The Pianist
Posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 9:57 pmFinished the scene immediately below. Hair was the only post-production.
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In the gallery.
http://gallery.fringewood.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=338
Finished the scene immediately below. Hair was the only post-production.
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In the gallery.
http://gallery.fringewood.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=338
I got my permanent modo 4 license a year ago. It has kept me pretty busy. I think the thing I like most abut it is the dynamic hair. It’s best hair I’ve ever used.
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There are so many other things that I like about 4.0.1 that it would take a lot of time to list. The animation panel is a big plus. So are the other advancements in shaders in the new rendering engine. All I can say is that I’m tickled to have it and intend on using it a lot in the coming year.
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First year total of modo 4.0.1 projects, 137 (2.6/week)
I have discovered that cicadas like Gershwin’s Summertime sung a capella. It would not be summer in Texas without the drone of cicadas, and Summertime fits in so well with their chatter. Gershwin must have been hearing them, in his head, if not in reality, when writing it.
One thing that drives me nuts are modeling nubes that present their first model, usually something simple like a vase, with in excess of 100k polygons and a file size of over 10M. It’s natural to pat them on the back for doing such a good job of modeling, up until they sub-divide the mesh several times to make it nice and smooth. It drives me nuts because usually there is no one there to say that sub-dividing isn’t necessary for use in a studio that automatically smoothes a low-poly mesh, except me it seems. That ends up making me the euphoria killer.
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Updated the blog to WP3.0, which meant that I had to update the theme as well. Fortunately, I was able to keep the CSS file (and some of the image modifications) from the old theme version and modify it properly to keep the same custom style as before and not have the Dashboard constantly telling me that I need to update it. It was tricky, as I did some major surgery a year ago when I adapted it the first time.
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Summer is winding upward, starting to turn on some real heat. Joy, joy. But at least it’s still green, unlike last year’s drought fueled, four month record heat wave. So maybe we’ll miss the 108°F highs we had last July and August.
I’m convinced. I’m giving up the guitar and singing and dedicating myself to playing the vuvuzela……. (Be a big star!)
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BTW, the best pronunciation I’ve heard from someone who has known the instrument for quite some time is vuh-vuh ZEE lah with a soft vuh-vuh and the ZEE having an accented rise in pitch. It falls smoothly off the tongue in a single breath. (Think Godzilla. Or better yet, Bubba-zeella)
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Well, I’m about to have the house to myself for several weeks, and the peach trees are just about to start turning out ripe peaches by the bushel. The job of picking these bountiful beauties in the heat of summer will be mostly mine, unless I can Huck Finn my way out of it. (Sure, picking peaches is so much fun….) About a dozen peaches have been picked, a very innocent beginning……
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One tree in particular is loaded to the hilt, possibly numbering over a thousand, branches drooping, some to the ground and requiring props to keep them up out of bug reach. It’s amazing just how much fruit this one tree is producing. It stuns everyone who looks at it.
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Most of the times I check on the trees, I am reminded of Steve Miller’s The Joker, “Sure do love your peaches, wanna shake your tree.”
Just a reminder as a cure for those dogs (or fools) who wander onto a skunk and get sprayed, tomato sauce (or tomato juice or tomato soup in a pinch, not quite as good) will zap the scent instantly. Wipe into the affect fur liberally, then wash it out with Dawn dish washing liquid. Amazing that such a total cure could be found in common tomato sauce.
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Austin (boxer: Sir Bubba Kuhnuckly, South Austin of The Aromatic Order of Knuckleheads) is thankful to be in the house today, with the temp outside in the mid-90’s. He didn’t mind licking off the tomato sauce as it sat for a couple of minutes, just to be sure, before the soap and rinse.
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The blog is almost a year old. Scary in a way. Passed too quickly, it seems.
Well, I yanked my freebies and said farewell to the Poser community (for the last time). I was justified in that the software that I warned was faulty, with a horde telling what a blowhard idiot I was for saying so, got updated yesterday, fixing the problem (supposedly).
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So now I have cut every last tie, pulled the freebies, and I’m moving on. Well, the freebies were being hot-linked, not to any alarming degree, and not that it hurt my bandwidth, but still, it was people taking advantage of my generous nature. I’m leaving the page there for the time being, but the download links are no longer functional. It’s there as a reminder for the time being.
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I’m not giving up on 3D, not by a long shot, even though I’ve stopped associating with the Poser community, a tie I’ve had since back in the 90’s. I have to admit that I outgrew the software years ago, and that I was there mostly for the friendships that I had formed. But many of them had faded away, and what was left of the community was too boring, too hostile, and too self-centered to hang around. There are still plenty of good people there, but they’re outnumbered by those who don’t want to deal with the learning curve (Barbie users, the make art button crowd).
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In a way, I blame the stores for it, drawing people in with the promise of easy use, when 3D is anything but. And turning the content toward nubie friendly ease at the expense of the experienced user has been sticking in my craw for years. They’re like a pack of baby birds with their beaks wide open, waiting to be fed, yapping at anything they don’t understand. I’m also reminded of the Instamatic camera making people think they were photographers.
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So I’m gone from the whole scene. No more reminders of what the community had become because of greed and laziness. The bookmarks have been relocated from the prominent locations. I can still access to see if anything new is worth downloading, but it won’t be tempting to check the places every day.
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It’s not an easy move. There is over a decade of memories being left behind. True, it’s not the only 3D community in which I’ve been a part. But it is a fairly large chunk of my life being left behind. I was given a lot, and I gave a lot in return. And there are plenty of people I will remember quite fondly. But the negatives are so prominent. It’s just too hard to ignore them, spoiling the good and the fun.
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I’m gone. Now to concentrate on what makes me happy.
Been visiting with Bill Staines the last couple of days. He’s hanging out with friends between gigs, and I dropped by when I heard. A most enjoyable time.