C o m p e r i o - E x o r i o r - C r e o 3 D

Moved

2009-02-18T05:54:00.001-08:00

Moved to cxc3d.wordpress.com

Sing to the Dawn Poster

2008-05-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

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

A device too sophisticated?

2007-12-17T09:37:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-30T09:40:00.001-08:00

The rise of the Undead

2007-10-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

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.

Even a fool prove software couldn't save an idiot!

2007-05-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

From my previous post (frost giant revisited), I said ORB wouldn't run because a missing opengl extension. Also xnormal refuses to run with the same error. And guess what. I set the Nvidia graphic "extension limit" to on. I don't remember why or when. Now orb run flawlessly aswell. Aswell as Xnormal in OpenGL mode. Clearly not the software mistakes here... lol

Welcome to... 0wn3dville

2007-05-10T04:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm on my way back from my office. Here's what I spotted on my way home. It's a spa and health center, but specializing in foot reflexiology. Either the owner loves linux so much and thought "aaah no one ever heard of linux beside me, the logo is cool, heck why not using it for my business, no one will know anyway" or in opposite, never heard of linux before and got ripped by the designer he/she hired. ROFLMAO.

It's 100% untouched copy of the Gnome Project logo. Although I'm no businessman myself, I do think this is bad example of business. How can an owner don't really care about critical stuffslike this, specially the image and "soul" of the business he/she runs?

Why not modified it just a little bit before using the logo, maybe keep the toes but loose the G shape. That wouldn't so hard to do isn't it? Geez!

pidgin 2.0

2007-05-07T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well, this isn't anything about CG. But pidgin 2.0 is out. Pidgin was formerly known as gaim. They changed the name into pidgin to settle some legal issues with AOL (with their AIM instant messenger... who's using that anyways). Anyways gaim is one of my favorite instant messaging client. Simply because it supports tons of protocols. The only downside is that this software is kind of huge. Yet it's safe and support linux. Other clients I use are Miranda and easymessage. Pidgin 2.0 was said to have better support on file transfers. I installed it and the GTK theme looks more clean and pretty on windows.

You can visit their website at www.pidgin.im

Frost giant revisited part deux : Commercial softwares VS free (both beer and speech) softwares showcase

2007-05-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Well, got my sinus operated. The experience itself : priceless! I mean how many times you get operation or do you even expect to get operation? ROFL. When they drag me to the room and told to lay down all i see is the huge lamp on the ceiling. Everything is white. Whoa... they gonna turn me into Strogg! Wohoo!

Started to get anxious and the nurses sticking stuffs to my body also plugged my hand with the infus needle. 10 o'clock the anaestetic drug flows in, heh, I'm telling you that's one cool experience. You started to feel like sleepy but veeeerrry sleepy. You resisted but yet your eyes are very heavy. then everything went black. When I woke up I can feel my bed was dragged outside. Saw the clock on the wall 11 am. 1 hour only, that's fast.

So here I am again. Refreshed. Without any green goo dripping from my nose. Ew. Gross. Thanks doc.

Getting back to the giant model. Finally found a solution. Pointed by Santyhammer, I should play with the "cage" settings. I downloaded the whole tutorials and bummer. The cage tweaking requires the 3d viewer launched. The viewer refuse to run on my machine, said my hardware don't support "GL_ARB_multitexture", I don't know what the heck is that, something todo with opengl perhaps. Nevertheless, it generates the map flawlessly (outside the artefact problems of course, which would require the cage tweaking within the 3d viewer).

Researched many times on the google, downloaded ATI normal generator, but it uses its own format and I can't find an exporter for blender. I am too dissapointed with this issue so I lost my mood of researching ATI's normal map generator any further.

So heck I turn back to Nvidia Melody. Just one correction from the previous post; turn out melody should be able to generate displacement maps aswell. On the previous post I use version 1.1 of Melody. I checked on nvidia.com, they already released 1.20. So I'm gonna give it another shot. Installed and imported the obj flawlessly. Also the map it generates is cleaner, but not without any problems. It still have the artifacts but lesser than xnormal using default settings. Nothing that can't retouch within GIMP. Score 1 for melody.

But I don't know why, Melody crash alot. I think it have something todo with displacement map creation. When I just turn on generate normal and turn off others, It runs fine. Xnormal scored 1 in term of stability compared to NVidia's. Melody is built by gigantic company that holds the graphic technology "standards". While xnormal is built by individual. Perhaps it's the deep love of "parents to child" between a programmer and his/her software?

The seams? I fixed them using polyboost clone tool within max. Heck this software's super cool, and surely far cheaper than Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint 3D or Maxxon's Bodypaint. And all I need is the clone stamp for removing seams.

I test and apply the normal map within max. Here's the result :
Seams are everywhere. I already tried to tweak any possible settings within the normal mapping on the material editor. I give up.

Anyway here's when applied to diffuse map. See any seams?
So I fire up blender and apply the normal map onto the dude. Here's the result :

No seams. How come? Maybe I'm missing a couple of steps in max? Maybe. If I'm not than definitely blender have far more superior support for tangent-space normal map. Score 1 for blender. So now I can sculpt the dude further within blender without any worry.

Here's the current progress with the diffuse map + normal map :

BTW I also had the chance to test a max plugin called "polyspeed3D". The creator said okay you can be a beta tester. Just like that. It is said it'll improve Max performance further. Whoa... wait for my review on this one guys.

Another correction : I fire up xnormal, the viewer now runs smoothly I don't know what the hell I did. ROFLMAO. XD. Well, I should give it a further try then.

Frost Giant revisited

2007-04-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Well, lately I've been quite sick, need operation but my blood check always not qualified. I'm also working this one on paralel with my collaboration with JohanesKurnia (no WIP allowed to be shown by him yet) and my office works at home so spended about a week on home so I got more time to do some progress.

Laurentiu didn't supervise this one anymore, so I redefine the concept for this guy. I'm not gonna putting any beard or furs, but maybe to a more frontline warrior with huge club and minimal armor. Gonna do some quick sketch later to see what this guy gonna be.

Anyway the whole process now done within blender + Gimp and also fetched a cool normal map generator called xnormal. Tried Nvidia's melody but it refuses .obj (and every other formats aswell) that made with blender. But also melody is normal map only. While I think xnormal is capable to produce normal and displacement map. Yet this is quite good, since I still do research on how to utilizes free (as in free speech and free beer) softwares to produce high quality CGs.

Other softwares I bumped to are DE Normal Generator (it's on sourceforge), this one supports Linux with the source code available on the website and ORB (Open Render Bump). Tried both but seems failed in opening the models. DE Normal Generator uses its own file format, and included a python script for blender, but failed to export the guy. I doubt that xnormal would work under wine, since it uses .net framework, directx 9.0c april 2007, and VC libraries.

Blender's built in normal map baker isn't capable of creating the so-called "tanget space" normal map, which is unusable on dynamic objects (creatures), only usable on such objects like wall or something. Tangent space normal maps are more dominated by blue color, while blender produces balanced red, green and blue on the maps. It is said tangent space normal maps generation will be implemented on 2.44 or so. That'll took at least 6 months for the release.

BTW here're the progress caps :

Original Mesh (subsurf modifier) :

Sculpted in Blender (level 3 multires) less than an hour work :

Diffuse Map (still WIP) made 100% under GIMP :

Normal map generated from xnormal :

As you can see there're several marks in normal map. They're artifacts and I'm still looking for a solution for it. Cheers.

100 of triangles fun

2007-04-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

This time it's quite challenging. A character. But not just a character. The client requested a full featured facial animation, with 100 triangles limit on the model.

Whoa d00d. How? Hoooow? For comparison, older games such as quake took at least 300 triangles or more. They don't have facial animations. Maybe older RTS games would took less. But 100 with facial animation? They also asked for m3g format. What the hell is m3g?

Have you ever done this? they asked. Low polies yes, but not this low, let alone featuring facial animation. And what the heck is m3g, I have no clue. But I said yes anyway. I like the challenge.

The model is a fish, for a mobile phone game under Java. Done a research in a day on all about m3g. Resulted in some m3g file tutorials and specifications. Okay I get this m3g thingy now.

Modeling finished quite fast. But optimizing and reaching the targeted polygon budget, now that's a real headache. It's way too limited. Hum.

Animating a turntable 720○ rotation and exported it using Max 9's default jsr-184 exporter. Testing it using Max included m3g player. Okay the model looks great.

But I'm in dillema. Should I rig a skeleton? Or use other methods? Gawh. Would took longer times and too risky. I don't know how m3g would handle bones from max. So I decided to use morph animation for all the deformations. At least old games support morphings, m3g should too I think to myself.

So I created about 16 target morphs. Animated it, and exporting it again. Here comes trouble. The model won't show. I tried many times but still it's either blank or the model's static without any animation at all.

Then suddenly, I found a PDF of 3dsmax' m3g exporter specification. I read a line there and said to myself "dude, you're screwed". The line said "m3g exporter don't support morph animation". Yet my animation was 100% based on morph animation.

Stressed out for couple of hours looking for answers. Tried most things that came up in my head, and all failed.

What the hell should I do. Well, fired up Firefox again and typed www.google.com. Tips of the day : google IS your best friend :). A little harder search finally gave me an answer.

Exporting is fine, testing on the viewer.... (crossing my finger) the animation going well. Wohooo! Victory is mine...

Adrenaline Rush

2007-03-31T11:14:00.000-07:00

"Awang Cekmat" (I think it means careful/frugal guy or something) modeling, rig and skin. A Mascot for Brunei Darussalam PU and DES (Petroleum Unit and Department of Electricity Service~ as I recall). Must be finish in a day. Completed in about 6/7 hours.

When I was offered this project, it was noon, about 5 PM. Usually I'm arrive back home at 7PM. A colleage of mine gave me the all the detail but the last thing he said "1 day, 9 pm tonight must be delivered with all the rigs". Holy crap. Should I take it? I bargained "tomorrow morning". "Sure".

I'm pretty sure I can do this in less than 5 hours, but I always expect the worst thing would came up on the way. I'm not an optimists, I'm a confident pessimists :)

Started on about 7 PM. The modeling took less than an hour, but for the rig, I bumped into some problems on the way, such as the fingers won't curl or the faces flipped and the leg skinning setup got f-d up for no apparent reason. These kind of things happen alot if not because of the software itself, but because you're exhausted or sleepy. The clock shows 1 AM. I was started to get anxious. 2 AM it's finished. Whew.

The rig are very simple. 4 morph targets, 7 IK controllers, 16 custom attributes, 17 shapes for controller proxies. Done in Max 6 to maintain highest compatibility.

Ubuntu Fascination

2007-03-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Dang! All these times I haven't had any chance of testing the wireless under ubuntu. Now I have the connection. Yep. It's working. Using Intel pro wireless hardware. Thumbs up for Mark Shuttleworth and the whole ubuntu staffs. Thank you for such great distro. I say this is the most user friendly distro I've ever found, with superb hardware recognition. No wonder Ubuntu stuck up there on Distrowatch page hit rank. Would I turn back from this one? Maybe... someday I'll try to conquer slackware again.

The quest for 21 million rupiahs worth notebook

2007-03-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Well, my cheap Acer wouldn't be sufficient anymore to do my works. I need a new notebook, so far I have 21 million rupiahs, I earn that amount of money myself. That is moa money so I can do anything with it. Thou had problem with that?

First thing first. I can't risk my eyes damaged by the ugly interface that older operating systems have. A minimal Windows Vista Ultimate edition with aero glass effect would be required. Thus I would need a bleeding edge technology equipped notebook. Say, equipped with Quadro, with dedicated memory at least 512 mb of RAM. 1 gigabyte of RAM won't be sufficient since I'll be working on hundreds of lines of essays using Microsoft Word. I say 4 gigabyte of it. I don't want any lags occur when I'm using this notebook. So even intel core duo 3 ghz wouldn't be enough.

For browsing important websites such as http://uh-oh.net for our studies, I will need extra security so that no viruses nor spywares and trojans would able to penetrate my system. I'm too lazy learning to use weird browsers such as firefox and opera, let alone they're free! My gosh! What would people say if I'm using free stuffs? So I figure software based firewall won't be enough. I'm also too lazy updating my antivirus software database it must be hardware based firewall with double license of antivirus softwares, you know, just in case.

I'll be doing top secret jobs, so I will need extra hardware security on my notebook. Such as fingerprint ID, retinal scan, and perhaps for extra-hardened security I want voice recognition aswell. But I don't think even that would be enough. Maybe I'll order a custom build fart and burp recognition device. You know, scientist have discovered that our fart sounds very distinctively one another, base on what underwear we're wearing, also our arse's characteristic. Wether wet sounded (like brrrrtttttt!), or a hiss (sssssshhh). Our favorite food we eat everyday will also alters our genetic burping characteristic. So this will be very necessary.

Yet, I discovered every person's credit card have distinctive numbers on them. I don't know what the purpose is, but I just found that out. Maybe I can use this also for the extra security layer. A credit card swiper. How genious I am. I'll suggest this to notebook producers. So only those who have same numbers on their credit card can only access my notebook. While those who have different numbers would be charged everytime they swipe their card on my notebook. I mean how are the odds a person would have a same credit card number from another? base on a statistic came out from nowhere it's about 0.000001%. See? I'm a genious. I can gain profits from those who try to access my notebook without permission.

I will need to transfer my espionage mission snapshot from my infrared and night vision equipped cameras. Floppy drives and Thumb drives are old technology. And I'm allergic to old technologies. I require a built in multi card reader, bluetooth and wireless LAN. I will be keeping high resolution study materials I acquire from bangbros network so I will need at least 500 gigs of harddrive space.

Also I'm a clumsy person. I drop my gadgets and electronic stuff all the time. I will need adamantium (you know, those metal thingy from wolverine's claw) hardened case on my notebook. Also my hobby is diving, I figure it will be fun to work underwater with the fish. So at least 1000m water-proofed capable notebook would be very important.

I look around for the notebook of my dream. Let see. Oh geez. Turn out they sold some Rp.3.000.000 - Rp.5.000.000 priced notebook. Stupid people. Who would want to buy such cheap stuffs?

Here're my candidates notebooks (taken from bhinneka.com) :

ACER Aspire 9125WLHi
Core 2 Duo T7200, 1GB DDR2, 120GB HDD, HD DVD±RW, 56K Modem, GbE NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, TV Tuner, VGA NVIDIA GeForce Go7600 256MB, 15.4" WXGA, Win XP Media Center

ACER TravelMate 8215WLHi
Core 2 Duo T7200, 2GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, Bluray DVD±RW, 56K Modem, GbE NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, VGA ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 512MB, Camera, 15.4" WSXGA, Win XP Pro

ASUS Lamborghini VX1 Black
Core 2 Duo T7400, 2GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, DVD±RW, 56K Modem, GbE NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, VGA Nvida GeForce Go7400 VX 128MB, 15" SXGA, Win XP Pro - BONUS Asus Optical Mouse

ASUS Lamborghini VX1 Yellow
Core 2 Duo T7400, 2GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, DVD±RW, 56K Modem, GbE NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, VGA Nvida GeForce Go7400 VX 128MB, 15" SXGA, Win XP Pro - BONUS Asus Optical Mouse

FUJITSU LifeBook P-1610s
Core Solo U1400, 1GB DDR2, 80GB HDD, 56K Modem, NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, Fingerprint, VGA Intel GMA950 224MB (shared), 8.9" WXGA, Win Vista Business

TOSHIBA Qosmio G30-3012E
Core 2 Duo T7200, 1GB DDR2, 200GB HDD, HD DVD±RW, 56K Modem, NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, Fingerprint, VGA NVIDIA GeForce FX Go7600 256MB, 17" WUXGA, Win XP Media Center

TOSHIBA Qosmio G30-P650
Core Duo T2500, 1GB DDR2, 200GB HDD, HD DVD±RW, 56K Modem, NIC, WiFi, Bluetooth, Fingerprint, VGA NVIDIA GeForce FX Go7600 256MB, 17" WUXGA, Win XP Media Center

All price range is about Rp.20.000.000 - Rp.30.000.000

None of those notebook equipped with the technologies I want! What should I do! I know... I shall consult with our trusty, infamous technology, telemathics, psychic wizard.

Hi Roy! ™

Shadowpawn realization

2007-03-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

So one of my colleage, Johanes a contacted me. He said, "hey how about realization of the shadowpawn?"

Shadowpawn is one of our collaborative project. I describe the concepts, descriptions and the base rough sketch. He did the execution all by himself. The new clean sketch with alot of modification (I actually wanted quake 4, frankenstein style) and coloring. But his new, modified concept gets warm welcome from everywhere.

You can see the shadowpawn page here :
http://johaneskurnia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=27

artwork by Johanes Kurnia

Here's shadowpawn descriptions :

"Shadowpawns are Hell Warriors. Humans captured by the Hell forces, their memories wiped, their physical abilities boosted and all their emotions cleansed. Converted to fight on the Hell's side. But one human nature that hell can't get rid of. The desire and passion of love. Captured couples were assimilated, their bodies combined with their lovers, so that even in the war their lust and desire won't get in the way. Together within the newly formed body they fight their own people for hell."

see the page here from the Forsaken Earth universe :
http://novelas.wikia.com/wiki/Forsaken_Earth/Races#ShadowPawns

Well, I'm pretty excited, and he said the TD at his studio where he's working wanted to get involved with this project. Time to fire up blender again!

credit :

www.johaneskurnia.com

My Ubuntu Desktop

2007-03-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

I always digg for slackware, especially for its simplicity (one of the slackware slogan is "simplicity is divine"). But sometimes it is too simple, and require too many hard work from the users just to get it running. On my Acer Aspire 9412 the network isn't working. I also tried several Slackware-based distro, like Slax, Myah, Zenwalk (I really like Zenwalk) but none can make the hardware works. Now this is really sucks.

So, I dig up my Ubuntu Dapper and reinstall it on my notebook. With ubuntu even my wireless is working right-out-of-the-box. A minor problem persist, occasional lockups occur. This is the reason why I remove ubuntu from my harddrive. It's minor but kind of annoying. I just realize this happens on my windows partition aswell, although not as intense. Most people still complain about this, Suse, fedora, etc users are reporting this symptom. A patch already worked, but well, would took more hard work compiling a kernel yourself.

No matter what, I need some linux softwares, specially Supertux and Frozen bubble heheh. Also Scribus actually, I don't know why Scribus isn't really working well under windows.

Anyway so I just reinstall ubuntu, and try to live with it until maybe feisty out (hopefully they've fix it). Installed xfce and fluxbox, but eventually I went back to Gnome again. Gnome is sexy... not so fat, not so thin, but very beautiful. Nuff said. Customizing everything so a little bit similar to Mac (no zoom effect on the Icons, and no, I don't like KDE).

Installed Wine, the classic unreal (windows version) is playable under Ubuntu, Portable Firefox and Thunderbird is working, life's good.

Here's my current desktop, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on Gnome 2.14.3 (the best DE evah!). The wallpaper found somewhere in the net.

Simple interior

2007-02-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

This interior were made in about 2 days. The purpose of this project are for teaching material. Targeted audience is a complete 3D animation starter. The students will be expected to be able
to create such scene after 12 sessions (3 hours each), without the lighting rig.

Thou art lameth, Sir!

2007-02-05T00:38:00.000-08:00

So I bought this InfoLinux Magazine (yeah it's geek stuffs, goodie). 02/2007 edition. An article said that Indonesian Government signs an MOU with Microsoft, that said Indonesian government would buy 35.496 license of Microsoft Windows and 177.480 license of Microsoft Office. A single license of Microsoft Windows is about US $275 and office is about US $179 *brings a calculator*. Simple math :

275x35946=9885150
179x177480=31768920
9885150+31768920=41654070

So the Indonesia have national debt to Microsoft about US$ 41.654.070. Let's just say US$1=Rp.9.000,-. Do the math, baby! That's about 374.886.630.000 rupiahs.

In short, Microsoft 0wn3d Indonesia already. Well done to the lazy lame a**es up there who wouldn't even willing to learn something new! How many people can be fed with that amount of money? Indonesia's rate of poverty are such high. Yet that amount of money is used to facilitate lazy people, where there're far cheaper and familiar solutions already available out there. What kind of softwares do the government workers use? How complex? Office suite are the main softwares (duh? the number of license for MS Office the Government plan to buy). There's already OpenOffice out there. Or if that isn't enough, there're tons of commercial but cheaper solution than Microsoft's. What's the excuse? Standard? There's nothing standard about proprietary formats. OOo can open MS Office documents almost flawlessly, and I've been using it since years ago. So standard isn't an acceptable excuse.

How people think about free stuffs, how free stuffs aren't as good as the expensive ones. The prestige image when buying expensive stuffs. I say this is one of the main cause. In the software world, legal softwares here are very expensive and only few people can afford it. Thus, the solution : steal. More thief, more cheaper but full featured commercial softwares for everyone. Why would I want to use free stuff when I can get expensive one with very low price? That's what I think most people think.

This magazine I read is all about Free Software movement, with Linux (the main, most popular product of FSF) as its main topic. Linux is a full featured operating system that I say would enough for everyday needs, if you're a non gamer or non multimedia hardcore and only uses computer for office stuffs (emails, spreadsheet, browsing, word processor, etc). For the other two cathegories, if you willing to find out and learn harder (with some sacrifices), you can use linux aswell.

There's this so called IGOS movement by the goverment, but what they really do is only releasing a distro for internet cafes based on knoppix, and it's a mess IMHO, and they don't target the main problem with piracy in Indonesia. Since then, I never read or heard anything anymore about this IGOS movement. No surprise for me.

The Indonesia Linux communities also dissapointed for couple of times with the goverment refusing to deal with them and considering their solution. One of the project is KPU (hacked and 0wn3d by Dani Firmansyah). But I don't think goverment offices migrates to Linux just like alot of internet cafes everywhere in Jakarta.

Why is it come to such mess? One day I suggested a person, why not use wordpad instead of the full featured microsoft office if you just writing a letter (that person installed everything right from word, excel, powerpoint and frontpage just to get to type the letter)? Guess what's the answer? "I can't it's different". ROFL. The most priceless excuse I've ever heard. Familiarity is the most excuse people refusing this peculiar breed of software. So yeah I've been curious about this new digital penguin species for about years now, and keep anxious of learning it.

Well, that's very up to each of us. I'm prepared. I got the almighty penguin on my side :). Do you?

Linux Hell

2007-01-24T12:46:00.000-08:00

I learn Linux for couple of years now. Started with RedHat 6.0 back then but not much. I installed it but well, what should I do next? The GUI is working but with 16 colors, I'm very unfamiliar with the softwares. So nothing I can use from this alien operating system. Then couple of years later I heard about Mandrake, the most easiest Linux distro ever based on RedHat. Back then, it was Mandrake 8.2. So what the heck, I grab a copy from a local store then installed it on my PC. Wow. Linux surely change alot. Install is just a snap, great apps, specially Openoffice.org, Xmms and GIMP. With some games included it's even better. Frozen Bubble, Super Methane Brothers, Tux Racer. At least now I have much todo in Linux. So I thought hey, can I live only with Linux? I remove my windows installation and work with Linux for a whole week or two. Yes, I survive. But one problem. I'm a 3D animation professional and hobiist. I need 3D animation apps under Linux. Now this is a huge problem. There's almost none. Mandrake includes a evaluation copy of AC3D, but I need a fully functional one. So sure Maya is released under Linux also but it's hard to find a copy of the Linux version here. So I do some research on the internet and turn out I found ALOT. K-3D, Art of Illusion, and especially the infamous Wings and Blender. Now I'm really hooked with Blender. For wings, well, since Blender can do modeling aswell, I don't need too much softwares anyway so I never touch it as much as I play with Blender. Even today, Blender is still one of my main app.

So I learn about being a Linux user. My mandrake installation running fine, I work with Linux without any problem. But I'm not satisfied with Mandrake. There're alot of unused, unfamilar package installed automatically. I want a clean system with no bloat at all. So I took a copy of RedHat, the father of Mandrake, again. That day it was version 9. I remove Mandrake and installed RedHat. Well, a little bit faster with less bloat in it. But still, I'm not satisfied. One day a person suggested me to use Slackware. It is highly customizeable 100% according to my needs. Wow. Maybe this is it? So I grab a Slackware 9 copy and try to install it. I jump into expert mode right on the first installation. I choose each package carefully, reading its descriptions and guessing wether I would need it or not. Everything went wrong, but most of all X don't start. But the bash console tells me what's wrong, what package I miss. So I redo the installation and now I'm adding the package I miss told by bash. I reinstall it couple of times, reading the errors and suddenly I got myself a super clean installation with a fully working GNOME desktop. But browsing the internet or running a network with my Slackware installation was impossible, because I install none of the "n" packages. Well, I want a super clean operating system but also a fully working one. Now that's hell.

So I left Linux for sometimes and then now I grabbed ubuntu. This one is clean, and all my network devices are working from the start. But the downside is it can't play any of my media files (movies, sound, music etc). And there's too few softwares included so not much todo here. I was in brunei when I ordered the ubuntu CD, so when I play around with it I have no problem getting new softwares. And also I discovered EasyUbuntu script. In brunei internet was amazingly fast. Unlike here in Indonesia. But there's also a hardware problem. Ubuntu don't recognize the SATA controller on my notebook, so I got this freezes every once in a while. It's not comfortable working under Operating system which freezes frequently. So I removed Ubuntu.

Sometimes before I notice Ubuntu, I discovered Slax. A slackware based live cd distribution. I started to get interested in this one from version 3.0.25 or so. It's clean but kind of looking messy back then and there're still alot of unnecessary apps such as the potato guy (I really hate this app). Tomas just started this distro. But going through time, I routinely grab a Slax copy and I realize this distro is developing really well, it's getting neat and neater on each version. Started from Slax 4, this is it. This is the distro I always wanted! It also include a well written harddrive installation script.

But somewhere on Slax 5, Tomas, the developer removed the installation script *sigh*. Tomas wrote a tutorial on how to install Slax manually. It works. But some Slax scripts that weren't meant for harddrive installation were included if you use this method. So do I give up? Nope. I listed the installed packages in Slax and grab a copy of Slackware 11 and install it according to it. So here's the package list for you guys Linux enthusiast.

"a" packages
aaa_base-11.0.0-noarch-2.tgz
aaa_elflibs-11.0.0-i486-9.tgz
acl-2.2.39_1-i486-1.tgz
acpid-1.0.4-i486-2.tgz
attr-2.4.32_1-i486-1.tgz
bash-3.1.017-i486-1.tgz
bin-11.0-i486-3.tgz
bzip2-1.0.3-i486-3.tgz
coreutils-5.97-i486-1.tgz
cpio-2.5-i386-1.tgz
cups-1.1.23-i486-4.tgz
cxxlibs-6.0.3-i486-1.tgz
dcron-2.3.3-i486-5.tgz
e2fsprogs-1.38-i486-2.tgz
elvis-2.2_0-i486-2.tgz
etc-11.0-noarch-2.tgz
findutils-4.2.28-i486-1.tgz
floppy-5.4-i386-3.tgz
gawk-3.1.5-i486-3.tgz
gettext-0.15-i486-1.tgz
getty-ps-2.1.0b-i486-1.tgz
glibc-solibs-2.3.6-i486-6.tgz
glibc-zoneinfo-2.3.6-noarch-6.tgz
gpm-1.20.1-i486-2.tgz
grep-2.5-i486-3.tgz
gzip-1.3.5-i486-1.tgz
hdparm-6.6-i486-1.tgz
hotplug-2004_09_23-noarch-11.tgz
infozip-5.52-i486-1.tgz
isapnptools-1.26-i386-1.tgz
jfsutils-1.1.11-i486-1.tgz
kbd-1.12-i486-2.tgz
less-394-i486-1.tgz
lilo-22.7.1-i486-2.tgz
logrotate-3.7.4-i486-1.tgz
module-init-tools-3.2.2-i486-2.tgz
openssl-solibs-0.9.8d-i486-1.tgz
pciutils-2.2.3-i486-2.tgz
pcmcia-cs-3.2.8-i486-3.tgz
pkgtools-11.0.0-i486-4.tgz
procps-3.2.7-i486-1.tgz
reiserfsprogs-3.6.19-i486-1.tgz
sed-4.1.5-i486-1.tgz
shadow-4.0.3-i486-13.tgz
slocate-3.1-i486-1.tgz
smartmontools-5.36-i486-1.tgz
sysklogd-1.4.1-i486-9.tgz
sysvinit-2.84-i486-69.tgz
tar-1.15.1-i486-2.tgz
udev-097-i486-10.tgz
umsdos-progs-1.13-i386-1.tgz
usbutils-0.72-i486-1.tgz
utempter-1.1.3-i486-1.tgz
util-linux-2.12r-i486-5.tgz
xfsprogs-2.8.10_1-i486-1.tgz

"ap" packages
alsa-utils-1.0.11-i486-2.tgz
amp-0.7.6-i386-1.tgz
ash-0.4.0-i386-1.tgz
bc-1.06-i486-3.tgz
bpe-2.01.00-i486-1.tgz
cdparanoia-IIIalpha9.8-i486-2.tgz
cdrdao-1.2.1-i486-1.tgz
cdrtools-2.01-i486-1.tgz
diffutils-2.8.1-i486-3.tgz
dmapi-2.2.5_1-i486-1.tgz
dvd+rw-tools-6.1-i486-1.tgz
flac-1.1.2-i486-2.tgz
groff-1.19.2-i486-1.tgz
joe-3.5-i486-1.tgz
jove-4.16.0.61-i386-1.tgz
lsof-4.76-i486-1.tgz
lvm-1.0.8-i486-1.tgz
man-1.6c-i486-2.tgz
man-pages-2.39-noarch-1.tgz
mc-4.6.1-i486-2.tgz
mdadm-2.5.3-i486-1.tgz
most-4.10.2-i486-1.tgz
mpg321-0.2.10-i486-2.tgz
mt-st-0.9b-i486-1.tgz
normalize-0.7.6-i486-1.tgz
rexima-1.4-i486-1.tgz
rpm-4.2.1-i486-3.tgz
rzip-2.1-i486-1.tgz
screen-4.0.2-i486-1.tgz
seejpeg-1.10-i386-1.tgz
sox-12.18.1-i486-1.tgz
sudo-1.6.8p12-i486-1.tgz
vorbis-tools-1.1.1-i486-3.tgz
workbone-2.40-i386-3.tgz
xfsdump-2.2.38_1-i486-1.tgz

"d" packages
binutils-2.15.92.0.2-i486-3.tgz
gcc-3.4.6-i486-1.tgz
kernel-headers-2.4.33.3-i386-1.tgz
make-3.81-i486-1.tgz
perl-5.8.8-i486-3.tgz
python-2.4.3-i486-4.tgz

"kde" packages
kdebase-3.5.4-i486-7.tgz
kdelibs-3.5.4-i486-1.tgz
qt-3.3.6-i486-4.tgz

"l" packages
aalib-1.4rc5-i386-1.tgz
alsa-driver-1.0.11_2.4.33.3-i486-1.tgz
alsa-lib-1.0.11-i486-1.tgz
alsa-oss-1.0.11-i486-1.tgz
arts-1.5.4-i486-2.tgz
aspell-0.60.4-i486-1.tgz
atk-1.10.3-i486-2.tgz
audiofile-0.2.6-i486-1.tgz
cairo-1.0.4-i486-1.tgz
esound-0.2.36-i486-1.tgz
expat-1.95.8-i486-1.tgz
fribidi-0.10.7-i486-1.tgz
gdk-pixbuf-0.22.0-i486-1.tgz
glib-1.2.10-i386-2.tgz
glib2-2.10.3-i486-1.tgz
glut-3.7-i486-1.tgz
gmp-4.2.1-i486-1.tgz
gtk+-1.2.10-i386-3.tgz
gtk+2-2.8.20-i486-1.tgz
imlib-1.9.15-i486-1.tgz
lcms-1.15-i486-1.tgz
lesstif-0.95.0-i486-1.tgz
libao-0.8.6-i486-1.tgz
libart_lgpl-2.3.17-i486-1.tgz
libexif-0.6.13-i486-2.tgz
libglade-2.5.1-i486-1.tgz
libgsf-1.14.1-i486-1.tgz
libid3tag-0.15.1b-i486-1.tgz
libidn-0.6.5-i486-1.tgz
libieee1284-0.2.10-i486-1.tgz
libjpeg-6b-i386-4.tgz
libmad-0.15.1b-i486-1.tgz
libmikmod-3.1.11a-i486-1.tgz
libmng-1.0.5-i486-1.tgz
libmusicbrainz-2.1.4-i486-1.tgz
libogg-1.1.3-i486-1.tgz
libpng-1.2.12-i486-2.tgz
librsvg-2.14.4-i486-1.tgz
libtermcap-1.2.3-i486-6.tgz
libtiff-3.8.2-i486-2.tgz
libtunepimp-0.4.2-i486-2.tgz
libungif-4.1.4-i486-3.tgz
libusb-0.1.12-i486-1.tgz
libvorbis-1.1.2-i486-1.tgz
libwmf-0.2.8.4-i486-2.tgz
libwpd-0.8.6-i486-1.tgz
libxml2-2.6.26-i486-1.tgz
libxslt-1.1.17-i486-1.tgz
mhash-0.9.7-i486-1.tgz
mpeg_lib-1.3.1-i386-2.tgz
ncurses-5.5-i486-1.tgz
pango-1.12.4-i486-1.tgz
pcre-6.7-i486-1.tgz
popt-1.7-i386-1.tgz
sdl-1.2.11-i486-1.tgz
startup-notification-0.8-i486-1.tgz
svgalib-1.4.3-i386-2.tgz
t1lib-5.1.0-i486-1.tgz
taglib-1.4-i486-2.tgz
wv2-0.2.2-i486-2.tgz
xaw3d-1.5-i386-3.tgz
zlib-1.2.3-i486-1.tgz

"n" packages
autofs-3.1.7-i386-1.tgz
bind-9.3.2_P1-i486-1.tgz
cyrus-sasl-2.1.22-i486-1.tgz
dhcpcd-2.0.4-i486-2.tgz
iproute2-2.6.16_060323-i486-1.tgz
iptables-1.3.5-i486-2.tgz
iptraf-2.7.0-i386-1.tgz
lynx-2.8.5rel.5-i486-2.tgz
mutt-1.4.2.2i-i486-1.tgz
nc-1.10-i386-1.tgz
netwatch-1.0a-i386-1.tgz
nmap-4.11-i486-1.tgz
openldap-client-2.3.27-i486-1.tgz
openssh-4.4p1-i486-1.tgz
openssl-0.9.8d-i486-1.tgz
pidentd-3.0.19-i486-1.tgz
portmap-5.0-i486-3.tgz
ppp-2.4.4-i486-1.tgz
rdesktop-1.5.0-i486-1.tgz
rdist-6.1.5-i386-1.tgz
rp-pppoe-3.8-i486-2.tgz
rsync-2.6.8-i486-1.tgz
samba-3.0.23c-i486-1.tgz
tcpdump-3.9.4-i486-2.tgz
tcpip-0.17-i486-39.tgz
traceroute-1.4a12-i386-2.tgz
wget-1.10.2-i486-2.tgz
whois-4.7.15-i486-1.tgz
wireless-tools-28-i486-3.tgz

"x" packages
dejavu-ttf-2.10-noarch-1.tgz
fontconfig-2.2.3-i486-2.tgz
x11-6.9.0-i486-11.tgz
x11-fonts-misc-6.9.0-noarch-5.tgz

Frost giant unwrapped

2007-01-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is. Some minor warps on the head & neck area. But it's quite usable already. Unwrapped using blender. Blender LSCM unwrapper is one helluva really powerful tool. I understand it better than Max' pelt mapping and it's easier to do. Both LSCM and pelt are quite similar one another, with similar workflow (marking seams, then on to the unwrapping) but LSCM does some stuffs automatically compared to Pelt.

CBModelPro

2006-12-26T11:17:00.000-08:00

Found this software from blenderartist.org discussion, it's an interesting software. But I do think this is merely a repackage of kids software called "cosmic blobs", in a more professional look and ways and targeted to adults. Nevertheless, CB (from Cosmic Blobs?) Model Pro is one interesting software to play with. Very easy to learn, and very simple in design. The strong point of this software is the dynamic surface. Which means the surface will adapt on every sculpting process that users do. Thus, the user can focus 100% on modeling rather than worrying about technical aspects of their models. Think of it as pure digital clay.

It's very slow atm, considering the software is still in beta stage, and the meshes it generates are uncontrollable. So don't expect to generate an animatable model from this one. But think this way, this software can be used as "sketching tool". Model something quick, rough and dirty, export it to another software and then trace the surface with proper geometry.

I doodled with this software back then and created some interesting model. Posted on the forum, and now I check their gallery, hey whaddaya know? They put my works at the page!

These twos are just merely doodles, I was just trying to get my hands on the software. It's quite fun, and I think I created them in less than hours.

http://www.cbmodelpro.com/gallery.html

Open Universe Project

2006-12-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

I just made a wiki on wikia novelas, called Forsaken Earth. This project is about open universe project, which you can contribute, develop, use in any way you like, aimed for the story frame for games, short movies or whatever you want.

This one have been in my head for some years, then I found wiki, so I decided to post it on wiki thought might be useful for the community.

The universe itself is all about combination of mythical creatures combined with future, in a very dark theme.

If you're interested, go and check it out at :

http://novelas.wikia.com/wiki/Forsaken_Earth

Frost giant updated

2006-12-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Well, this is it, I do think the base mesh is quite done. He don't have any toes since he'll be wearing boots anyway.

Frost Giant

2006-12-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

I'm back helping Shards of Asgard and the leader, Mates Laurentiu assigned me to model 2 giants, frost and fire giant. He did the concept i think in just about less than an hour. "wait i'll do some quick concept *scratch... scratch*"... 15 minutes later... "here". Lol. 2 concepts. Whew. Great concept artist he is.

Here's a wip, not much and still a long way togo.BTW you can visit Shards of Asgard website at :

http://www.asgardshards.com/

If you interested to see how good is Laurentiu Mates with his hands, visit his website :
http://www.avatarart.com/

I also bumped on an interior project, for somekind of game cinematics, a throne room. It's not yet revealable. Still need to ask for permission. Let's just see later. Ciao!

Jame Asr Hassanil Bolkiah

2006-09-28T06:16:00.000-07:00

Here it is, in quite final stage. Composed and retouched by Artha aka Priyo Kwartadi.

3DSMax Batch Rendering Tricks

2006-09-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

This is for those who only have one PC at their hands. Sometimes when you need to render a couple of scenes at once so that you can move on to other work rather than wait for a scene to finish then reconfigure everything again you can use these tricks. AFAIK 3dsmax 8 have this new facility called "batch render" but I never got to that facility yet.

The first one is to use the backburner facility. Backburner is actually 3DSMax rendering farm facility. Its main purpose is really to spread the job around several computers at once so the rendering take less time. But it can also be used for batch rendering. This is quite simple. Just start up backburner manager and server on your PC, and then at the render dialog check the "net render" checkbox, and you're done. Open up the other scene, check the "net render" checkbox again, and do the same to the rest of your scenes. This would put the next scene into the queue. Add as many scenes you want and let the computer work for you. Go out and have a beautiful life.

The second one is when you have one scene but you want to render it with different views at once. You can use Video Post facility with this. Open up video post, add a scene event and output event. Configure them to your likings. For other views, just add another scene event and output event.

Hope that helps

Jame Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Revisited

2006-09-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

Digged up Jame mosque model and adding up some environments. I've cleaned up the whole model, organize the namings, layerings and doing further optimization. Also doing a proper, fast lighting setup using standard lighting. So, here it is, still in very early progress tho, rendered using standard scanline renderer.

Rendering time

2006-08-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Rendering time, the nightmare of all the animators out there. Digging some of my old folders found this file, screenshot of the Brunei 3D project rendering progress bar. The brunei 3D project was rendered with 4 dedicated rendering server equipped with Intel Xeon processor, using Autodesk Backburner network rendering software. Scary huh? Imagine how long would it took if it was only rendered using 1 desktop machine. But the scene wasn't properly optimized aswell with the given very short time range.

Joined Takran Online

2006-08-29T19:47:00.000-07:00

I've volunteered on some online collaborative indie game projects before this one, namely happyweed (spaceship vehicles), mythic perspective (characters), and shards of asgard (character). I was browsing blenderartists.org and a person posted volunteer recruitment on their game project called takran online.

Well, I said why not, to fill my empty times. So this is my first model built for the project, a greek temple. Final model is 2024 triangles.

The whole thing was built using blender and gimp. So here's what I want to do for a long time, using this icon hehe :

click on the icon to go to blender's website

Rendering was done under max, using light tracer. Wanted to use Yafray but I'm still very blind with Yafray.

These are the only references they give me. The texture was built from the second reference, retouched, and place it on the 512x512 UV template. It was done using GIMP. Crap, no "made with GIMP" icons available. But you can get GIMP at www.gimp.org

Takran's website is at http://www.dgxonline.net/takran/ registered there under the nickname "Stubbe"

Brunei 3D

2006-08-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is. Sorry for the long delay, got that "lazy updating" disease attack lol. I can't upload the whole movie so here's some caps instead. So enjoy the ride.

The Journey to CGOverdrive

2006-07-19T06:46:00.000-07:00

Well, all my part on Brunei 3D have been finished, now I have the time to share my pictures at the CGOverdrive 2006 Singapore.

At the Entrance

Carlos Baena of Pixar

Daniel Martinez Lara

Andrew Gordon of Pixar

Robert Chang

The bloody Indonesians (Rio and me) with Stahlberg and his friend Mr.Moayad. Accidentally stumbled to him at the SMRT

A pretty girl I met, introduced by Mr.Guni (one on the left), her name is Selvie. She goes to Singapore all the way by herself just to attend the conference. What a brave girl she is.

The trip cost alot of fortune. I'm broke. But with the experiences, meeting some extraordinary people and the knowledge I gain, it's worth it :). And if I don't dare to take the risk, how else would I learn to face risks?

Also Mr.Stahlberg posted our photos at CGSociety. I mean, it's Stahlberg... man! He posted our photos.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=344778&page=5&pp=15

To be or not to be...

2006-07-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Well, here we go. Alot of obstacles we've been through, like the new place for us to work and live isn't really prepared yet, so while working we're dry. No internet, no drinks, can't take any shower unless going to Bandar Seri Begawan since the bathroom here is a mess. This moving is necessary, since the rendering machine would eat up thousands of watts of power. The old office are also very crowded.

I can ask the neighbour wether I may use their bathroom, for doing our "business", but everyday? Na-ah, I don't think that's polite lol. Also we went to the CGOverdrive conference just yesterday although Fandy and Johanes are staying with the project.

Before I went to Singapore for CGOverdrive conference, I finished my part and hit the "render" button. The machines are rendering while I attended the conference.

Anyway tomorrow is the deadline. I already negociated about 2 weeks ago with my boss about this Brunei 3D project. We have to drop alot of the building and with this kind of human resources number we are only able to give Bandar Seri Begawan walkthrough. The man said okay, just do your best.

Other buildings will be assembled using motion graphic, sort of like turntable with realistic environments. Fandy done this retouching process with the building supplies from me.

And so, 15000 frames of Bandar Seri Begawan walkthrough is on its way. So stay tune, guys.

Brunei 3D project

2006-06-25T14:35:00.000-07:00

Or you may call it "Mission Impossible" Project. The project came from the Brunei Ministry of Education. 3 operators (Me, Affandy, Johanes), one month deadline, 4 whole cities full scale walkthrough, no blueprints, no aerial shots, no anything. We were focusing on distinctive landmark buildings and trying to keep everything as low as possible to keep the rendering time as low as possible aswell. Fandy was interrupted with another project in the middle, so that leave just two of us. So here're some of the buildings I've worked on :

Building 1 : 50th Birthday Monument

No comment on this one. I dunno much about this monument, but said it is build for Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's 50th birthday or something?

Reference shot

3D result ; 306 triangles

Building 2 : Jame Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque

The most expensive mosque in Brunei. I was told the budget to build and maintain this mosque is unlimited. The domes are gold (plated I guess) and the interior are fully marble.

Luckily we found a very old aerial footage for this one. Thanks to Cholis, the wise editor in our office. But the chopper only pass it by. I grabbed a screenshot, and use this one as reference. Also since this building is quite special here in Brunei, I go with medium polycount. So when zoomed some significant details aren't so flat.

Aerial reference

Reference shot

The 3D result (It has become a nice wallpaper on my workstation :) ). This is actually an older WIP ; 771166 triangles

Building 3 : Gadong Centerpoint

A classy hotel and shopping center. The exterior don't seem really classy at all, but if you enter the hotel lobby, whew. It's quite something allright. Not that fancy, but at least it has class.

reference shot

3D result ; 94 triangles

Building 4 : TheMall Gadong

The Mall claimed to be the biggest and the classiest shopping center in Brunei Darussalam. When I took a flight here, the booklets tells mostly about this mall.

Luckily we decided to went in for refreshing at TheMall when we were taking field shots, since I found a directory map near the escalator. This give me a better view of how the building is basically shaped, also googling for a while gives me some useful results.

The "blueprint" (sort of)

3d results ; 1457 triangles

Building 5 :The Old Syariah Building

I don't know what this building's function, but judging by the name of it, I guess it has something todo with the syariah law. I don't care. I do the 3D, that's what I really care about :).

reference shot

3d result ; 58 triangles

Building 6 : The Teapot Monument

I don't know what the heck is this monument is all about. I guess they just love to build monuments?

Reference shot

3D result ; 8512 triangles