Wow...you seem to have a quite weird/twisted view of european history...
> French Revolution: Won, primarily due to the fact that the opponent was also French.
I actually found this line funny...but....hey, I'm french !:D
As a lover of ancient times, I will use this opportunity to greet our nice and friendly italian neighbours (that were a little abused in this topic), whose history I really admire (the roman republic/empire, it's 1000 years of history, it's impact on modern society).
I send greetings to some our other friends in europe : the germans (you rock !, it has been a happy ride togther these past 50 years in the EU) and the citizens of the united kingdoms (well, it hasn't really been as happy a ride together in the EU...but...you know what, we love you all the same...you have your good points too;))
Mmmmh...looks like we lost a lot of war in the past....mmmhh...
Oh well, whatever...sometimes losing is better than winning:D Though I have great respect for napoleon's genius (among all the things he did, quite a few of 'em were done right), I'm actually happy that he lost in the end and that the European countries aren't anymore under a french hegemony (can you imagine the whole europe having to eat smelly cheese, eat frogs and snails ? )
Same thing goes for our ex-colonies... As a french, I'm quite happy to see you independant : It's the way it should be (don't tell the corsicans:D and the bretons). I hope you are thriving/'ll thrive in the future and I am/would be delighted if we cooperate/would cooperate in the future.
you CAN take a protected iTunes piece of music - burn it to CD then put it wherever you want it. By burning to a CD the copy protection is removed. An MP3 can be played everywhere.......or converted to Ogg Vorbis if that tickles your fancy.
LOL. If I understand correctly, what you mean is that itunes DRM is only an annoying thing.
If you want to play it on other devices than itunes/ipod, you have to go through the hassle of :
1) Burn it on a cd (buy a blank cd-R)
2) Rip it
3) Encode it
Man...and people buy those DRM songs instead of good old regular mp3 ?
What is the use of using DRM then if it serves no purposes and can be erased that easilly ?
I will buy an (expensive) IPOD when
1) it has an upgradable firmware
2) it plays ogg vorbis
3) my (high quality and slick looking) iriver mp3/ogg player dies:D
Wav files...... You are kidding ! Appart for quality recording purposes, storing music in wav format isn't interesting yet (maybee it'll change, as lossless format ratio aren't that good and need more procesing).
Which formats do they consider "open"? ->Ogg vorbis -> flac (When hard disks will have, let's say 8 times the capacity of those we have today, it is likely that people (keen on music) will store their songs in a lossless format)
I have around 3200 ogg vorbis files. Basically, as I understand it, if I buy an ipod (it doesn't play oggs out of the box, does it ?), I'm screwed... Don't want to spend hours compressing my 400 cds in mp3 to listen to 'em in an ipod. (but maybee I'll do it one day in a lossless format)
As for buying music online (this has nothing to do with ipod) : Well, I want to be able to play my music wherever I wish it, be it on linux, bsds, unixes, windowes, osxes, alternative oses....buying and Downloading a song saves me time (to encode it) and space (cds take space when you have lot's of 'em dirty buggers).
I find it "strange" to download a song.... to burn it afterwards on a cd (when you can buy (it's a bit more expensive ok, but not by much) the cd with a beautifull printed logo, cover art, etc...)!!!
And I will NEVER buy a song in a DRM format, which prevents me to play it on all my audio devices.... So WMA and AAC are a no go for me:D
Well...I'm french, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
My opinion is that pulling out of the france market :
1) is a serious blow : 2% of a market where you are the world leader must represent an awfull lot of money. The kind of money that would make sales/marketing people salivate.
2) Surrendering a country means, letting the competition gain a foothold/strong position where you (ipod/itunes) had a near-monopoly. Do you think, you could re-enter the market at a later point ?
3) Brand recognition. If you stop selling ipod/itunes songs in france, will the french still think of Apple as cool ? Mmmh, maybee, maybee not...
4) You'll have to open the ipod anyway....a few people (I did) are buying alternative mp3 player because thay want to play open formats, have more interoperability...People won't like the fact that the music they bought can't be played on other places than their ipod (they just don't realize it yet). Despite looks, a product that can't do half what the concurence does, can't be that cool...
5) would be funny to see what the EU would do about it (Yet, I'm still waiting to see what the EU does to microsoft...I fancy seeing microsoft have to pay a million $ a day till it behaves, it would be fun and a good lesson for others (rich people/corporations shouldn't be above rules)).
And I strongly feel too that :
Though they had a good start and people everywhere loves their product, I highly doubt that Apple will remain the uncontested leader in selling mp3 players/mp3 songs. Other big players/corporations (sony, microsoft, the music industry...) are interested in a (big) share of the juicy market and, one way of the other, they'll get what they want.
When the hipe around the ipod dies, what next ? There is always a next big thing, you know:D
I guess so:D
I actually flushed the PH D down the toilet (damn useless thing). I ended up teaching for wannabe engineer student = good pay for 15 hours of work a week, and I use my hoard of free time to work on other projects (music at the moment:D..., but would n't be against mathematician for hire consulting work....greedy me:D )
It looks like mathforhire.com is for small fries:)
Well, I'm not looking for tutoring/teaching/help my neighbor to do his home work: This kind of work isn't hard to find and basically nearly anybody can do/does it.
What I'm looking for is a kind of consulting job in maths/or to solve problems for tech firms/engineer teams (they are great at their stuff, but aren't that good at research in maths)
The ideal would be to have a place with lots of math problems with a bounty The harder the problems the greatest the bounty
(it already exists : you can get 1 million $ for solving Riemann's hypothesys, but lots of people have been trying unsuccessfully to do just that for the past 150 years).
I would like to know if there is a way to make money out of maths skills, as a freelancer.
I mean, I have a phd and I'm quite good at maths, having solved the 3 problems who where thrown at me in 1 year and a half (instead of the regular 3 years) but what I would like to do is : solve mathematical problems/bring solutions to people/firms in exchange for hard coin. Kind like a mathematician freelancer/mercenary : You do the job, you get the money and that's it.
I mean, there are web sites for freelancer artists/web developer/coder. But there isn't one for mathematicians.
So, the only way to make money out of maths (in france) is either to teach it or to research in an university. Either way, you are a salary man.
Man, that sucks. What is the use for those monsters maths skills, that I patiently honed all these years if I can't even make a little cash out of it/or make more money out of it that the average teacher (that really sucks at research/high lvl maths) ?
Is Blender going to get an OFFICIAL import/export script to poser (.pz3,.pz2, etc...) ?
Something really easy to use that could import a fully rigged (mesh, textures, bones and skins) poser model (high quality and cheap) into blender.
By "official", I mean a script that works for at least 80% of models and that is decently updated (I don't want to google through old forgotten web pages to find a script that crashes or only does half the job).
3dsmax has "gestureMax" and I think Maya can use poser models natively (though I might be mistaken).
The advantages of tex4ht over itex2mml (or latex2html) etc are :
1) tex4ht can convert standard TeX/LateX/AmsTex/etc code when itex2mml use a dialect of LaTeX :
Using itex means you have to learn another (La)Tex API (for some commands at least)
2) tex4ht is a much more versatile, flexible and powerful utility :
Indeed, it allows conversion of (La)TeX documents or formulas to Mathml/xhtml/html+gifs or jpgs or pngs/open office documents/pdf/a few other document types.
3) it is smarter because it lets the (La)Tex engine preprocess the document and it then uses the special dvi produced to make the conversion....whereas itex2mml tries to guess what the user want from the document WITHOUT letting (La)Tex process it. Lol...it uses an (light) implementation of a "basic/castrated" Tex Engine
One consequence is that Tex4ht can generally use the macros defined by the user when itex2mml fails beautifully at it
That was an "if" statement. A perfect logical one too : I'm talking about features/scripts (third parties included) that would make blender a good alternative for maya/3ds max for the production of good qualities movies. You pretended blender had then (without giving proof/links). I just asked you to back your words. If you can't back your words, wouldn't you be a fool to have said them in the first place ?
Remember that these blender features/scripts should be solid enough to meet commercial quality.
I looked for this kind of scripts when I tried blender in July, became frustrated with those I found/googled (lots of blender import/export scripts are old/obsolete/don't work well). In the opposite, the commercial solutions for 3dsmax (from third parties) worked flawlessly for me (at least I got more than 80% of success, you can't hope for much more in the 3d world).
Please note, that I GAVE YOU references to great plug ins. If the link you gave me (I read about that in july) is the best you can do, it wont change my opinion that :
Blender may have a great feature and is a nice piece of software. But it CANNOT compete TODAY with 3ds max/maya for the creation of movies...even if it CAN create movies.
I fire back at you : last time I used blender 2.37 (july 2005), It had a basic 3dsmax.3ds import script and it definetely didn't have a poser import script. I'm not talking about importing wafefront obj meshes here, but FULLY RIGGED poser characters, with bone system and vertices assigned to bones.
And if by importing poser animation, you mean "converting each frame to.obj and importing each.obj into blender", I know that blender can do it but this feature isn't good enough, sorry.
What blender needs is POWERFULL plug ins (not basic/uncomplete ones) that simplifies hte artist's life, like these commercial ones :
gesturemax : converts fully rigged poser character into the physic/bones system of 3dsmax phoenix : create DYNAMIC flames around something (with lights with shadows that moves accordingly to the object's movement) Speedtree : create great looking trees/forest (low polygons, with light cpu use) Ventiloquist : lipsync plugin dreamscape : for clouds, sky etcs..(low cpu usage..and lights and shadows for the clouds layer..etc...)
I suggest you to make an internet search about these plug-ins, you'll see that those can make an artist's life much easier and greatly enhance the MOVIES you create.
If you know plug ins for blender that have the same set of VERY convenient features, I would be delighted to know of them (and I would beg you for forgiveness for my ignorance). If these plug ins of yours are free, I will even call you "god".
If you don't, well....you can't even back your words, so BE GONE fool !
Another great advantage of 3dsmax and maya on blender is : hardware renderer. Have you heard of the coming Gelato/Sorbetto/Amaretto solution from nvidia for their quadro fx professional cards ?
Please wake me up when blender gets such support from nvidia/ati/3dlabs/matrox....
sorry for the previous (unreadable) post, I should know better and preview the post, sorry...
I fire back at you :
last time I used blender 2.37 (july 2005), It had a basic 3dsmax.3ds import script and it definetely didn't have a poser import script.
I'm not talking about importing wafefront obj meshes here, but FULLY RIGGED poser characters,
with bone system and vertices assigned to bones.
And if by importing poser animation, you mean "converting each frame to.obj and importing each.obj into blender",
I know that blender can do it but this feature isn't good enough, sorry.
What blender needs is POWERFULL plug ins (not basic/uncomplete ones) that simplifies hte artist's life, like these commercial ones :
gesturemax : converts fully rigged poser character into the physic/bones system of 3dsmax
phoenix : create DYNAMIC flames around something (with lights with shadows that moves accordingly to the object's movement)
Speedtree : create great looking trees/forest (low polygons, with light cpu use)
Ventiloquist : lipsync plugin
dreamscape : for clouds, sky etcs..(low cpu usage..and lights and shadows for the clouds layer..etc...)
I suggest you to make an internet search about these plug-ins, you'll see that those can make an artist's life much easier
and greatly enhance the MOVIES you create.
If you know plug ins for blender that have the same set of VERY convenient features, I would be delighted to know of them
(and I would beg you for forgiveness for my ignorance). If these plug ins of yours are free, I will even call you "god".
If you don't, well....you can't even back your words, so BE GONE fool !
Another great advantage of 3dsmax and maya on blender is : hardware renderer.
Have you heard of the coming Gelato/Sorbetto/Amaretto solution from nvidia for their quadro fx professional cards ?
Please wake me up when blender gets such support from nvidia/ati/3dlabs/matrox....
Blender needs more plugins or more powerfull ones:
one to import fully rigged poser models (cheap high quality models with bones and skin) one to create skys/clouds/suns/moons and animate it one to create landscape one to create the sean/animate it one to sync a character's lips to a wav/tex file. one to make an object burn one to create trees/forests and to animate them one to import/export fully rigged characters to 3ds max/maya one to create/animate hair/fur one to create/animate/simulate clothes one system to simulate physical properties/constraints...
Of these functionnalities, I think blender only has the one to create landscapes. 3dsmax has all of these...(and maybee more)
By the way....The amount of money that famous actors make is ridiculous.
World class Virtuosos do have to train daily for hours to play at the peak of their talent...and they don't get that much for each event
World class actors just need to wake up (without an hangover) and act naturaly.....
With one movie, where they only talk/run/stand/appear half naked they sometimes make more than 20 million $
And, of course, the dangerous scenes of the movies are done by someone who is paid 1/10000th less
Not fair.....
as you have to pay for studios fees, for the cds, the box, for the publicity, the promotion tours, the hardware for the tour and you have to distribute it...
The fact is : most musicians are broke...and can't live from their music. Mainly because the labels don't (for the big ones) or can't give (for the others) 'em much...
You really have to struggle a lot when you want to distribute your music.
The good thing about internet is that you can distribute your music and bypass all these sharks of the music business.../me thinks that there is less concurence in the movie business than in the music business.
Statistically, the number of people playing an instrument is much bigger than the number of people acting...
Even if wannabe-famous actorS struggle hard too, it is my opinion that musicians have to struggle harder to make it.
What I meant is that they could have sticked to their Windows 2000 machine and avoided this problem.
It is know as the most stable version of windows.
Besides, why repair (upgrade/take risks to break) something that isn't broken and work well.
let me see.....
13th root of say 10^130 is 10^13
Wow...
I just computed a 13th root of a 131 digits number in less than 2s....
Now, computing 13th root of 100 digits numbers in seconds is a nice super-power but...it's useless.
It is Not one of those things that you can use often even if you are a normal mathematician. (it may be different for highly specialized ones) Besides, calculators were invented for this...
Well...The good point is...if he can do that...I bet he can do a lot more usefull things with his head too.
Lakedemon
(phd in maths).
I mean...I just loved the Uplift saga "Marée stellaire" et "Elevation 1&2" in french....
And I really want to see some men, chimps, dolphins Kanten, Synthian and Tymbrimi and Wazoon (those scouts were cute, too bad they had to die) kick some Gubrus, Jophur, Soro, Tandu & Thenanins 's asses (or whatever they use to sit upon) on a big black screen
Damnit David, just put some sense in the heads of those hollywood directors and make them adapt your novels ! Please make more money by entertaining us !
The core Foobar2000 is quite slim and....
you can choose to download and install the open source components (official or third parties)
that you want....
this is customization as it should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow...you seem to have a quite weird/twisted view of european history...
:D
;))
:D
:D and the bretons). I hope you are thriving/'ll thrive in the future and I am/would be delighted if we cooperate/would cooperate in the future.
> French Revolution: Won, primarily due to the fact that the opponent was also French.
I actually found this line funny...but....hey, I'm french !
As a lover of ancient times, I will use this opportunity to greet our nice and friendly italian neighbours (that were a little abused in this topic), whose history I really admire (the roman republic/empire, it's 1000 years of history, it's impact on modern society).
I send greetings to some our other friends in europe : the germans (you rock !, it has been a happy ride togther these past 50 years in the EU) and the citizens of the united kingdoms (well, it hasn't really been as happy a ride together in the EU...but...you know what, we love you all the same...you have your good points too
Mmmmh...looks like we lost a lot of war in the past....mmmhh...
Oh well, whatever...sometimes losing is better than winning
Though I have great respect for napoleon's genius (among all the things he did, quite a few of 'em were done right),
I'm actually happy that he lost in the end and that the European countries aren't anymore under a french hegemony (can you imagine the whole europe having to eat smelly cheese, eat frogs and snails ? )
Same thing goes for our ex-colonies... As a french, I'm quite happy to see you independant : It's the way it should be (don't tell the corsicans
Wav files......
:D
:D
You are kidding ! Appart for quality recording purposes, storing music in wav format isn't interesting yet (maybee it'll change, as lossless format ratio aren't that good and need more procesing).
Which formats do they consider "open"?
->Ogg vorbis
-> flac (When hard disks will have, let's say 8 times the capacity of those we have today, it is likely that people (keen on music) will store their songs in a lossless format)
I have around 3200 ogg vorbis files.
Basically, as I understand it, if I buy an ipod (it doesn't play oggs out of the box, does it ?), I'm screwed...
Don't want to spend hours compressing my 400 cds in mp3 to listen to 'em in an ipod.
(but maybee I'll do it one day in a lossless format)
As for buying music online (this has nothing to do with ipod) : Well, I want to be able to play my music wherever I wish it, be it on linux, bsds, unixes, windowes, osxes, alternative oses....buying and Downloading a song saves me time (to encode it) and space (cds take space when you have lot's of 'em dirty buggers).
I find it "strange" to download a song.... to burn it afterwards on a cd (when you can buy (it's a bit more expensive ok, but not by much) the cd with a beautifull printed logo, cover art, etc...)!!!
And I will NEVER buy a song in a DRM format, which prevents me to play it on all my audio devices....
So WMA and AAC are a no go for me
Hey, But that's me..
You can do what you want !
Well...I'm french, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
:D
My opinion is that pulling out of the france market :
1) is a serious blow : 2% of a market where you are the world leader must represent an awfull lot of money. The kind of money that would make sales/marketing people salivate.
2) Surrendering a country means, letting the competition gain a foothold/strong position where you (ipod/itunes) had a near-monopoly.
Do you think, you could re-enter the market at a later point ?
3) Brand recognition. If you stop selling ipod/itunes songs in france, will the french still think of Apple as cool ? Mmmh, maybee, maybee not...
4) You'll have to open the ipod anyway....a few people (I did) are buying alternative mp3 player because thay want to play open formats, have more interoperability...People won't like the fact that the music they bought can't be played on other places than their ipod (they just don't realize it yet).
Despite looks, a product that can't do half what the concurence does, can't be that cool...
5) would be funny to see what the EU would do about it (Yet, I'm still waiting to see what the EU does to microsoft...I fancy seeing microsoft have to pay a million $ a day till it behaves, it would be fun and a good lesson for others (rich people/corporations shouldn't be above rules)).
And I strongly feel too that :
Though they had a good start and people everywhere loves their product, I highly doubt that Apple will remain the uncontested leader in selling mp3 players/mp3 songs. Other big players/corporations (sony, microsoft, the music industry...) are interested in a (big) share of the juicy market and, one way of the other, they'll get what they want.
When the hipe around the ipod dies, what next ?
There is always a next big thing, you know
Just my 0.02 euros
Man, this is funny :D and right to the point, about our young generation...
The guy who modded you as troll is a fool or dense !
This is indeed a piece of sensible advice or I never heard one :
:D
Don't wait for your chance...Work and make it happen !
Thanks for the insight....
Good luck to you too
I guess so :D
I actually flushed the PH D down the toilet (damn useless thing). I ended up teaching for wannabe engineer student = good pay for 15 hours of work a week, and I use my hoard of free time to work on other projects (music at the moment :D..., but would n't be against mathematician for hire consulting work....greedy me :D )
It looks like mathforhire.com is for small fries :)
Well, I'm not looking for tutoring/teaching/help my neighbor to do his home work:
This kind of work isn't hard to find and basically nearly anybody can do/does it.
What I'm looking for is a kind of consulting job in maths/or to solve problems for tech firms/engineer teams
(they are great at their stuff, but aren't that good at research in maths)
The ideal would be to have a place with lots of math problems with a bounty
The harder the problems the greatest the bounty
(it already exists : you can get 1 million $ for solving Riemann's hypothesys, but lots of people have been trying unsuccessfully to do just that for the past 150 years).
Oh well...
I would like to know if there is a way to make money out of maths skills, as a freelancer.
I mean, I have a phd and I'm quite good at maths, having solved the 3 problems who where thrown at me in 1 year and a half (instead of the regular 3 years) but what I would like to do is :
solve mathematical problems/bring solutions to people/firms in exchange for hard coin.
Kind like a mathematician freelancer/mercenary : You do the job, you get the money and that's it.
I mean, there are web sites for freelancer artists/web developer/coder. But there isn't one for mathematicians.
So, the only way to make money out of maths (in france) is either to teach it or to research in an university. Either way, you are a salary man.
Man, that sucks.
What is the use for those monsters maths skills, that I patiently honed all these years if I can't even make a little cash out of it/or make more money out of it that the average teacher (that really sucks at research/high lvl maths) ?
Is Blender going to get an OFFICIAL import/export script .pz2, etc...) ?
to poser (.pz3,
Something really easy to use that could import a fully rigged (mesh, textures, bones and skins) poser model (high quality and cheap) into blender.
By "official", I mean a script that works for at least 80% of models and that is decently updated (I don't want to google through old forgotten web pages to find a script that crashes or only does half the job).
3dsmax has "gestureMax" and I think Maya can use poser models natively (though I might be mistaken).
The advantages of tex4ht over itex2mml (or latex2html) etc are :
1) tex4ht can convert standard TeX/LateX/AmsTex/etc code when itex2mml use a dialect of LaTeX :
Using itex means you have to learn another (La)Tex API (for some commands at least)
2) tex4ht is a much more versatile, flexible and powerful utility :
Indeed, it allows conversion of
(La)TeX documents or formulas to Mathml/xhtml/html+gifs or jpgs or pngs/open office documents/pdf/a few other document types.
3) it is smarter because it lets the (La)Tex engine preprocess the document and it then uses the special dvi produced to make the conversion....whereas itex2mml tries to guess what the user want from the document WITHOUT letting (La)Tex process it.
Lol...it uses an (light) implementation of a "basic/castrated" Tex Engine
One consequence is that Tex4ht can generally use the macros defined by the user when itex2mml fails beautifully at it
I never called you a fool...
That was an "if" statement. A perfect logical one too : I'm talking about features/scripts (third parties included) that would make
blender a good alternative for maya/3ds max for the production of good qualities movies. You pretended blender had then (without giving proof/links). I just asked you to back your words. If you can't back your words, wouldn't you be a fool to have said them in the first place ?
Remember that these blender features/scripts should be solid enough to meet commercial quality.
I looked for this kind of scripts when I tried blender in July, became frustrated with those I found/googled (lots of blender import/export scripts are old/obsolete/don't work well). In the opposite, the commercial solutions for 3dsmax (from third parties)
worked flawlessly for me (at least I got more than 80% of success, you can't hope for much more in the 3d world).
Please note, that I GAVE YOU references to great plug ins. If the link you gave me (I read about that in july) is the best you can do, it wont change my opinion that :
Blender may have a great feature and is a nice piece of software. But it CANNOT compete TODAY with 3ds max/maya for the creation of movies...even if it CAN create movies.
*formating the previous post*
.3ds import script and it definetely didn't have a poser import script.
.obj and importing each .obj into blender",
I fire back at you :
last time I used blender 2.37 (july 2005), It had a basic 3dsmax
I'm not talking about importing wafefront obj meshes here, but FULLY RIGGED poser characters,
with bone system and vertices assigned to bones.
And if by importing poser animation, you mean "converting each frame to
I know that blender can do it but this feature isn't good enough, sorry.
What blender needs is POWERFULL plug ins (not basic/uncomplete ones) that simplifies hte artist's life, like these commercial ones :
gesturemax : converts fully rigged poser character into the physic/bones system of 3dsmax
phoenix : create DYNAMIC flames around something (with lights with shadows that moves accordingly to the object's movement)
Speedtree : create great looking trees/forest (low polygons, with light cpu use)
Ventiloquist : lipsync plugin
dreamscape : for clouds, sky etcs..(low cpu usage..and lights and shadows for the clouds layer..etc...)
I suggest you to make an internet search about these plug-ins, you'll see that those can make an artist's life much easier
and greatly enhance the MOVIES you create.
If you know plug ins for blender that have the same set of VERY convenient features, I would be delighted to know of them
(and I would beg you for forgiveness for my ignorance). If these plug ins of yours are free, I will even call you "god".
If you don't, well....you can't even back your words, so BE GONE fool !
Another great advantage of 3dsmax and maya on blender is : hardware renderer.
Have you heard of the coming Gelato/Sorbetto/Amaretto solution from nvidia for their quadro fx professional cards ?
Please wake me up when blender gets such support from nvidia/ati/3dlabs/matrox....
sorry for the previous (unreadable) post, I should know better and preview the post, sorry...
I fire back at you : last time I used blender 2.37 (july 2005), It had a basic 3dsmax .3ds import script and it definetely didn't have a poser import script.
I'm not talking about importing wafefront obj meshes here, but FULLY RIGGED poser characters,
with bone system and vertices assigned to bones.
And if by importing poser animation, you mean "converting each frame to .obj and importing each .obj into blender",
I know that blender can do it but this feature isn't good enough, sorry.
What blender needs is POWERFULL plug ins (not basic/uncomplete ones) that simplifies hte artist's life, like these commercial ones :
gesturemax : converts fully rigged poser character into the physic/bones system of 3dsmax
phoenix : create DYNAMIC flames around something (with lights with shadows that moves accordingly to the object's movement)
Speedtree : create great looking trees/forest (low polygons, with light cpu use)
Ventiloquist : lipsync plugin
dreamscape : for clouds, sky etcs..(low cpu usage..and lights and shadows for the clouds layer..etc...)
I suggest you to make an internet search about these plug-ins, you'll see that those can make an artist's life much easier
and greatly enhance the MOVIES you create.
If you know plug ins for blender that have the same set of VERY convenient features, I would be delighted to know of them
(and I would beg you for forgiveness for my ignorance). If these plug ins of yours are free, I will even call you "god".
If you don't, well....you can't even back your words, so BE GONE fool !
Another great advantage of 3dsmax and maya on blender is : hardware renderer.
Have you heard of the coming Gelato/Sorbetto/Amaretto solution from nvidia for their quadro fx professional cards ?
Please wake me up when blender gets such support from nvidia/ati/3dlabs/matrox....
Blender needs more plugins or more powerfull ones:
one to import fully rigged poser models (cheap high quality models with bones and skin)
one to create skys/clouds/suns/moons and animate it
one to create landscape
one to create the sean/animate it
one to sync a character's lips to a wav/tex file.
one to make an object burn
one to create trees/forests and to animate them
one to import/export fully rigged characters to 3ds max/maya
one to create/animate hair/fur
one to create/animate/simulate clothes
one system to simulate physical properties/constraints...
Of these functionnalities, I think blender only has the one to create landscapes.
3dsmax has all of these...(and maybee more)
By the way....The amount of money that famous actors make is ridiculous. World class Virtuosos do have to train daily for hours to play at the peak of their talent...and they don't get that much for each event World class actors just need to wake up (without an hangover) and act naturaly..... With one movie, where they only talk/run/stand/appear half naked they sometimes make more than 20 million $ And, of course, the dangerous scenes of the movies are done by someone who is paid 1/10000th less Not fair.....
Music albums require investments too...
/me thinks that there is less concurence in the movie business than in the music business.
as you have to pay for studios fees, for the cds, the box, for the publicity, the promotion tours, the hardware for the tour and you have to distribute it...
The fact is : most musicians are broke...and can't live from their music.
Mainly because the labels don't (for the big ones) or can't give (for the others) 'em much...
You really have to struggle a lot when you want to distribute your music.
The good thing about internet is that you can distribute your music and bypass all these sharks of the music business...
Statistically, the number of people playing an instrument is much bigger than the number of people acting...
Even if wannabe-famous actorS struggle hard too, it is my opinion that musicians have to struggle harder to make it.
What I meant is that they could have sticked to their Windows 2000 machine and avoided this problem. It is know as the most stable version of windows. Besides, why repair (upgrade/take risks to break) something that isn't broken and work well.
throwing Windows 2000 away for Win xp...
or not using
Linux
or
Macs
or
Solaris and sun hardware....
Gah...... ^_^; 13th root of say 10^130 is 10^10.... You see my point....you can have a phd in maths even if you can't compute 13th roots....
let me see..... 13th root of say 10^130 is 10^13 Wow... I just computed a 13th root of a 131 digits number in less than 2s.... Now, computing 13th root of 100 digits numbers in seconds is a nice super-power but...it's useless. It is Not one of those things that you can use often even if you are a normal mathematician. (it may be different for highly specialized ones) Besides, calculators were invented for this... Well...The good point is...if he can do that...I bet he can do a lot more usefull things with his head too. Lakedemon (phd in maths).
I mean...I just loved the Uplift saga
"Marée stellaire" et "Elevation 1&2" in french....
And I really want to see some men, chimps, dolphins Kanten, Synthian and Tymbrimi and Wazoon
(those scouts were cute, too bad they had to die) kick some Gubrus, Jophur, Soro, Tandu & Thenanins 's asses (or whatever they use to sit upon)
on a big black screen
Damnit David, just put some sense in the heads of those hollywood directors and make them adapt your novels !
Please make more money by entertaining us !
I always wanted to play with a teleguided car too, when I was little.
Damn *%$!%& Santa never brought one.....sob...
The core Foobar2000 is quite slim and....
you can choose to download and install the open source components (official or third parties) that you want....
this is customization as it should be.
So, some proprietary code was open-sourced. Great, let's rejoice a bit and then, quick, let's resume our everyday life :
You are losing your time speculating/bashing/praising this move from microsoft....
If you really want to do something to really help OSS,
stop talking and write some code !