What’s it been? Six months?

Thought I’d write a new post … much though I loathe the idea of spoiling you people.

By the way, what is the deal with screenwriters establishing a character’s history with the phrasing I used for the title of this post? As in: “Hey, Mitch … you’ve been on the force for, what, twelve years?” or “You’ve been working on that novel for how long? Eight years? When are you going to face reality?”

I’d really like to create a montage of shots that use that exact phrasing; it really bothers me for some reason.

Incidentally, the “UFOs at the You Yangs” project has not been abandoned or anything. I’ll be sure to post an update very soon — perhaps as early as next week — because it is something I’m keen to prioritise. In recent months, though, both the need and desire to learn more about Vue has taken precedence.

I can’t believe it’s been, what, five-and-a-half months since my last post? All that time I’ve been learning cool things, taking photographs, crying for no reason, and conducting all sorts of CG-related experiments. Though I haven’t taken the time to write, I’ve always had plenty of things to write about. Just now, for example, I noticed one of the pictures behind me was hanging at an angle. Interesting!

Most of my studying time has been devoted to Vue and because I like to practice as I go, I’ve been slowly-but-surely accumulating a weird array of experimental images and video clips.

This time last month, I spent a couple of days learning how to simulate depth of field (the distance between the nearest and farthest parts of the ’sharply focused’ area of an image). When you’re taking photographs with a decent camera, you can achieve a lovely depth of field by using a combination of aperture and exposure settings. Like so:

Vue allows you to achieve a similar effect by specifying a blur percentage and range of focus:

See those dotted lines to the fore and aft of the ship? They outline the depth of field. The settings in that screenshot (12m Focus, 15% Blur) yielded this:

For the sake of comparison, I also rendered two versions of an X-Wing, one with depth of field and one without:

Cool, huh? Now, how about a row of pyramids at sunset:

Boy, do I envy people who wear glasses. All they have to do is take them off and they get to see the world that way whenever they want! Lucky …

Another awesome thing you can do with Vue is create EcoSystems. Generally-speaking, they’re the means by which users create natural-looking forests, rock formations, cities, etc. but you can also use EcoSystems to create all manner of cool-looking shit:

(You can click on most of those images for larger versions, so … go nuts.)

I’ll leave it at that for now but before I sign off, I’d really like to congratulate the WordPress code monkeys on coming up with the most insane image-management system yet. Every incarnation is more aggravating than the last. Nice going.

UFOs at the You Yangs (Part 1)

Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of UFO footage.

Enough to warrant the design of a simple, hierarchical classification system?

Err … sure, why not?

You may have noticed the absence of a category for crystal clear, non-hoaxed footage of extra-terrestrial spacecraft. I’m afraid that’s because I’ve never seen any footage that would warrant the inclusion of such a category. Find me some and I’ll update the system, otherwise I’m sure whatever you’ve seen could easily find its way into one of the pre-existing categories.

Here are some examples:

Type 1-Ai – 1, 2, 3,

Type 1-Aii – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

Type 1-B – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

Type 2-A – 1, 2, 3, 4,

Type 2-B – 1, 2,

I’ll keep adding links until there are at least ten for each category. If you want to nominate any, just let me know and I’ll do an update.

Now, I’m not saying spacecraft flown by extra-terrestrials have never been filmed by humans; only that I’ve never seen any conclusive footage. All the high-quality UFOs videos I’ve seen have been hoaxes or artwork.

Why are there no high-quality videos of the real thing? I know what Occam’s Razor would have us conclude … but that’s no fun. I’d rather believe the government has seized all the best footage and kept secret our regular contact with extra-terrestrial civilisations. Bastards!

I’m probably coming across as skeptical to the point of being close-minded but I’m not. Honestly. I would love nothing more than to be provided with unassailable proof of the existence of advanced extra-terrestrial civilisations; it’s because I’m so taken with the idea that I can’t settle for lousy footage of some tiny, blurry shape in a distant cloud. Nor can I settle for eyewitness accounts because I have no way of knowing whether or not people are reliable / honest / capable of distinguishing between oil refineries and flying saucers. There’s a huge difference between seeing something incredible with my own eyes and merely wanting to believe the testimony of an eyewitness.

The reason I brought this up is that I’ve decided to create CG footage of a UFO (or two) at the You Yangs. I’m going to make the entire video CG and strive for photorealism but I’m not going to try and pass it off as real. Mine will be Type 1-B footage; a project undertaken so that I can learn more about visual effects.

I’ll post blog entries as I complete each stage of the project. Partly to keep you, my loyal reader, in the loop but mainly because I’d like to receive feedback and ideas throughout the video’s development.

Sound good?

To the xStream!

Although I’ll be using 3ds Max throughout the foreseeable future, lately I’ve been flirting with Vue 6 xStream and getting a feel for what it can do. So far, I’m impressed. Even the shit I rendered whilst working through my first set of Vue tutorials could be passed off as carefully-designed desktop wallpaper:

Click to enlarge:

Okay, maybe not the rocks … but each of those scenes required fewer than five minutes to set up and the rendering times were surprisingly fast. Everything’s a cinch with this new software.

A sample of my early prose.

My grandmother, bless her, recently unearthed some of my early creative work:

In the years since, my handwriting has noticeably improved.

Yeah, those were the days; back when Mum – sorry, “mummy” – could unlawfully seize my hard-earned birthday money and use it to buy me clothes. What a scam! Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, can I appreciate that she was trying to teach me an important lesson about the dangers of “big government.”

I’m still trying to work out what I’d written before that almost-imperceptible transition to the word “clothes.” Was it “claths”? Damn, I hope not.

Pearls before swine.

Pearl Gross likes to do a little bit of comedy once in a while about her brother Bob. You can see her well-refined act and discover her other great talent (singing) by clicking on this LINK. If you’ve not seen the video before, then by all means, take a look. I find it hard to believe you’ve got anything better to do.

As John Daker and Reva Unsicker would attest, the audience that night was comprised of unappreciative, brain-dead Philistines who wouldn’t know talent if it smacked them in the face. My tap-dancing instructor would have fit right in.

Pearl deserved better. My friend Robin agreed, so we set to work on a new version of the video; one with a livelier, albeit fickle, audience.

Making our ‘Special Edition’ was a lot of fun, too. We imported the original clip into Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0, then spent several hours coming up with ideas, playing around with various edits, and gathering audio and video clips to splice into the original footage. When Robin hit the road to take part in a nationwide musical tour with the Mace Francis Orchestra, I was left to refine, finalise and upload the clip. Damn thing took a lot longer than I thought it would but just knowing it’ll accumulate a good 300+ views over the next 15 years makes it all worthwhile.

MAME – Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

Remember the joys of playing immensely popular games down at the local arcade? You don’t?

Oh.

Well, screw you. You probably weren’t a child of the ’80s. This post is for people who grew up playing arcade games and wish they could play some of their old favourites again. I played Street Fighter II for a couple of hours yesterday and couldn’t believe how quickly I settled in to my old fighting style again. I suppose the 1991 me would annihilate the current me in any two-player tournament but even with just a couple of days’ practice, I know I’d put up a decent fight.

I so enjoyed Street Fighter II back in the early ’90s that being able to play it again was easily the highlight of my long and tedious, work-filled day. So many memories came flooding back, it was like reuniting with an old friend; one perfectly willing to waste months of my precious youth and take all my 20c coins.

In hopes of being able to provide others with a similar experience, I thought I’d write out a quick guide to acquiring and setting up MAME32 (”a version of the standard Windows MAME build with the front-end built directly into the application”), then downloading and readying a ROM for the emulator. I’ll use Street Fighter II: Champion Edition as the example but you’ll be able to play ten trillion other arcade games, too.

Oh, yeah, I should also mention that this guide is for people using a typical Win32 Platform.

Trust me, the set-up process couldn’t be simpler; it’s on a par with downloading a simple peer-to-peer client and then using it to rob artists of their rightful income.

MAME, of course, is perfectly legal. The legality of the ROMs (the games for the emulator) varies according to the game itself and where you live in the world. Some titles are now in the public domain, others are not.

If flaunting copyright laws is not your thing (nor should it be, lest you’re keen to burn in Hell), you should investigate on a game-by-game basis. For example, the copyright warning at the start of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition informs me that I’m allowed to play because I’m in Australia. Had it been illegal, I would have deleted the ROM that very instant and penned a letter of contrition to Capcom’s legal department, begging that they forgive me for my having downloaded the game in the first place.

Okay, so here we go:

01. Download MAME32 (m32-062.zip, 3.01MB) from HERE.

02. Unzip the contents of the m32-062.zip archive. You do know how to unzip a simple archive, right? Just right-click on the file and select the appropriate option from the context menu.

The unzipped archive should look like this:

03. Now that MAME32 has been set up, it’s time to acquire the Street Fighter II: Champion Edition ROM. There are sites all over the web that host these ROMs but I got my copy from ROM World.

To save you the trouble of looking for it, here’s a direct LINK to the file (sf2ce.zip, 3.45MB).

04. Unzip the sf2ce.zip archive. This will yield the sf2ce folder, which you’ll then have to move into the roms directory highlighted earlier, giving you: m32-062\roms\sf2ce

05. Now, double-click the mame32.exe file to launch MAME32.

06. With MAME32 open, click File > Audit all games:

MAME32 will then realise you’ve added the sf2ce ROM.

07. Once the audit is complete, just click on the Available folder and you’ll see the Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (World) ROM, desperately awaiting activation (just double-click):

Easy!

The only thing left to do is kick the shit out of Ken, Ryu, E. Honda, Chun Li, Blanka, Zangief, Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat and Bison.

Once in-game, use the ‘Tab’ key to access all the different settings and to learn / configure your controls.

Streetbattlefield Fighter 2

I don’t know what useful and/or exciting things you, my fickle readers, did during the first two weeks of May but a good portion of my precious time was devoted to 3ds Max. The focus of my efforts? Learning how to import, reconstruct and texture some of the more complex models from Battlefield 2 (and its various mods).

After a week of rendering those models and experimenting with different types of lighting, I decided it’d be fun to make a little composition. Originally, the plan was to create an animated scene that I could upload to YouTube but within a few days I changed my mind and decided to do a single frame instead:

An animated version of the scene remains a possibility; it’s just that I’m still hopeless at rigging and preparing the soldiers for this scene would have required a lot more time and effort than I was willing to commit. An experienced animator probably could have done it in no time but I’m an amateur and burdened with other priorities. I still haven’t told my neighbour that I found her cat and that’s something I should have done weeks ago. I’ve also got half a dozen DVD rentals that are seriously overdue.

The idea to recreate Guile’s level from Street Fighter II appeared out of the blue. I knew the Allied Intent Xtended mod included a well put-together F16—modelled and textured by clivewil—and it was probably the availability of that model, more than anything else, that compelled me to try. Growing up, I was a big fan of Street Fighter II, so the prospect of recreating a familiar image and spending a few days reminiscing about my Godlike SFII skills held great appeal.

More importantly, creating the scene allowed me to get better at using textures, Bipeds and the Physique modifier, and required the careful posing of half a dozen 3D models of humans. I’d never tried that before and it seemed a fun way to learn the basics.

Except for the clouds (created in 3ds Max) and the HUD (added via Photoshop), everything in the scene was sourced from Battlefield 2. Well, everything except clivewil’s F16 which, as I’ve already mentioned, was from Allied Intent Xtended, one of the very best BF2 mods going around. Some of the models were tweaked ever-so-slightly because I wanted them to better resemble the objects featured in Guile’s scene. For the most part, though, they were left alone. Battlefield 2 offered the equivalent of virtually everything seen in the original SFII level, so it was just a matter of finding the right objects, importing them into 3ds Max, applying textures, then moving them into position.

The only object that could have been more faithful to the original was the Supply Crate. In Street Fighter II, the corresponding object is a destructible wooden crate (a rarity in video games) and BF2 definitely had one that was suitable but I think the Supply Crate, for this version, has more novelty value.

The scene’s main source of light is a Skylight with its Multiplier set to 1.3, however there are also three Omni Lights; two within the hangars to prevent them from being pitch-black and one in the foreground to increase the overall brightness of the fighters and onlookers. Without the Omni lights, the lighting had a more consistent, realistic feel but video games from that era didn’t really strive for photorealism, so I had no qualms about brightening things up.

As hoped, it was a fun project and though I’m sure it could have been done better, I’m happy with the end result. Happy enough to move on, anyway.

Let me know what you think.

(Click to enlarge)

SMD Importer for 3ds Max 9

Every so often, I like to examine the ‘Search Engine Terms’ listed amongst my Blog Stats to learn which keywords are bringing people here. I know from months of doing so that most visitors will leave within seconds, annoyed that this blog didn’t include the information they wanted. For example, I have not written, nor will I ever write, a tutorial on how to create cotton candy using 3ds Max. Sorry, that guy. Try modelling a funnelcake instead.

Not everyone will navigate away from here disappointed, though.

At least once a day, someone visits in hopes of finding an SMD Importer for 3ds Max 9. My tutorial for Importing Half-Life 2 models into 3ds Max included the associated keywords but at the time of writing that tutorial, I was not aware of the existence of a functional SMD Importer for any version of 3ds Max beyond 6/7/8.

Well, there IS an SMD Importer for 3ds Max 9.

In retrospect, I should have written this post the very moment I learned of the Importer’s existence but I figured people would find it with or without my help, so I never bothered. I do, however, suffer minor feelings of guilt every time something like ’smd importer 3ds max 9′ appears in my list of Search Engine Terms, so I thought I’d write this post and amend my tutorial.

You can download the SMD Importer / Exporter for 3ds Max 9 from HERE and read about it HERE.

At last, “do a good deed” can be scratched from my list of goals for 2008.

I’ve tested the Importer using 3ds Max 9 and it does work as both an Importer and Exporter, so ignore anyone who insists it only functions as the latter. They’re either using a different version of 3ds Max or they haven’t installed the Importer according to the (fairly straightforward) instructions provided in the download’s SMDImporter-Readme.html file.

Look, here’s a test I did five minutes ago:

Doesn’t work as an Importer, huh? Well, explain that, professor … with all your PRECIOUS SCIENCE.

Lightning strikes! Kablammo!

Not many people know that I have freakishly good reflexes. I do, though. How else could I have taken all these lightning photographs on Australia Day, 2005? Huh?

(Click to enlarge)

A keen observer may notice that their resolution is the same as the PAL video I record with my Panasonic NV-GS200 digital video camcorder but that’s just a funny coincidence. I probably chose that resolution when I was resizing the images in Photoshop or something. Did I say “images”? I meant “photographs” …

My very first YouTube video.

I really don’t care for that title but every time I substitute it with my original choice – “Here’s a nice piece of SHIT!” – I feel guilty for using bad language.

Back when I was deeply immersed in the world of Battlefield 2 machinima, I felt contempt for anyone who posted their work on streaming video sites. I wanted crystal-clear, high-quality versions of everything. For a while there, Putfile.com was the most oft-used of those streaming sites but then YouTube arrived on the scene and everyone started posting their horribly-encoded, low-res crap there instead.

Eventually, I, too, was lured in by YouTube’s siren song but I vowed that I would always provide people with high-quality versions of the same clips. All they had to do was ask. (No-one ever did.)

My very first video was posted almost two years ago to the day and has since racked up 7104 views. To put that into context, there’s a ten-minute video on YouTube called Watching Paint Dry; it’s exactly what its name implies and it has amassed 39,720 views. Quite an indictment on the quality of my own videos.

Speaking of which …

The clip was actually a response to someone’s request on the TotalBF2 forums. The game had just been patched to include vehicle drops and someone had asked whether or not it was possible to exit a flying jet or helicopter and then land in an air-dropped vehicle before it reached the ground. I can’t remember how many times I tried it before finally succeeding. Maybe it was five. Maybe it was fifteen. When you think about all the pain and suffering in the world, though, does it really matter? What’s important is that I had a problem (my abject disgust for low-quality streaming video) and I overcame it … the feel-good story of the year.