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...

January is half done...

So far I've not made much progress on my "resolutions". I'm still resolved to get 'em done though.
I've also been bringing my own lunch into work most days and more or less spending all the savings on coffee :)

Life drawing seems to be sorted - had a decent session last week. Just need to document some of the sketches somewhere. I did have an idea to do some sort of super short animation for CNY but I keep getting distracted by work, general slack & games. Perhaps I should finalise a storyboard before deciding anything else.

Decided to try out Lovefilm for a few months. It's all free for now :) Working through many highbrow Criterion collection dvds. (oh and Milk was rather good!) Not entirely sure how this is going to be beneficial to unslacking - but I suppose it's better than browsing the web aimlessly in the evenings. It's also nice that it keeps a record of everything you've watched.

Tried to learn a bit of Python this week...it seems to save some time with certain programming procedures (loops especially), so I just have to keep familiarising myself with it, find some sort of Python for dummies exercise book.

Onward to a new week! I'm cautiously optimistic about it...and if I'm ready for what it might bring!

First!11one (of the year)

Before making a whole bunch of new resolutions/targets/goals/plans let's take a look at what happened with last year's!

1. Jump onto the indie development bandwagon. Be it a cruddy game or a half assed app it's something I feel is worth doing. At the very least I'll gain some programming experience. I've signed up for a free XNA creator club account and sat through 2 hours of tutorials to get the ball-a-rolling on this 'un. Short story -TAKES TOO MUCH TIME. IS BORING. I find it quite hard to be enthused by other people's ideas when they aren't particularly good. This applies to other projects - including animated shorts which I did invest a bit of time in. Bah!
2. Start drawing again, as well as developing series/shorts ideas. Keep an actual organised and documented sketchbook...hey..it could be on this blog?! Found a new life drawing venue, and I'm not too rusty, though the real challenge is to keep going even in crappy weather & after a boring day of work.
3. That leads me to the subject of this blog.... I'll aim to actually keep it updated with stuff that isn't just code stolen from other sites (though there'll be plenty of that). No real progress here, though I do leave better explanations for what the code is.
4. Leave the country at least twice. Done! Went thrice! Berlin, Trento & San Francisco!
5. ??? Lots of this :)
6. Profit Ho hum...

So on to this year's naive list..I'm going to split them into two categories. Personal & Work.
Work...

1. Produce two short films.
2. Learn new stuff! Python perhaps, or refamiliarise myself with 3dsMax, Houdini or something? Oh and Zbrush..and Vray.
3. Get a new job/career.
4. Keep daily Firefox browsing average to under an hour! Draw in downtime and not slack lolz.
5. Make some cash monies outside of main job (photography I hope)

 Personal...

1. 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)
2. Go to more music gigs, cultural events.
3. Acquire a new skill of some sort..(driving? new sport, tailoring! diy?)
4. New hobby (could be linked to 2)
5. Maintain Inverse Panda blog with frequent updates
6. Finish two substantially sized paintings.
7. Decide.

Onward!