Trying to get some new portfolio pieces organized and posted but not having a lot of time to set aside for that ATM. That said, here is a little before and after teaser that was fun.
Give the Drummer Some!
Great interviews here by J-Zone at “Give the Drummer Some”. More on this website as well. Give it all a listen!
Noedle - free texture maps!
Slack is talking about his new site for free texture maps, Noedle but the copy is where it’s at!.
“I always said the Earth was flat. How else could I have this beautiful Landscapes? Color, Normal and Displacement Texture to use on a flat surface.”
Pak on the frontier of NFTs.
Interesting interview with Pak on Foundation.
“As a creator who doesn’t self-define as an artist, I can only compare the crypto world with the design scene. There are many differences in intention, purpose, and value distribution. For a design production, the product* is generally assigned value based on how much time goes into the work’s creation, and the creator’s vision is substantiated based on their back-log of successes (aka their "portfolio"). The crypto space (specifically the #cryptoart space), on the other hand, can value ideas almost instantly. This valuation sometimes ignites the realization of the product*—which wouldn't exist in a traditional production world. In short, this scene makes some things* exist instantaneously.”
NFTs
We all know about Beeple and his crazy NFT sale at this point, but I am interested to see how this all shakes out. For so long now art and music has just been digital trash artist’s though out into crappy social media platforms for free and get nothing in return for creating their art. If it actually brings value back to creative pursuits I am all in. Checking out Nifty and Foundation ATM to see what the deal is. Will keep you posted on how it all goes.
Valheim - A Big 'ol Tips Megathread
I have been playing the ever-loving hell out of Valheim lately. It’s the most fun I have had in game in a long while. It just kinda does everything right and does not punish the player at any point. Highly recommend it!
I found a, “A Big 'ol Tips Megathread” on Reddit that has a lot of good ones though.
You can press the , and . keys to zoom the minimap in/out. You can Zoom all the way out and eventually see the entire map if you want.
Pressing the R key will sheath your weapons and shields, or anything you have in your hands. You will run faster if you have your hands free! Pressing the R key again will place the items back into your hands.
Press the Enter key to open up the chat box in Valheim. You can use some chat commands and emotes to communicate with your friends, (or enemies). Looking at you /challenge. [/s is used for a server-wide message and /w for whisper or close-pproximity chat]
Album Art Feature.
Got a little write up for some of my Album Artwork I did.
“Inertia by We Are Parasols is coming in hot with this rainbow orb! The art was created by Daniel Kopton . This feels like something I could see in a museum. It would make a great desktop background, too. A poster, even. Basically what I’m trying to say is that I love looking at this. The choice of using a bar code instead of text is bold, but I think it works well.”
The Mac Pro - a year in the studio
Interesting write up about using the Mac Pro in a 3d studio for a full year. They start testing it with Redshift and Octane at the end which is interesting. The USD previews are cool as well. The biggest thing for me is when they are caching a Houdini sim and can continue working in another program. My computer could not handle that for sure. But after being burned by the trash can mac, I don’t trust them to continue support for it. Interesting though.
“The Mac Pro has given us stability in complex workflows and enabled us to create larger, more detailed worlds than we have ever attempted before. We can animate more characters, paint larger textures and simulate more realistic effects. It allows us to work seamlessly across multiple applications simultaneously and we can continue to work while waiting for heavy tasks to process.
There is now more support than ever from developers. It’s great to see support for new technologies that take full advantage of the hardware like the Redshift and Octane GPU renderers and game engines like Unreal. Apple’s dedication to professionals and studio workflows is apparent with the integration of USD in the core of macOS.
The Pro Display XDR has given us the ability to work in the P3-DCI colour space for feature films and develop workflows for HDR which is something we can now offer to our clients with confidence.
We must address the elephant in the room, Apple silicon. We feel reassured that Apple has aided the transition with Rosetta 2 and noticed the cheeky inclusion of Maya already running on it in the announcement keynote. It’s also great to see the developers of the software we use announce support, like Chaos Group noting plans to support ARM based architectures with their V-Ray rendering engine later this year.”
Man, that is is freaking UGLY though……
Karan Gujar - DIORAMA.
Karan Gujar has created a lovely set of abstract landscapes on her Behance page, titled DIORAMA. The mood and simplicity of these is really compelling. I have been taking a sabbatical from most of my creative outputs lately but this series is kinda motivating me to create again.
Stanford study into “Zoom Fatigue” explains why video chats are so tiring
“The first cause for Zoom Fatigue suggested by Bailenson is the state of stressed hyper-arousal generated by excessive stretches of close-up eye contact. Unlike an in-person meeting, where participants will shift from looking at a speaker to other activities, such as note taking, on Zoom everyone is always staring at everyone.
The anxiety generated by a number of faces staring at you can be likened to the stresses of public speaking but amplified to a degree regardless of who is talking. Bailenson explains, from a perceptual standpoint, Zoom turns every participant on a call into a constant speaker smothered with eye gaze.”
I am not a fan of the zoom call. A) I have to do a hard search on everything in the studio to make sure nothing from another client is visible. B) I have to scrub my desktop if they want to screen share. Move their project to a seperate hard drive so and turn off all notifications in case a email or slack pops up. Which as far as I know, is really difficult to turn on in windows. It’s just too much of a risk for us here. And don’t forget, zoom calls are not encrypted. Then there is something about the video quality that gives me a instant headache. Conference calls are garbage enough, now lets add in shitty video with terrible lag, syc issues and bad lighting, YES! I WANT THAT!
Also, get off my porch. Ahem.
Larnell Lewis Hears "Enter Sandman" For The First Time : drums
This is a pretty fun thing to watch.
Music Friday
Snowed in pretty good up here in Portland, so snuggle up and listen to some tunes will ya?
New Work in the Wild: Nike The Cosmic Unity
Some retouching/compositing work we did last year surfaced in a press release today. Check it out. Maybe I’ll build a before and after for the portfolio, but I’ll post the finals for sure. Pretty cool project.
“Fresh from announcing its hands-free GO FlyEase, Nike (NYSE:NKE -0.82%) has now officially revealed a new sneaker as part of its “Move to Zero” sustainability initiative. The Cosmic Unity — which has leaked previously — the shoe is the first performance silhouette under the project, and mixes responsible materials with court-ready technology.”
Naturalistic lighting from Andrew Wyeth in CG
These two did another project where they figure out the lighting of an artist in CG. This one is on Andrew Wyeth. My big take away was to start using modifiers on my lights. Kind of a forehead-slapping moment.
When I light stuff in the studio the first thing I do is decide what kinda modifier I am gonna put on the light. Strip box with a grid? Projector with a grid? Beauty dish? Well, in CG I just grab a naked light and start aiming it like a scrub. It will be interesting to mess around with diffusion and more modifiers.
Still Life Study
Way back in September, I talked about doing a lighting study on some of Niall McDiarmid images. Well I finally got around to one of them! Took me long enough….
Built it out in Houdini with a quick Vellum sim for the napkin and towel thingy. The new vellum brush tool is quite handy to use. Lots of fun as well. I did learn how bad Redshifts Sub Surface Scatter is though trying to get the ketchup, mustard bottles and bread to look like anything other then plaster. It took a mix of roughness settings and coating to get it looking close to how I wanted. Using both the Sub-Surface and SS Multiple Scattering was not getting it there. Adding detail like the lipstick and coffee stains was super easy though.
Made a simple markup of the lights as well. Nothing too fancy. The super narrow spotlight for caustics is the only little trick in there. The light in back of the bottles was originally just there to help me work on the SSS, but I liked how it made that highlight on the table. Kinda looks like a window or something.
'Artists, Weirdos, Hellriders And Homies:' Thrasher Magazine Turns 40
OK, I can put “Thrasher Mag having a part on NPR” on my list of things I would not have thought I would see.
“Playboy.
Glamour.
O.
Teen Vogue.
All these magazines have something in common.
They're no longer in print.
While these — and many other — publications have shifted to digital only in recent years, there's a print magazine bucking the trends and still going strong: Thrasher magazine. Created by skateboarders for skateboarders, Thrasher celebrates its 40th anniversary this month.
Founded in 1981 by Eric Swenson and Fausto Vitello, the San Francisco based publication has been busting out new issues every month for decades. Thrasher captures the gnarly antics of skaters as they shred pools, bomb hills and hurl themselves down rails and staircases.”
Slow news day, anything happening out there?
Oh, well, would ya look at that?
Reaper
So I dabble in recording stuff, because, hey, why not? But with COVID, not being able to record new stuff, and all of that I have been pretty burned out. Also, I have been using Pro Tools for the last few years and it has gotten really stale. Just opening the program is depressing somehow. They are like the Maya or Photoshop of DAWs. Don’t like it? Screw you.
But recently one of my friends has started to track stuff at their place and wanted me to lay down drums on it. I think I recommended Reaper to him as an affordable way to record years ago, but not too sure about that. But after working with his files a bit I figured to make sending the project back and forth smoother I would give Reaper a try.
Man, it so far has been way nicer to use than Pro Tools. I took the entire project from Protools to Reaper without even have to google anything. The UI is just that easy to follow and find stuff. If anyone else is looking to escape the Pro Tools nightmare of dongles, license crap, crashes (oh my god the crashes!), I highly suggest giving Reaper a shot.
Folder instead of busses are just so simple and awesome to use. Guitar bus? Just make a blank track and drag them in. Done. Super clean and customizable interface. So far the only real hitch is that the free plug-ins that ship with it are downright ugly, lol! The 7 band EQ is pretty slick and has some nice functionality but it just looks like something from 98. Also, I can’t get my Sound Toys plugs in to load which is a bummer. But FET compressor and pretty much all my other ones load no problem. Get FET now. It’s so worth it.
The next step is to install it on my recording rig and get all the mics configured and try out some tracking with it. In Pro Tools I have been having a lot of crashes that when I am playing and it locks, it just starts screaming in your ear. So bad….
Hey, Republicans Who Supported This President: Are We Great Again Yet? - LIVE MONOLOGUE
Yup. Cowards.
“Hope you are enjoying those tax cuts.”
Sedition. Full Stop.
“Trump has forfeited the public trust. For that reason, he cannot remain the commander in chief. He has shown himself to be mentally unstable, and for that reason he cannot remain in charge of an apocalyptically huge nuclear arsenal. He has demonstrated a clearly criminal approach to the Constitution, and for that reason he cannot be allowed to hold high office for the next two weeks in the run-up to the transition of power. He is, in short, a clear and present danger to the constitutional order, to the country, and to the world. Congress will fail in its duties if, after confirming Biden’s election win, it doesn’t continue on, in quick order, to forcibly remove Donald J. Trump, traitor, from the White House.”
“The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer called for President Donald Trump’s removal Thursday a day after a mob spurred by the president overran the Capitol as lawmakers tallied President-elect Joe Biden’s presidential win.
“The quickest and most effective way - it can be done today - to remove this president from office would be for the Vice President to immediately invoke the 25th amendment,” he continued. “If the Vice President and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president.”"
“Members of the House Judiciary Committee have announced articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump, alleging he will “remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution” if he is allowed to remain in office for two more weeks.
The announcement comes after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the majority leader, said in a statement that the president should be “immediately” removed from office, either by the 25th amendment or articles of impeachment.
Reps. David Cicilline (D-RI), Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have authored the articles, according to two individuals familiar with the matter.
Cicilline and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) later tweeted the articles. “[S]o proud of everyone co-leading this effort with us,” Omar wrote. “We need to move quickly to remove this President from office.”
"And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim, they would have been sniped from the top of buildings," Scarborough continued. "So I wanna know from the Capitol Hill police, what is it? Is it just white people?
"Or is it Donald Trump supporters? Why do you scream at people walking across the street three blocks away from the Capitol?" he added, referring to when BLM protesters were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the way for President Donald Trump's infamous June photo-op in front of St. John's Church.
Scarborough then turned his rant up a notch with some profanity on-air.
"Why are you not as bad asses around the Capitol, but then Trump supporters come in, and you open the f---ing doors for 'em!" Scarborough said.
One of the show's panelists was heard muttering "Oh my god" when Scarborough dropped the F-bomb on live TV.
