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Sing to the Dawn Poster

Posted by Henryz from IndoCG. Finally. But I've watched the movie hundreds of times. Lol.

A device too sophisticated?

Not long ago I was thinking about buying a digital camera. But seems that most cameras are quite expensive, ranging from 3000000-4000000 ($300-$400). Yet I owned a monochrome colored nokia handset, I don't know which type. Bought it for just about Rp. 300000 (US$30 that is). Sure, I just use the cellphone for talk and sms, nothing more. But I miss something, like converting my address books.

The most sophisticated handheld device I ever own is a second-hand O2 XDAII. Bought that about a year ago. I like the whole idea, synchronizing all contacts and agenda throught outlook, but also cool apps and games for mobility. The only real headache, O2 erased everything in its internal memory once the battery drains completely. Re-setting the whole thing on the device each time I ran out of power isn't really a pleasing task. The camera was cool, but it's only VGA. Finally I had enough and sold the device, and went back to the mediocre featured nokias.

On long thought, I think it was quite fun, carrying your camera everywhere. But If I got a handphone and camera, carrying the two devices everywhere that wouldn't be so practical. I decided to buy a phone with a camera instead. Got my eyes on N95, the only reason is that it have 5 megapixel camera, plus it supports HSDPA. Well, I just thought why not. I want to surf on ultra high speed internet. Without further thinking, I bought the device.

First time I play with it, not much, just some symbian and java games, photograph everything with it, yadda yadda. Symbian and Java games are nothing special. I could've bought a much cheaper, half price than this n95 and play them. N95 comes with integrated GPS and wifi. Never used the GPS. But the wifi? Hmmm... most my pals visited coffee cafe bringing their 20" notebooks just to get the wireless internet. Woah. This is good. I can just bring my N95 and just browse, without carrying heavy notebooks. A potential arise.

Anyway the device comes with a TV-out cable. At firts I thought "oh this must be for displaying the pictures you've taken on a tv". Then I read an article somewhere, that really gives the great idea. Add a bluetooth keyboard, install office application, plug n95 on the tV then tada. You have a whole pc with big screen for doing office works!

N95 suprisingly comes with 3D accelerations too. I just found this out when trying out a game called global racer. Does somebody interested porting blender to Symbian? Wow... if somebody do, this would be big. I'm only dissapointed with the battery life, which drains out in about just a day. But nevertheless, the experience is quite good, and I don't regret buying this device.

Now this is what I mean with this whole post. At first I just bought this device for, what, the camera and the os? Most people bought sophisticated stuffs just for doing remarkably super simple task that can be done with cheaper, much simple devices. Nobody have the time to explore things like this. And most of the time, the most sophisticated nokia phone ever available now, end up just as a plain cellphone.

I guess the same thing goes to other area, such as software aswell. Such as people forces themselves to use high end 3D suite, just because it is being used in major studios. Or rather just because they never heard of anything other that those. To exaggerate the situation, it's like using a $15000 to render a plain sphere or using $5000 compositing software just to desaturate a jpeg (I use to do that when I was kid... using photoshop just to convert the image formats).

Some people refuses the opensource movement. I guess it just rather a human nature. Somebody who invested years of their life to put on the softwares they learn, saving money to buy the license and suddenly a strong, free competitor arise. For example when I told my friends about blender, those who never heard of it or heard of it and know that it's free becoming defensive and sometimes aggressive with their arguments.

One of the arguments is that why big studios don't use free softwares? Why did the 3D community never heard of it? Even though the situation now is very different, but I've been there before, that's the same argument I heard from years ago.

But nevertheless "you're not doing anybody any favor by using it". It's very up to you.

Undead color test

The rise of the Undead

Well, been playing with Laurentiu's undead again. The model is quite done, but not detailed. I always rather lazy doing textures and unwrapping. And also never did any finished character texturings before, most work I done was on architecturals. Except some tests I did back then such as the fairy. All I do when doing characters are modeling only. The undead was long neglected... then I dig up the model again, and said to myself, why not. The concept sketch done by Laurentiu was obviously way too great to be forgotten. Would be better if I can see the dude rise in glorious 3D rendering.

I'm planning to do only a still image of this dude. Something like rising from the ground filled with bloodlusts, dead city surrounds him and also the hunger of life expressed from his eye sockets. He is in real pain both body and soul, but somehow he love his immortality. Heh. Gone too far. Let's just see later.

Anyways, the base mesh done in max (forgot which version), unwrap and sculpting (for the body) done in blender 2.45, texturing done in gimp 2.2.17. Rendered in Max 6 using light tracer.

Some Slight Changes

Long time I haven't updated this blog. Well, quite busy with work now in an area with limited internet access. I'm currently working on a feature movie on Batam island. As a contract-based animator on Infinite Frameworks Studios.

I guess I'm very lucky to get involved in this project. I'm working with marvelous people such as our own CG seniors Daniel Haryanto, Patar Napitupulu, Syah Inderapramana, Deswara Aulia and international CG seniors such as Phil Mitchell, Philip Stamp, Steven Read, Alexis and Elsa Santos.

We currently don't have any international targeted feature movies. But yes, we already had some full animated feature movies. Such as Kasatmata Studios' "Homeland", which regretfully, I'm not involved with it. It was done by 100% local Indonesian people.

But we have to admit, we don't have any experience in these kind of project before, at that time. Now on IFW, everything is really prepared to the full extend, everyone is working very hard, and we suppose to be able to learn alot from the international CG crews, specially the pipelines and the systems.

All in all, I'm really having fun working on this project. It's what I've always dreamed. Working on a full scale-CG motion picture. But even so, there're tons of recreations subject here in batam. I work alot, but also I learn and play alot.

Heh, time is really precious here. I'm thinking to drop the giant for awhile and started to texturing Laurentiu's undead instead. But nevertheless the new giant concept is now built and ready to model.

And oh, Johanes finally finished Shadowpawn, along with ehsan, and the cute couple went into the frontpage of IndoCG. Check the thread here

And the last but not least. Xnormal is now updated to 3.11.1. Lucky month or me?

A new cool software to play with

Lately I was also spending too much time playing with a new software I found. Called 3DBrush. This software were made by russian developers who created the cossack RTS game. The gallery don't seem quite impressive, but the software itself rather powerful, in its very simple form. Here's the link where you can get this one : http://www.3d-brush.com/index.html

Looking impressive. The beta version is free. I tested the 1.7 version of the software. Kind of very slow atm. I'm glad there's clone tool, which is missing in Blender's painting tool. But it's also rather awkward too, at least in its current form. You can't choose smooth brush when using the clone tool, which rather renders the clone tool useless. I really love the interface tho. Haven't tried the version 1.8 yet. Nevertheless, I'm still keeping my eye on this one.

And oh BTW seems that lately CBModelPro got a fan site too. http://cbmodelprofans.blogspot.com/

Seems that the forum also started to crowded with some interesting models aswell. Even some non organic models which I thought would be very difficult and almost impossible to do on CBModelPro. http://forum.solidworks.com/forum/categories.cfm?catid=68&entercat=y

And the most pleasing news of the day Santyhammer released version 3.10.6 version of xnormal. Here's the changelog :
- Added two new examples from Howard Day and Vidar Rapp.
- Added an option to render a cheap and fast AO map from a lowpoly model + a normal map.
- Improved numerical stability and memory efficiency.
- Rewritten the multicore renderer.
- Added the 8MonkeyLabs mesh importer for their upcoming game "Darkest of days".
- Two new tools: the heightmap to occlusion and PhotoNormal to generate normal maps from photographs. Also added the normal map to cavity methods.
- Added automatic camera and light rotation in the 3D viewer.
- Added antialiased/non-antialiased map mask output files.
- Solved tons of bugs

cheap and fast AO, heightmap to occlusion, wow... that.... would.... save.... ALOT of times for ambient occlusion.

Get it at xnormal.net

On my own side, I Accidentally deleted the giant model when I'm cleaning up my files. Hooray. But luckily Laurentiu kept the original obj. Asked him and kindly look it for me from his archives. So got the base obj back.

Also recently just chat with Johanes and he kindly sent me the link to the shadowpawn progress on his website. Here it is.

http://johaneskurnia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=1

But lately I barely involved in the creation process. I went too slow on this one. The male model creation was took over by Ehsan Kiani. I just posted a single wip and a concept development. So might aswell said, it's Johanes and Ehsan's full work. Not mine. I'm just glad the lovely, adorable cute and twisted couple, finally took shape up.

It's interesting how they work this one out. Evolving all the way. It very far from Johanes' 2D execution but also my original concept. I suppose Ehsan also contributed the male concept of his own. Thumbs up for you guys!

So while Johanes and Ehsan finishing the Shadowpawn at the least moment and some times ahead I will have more time to finish the giant and undead, with my own developed Laurentiu's concept. Now I know, have and familiar with the tools I need, I will be doing this dude for months ahead. Gonna get crazy with this one.

these are my final weapon of choice :
sculpting : blender
normal map generation : xnormal
texturing : the gimp

I was hoping to get work under ubuntu, just for my idealism satisfaction, something like what project orange trying to prove. Free software are sufficient for productions. But dual booting kinda tiring, to maintain 2 oses at the same time kind of confusing.

ORB should run under Linux and wine I suppose, since it's not too demanding on the additional software requirements but haven't test it yet. I've removed dapper, got copy of feisty but I decided to go with windows instead. Still love playing games on my spare times, uh, ironically that's where the mighty penguin have really failed on me.