Anim Tip: Pose Libraries are just Actions!

From time to time, I hear questions about people wanting relink Pose Libraries, or manually reorder the poses, and not knowing how/what to do. The answers to these questions are quite simple once you know one simple trick about Pose Libraries:

Pose Libraries are just Actions!  (*)

(*) The fine print:
- The pose data is just stored as keyframes in these Actions
- The "secret sauce" is that Pose Library actions use markers (stored inside the action) to tell Blender which frame each "pose" is stored on. The name of each marker is the name of the pose. These markers are drawn as the taller, "bone" shaped markers.
- If you're going to do anything to these Actions, make sure you keep the markers and keyframes in sync!

Gah! Stupid HP Design Flaws

Earlier in the week, I randomly started getting some nasty creaking/snapping noises everytime I opened or closed the lid on my laptop. Last night, I finally discovered the cause: the plastic base-plate was coming away from the rest of the case in the top left corner (below the power button)! Basically, every time the lid opens and closes, it looks like the left hinge is forcing open the casing (currently by 1 - 1.5mm, along a 2-3 cm stretch from the top-left corner). For now, I can still nudge/snap it back into place after each open/close cycle; there's also a bit of a rattling sound inside (like some plastic bits have snapped off). Apparently, this design flaw with the hinges+base-plate has caused quite a few people grief.

If the rumors are true that this is because they freaking glued that part of the case together, then that would really suck, as AFAIK, all the heat-producing processors are located there along with some fans. Along with some of the other annoyances I had when setting up this machine (i.e. RSI-causing keyboard, oversized and hard to deliberately-click (yet easy to accidentally bump) touchpad, out of kilter out-of-box monitor colour calibration, and the high pitched eee...errr...eeee....errr whining when it's on standby, to name the most egregious examples), this just further reaffirms my decision to never buy an HP product again. I would also strongly discourage anyone else from doing so in the future as well.

Mid Afternoon Sketches - Birdies

Some mid-afternoon doodles from earlier today - all with black ballpoint pen..

 Chiieee!

The silvereyes do sometimes get into a bit of a flap over a preferred perch...

A little warmup sketch

Blender Animation FAQ's - June 2015 Edition

From time to time, several issues commonly popup up time and time again. So, I'll try to answer a few of these that come to mind most currently.

Grease Pencil Dev - Sneak Peak of WIP Feature

Yippee! After a weekend of work, I've finally gotten this new tool for Grease Pencil editing working! Here's a little teaser to wet your appetite for what's coming ;)

Stroke Sculpting - Interactively "paint" edits on to the strokes, instead of needing to select the points one by one...

The functionality is still very rough - only a single brush is implemented, lots of UI polish is still needed, and the strength of the effect still needs fine tuning. But most importantly, the first version of this tool is now functional! :)

Now, it's time I headed off to bed!

Musings on Forceful Methods to Bring "Heated" Forums Back to Health

I think everyone can agree that the atmosphere over on BlenderArtists has been quite "heated" and problematic over the past few years. There has been much written about this - pages and pages by the same cabal of 3-7 "usual suspects" (*) who are largely responsible for most of these very issues. These "forum addicts" spend their time trotting out the same few complaints over and over like a broken record, getting into some rather heated/vindictive/nitpicky+pedantic debates that at times border on outright slander.

Klaus Trailer - SPA Studios

Wow! This looks great! On some many levels too :D

Klaus teaser ©2015 Sergio Pablos Animation Studios, S.L. & ANTENA 3 FILMS, S.L.U. All rights reserved from The SPA Studios on Vimeo.

In case you haven't noticed, this is actually hand drawn animation! (Don't believe me? Watch it again carefully!) At first, I too thought it was just 3D rendered using a NPR style... but, apparently, it's hand drawn and rendered using some new CGI techniques! I'm very curious to learn more about how they're doing this, as there's some very interesting stuff going on here.

Christchurch CBD - Signs of Rebuild

This weekend was a long weekend (Queen's Birthday weekend) here, and an eventful one at that. Yesterday (Sunday) saw the old central police station tower "imploded" (I've got before and after photos for this to come in a later post), followed by some nice warm weather today (20 degrees for the first day of winter!). Here are some photos I took during an impromptu trip late this afternoon  to check out the rubble from the implosion...

It is done!

Hoorah! At long last, it is done! Yay!

This ended up taking quite bit longer than I'd initially planned, but I'm glad to finally see this in a "complete" form at last. (There are still a few bits and pieces which could do with a bit of polish still, but at least everything that needs to be there is there for the first time ever :D

I told you so - On the course of action that research should often take but isn't taking

When doing research, there are often quite a lot of times when you wonder whether you're heading in the right direction - that you're researching the right things, that a particular idea will/will not work, that that gut reaction you had initially but couldn't put a finger on at the time that the thing you'd spend the next 2-3 months slaving over (trying to fix some of the most hideously fickle UI event bugs you've ever encountered, and hope to never encounter again) was ultimately a pointless and ill-motivated dead-end was due to an issue that in hindsight is blindly obvious yet nobody in the field seems to be able to comprehend it. At. All. Gaaaahhhh!  

Violin Improv - 20150516

Just some more crazy random violin playing this afternoon for a bit of fun before bunkering down again to try and get this bloody project that I've been busy with wrapped up :)



This is one of the longest continuous recordings I've put together to date...

Rrraaaarrrrwwwww!!!! 15/5/15 - 15:15

It's an interesting date again...

Every time I see one of these bad boys in action, I can't help but think that they look an awful lot like a hungry dinosaur - the carnivorous sort too!