ROOM teaser

Finally after 3 mths of hardwork, I finished this short 3D animation.

ROOM is the story about 2 guys struggling for space in a house.

Production time is 3 1/2 months (Feb - June 2009), from concept toward compositing. Music and sound fx are done by Markus Kellow, really nice guy to work with.

This is just a teaser poster. It hasn't been submitted, I'm sorry I'm unable to show it publicly yet.

I hope to be able to show more stuff after submission.

JPEG compression control in Maya

By default, the JPEG files that render out of Maya use a %75 quality setting.

There is a way to increase the quality.

You will need to add an environment variable to your Maya.env file.

AW_JPEG_Q_FACTOR = 100;

Where 100 is the quality percentage.

from mayastation

Blend shape attach head to the body

Usually we duplicate the entire body mesh to create a blend shape for the head, but what if the object is heavy? Having few duplicated object will kill your scene.

The solution is to separate the head (extract), then duplicate and do some blendshapes, keep the first duplicated as the 'base' rather than the original mesh because we can't use original mesh as the target due to vertex order change. As soon as blend shape is ready, create a blend shape to the 'base' so it stores information. Then apply wrap deformer to the original mesh.

I know it's killing the scene by computing the calculation. But the trick here is GO TO INPUT AND CHANGE THE ORDER OF THE WRAP BELOW SKIN CLUSTER. Therefore the wrap deformer is no longer calculated after the skinned deformation. This will dramatically improve performance and resulting cleaner construction history. However another method is by using combine and merge verts, which leave ugly construction history. I prefer to use wrap instead.

squeeze your firefox

Found that you can actually save some pixels on your navigation bar.



Right click on the home button > Customize, change icon to small, and start dragging your back, forward, refresh, stop, home button, url bar to the side of "help"

Using black white image as mask.

Intro
Sometimes you want to blend 2 different textures using the mask which is a black and white image (dirt maps or texture masks) *see B. The way I usually did is to select one of the channel which has better contrast, drag it to "create new channel" to create the alpha, and use that alpha (ctrl+click the alpha thumbnail) to create the selection (indicated by marching ants), and then apply that selection to A. Well this method has disadvantage if you want to use texture which has color information for example. I don't know if this method I'm gonna show is the right one, but it achieve the result I wanted.

Steps

• Click the B. , ctrl+a to select all, ctrl+v to copy
• Go to A. , create the "add layer mask", click the white area *it must be selected otherwise you won't see alpha channel
• Go to channel Tab, click on the alpha layer and make it visible.
• Make sure the layer is selected, and the eye icon is on, ctrl+v to paste
• Done, now you need to do is delete/hide the original mask which we copied earlier
  

Result



Many thanks to Peter my classmate for his help

Update: My GF pointed me out an easier way.

Click on the B/w layer (B), in channel, click the RGB instead of creating an alpha from one of the channel, so basically it will select everything, then apply mask on the (A). As simple as that, how stupid am I.

Can I use the old style render layers in Maya 2009

There is no preset option to create a layer override in Maya 2009 as it was in 2008

However you can still create these overrides by using the following Mel
Where layer1 is the name of the Layer you like to override.

Ambient Occlusion

renderLayerBuiltinPreset occlusion layer1;

Luminance Depth

renderLayerBuiltinPreset linearDepth layer1;

Normal Map

renderLayerBuiltinPreset normal layer1;

Geometry Matt

renderLayerBuiltinPreset matte layer1;

Diffuse

renderLayerBuiltinPreset diffuse layer1;

Specular

renderLayerBuiltinPreset specular layer1;

Shadow

renderLayerBuiltinPreset shadow layer1;

From http://mayastation.typepad.com/

The web is evolving

Nowadays we got blogger, twitter, facebook, and all other stuffs. To be honest it's quite time consuming to update all these. I still love this blog, but I believe the web has evolved again. From all those, I've chosen facebook over twitter and all others. I've found kutucg to share all my knowledge and cg related infos so ppl can benefit. I've got Deviantart to put all my works related stuff. I've got makanmana.net to put my interest in Culinary side. And lastly I've got facebook for mostly personal and time killing stuffs. So basically what's this blog for??

In the mean time, I'll be very busy finishing off my final year 3D animated short film.

kutuCG V2

I've to rebuild kutuCG due to my HDD crashed. All my previous working files are gone. I've migrated the engine from punBB. It was good, fast, and light. But lack of features, like PM, polling, and some moderation tools. It can be done by hacking/ adding plugin, but this also mean messing up with the database. Shortly said, the new engine is much more easier, learning curve was easy, and customization is sweet! although I feel it appeared to be a little slower than punBB, but hence the features it offers, gotta compromise. Therefore I tried to use less graphic buttons and relied more on CSS. Here's the layout when launched....



EVERYBODY COMPLAINED! it's too bright. Therefore I worked my ass out to match V1 look as closed as possible :p

HDD Screwed up

Dropped my Lacie 750gb ext HDD last nite when I tried to move my monitor. Tried to turn it on again, seemed like physical failure. Brought it to JB hifi to claim warranty but they asked me to do it myself.. fuck. Email and called Lacie technical support, they don't do data recovery... fuck. They sent me some company url which does data recovery, after talking to the guy, it cost around AUD2400, same price with my iMac... fuck. I gave up... Applications, music, project, documents, videos, TUTORIALS! lost. Lesson learned, backup to DVD no matter what.

2009 workspace

It's exciting to see my workspace change time to time. This is 2009 workspace in Melbourne.



This one was taken in Kuala Lumpur, 2005 during my study time in Puchong :)



To see other CG artists' workspace, visit this LINK

KutuCG first month progress

It's been a month since KutuCG been launched. The forum has reached 223 members registration so far. Although 30% are non-active. However, it's an exciting news!

So far I've changed the header image and listened to members' feedback. It's tiring definitely, but I guess this is the most important part. Although not all of the issues can be resolved, I'm still looking for the workaround and fixing it asap.

During the first month, there's been some activities going on, notably 2D and 3D mini challenge with given theme "SHIO". It's just ended today and the result are impressive. Check it out 2D MINI 3D MINI

Besides that, there are also some tutorials available from myself and our members.
Please check it out HERE

January site statistic:
2150 unique visitors
5687 number of visits
109534 Pages
354867 hits
2.5GB bandwidth

January Board statistic:
Total number of users: 223
Total number of topics: 151
Total number of posts: 2537

What's coming for February? KutuCG will begin another mini 3D and 2D challenge with "Valentine" theme. I will also propose to have another challenge section called 'Modeling contest', which can be sculpting/mechanical object only. This has shorter amount of deadline and aimed toward busy members who's already in the industry and want something easy and short to finish.

I would like to sincerely thank forum members who support this forum.

Zbrush importing psd texture issue

Zbrush won't allow texture import IF the psd file have more than 1 alpha..

Maya display problem in Bootcamp

Well, not only Autodesk announce the issue with camera selection in Maya for OSX, apparently my iMac has got problem with display issue as well.

KutuCG launched!

Well, after almost 2 week work, I finally made it online. kutuCG is an Indonesian CG forum. Yes.. you may probably ask.. why create another forum while we already have the largest indocg.com?

It started when IndoCG was down due to the database overload, I wasn't really sure what's happening but this is roughly what I got from Soyuz from Mediavisi, ICG ex-hosting company. Since Rey, ICG founder and administrator didnt want the site to be down for so many days, he decided to move the entire content to another server. The first time it landed in Lunarpages which claimed to provide unlimited bandwidth, but unable to delivered so. With dissapointment, Rey had to move over the server to another hosting again. This time I wasn't really sure but I suspect it's Techscape. The problem came when transferring huge database and files over to another server. The size was roughly 3GB and upon transferring, some files were corrupted or internet was disconnected. This is what you guys in IndoCG are experiencing now. Rey had to setup a new forum with old database, hence all the customization which was done before are not synchronizing anymore. Some links, images, plugins, and custom pages are not working anymore. Stuff like image upload, Private message, are not working anymore...

This problem frustate him, I understand it's not easy to manage such big forum, we as moderators tried to help, but unfortunately it's not in the right time. Everybody was busy, including me. I was in about the end of my semester and got bunch of school work to do. Rey is married and has family now, and he also a flash game studio, which made him busier than before, therefore paying less attention to the forum.

Well, I love ICG. I grew from it. I knew so many people from it. After a long internal discussion, it is very difficult to decide what and where ICG is going toward. Option one, we moderators tend to donate some money and purchase commercial forum software, so it can handle large scale community better, but in return we should have access to the backend, and since Rey himself is not an active founder anymore, he's not listed in management team, although he still remain as founder. In simple word, We took over ICG. Second option, Rey himself buy the commercial forum, and let us take care of the content, he remain less active. Most moderators felt unfair on the second option. We do love to do voluntary work, keeping and managing the forum and such, but given that option, I suddenly lost my will and interest. Furthermore, he's invisible and absent from internal discussion, leaving the decision questioned *and he's still absent till now, although he promised something's gonna change after xmas.

Without backend access, we mods can't do anything. We can only overview forum. And with his absence, everything becomes difficult. Speaking of which the forum still can't open registrations due to spam bot and such. This forum is going nowhere. Where's the fun of speed modeling challenge? daily sketch? speed painting? I guess most of the moderators felt the way I do.

So I discussed this issue with Soyuzno from Mediavisi, and I'm glad he's happy to help. He's willing to support hosting for me to create a new forum. After few discussions with some mods and friends, we decided to create kutuCG.com

I understand some of you guys, even myself sometimes prefer to visit worldwide CG forum, such as CGtalk, Threedy, Gameartisans, DA and others. I was thinking and hesitant to create another forum. But, isn't it a shame we Indonesian artists do not have a place to hangout online, a place called home?

Learning from past and mistakes, I hope I can manage this forum better. It is not aiming to be the largest or ICG replacement or whatsoever, but I believe one day I could bring back those moment I had in ICG few years ago.





This time, it's a forum by artists for artists, and I hope in this forum, we can work hard, play harder.

I welcome you to KUTUCG.com

Happy new year 2009

Well... Looking back at my blog, time passed by so quickly. I didn't realized this blog has been existed for 4 years. It started from the day I worked in Twisted, mainly to share interesting links, and some of production techniques I learned throughout my working day. And then it slowly turned into personal blog since I've quit my job. That's bunch of entries and all mixed up. I must admit 2008 is a tough year for me, physically and mentally. I'm looking forward to the new year and I'm confident that 2009 is going to make a turn around. Thus I've created a new blog, which I hope you guys will find it interesting. Happy new year!

Which sounds best?

Please help me with the survey..



Turned out I used kutuCG.com and it's alive now :)

Sketches

I suck at drawing, need to practice more..





From idrawgirl tutorials

GA mini sculpting challenge #1 mud monster

Work in progress screenshot






Concept


My entry here

God Bless you Obama

Phillip Island

Semester has just finished. There's one more assignment to go, Business proposal. Just came back from weekend trip to Phillip island with Hardy's family and friends. It's a great experience.


More photos are uploaded in Facebook.

Slow Update

It's been a slow update recently, been busy with assignment. Collaborative project has just finished, and we're all satisfied with the result. 3 more assignments to go. I just update makanmana.net layout to a new one.

Been playing with maya2009 lately, it's worth upgrading I would say. The IPR is getting better in this version. Also the animation and render passes in mental ray are awesome. The animation layer would somehow use trax editor workflow, just that it's more simplified and easier to use in term of workflow.

School is just approx 4 weeks to go. After that it's party time... or more like a... [insert your own opinion here]

cylman re-render

What is your favorite graphic viewer?

ACDsee, Picasa, XnView, FastStone image viewer, Windows image viewer, Nero image viewer?
No...I've tried all of them.. but
Irfanview FTW!

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

Orbit Downloader

Previously I was using flashget as download manager which is 5.5mb in size, and it has built in torrent, which personally I don't quite like it. On top of that I had to use flashgot which is a firefox plugin to capture link from browser (oh yeah this is freakin useful for rapidshare links) and transfer it to flashget. Now I uninstalled both flashgot and flashget, getting an Orbit Downloader, which is just 2.2mb in size, and better.. it has built in firefox integration.

Cylman finished

Gosh finally I'm able to focus on school assignment now.

Model in maya, texture in Zbrush and photoshop, Rendered in Modo.

Google chrome

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.



One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.

Cylman full body texture WIP

Full body texture is done, gonna put it on hold for a while, balancing out my school assignments.

Need to fix the glove, not really satisfied with it

Using QR-code

It's been a trend in Japan recently to use qr-code as a communication medium.

Kaywa has came up with its unique concept of this method. As you can see I have my own qr-code in this blog.

The way it worked is to use your Handphone's camera, together with kaywa mobile application which is called kaywa reader, which will scan the code, decode it, and open the decoded link, be it url, message, text, etc.


Once scanned from the mobile phone...

The qr-code in this blog serve as a mobile version of this blog, like below


It's viewed like this inside your phone.

Other than that, you can generate your own QR-code here

Zbrush 3 mac

Finally...

1 hour speed sculpt

Got invitation from Coke via msn buzz.

Cylman Trousers

Small update on the weekend.

Steermouse

Mac mouse sucks, except the 360* scroll bar. Well visually it's nice, but when comes to work it's just not ergonomic. So I purchased Razer Krait. But I just realized when I plugged it, the movement is just weird. I don't know how to explain but it's the 'feel', which is much better in Windows. Worse, there's no mac driver for this mouse. Desperately looking for solution, I found this software.

Last Pass

Lastpass is the online password manager. I found this site very very useful that I'm interested to share. Lots of you and me probably dealing with bunch of passwords online that are often forgotten. Now you don't have to.

Click the picture to go to the link, watch the short video tutorial and let yourself worry free.

Cylman update

Forgot to post this last time, a test render matching live environment.



Finished the head texture for now.

Zimbabwe inflation

I thought having 1 billion rupiah in Indonesia is considered rich.

GridIron Flow

Flow is a revolutionary approach to digital content management that dramatically simplifies the design process for creative professionals working on graphic design, web and video projects. Flow automatically tracks your work from idea to end result and manages your assets and applications for your most complex projects- all without changing the way you work.



Alien Brain, just node based :)

Link

Random pics

Just random pics taken during moving to new house.

Swap alt<->command(windows logo) in boot camp mac keyboard

Having installed bootcamp in my mac, using apple keyboard is a little bit troublesome, especially when I'm used to regular pc keyboard layout. In bootcamp, alt(option) react as alt in windows, whereby command key react as windows logo. This is getting annoying when I start using 3d application like maya or modo where you click alt key a lot for viewport navigation. Another example is when I'm playing Dota, I keep holding alt almost all the time to show health bars.

I found a software called AutoHotkey which enable custom configuration on the keyboard. All you need is install the software. After that, open your notepad and fill in with this code:

LWin::LAlt

LAlt::LWin

What it does is swapping both key. Save it as win-alt.ahk

Double click on it to activate.

You can choose to put the file in the startup folder to let it run everytime you boot windows.

Now, get back to dota and time to own.

*Update on 09 January 2009

I've found a new software called keytweak which basically does same thing, but more native and less buggy, because keyTweak tend to manipulate keyboard registry value.




As you can see above, the concept remained the same, this is quite easy to achieve.

Just click full teach mode, and begin the key mapping, basically you have to do it twice, by swapping both of the key. Failing to do so will only replace a key and not swapping them.

Got DSL today!

Finally, after few weeks.. subscribed to TPG ADSL2+ 150gb/mth plan. Geez I thought it's difficult to setup a network in mac. I purchased Netgear DG834Gv4 Modem router. Review said it's better compared to D-Link DSL-G604T, and checked out that it's just different by $4 *promotion in JB-Hifi. At first I was kinda doubt. D-link package cover mentioned it's compatible with mac, whereas Netgear didn't state clearly (though it said any OS with TCP/IP compatible).

Once home, plugged to the mac, connect the ethernect cable and trying to setup the router (Although DSL is not activated yet). In the beginning there's a confusion. Mac didn't read the cable. It's stated unplugged. WTF, I thought either my mac ethernet socket or the cable was broken, but I could connect to the modem setting via web interface.

Few days afterward, I received an email from TPG that my DSL account has been activated. My joy didn't last long however. I tried to connect the modem to the wall socket, and the DSL light is not blinking. Something went wrong, so the next day I went to buy a home phone set, which in the end turned out the old converter connected to the wall socket was spoiled. Therefore I replace the converter with the new one coming with the phone. Regarding the ethernet cable issue, I realized I have to use slight force to ensure the cable is plugged, but in the end I prefer to go wireless.

Setup complete.

Rmit 1 Limkokwing 0

This proves it. Owned.