Tutorial: Wacom tablet fix
Wacom + Vista
The problem is common across Graphires and pro series recently. I’m not sure about Cintiq’s since I’m away from our animation lab and just what is a Bamboo.
Actually I experienced a pile of issues with the tablet and Vista. Perhaps getting back the old Graphire and xp would be the improvement.
Fix 1:
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Pen and input/
Enable right click and eraser. Clear everything else on all tabs/parameters.
This removed weird conflicts between Vista’s tablet driver and wacom’s own driver. But Photoshop x64 had no pressure sensitivity, while my other x86, x64 apps are fine. So I installed the latest (5.1.1) wacom driver. PS is fixed, but now I joined everyone with right click/hold causes pausing or staggering issue. It’s reported in max and maya. I must hold right click and move it far enough to see maya menus, so productivity became a serious issue. Colleagues with Intuos also has this issue.
Fix 2 (from online):
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device manager/
Disable wacom virtual HID device
Features/
Remove the Tablet PC Optional Components
This should remove some hogging processes and fix the stagger after restart. My Vista refuses to remove the “components” (mostly handwriting recognition + Journal etc), so I did the optional fix.
Fix 3:
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services/
Disable tablet pc input service
(KEEP TabletServicePen, which is the wacom driver)
This removes the 5 processes from wistip & tapTip. 3 pen_tablet processes remain for wacom. Caution: some CG artists found stopping the Vista service stops tablet use completely (no detection?). However, except for the usual nondetection between hibernation/sleep/boot requiring another reboot, I used the three fixes and Graphire runs slick.
abstract designs
particle concepts & fun with ink. MOV files below.
waving cloth structure
- First time using HDRI. Don’t laugh. Was reading HDRI tutorials before 2003, but when needed, I usually found IBL from normal images (like “LDRI”) sufficient and easy to design my own. For realistic soft environment lighting and GI-like shadows IBL has been great. But HDRI gives more definition to highlights and smoothness.
UPDATE: 2nd revision. I removed the odd flickering (due to mentalray sampling), but left some extra “sparkle” at one point for a starry sky feel. The DOF by floating point control was hard to use, but there’s still some rack focus I hope it’s effective. The “DESIGN” text is clearer now, with new frame compositions for the primary marks.
morphing sphere
- You’ll find a 2 petal and 3 petal pattern. weird?
lots of pastelly balls
- I tried the renderers to find a speedup, since we couldn’t use the shot because of the render times.
hw 45″, mr 3:45″, sw 4″
Yes 4 seconds for Maya software, sw wins again! And for 10k balls, raytraced shadows made more sense since each ball could receive shadows.
Chinese ink
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first try at an ink shot.
I’m gathering some references, and there’s a wide variety, some with apparent methods (like that must be from so and so software + plugin…). Also it’s important not to overthink the movements. Some truly good ink splashes in 3Dare photographed and comped well.
demoreels
I’ve made two demoreels so far, both work in progress. There’s some clips to fix and rerender.
You’ll see it on my site: http://www.gophercg.com
Or here:
demoreel – fx|script on blip.tv
demoreel – animation on blip.tv
JW player embedded update
Originally for a company reel presentation. I’ve made a local version sample portfolio SWF.
Select any from the side menu to play. Notice I tweaked the original JW fullscreen function so it expands from the embedded SWF onto the parent SWF. Fullscreen pretty much acts like youtube.
It’s not my real reel (you won’t find it…yet), just a random sample.
And the updated tutorial’s here:JW player embedded tutorial
Perl & SQL
Learning Perl with MySQL…
Some steps seems a bit long winded compared to PHP, but perhaps it’ll make sense eventually.
Animation Showcase & Finalizing…
We had our Tisch animation showcase 5/7. I’m quite impressed especially of the longer works. Andrew & Harry’s film worked out well–that painting and shading is awesome. Several friends back in intermediate animation finally ‘disclosed’ their films, and wow, gota see again Bethany’s vaccum dog PK and Connie’s flower seduction.
I really wanted to see SVA’s and other’s animation…happens to be during my finals and graduation (i did see Metrocaf at SVA) maybe next time.
So parts of my showcase is online, plus extras: Experimental animation. It’s mostly exploration into various animated media and computation from prof Rob Fergus’ expertise in image processing. I might explain some coding/procedure behind some works if it can make any sense to people. But the weird visuals come from permutations of {matlab, maya, flash, pencil, me}.
Media Players in Firefox 3, finally!!
It’s amazing things change since the days of FF2 only a few months back. Previously I tried online methods of making quicktime, wmp player plugins work in FF2, but all the hacks and ini changes failed. The only ‘media’ playable was Flash. So IE was my official media/radio browser. Mind you my FF is portable (not installed), and I didn’t use the real QT. VLC plugin wouldn’t run either, and the best FF playback was to sift for links on a page, and open it with an assigned external player.
Now after some revisions to FF3, I decided not to waste time fixing media issues, but needed to update all my codecs for video work. So I installed the latest K-Lite codec pack, QT alternative, Real alternative. Then I noticed an odd side effect: for the first time, I saw wmp and QT all playing in FF3, with radio stations retrieving license and playing smoothly!
QT alternative still has the invisible playback controls, but the settings button and volume ctrl work this time if you know where to click. Otherwise, Wow it’s perfect!
PHP & MySQL basics
Implemented a register/login system from editing some template code. The SQL’s fairly simple, and more involved are the PHP files. I’m learning the PHP parts, and customizing it. It’s quite useless for a site like mine, but it’s just for experimental fun!
My current class is starting with Perl + MySQL, but seems like the easiest route is PHP. Perl’s worth learning though, like a more powerful, OOP optimized version of bash/ksh.
Anim: Bunnies with Flash
Learning AS3 and how designing (mostly) perpetual animations from code:
Bunnies
It’s a bit psychedelic. I’m thinking of adding interactivity of some sorts, or making it more ‘practical’. Because now it’s mostly experimentation.
Eatery: Han Bat
Han Bat, 53 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 (btw 5th & 6th)
24hrs restaurant in K-Town
Caution: plates bigger than photo!
The sizes are quite generous compared to others for the same standard numbers across Korean Town.
11 giant fried rice with 5 meat/veggie choices: I chose shrimp+kimchi fried rice: so much jumbo shrimp (but qu-qu hardness suggests cheaper-grade shrimp, compare to real spongy texture at real seafood exclusives). Soft kimchi compared to the cold crispy kimchi in the side. For the wallet it’s the most shrimp you can find. The flavoring is fairly good, and will depend on how you mix the five elements. You can get it vegan too.
Bibimbap: my friend ordered beef Bibimbap, standard sized and number. But the egg and beef looked nice.
Korean pancake, soups, (possible) free ox bone soup: Big? Will try next time!
free sides: 6 dishes, but unlike other K-eats, they didn’t refill. But it’s ok since the portions are over the top.
As usual we get a bottle of sweet hot sauce.
