2011 Resolutions!

Forgot about this.. anyways! These are probably maybe definitely all doable, though I might be dead broke if I do manage to fit them all in...

- Get a bunch more clients
- Figure out XSI, especially ICE.
- Learn Spanish. All of it. Once I'm done with the work books I'll find some sort of meetup group.
- Brush up on French, probably a good idea to do meetup for this too..
- Visit people abroad - Germany, France, Colombia!
- Keep drawing/painting. Emphasis on capturing smaller details like hands,feet and face.
- Maintain Tumblr
- Cook more
- Draw more random stuff
- Take more photos
- Drink less caffeine, alcohol
- Exercise more
- Get a flat??

Resolving resolutions

Since 2011 is coming to an end, let us see how I did..
Work...Produce two short films. Whatev's

1. Learn new stuff! Python perhaps, or refamiliarise myself with 3dsMax, Houdini or something? Oh and Zbrush..and Vray. Well, I haven't learned any of the mentioned stuff, but I am pretty handy with Nuke now... That's sort of a success :)
2. Get a new job/career. Yup. Freelancing now. So far, so good. Tick.
3. Keep daily Firefox browsing average to under an hour! Draw in downtime and not slack lolz. Lol wut
4. Make some cash monies outside of main job (photography I hope) Still not sure how to do this!

 Personal..
More holidays/travel! Last year I managed 3, this year I need to have at least 4, or die trying (doesn't necessarily have to be abroad) New York...not much else..sigh

1. Go to more music gigs, cultural events. Not so many gigs this year, but a fair few cultural thingies
2. Acquire a new skill of some sort..(driving? new sport, tailoring! diy?) Nadda
3. New hobby (could be linked to 2) Nadda
4. Maintain Inverse Panda blog with frequent updates Well, I've started up a tumblr now..so that sort of counts
5. Finish two substantially sized paintings. I've finished many insubstantially sized ones...A winrar am I.
6. Decide. Can't actually remember what I'm supposed to decide on. But I think I'll stay in the UK for the time being.

Nuke stuff - basic shortcuts/hotkeys

shift-x to swap a/b 1/2 inputs.
ctrl-shift-x to detach from network
ctrl-shift drag onto, to replace node

killing nparticles with fields

Anything that works on old Maya particles should work just fine on nParticles.

I can't access Maya here right now but it should work just making a new event and deselecting emit and split and selecting kill original particle.

A more fun way is to create a volume axis field and check to see whether the particles are being affected by it.

If you set your particles lifespan to lifespanPP, you will need to set the lifespan in the creation expression, you can then set the particles lifespanPP to -1 when it enters the field. When you are in the expression editor you will see under attributes ones called inputForce
these correspond to the various fields affecting your particles. I believe they are numbered from 0 based on the order of which they were added to the particles.

So your expressions would look like.

Creation

lifespanPP = 3 + rand( 1 , 2 );

Before Dynamics

if (inputForce[0] > 0)
{
lifespanPP = -1;
}

Testing Vimeo Links..

After Effects footage stabilisation,smoothing

Pinched from AE-CoPilot..

Stabilise footage as usual, make layer 3d. Make a null, copy across anchor animation from stabilised footage. (check position matches footage) Make camera. Parent Camera to null.
select Null anchor, alt-click the animation clock thing.
Type smooth(0.2,5)
every 0.2 seconds sample 5 times. The longer the duration, the smoother, but more black borders ..mix and match etc.

houdini things..

Houdini - for reassigning group selections, select group node hit ` and reselect stuff...