Pre Paradise

So... It's 1 week left before I'm going back to Medan. I've been jobless this month but luckily my savings is still more than enough to cover my expenses, at least till next year...hopefully. A lot of things happened but unfortunately I've just got internet installed after 3 weeks from 1st of August.. sucks..

Recent news is about the new version of maya and max. Funny they rename it to 2008 instead of Version 9. I personally didn't like the sound of that, but hey, it's autodesk.. they never listen to a customer like you. Overall improvement is worth to look at, especially on rigging and nCloth side. Modeling workflow is also increased by replacing 123 key to smooth.. very good workflow. But this time I'm more eagerly to wait for Modo 301. A lot of cool features that yet haven't been explored, and it will somehow slowly change our old school way of doing 3d.

Aside from 3D, Stanley my ex-colleague just celebrated his wedding few weeks ago. Lots of fun on the wedding dinner, especially toward the end, because AhLoong and Cjinq are both pawned and got drunk.. LOL. Congratulations Stanley, if you're reading this.

Since I'm no longer working, this blog will be slowly changing into personal blog. I'm taking a break and going back to learn traditional art, but I'll try to post any technical stuffs that I find interesting to be shared. :D

So, if you ask me what's my daily activities now? GAMING.. yeah..I'm so addicted to DOTA.. and eat. as much as I can before going back. I've just had Tony Roma's tonight, that made me want to post it..

First, it's the potato skin.. starter..


Then.. for me.. the uber-famous beef-rib..


as for my gf, she ordered chicken something lol..


In the end, we realized we ordered too much.. I'll probably skip my meal tomorrow...

Wii...

I've been away from internet these few days.. just moved house.. so there's no internet and I'm so so outdated..

Good news is.. I bought wii.. at least it kept me staying out of boredom.. The internet should be ready within this week.. so till then..

I'm also preparing material to be sent to IndoCG showoff artbook..

Farewell Twisted

My last day working in Twisted. 2 year time definitely leave so much good and bad memories. Time to move on however. Thanks to all my colleagues for being supportive.

I'll still be in KL until end of August. Enough time to settle my education stuffs and keep in touch with old friends.

Farewell soon..Eat Eat Eat

Went to Klang to eat BakGutTeh last nite with colleagues.


More pictures on the dinner can be viewed on my collegues Loong's blog

Went to celebrate my farewell in Indonesian Restaurant in Sunway "Restoran Ria"

New Hobby

Yesterday went to art shop to buy some basic traditional sculpting tools. It's expensive, so gotta be serious in this hobby.


No, it's not 'kue bakul'.. It's industrial styling clay :P I was thinking to buy super sculpey aswell, but my budget didn't allow and I'm afraid it'll cause overweight on my luggage when I go back Medan next month.


Did some housekeeping for this blog. The category is simplified and more organized now.

Rectangular size texture map

Usually we will create square size texture map and for games engine, it'll mostly must be power of 2, e.g : 512x512,1024x1024,2048x2048. However there are particular case which require rectangular size, like 1024x512, or 512x128.

In maya itself, the uv range is always square, this is confusing because if we have a rectangular size texture slapped on square size layout, it will be stretched. Look at the image below.



The uv size range from 0 to 1. And it's square. Let's apply rectangular size texture.



The texture is now stretched. What if we want the uv to follow the texture rather than the other way round?
Use image ratio as shown in the image.



However, this result UV to stretch. Therefore, you need to work in the proper uv (image ratio on).
Once you're done with the uv, you can turn image ratio off. It'll look stretched (shrinked), but it doesn't matter, because that's the correct uv with correct texture. Unless you're planning to change the texture size :)

2isted Website Updated

We just updated our website with some of our latest works. Please have a look and thanks for viewing.

*click the title to go to the website.

Custom character control interfaces

As suggested by BuGuru, I would like to explain some of the custom character controls available. There's no point on creating your own unless the existing doesn't suit your workflow.

1) David Keegan C3[download]



This is by far the simplest and step by step guide.
1) By executing the script you're prompted with a dialog to setup or load character.
2) If you choose setup, the first step is to define the character(type the name), what it does is to snap a screenshot based on the camera(It is actually playblasting currentframe and save it as images)
3) Once you click done, the next step is to define the control, you can select and move it in x and y direction, the select field works this way:
- select the control on C3 viewport, select any object/control in maya viewport.
- press the 'select' button. C3 will link both object.
- Under the tool, you can either select one, so by selecting the control, it automatically change to the tool corresponding to the tool you select.
refer to the image for better understanding.



click Finish and you're done.
But as you can see, there's no additional node in the scene. C3 is quite smart in the way it stores a mel inside your project directory, you can see a folder named "C3" and inside there is a snapshot and a mel file. So you can always load the character anytime.

2) Adam Burke's abxPicker.



abxPicker is similar to C3, but with more control and advanced settings.
Everything is basically already explained in the help.





3) Dan Moreno's Character control


Not really my favorite, because the window took so much space and it look unorganize and not flexible. But perhaps if you like it, you may give it a try.

*edit: Receive a comment from Dan himself, perhaps I should spend more time on this script before posting it. Thanks Dan for your comment!

Extremely Busy & Habu

Again, I'm not dead. Just been extremely busy these few weeks. Looking back at my post here which was last year's entry, I finally get a Habu mouse. Some of you may say I'm insane, in fact, all the people in my office said so. It cost me RM250 (Rp.650.000). I believe I was physically and mentally healthy upon the transaction. Well, for a mouse that you use regularly everyday, is it too harsh to invest a little bit more on it? Besides I've been using my old white mouse(which was my favorite) till I got wrist injured :)

I'll be writing on how to create a UI for character animation selection. Not really my preference, but since I'm out of idea and BuGuru requested it, might give it a try.

Maya 8.5 Service Pack 1

Previously in maya 8.5, batch rendering with render layer cause a loop. No more confusion now.

You can get the service pack update here