What I've Been Working On

[thekev]

Ah. These days, all the Autodesk stuff (3DSMax, Maya, et al.) uses Arnold for rendering.

Really, unless you're intending on going into studio production, where Maya is still king, there's no reason not to use Blender. It's pretty well competitive with everything else these days, and hey, it's free.

I must have missed that. Maya is still king in those environments due to decades of infrastructure built for it and generations of users trained on it. It's not really what you would get starting from scratch today.

There are a lot of these old standard applications that are probably crazy expensive to maintain, yet not necessarily the only option at this point. Any thoughts on affinity photo?

 

[Renzatic]

Any thoughts on affinity photo?

Excellent. I replaced Photoshop for it years ago, and haven't regretted the decision even once.

Though if that doesn't convince you, I think they're still running their 90 day free trial offer.

 

[thekev]

Excellent. I replaced Photoshop for it years ago, and haven't regretted the decision even once.

Though if that doesn't convince you, I think they're still running their 90 day free trial offer.

It's also on sale for $25. I seem to recall them running sales periodically, but it's pretty cheap. Photoshop is largely a product of its time. It wouldn't be written the same way today. If I had to write something like that, I would use a DSL to generate as many of the computationally expensive parts as possible. Halide's a little limiting, but a DSL isn't really impossible to write against a reasonable api. Most of the complexity comes in with validating assumptions on dependency ordering and stuff (diophantine equations and all of that nonsense).

 

[Zoidberg]

Excellent. I replaced Photoshop for it years ago, and haven't regretted the decision even once.

Though if that doesn't convince you, I think they're still running their 90 day free trial offer.

Yeah, I've been contemplating getting Affinity. My problem is obviously not the price –as Affinity Photo is a steal– but that I have been using Photoshop since version 5.5 (not CS5 but version 5.5, from 1999) and I'm very comfortable with it, I know tens and tens of shortcuts by heart. I don't need it very often these days, just for the quick job every now and then, so I'm reluctant to jump ship because I'm not sure it's worth the time I'll spend relearning everything. Same thing goes with Premiere. I started with Speed Razor on a 50K € workstation in the SD days, then Pinnacle Liquid Edition (which sucked, but it did HD when others didn't), then FCP7, then I ended up settling with Premiere because I find it quick and unobtrusive to use. Since I refuse to use Adobe's subscription model, now I'm stuck with using an old non-cloud version of Photoshop (which I'm sure will not work on the newer Mac models) and for video I use Blackmagic Resolve, which is amazing and –amazingly– free but too intricate and thus, slow, for what I usually need these days.

How many hours does it take to learn Affinity Photo coming from Photoshop, in your opinion?

 

[Renzatic]

How many hours does it take to learn Affinity Photo coming from Photoshop, in your opinion?

A goodly number of the shortcuts are the same between both programs, and for those moments when the programs don't quite match 1:1, you can find a tutorial easily enough.

There will be a bit of a readjustment curve you'll have to contend with if you switch, but it's not a steep one. I'd say about 2-3 hours of goofing around (with the first hour being the roughest) would be enough for you to come to term with the differences.

Here's a shortcut cheat sheet if you want to check it out.

 

[thekev]

Yeah, I've been contemplating getting Affinity. My problem is obviously not the price –as Affinity Photo is a steal– but that I have been using Photoshop since version 5.5 (not CS5 but version 5.5, from 1999) and I'm very comfortable with it, I know tens and tens of shortcuts by heart.

Version 6 for me. I don't use it enough to really care for the subscription model, and I don't use it much now.

and for video I use Blackmagic Resolve, which is amazing and –amazingly– free but too intricate and thus, slow, for what I usually need these days.

Free version is a light version, although it isn't bad. Video has much better color correction tools than something like photoshop. It isn't even close.

 

[Renzatic]

Free version is a light version, although it isn't bad. Video has much better color correction tools than something like photoshop. It isn't even close.

If you're going for pure color grading, neither Photoshop nor Affinity Photo will work for you. They're more about manipulation than color correction. For that, you want something more like Lightroom.

I hear that Luminar is the best of the best for that. There's also Darktable if you want to go the free as in freedom route.

 

[thekev]

If you're going for pure color grading, neither Photoshop nor Affinity Photo will work for you. They're more about manipulation than color correction. For that, you want something more like Lightroom.

I hear that Luminar is the best of the best for that. There's also Darktable if you want to go the free as in freedom route.

That was more commentary. Note that a lot of the raw unprocessed stuff for canon/nikon and similar still has quite a bit of processing either at the AD converter or packaging level. I'm familiar with Darktable. I've never heard of Luminar, although it looks cool.

 

[Renzatic]

That was more commentary.

Something of an aside here, but I've been tinkering with the new geometry nodes setup in Blender, and I figured it'd be right up your alley, since for all intents and purposes, it's modeling and animating with pure math.

If you've ever toyed with Houdini, it's basically a pared down version of that.

 

[Zoidberg]

A goodly number of the shortcuts are the same between both programs, and for those moments when the programs don't quite match 1:1, you can find a tutorial easily enough.

There will be a bit of a readjustment curve you'll have to contend with if you switch, but it's not a steep one. I'd say about 2-3 hours of goofing around (with the first hour being the roughest) would be enough for you to come to term with the differences.

Here's a shortcut cheat sheet if you want to check it out.

Thanks. I know it's inevitable that I'll eventually switch to Affinity, it's just I feel it's the end of an era...

Version 6 for me. I don't use it enough to really care for the subscription model, and I don't use it much now.



Free version is a light version, although it isn't bad. Video has much better color correction tools than something like photoshop. It isn't even close.

I remember when I started working in the film industry, Resolve was something you'd see talked about in some industry magazines but very few people got the chance to work with because a workstation for it used to cost (IIRC) hundreds of thousands.

 

[thekev]

Thanks. I know it's inevitable that I'll eventually switch to Affinity, it's just I feel it's the end of an era...

I remember when I started working in the film industry, Resolve was something you'd see talked about in some industry magazines but very few people got the chance to work with because a workstation for it used to cost (IIRC) hundreds of thousands.

The fairlight decks still go up into the tens of thousands range, but this is the way of things. Quantel Paintboxes and SGI workstations also used to cost an enormous amount of money. The price typically dives when proprietary hardware with long R&D pipelines is displaced by commodity stuff.

Something of an aside here, but I've been tinkering with the new geometry nodes setup in Blender, and I figured it'd be right up your alley, since for all intents and purposes, it's modeling and animating with pure math.

If you've ever toyed with Houdini, it's basically a pared down version of that.

You really needed to speculate on that? I didn't use it as much though. Houdini had nice particle systems and things.

 

[MEJHarrison]

I'd love to share what I've been working on. What's the best way to share a video?

For now I'll say I've spent the last 10 days learning VR development. And Unity. Hugely steep learning curve since I'm used to working with Claims and Referrals for an insurance company. It's nothing fancy. Just a little working area where I can test new things and whatnot.

FYI, the hands were horrible. I did it the hard way. Started with a bare model. Setup my own animations. My own colliders. So as you squeeze the trigger on the controller, the finger on screen squeezes too. I'm glad I did it the hard way. Now I know what goes into making something like that. But if I ever release something, I'd just buy some damn hands. It was not fun and mine are just for demo purposes, not great or high quality. My hat is off to the people with the patience for it!

Here's a couple screenshots. I'll post a video if I can figure out how to do that..

 

[DT]

@MEJHarrison Nice! I did a fair amount of Unity development, at one point I had integrated Leap Motion hand control into a something we were working on (FWIW, it was visualizing social media content as a 3D city-like construct).

 

[DT]

I'll have to find a movie because the motion was pretty slick, but here's a very early working POC of a Facebook wall, it loaded content via their API in real time, and there were filtering controls, so it sort of Tetris'ed into different stacks as you applied them ...

 

[thekev]

I'll have to find a movie because the motion was pretty slick, but here's a very early working POC of a Facebook wall, it loaded content via their API in real time, and there were filtering controls, so it sort of Tetris'ed into different stacks as you applied them ...


View attachment 5269

So the tiles disappear if you mismatch them?

 

[MEJHarrison]

@MEJHarrison Nice! I did a fair amount of Unity development, at one point I had integrated Leap Motion hand control into a something we were working on (FWIW, it was visualizing social media content as a 3D city-like construct).

Great! I have someone else to pepper with questions now!

Day 11 (I should keep a journal ), was spent watching no tutorials at all. I read the documentation. First of all, I now feel like I can finally move around. That was the first page I looked at. I think I have it figured out now. But some things just don't work well on a Mac. Like slide two fingers on the trackpad to zoom in or out. It works. But it's "No, too far, not nearly close enough, too close, why the fuck did you move there?, where the hell did my widget go?, I'm just going to start over now ". Thankfully there are other ways to move about that do work well on a Mac. I just had to try them all out. I think I have it now. Or at least I have notes! That was by far the most frustrating thing I've been dealing with. Hard to setup animations on a hand when you can't properly navigate to see the part of the hand you're interested in. Shame on me for waiting till day 11 to figure it out!

The other thing I'm working on now, I'm hesitant to say "struggling with" on day 11, is scripting. For example, let's say I want a chainsaw that could cut down a tree (I don't, but it's a good example). I could find free assets for trees and chainsaws. I could build a scene with trees and a chainsaw. I could have the player pick up the chainsaw. I suspect I could even figure out how to attach a sound to it even though I've not seen that done yet. That's all Unity. But "cutting down the tree" would be script I'd presume. And that's about where the knowledge ends. Someone gave me a hint for this particular example, the collision detectors. Cool, I can set that up (I've been doing C# since there was a C#). But what code do I write in the collision detectors? That's the part that has me scratching my head.

The knowledge will come of course. I've spent a lifetime picking up new computer languages, tools and technologies. And I get that I'm wanting to skip days 12-30 and just jump ahead to the fun stuff. When things do click into place however, that's going to be super exciting.

Now that I think about it, I should make "cutting down a tree with a chainsaw" a test. When I learned enough to make it work without Google/YouTube, I'll know I've finally broken the scripting barrier.

 

[MEJHarrison]

The other frustration I really need to stop and figure out is that my Oculus doesn't play well with the Mac. The Oculus Link software isn't on the Mac or something. So while Windows people can click run and move their controllers and headset and see it reflected on the monitor, mine doesn't do that. I needed a debug statement at one point to spit out the exact name of my controllers to hook-up the correct controller model. But I couldn't do that on a Mac like I could on Windows. Can't run it in the headset and have debug statements popup in the console. I can't set a breakpoint in the code and trigger it in game.

I think I just need to also setup a mock headset and keyboard controls. I had it going for a short time from a tutorial for testing, but couldn't figure out how to navigate and was too excited to figure out something so boring. So adding that to my current playground should be my next task. At least I could pick up a gun and shoot with the keyboard to see how it behaves and do most of the debug stuff a developer would want to do without needing a headset.

 

[Renzatic]

Going for more of a painterly style. It might make things too hard to see though.

 

[lizkat]

Going for more of a painterly style. It might make things too hard to see though.

View attachment 5289

But it's gorgeous, wow.

 

[DT]

So the tiles disappear if you mismatch them?

Not only the tiles, but the people in the photos ... IN REAL LIFE ...

Hahaha, what it did was to just drop down and fill the empty space if you changed a filter, so like "Only Pics from 2012", a bunch of cubes would disappeared and the remaining ones would just fall straight down, as discrete blocks, but it was kind of a cool effect. I never finished it, but I was working on something where you could "grab" a photo cube and stick it into various filter/sort receptacles.