not old-fogey (in mind, anyway) central, shouldn't you be more openminded?
At 19 years old, I'm not exactly an "old fogey." I am openminded about new forms of music (and have even played some of them), but you have to draw the line somewhere.
I'll sometimes resort to MIDI when I'm recording demo stuff and I'm not a good enough guitarist to pull it off (I'm primarily a bass player/drummer) or when I don't want to wake people up with drums, but I hate doing it just because the feel is so horrible, especially on the drums. In order to put in the feel that comes naturally to me playing live, I have to mess around with the velocity of every single note, and even then you don't quite get that subtle "behind the beat" feel that makes it funky.
That was my band in high school, and it's some kind of law or something that high school bands have to suck. I'm a much better player now, playing in a much better band (ironically, a former electronic project), but we haven't put anything on tape yet.