A brand-new tutorial series is in pre-production!

Hi all!

So finally a blog update from me - seems I just can't break this pattern of posting in spurts and then disappearing off the face of the Earth, can I?

So this is really just a quick update to let you know that:

A. I'm still alive (cue GLaDOS)
B. I've started pre-production on my first-ever proper tutorial series.

     I'm going to be bringing an old tutorial request from 2 years ago back into the spotlight and making it as professional and well-built as I can. It's going to push my presentation, editing, and general recording skills to their current limit, but hopefully this can get my tutorial-creator juices flowing again.

     So I've actually spent the last 2 years not recording anything really worthwhile due to some personal issues I was having and am still dealing with (in short, a lot of self-criticism), but I've decided it's time to simply plunge and figure it out as I go. Learn to accept my shortcomings and work on improving them.
     I've been practising with Minecraft and I'm also simultaneously working on a new Let's Play series and channel - I've always wanted to get into Let's Plays ever since I started watching Chuggaaconroy's The Legend of Zelda - The Wind Waker and Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door series. I've gotten more and more interested in LPs as I've started to follow people such as Etho's Lab and GuudeBoulderfist and others of the MindCrack group, so I've finally decided to dive in and start my own.

     I've been putting a lot of thought into both my tutorials and the LPs, and I've started working on setting up my channels for both. The LP-specific channel hasn't been created yet; I'm still figuring out a banner and whatnot, as well as creating a backlog of episodes that I can then upload on a regular basis. I'll be doing the same for this tutorial series, so there may be a couple of weeks of work ahead of me still.

     If you're curious to know more about the series as it develops, check my Twitter and/or Google+ and I should post some updates on a semi-regular basis. I also tweet/share other things like Linux news, artwork, anime songs, gaming news and a few other things ;)
   For anyone wondering about my Facebook profile, I really only keep it just in case I might need it, but I never use it. I just don't particularly like the system - Twitter's the one to check if you want to follow me.

That's it from me for now. Keep an eye out for those production updates!


Philippe M., signing out.

Hatsune Miku Portrait - A Timelapse

Seems I completely forgot to post the timelapse video here on my blog.  I've been rather quiet here lately, I know - no inspiration at the moment, though I have been picking at a new, relatively serious post concerning motivation and self-criticism.  I'm hoping I can bring up its quality a notch or two before I post it, however, so that might still be a bit far off.

Anyway, before I babble on for too long about blogpost Drafts (I currently have two), I'll cut to the chase.  These two videos are the progress timelapses for my first-ever fan-art. I posted about this image back in May, after I first completed it, and subsequently forgot to update my blog.  Cue the facepalm.

Hatsune Miku Portrait - Progress Timelapse (Part 1)

Hatsune Miku Portrait - Progress Timelapse (Part 2)

Both videos can be watched in 1080p HD on YouTube!

The music tracks used in the videos are all licensed under Creative Commons with Attribution.  I listed the songs and their respective remixers/composers in the video descriptions. All the songs are from CCMixter.org - I'll definitely be browsing through there again, they have some really cool tunes that I think would work well in both timelapses and maybe a possible Minecraft Let's Play series I've been working on.

I also have another fan-art in the pipeline - I've been calling it Miku 2.0. This time I'm going for a "full shot" instead of just a bust/portrait, and I plan on using Krita for the final lineart and colours. I've been working on finalizing the sketch in MyPaint, and I think I've made some good progress so far.  I haven't recorded any footage of the process yet, but I plan on screencasting the final process in Krita. Not sure how it'll turn out yet, but I'm optimistic.

As a quick note to any fellow Vocaloid fans and PlayStation 3 users, SEGA has released a Demo version of the latest Vocaloid rhythm game, Project Diva F, on the PlayStation Network.  As far as I know it's slated for release some time around the end of summer, so until then the Demo will have to do ;)

That's it from me for now - thanks for stopping by!

Check that off the To Try list!

So while I was working on the Fantasy Axe model I posted about a couple of days ago, I also had a smaller side-project/experiment going and I can officially say that it's completed!

This is my first-ever fan-art.  I rarely draw, by hand or otherwise, but I've had ideas for various fan-illustrations for several years and now that I have a Wacom graphics tablet (a Bamboo Capture, for those of you wondering - works absolutely great, I love it) I thought I'd try my hand at drawing something other than single-pen-stroke Triforces or Sonic the Hedgehog's face always at the same angle.  So I went with Vocaloid virtual-singer Hatsune Miku, since I'm quite familiar with her design and variations of it.  I guess you could say I'm a fan ;)

So, this is my first-ever successful attempt at fan-art of any kind, and I don't want to sound brag-y or excessively proud or anything, but I'm really, really pleased with the result!

I seriously never draw.  I had left that up to my younger brothers while I concentrated on the awesomeness of vertex and polygon manipulation (aka 3D modelling). But I saw my Wacom tablet as a way into that kind of artwork, so the Bamboo Stylus combined with a healthy portion of MyPaint and Linux Mint led to this coming out of my brain and onto the pixel-ey canvas.
This was also an experiment to try and get to know the MyPaint application.  I really love it so far, and I'm also looking into Krita, another open-source digital painting application.  Only problem with Krita so far is that there seems to be a memory leak somewhere and it fills up 4GB of RAM relatively quickly, but its brushes are really interesting.  I'll figure something out eventually.

Anyway, the piece is far from perfect; her proportions are a little off, the perspective is slightly off, my lines aren't the cleanest, the shading is still a little rough, a few too many hair strands in her twin ponytails, the collar and edges of her outfit don't have the usual zig-zag border, and a bunch of other things I could list.  But, all that being said, I'm still very happy with the result :)

I'll also be putting together a time-lapse of the drawing process.  I have roughly 8.5 hours of footage to cut together at high-speed, but it should be up relatively soon.

A new model completed!

So this is a small project I've been working on for about a month.  I had decided to look through ConceptCookie's list of free downloads and I saw the modelling sheets/references for a fantasy axe, and it piqued my interest.  So I gave it a shot, and I had a LOT of fun modelling it.  I posted regular updates on my DeviantART gallery, so for anyone curious, please check it out :)

Without further ado, the renders:

Final poly-count in the viewport, with both the Mirror and Subsurf Modifiers enabled, is 236 856 faces. Actual model poly-count (since I only modelled one half) would be of 7403 faces. All hand-placed - and also not a triangle in sight, it's all quads!

That's it from me for now. I'm off to finish another mini-project, and then who knows? Might actually finish my Audi A5 

A note to my fellow film geeks

I usually don't do posts like this, but as a 3D and Visual Effects geek I thought this was an important issue.

Today is the Oscars, and of course there are lots of films being nominated, one of which is Life of Pi.  Now, all I know about this film is that it's an adaptation of the book by the same name, which I've never read.  The point is that Pi sold over $500million in tickets worldwide.  The studio behind the apparently amazing visual effects is Rythm & Hues - it's one of the big, well known studios in California.

If you take a look at their Wikipedia page (link) under Filmography, they've worked on a lot of big films - many of which I've seen and like: the X-Men films _{(except for Origins: Wolverine, thankfully - haha)}, Lord of the Rings, Night at the Museum, The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and many others.
However, they've had to declare bankruptcy and around (maybe over) 200 visual effects artists lost their jobs.  This is after a Oscar-nominated film - for which they created the VFX - has made over 500million bucks in ticket sales worldwide.  And according to my reading, more and more studios are having financial trouble even after their films make tonnes of $$, and the studios and artists involved aren't getting paid as well as they should.

So my point is, today I found out about a protest being held by VFX pros and artists, and after reading up on it I thought I should share the news with my fellow geeks.  I grew up watching VFX-laden films like Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or animated marvels like Toy Story, Shrek, or The Incredibles, and I've spent hours watching bonuses and behind-the-scenes footage on how they make a 2-tonne mecha smash through a digital wall, or how they created the amazing character that is Gollum.
So, if you're on Twitter (the hashtag is #vfxprotest) and care about VFX and its future, let those artists down in L.A., Vancouver, and other cities know that we're behind them as well :)

Well, that's all I have to say for now.  Thanks for reading!

Anime verdict - Steins;Gate

Let me start off by pointing out that this particular anime isn't for younger audiences - it's definitely a more serious story, and there's some language, questionable jokes (mostly Daru's fault) and a bit of fan-service mixed in.
Also, please be warned that although I did my very best, some spoilers have slipped in just the same.

...and I also might talk your ears off.  This is a looong post, guys.

Steins;Gate was dubbed by Funimation in two parts last year, and I started watching it soon after the first twelve episodes were dubbed and released.  This series dives into a popular sci-fi subject - time-travel - by a rather interesting method.  Rather than physically travelling through time like a 900-year-old Time Lord in a blue phone box (which the show makes references to a few times), they change events already passed and alter their future by sending text messages back in time using a cell-phone.  This also involves one of the strangest time-machine discoveries I've seen yet - microwaved bananas, which turn fluorescent-green and their molecular structure pretty much breaks down.  They eventually stop nuking bananas to send their text messages since it was both getting expensive and they didn't actually need the bananas as a catalyst or fuel source.

In a nutshell, if you take a look at my currently non-existent list of anime favourites, you would see that the top spots are now occupied by three different series, all of which are on an equal footing.  These three would be the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series - which only recently joined the top ranks as I've sort-of rediscovered the series* recently, if that makes any sense; the short, 13-episode Angel Beats!, which I've talked about before; and now Steins;Gate.

Thanks to Funimation for uploading the trailer

The story is quite mind-bending and lengthy as well, spanning a full 25 episodes and going through two major, interconnected arcs - which Funimation conveniently released in two parts, giving us the big unexpected cliff-hanger at the end of episode 12, which in my opinion is also one of the funniest episodes of the whole series.  It's rather ironic too, considering said cliff-hanger, but I can't say anything more about that cliff-hanger without risking giving away its cliff-hanger-ness.

New Audi A5 update

I've already fallen behind with my blog posts - I originally had planned to do a post every ten days or so, since I wanted to have double the number of posts in 2013 as I did in 2012.  However, I've been quite busy and haven't had much time to think about new posts or subjects.
However, I do already have one subject to post about, I just have to get around to it.  Last week I (finally) finished watching sci-fi anime series Steins;Gate, so I'll definitely be doing a post about that.  In the mean time, I'm happy to say it has happy ending - I had my doubts during the last few episodes.

For today, I'll be posting all the new updates on the Audi A5 project.  I've mostly been posting about it on BlenderArtists.org, so the last image I posted here was of the new bumper panel.  I've made quite a few changes to it since then.
These images start from August 21st last year up to present day - on a side note the HTML has messed up and not all the images are 100% centred, but I can't figure out how to fix it :|

A new bumper and front wing.

Software Spotlight - Audacity

And we're back with the second entry in my planned series, the Software Spotlight!  Today I'll be talking more-or-less briefly about a program I've used a lot - open-source audio editor Audacity!  And it works on all three major operating systems (Windows, MacOS and Linux) so that's a plus.

Image courtesy of audacity.sourceforge.net

I'll start off by saying I am far from being an expert on sound engineering and editing.  As always, I'm just trying things out and figuring it out as I go - I've been doing this for years with various software, even back when the most complex image and sound manipulation programs I used were Microsoft Paint and Sound Recorder (hey, I had to start somewhere)

Anime verdict - Fractale

I had originally written a small Journal post on this series on DeviantART, roughly half an hour after finishing the thirteenth episode, but there was something about the post and my wording that I didn't like and couldn't manage to fix, so I tossed it into the digital trash bin.  Here I am, giving it another shot, but this has also given me time to think back on the series and have a more objective viewpoint.  I tend to be in "fanboy" mode when I finish any series, and the whole "OMG that was awesome" factor tends to show a lot ;)

Ultimately, I am disappointed by Fractale.  It was a series I was very much looking forward to watching, after seeing the English trailer for it on the Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike DVD (which, while I'm on the subject, I quite like).

Basically, I find the trailer better than the series.  This is actually the first anime I've watched that hasn't made it onto the Re-watch list.  Every other series has been a favourite, from Haruhi to Shana to Steins;Gate and back.

The trailer made me think the series was a combination of elements from one of Isaac Asimov's visions

Software Spotlight - Guake Terminal

I'm hoping this is the first of a series, to be honest.  It's an idea that popped into my head this morning and I just went with it.  But, without further ado, let's talk Guake.

Guake is a command terminal for Linux, much like the standard terminal you can find in Linux Mint.  What makes this one so special is that it's unobtrusive - the standard terminal will always be present in some form, whether that's on-screen or minimized to your taskbar, or on another workspace.  Guake is also always present once launched, but the difference is that Guake will hide in the notification area, and only come out when you call it with the (default) F12 key.  It also has workspace immunity, so it will appear on your screen regardless of which workspace you are currently using.
You can see it here in action on my second monitor**, currently running a python-script for automated GPU temperature monitoring and fan-speed control (script by lfrisken on BlenderArtists.org)

And like the standard Terminal, you have the option of having several different Tabs running different processes - Guake, however, displays these on the bottom.

The other nice thing about Guake is that it is very customizable.  In the Appearance settings alone, you can set transparency - I have mine around 20-25% - and background colour, font colour, set up a background image, change font types and sizes, as well as pre-defined palettes, which I haven't yet tried.
On top of which, keyboard short-cuts are also customizable.  For instance when Guake starts for the first time you can summon it using the F12 key, set it to full-screen with F11, and so on.  However since Blender also uses the F12 key for rendering images (therefore a pretty important key) I've changed this to the "~" key, between "Esc" and "Tab".  I find this more intuitive, but you really can set it up with whatever key combination you like.

There are also several other options, most of which are more technical so I haven't yet figured out what they do.  Putting all that aside, however, I can definitely recommend Guake to any fellow Linux users.  It's quick, unobtrusive, and quite customizable.  I thought I liked the standard Terminal quite a bit, but Guake has overtaken it :)

** The only slight issue with Guake at the moment is that you can't choose which monitor it appears on.  It simply sets itself up on what it considers the primary monitor, which in my case is, oddly enough, my second screen.  If I remember correctly this is something in development and should be available some time in the future.  It doesn't really affect it negatively in my opinion.

A fight to the death - MeshWeaver VS Dust & Thermal Paste

So it's finally time for me to talk about a side-project I've been working on for a couple of months.

I'll kick it off with a comment concerning thermal paste and what it's for.  Of course, if you're already familiar with it, then feel free to skip ahead.
Thermal paste (also called Thermal Grease) is, obviously, a material used on various pieces of computer hardware and electronics such as processors - both central (ex. quad-core Intel i5-2320) and graphics-dedicated (ex. nVidia GTX560 Ti) - and it is usually applied between said processors and their heat sinks to improve heat dissipation through conductive materials like silver, aluminium, and other metals.  The Wikipedia article lists the different types as well as the general usage of thermal paste - for instance too much can increase the risk of over-heating, while too little won't help heat-dissipation as much as it should.
Thermal paste can also be relatively expensive considering the size of the tubes - over at newegg.ca you can see that they have three pages-worth of different brands and types, and they go for up to ~40.00$ CDN.

As I just mentioned above it's usually found between heat sinks and processors to help conduct heat generated by the processor over to the heat sink, which then usually air-cools and any excess heat is pushed out the back of your PC by the casing fan(s).

Dust, of course, needs no explanation - it's just really, really annoying to deal with.

And now on to the project - I mentioned it my last blog post but the only hint I gave was installing drivers for a nVidia GeForce 6200.  Well, time to let the cat out of the bag - I've been working on restoring a roughly 8 year old computer to working order.

Open-source penguins, food mixers, and anime - Long post ahead!

Yep, I'm still around, still geeky, still stuck on my Audi project.

I've been slowly chipping away at the interior models, but it's proving to be rather difficult - not to mention I seem to be going through a creativity drought, and my life's been a bit hectic over the last few weeks.
As a heads-up, I also have a post about a recently completed project coming up, so keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway, on to those open-source penguins.  In other words, Linux.  I've now spent the better part of today configuring my desktop's Linux Mint 13 installation, which I had been putting off for several weeks.  In case you're wondering (or if you're forgetful, since I've posted about this before), my desktop is a Gateway with a quad-core Intel i5-2320 at 3.0GHz, 6GB of RAM, and a EVGA nVidia GeForce GTX 560TI SC GPU.
The fun part when installing Linux is that most of the time it can't use the GPU in your system when still "out-of-the-box".  You have to install the drivers for it, since Linux doesn't generally seem to be as plug-and-play as Windows 7 (which I love), which is both a pro and a con in my opinion.  The problem then becomes actually getting to the desktop interface, which is made tricky by the afore-mentioned lack of display drivers.

That of course means that even the LiveDVD versions have trouble booting up properly, which is always fun.  So in order to get around that, you have to first get to the Grub loader screen and modify the parameters for the Linux booting process.  For nVidia GPUs, there's a specific change that needs to be made which, unless you edit the grub.cfg file itself, is temporary and resets itself when you reboot.  I have no idea if this works with most common Linux distros like Ubuntu and so on, so if you're having trouble booting a Linux LiveCD/DVD or getting a newly-installed GPU working I'd recommend finding the right set of instructions for your Linux distro :)

My process, however, is as follows: when you get to the grub loader, press E over the desired option, which then brings up details concerning that particular boot process' instructions.  You should see a long line of instructions about two-thirds of the way down, which should end in the words "quiet splash", or at least have those words near the end of the string.  For an nVidia GPU (whether that's a GeForce 6200, which I had to deal with a few days ago, or a GTX560Ti, which is in my desktop) you have to change that "quiet splash" to "noacpi noapic nomodeset", which basically tells Linux to boot up without all the fancy GPU processes that require drivers.

Updated Gallery + new Audi improvements

So I've finally done a bit of cleaning up in the Gallery page, as well as a general clean-up throughout both my blog and my DeviantART gallery.  I'm trying to better showcase my best renders and projects, so as they tended to get lost among the test renders and lower-quality renders, I've removed quite a few images from both galleries.
For DeviantART, I've simply moved all the unwanted images into storage.  I'll deal with deleting them eventually, I just don't have the time at the moment.
Also concerning the new Gallery page, I've added five other shots of the Audi A5 to the list (I'll be adding them to the Audi's project page in a moment), so click the tab up top to check 'em out!

2012 Audi A5 - last updates and Render!

So, just another string of pictures!  There were 6 more updates since my last post, but they were mostly centered around tweaking and texturing.

WIP 18 - Still experimenting with materials

WIP 19 - Tweaking the model slightly

WIP 20 - More model tweaks, this time on the headlights, adding
detail on the lights themselves.

WIP 21 - More tweaking of materials.  Everything is starting to come together :)

WIP 22 - Textured calipers.

WIP 23 - The scene's coming together!

And now the final render!

The final shot was rendered on my Intel i5-2320 at 1250 samples.  Took 3 hours to churn out this 1080p image.  I'm still working on a few other shots, so I'll put those up once they're all ready and whatnot.

I think I can now say with certainty that this is my most complex project ever.  The vertex count is above 3 million at render time... anyway, now on to other projects!  I'll have a special post over the weekend about new developments, so stay tuned!

2012 Audi A5 Coupe - Update #2! (lots of pics!)

**A wild meme-face has appeared!**

(Lvl. 9001 Wy-yuno)

MeshWeaver, Y U NO POST MOAR UPDATES?!

Well, to put it simply...I was being lazy - posting on a blog is a bit more time-consuming than uploading on DeviantART, you know?

Anyway, last time I ended with WIP snapshot #04, which was a turntable render of the bodywork at it's then-current level of progress.  But...since then there have been thirteen new updates.  I'm that lazy, yes.

Geekness à la GTX560 Ti (long post!)

What's a GTX560 Ti, you may ask?  Put simply, it's awesomeness condensed into the shape of computer hardware.  Put complexly (because I can't resist talking about the details), it is the second generation of the nVidia GeForce 460 - the 400 series was replaced with the 500, so the GTX460 (apparently a very popular GPU) became the GTX560.  However, to bridge the performance gap between the 560 and the 570 (which was relatively considerable) nVidia came up with another "in-between" version, the GTX560 Ti.

Why am I talking about this particular GPU?  Well, waaaaaaay back in December 2011, I bought my current desktop PC, a Gateway DX4860 with an Intel i5-2320 processor @3.0Ghz, 6GB of 1333Mhz RAM, a DVD drive, about a dozen USB ports (you can never have too many USB ports) and finally a nVidia GeForce GT520.  Not the best card out there, truth be told - I looked it up on an benchmarking website and it was third from the bottom.

However, it was millions of times better than the GPU I have in my good-ol' laptop - an Intel 965 Express Chipset, which sometimes struggled to run even Age of Mythology - not exactly the most graphics-intensive game out there.  (I don't even know why Intel makes GPUs O_o)

Coming to a 3D handheld-console near you

So I just opened up Google Chrome and was checking the good ol' BlenderNation news feed on Blender.org, when I saw this:

http://www.blendernation.com/2012/04/27/nintendo-set-to-release-big-buck-bunny-on-3ds/trackback/

...just to explain just how epicly awesome this is to me, consider this following sentence.   My discovery of The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time and other Nintendo games has very probably led to me doing what I'm doing now - being a total Blenderhead.  And now my one great passion/interest being (in a way) ported to a Nintendo system is something I was not expecting at all.  I seriously grew up with an NES and N64, and Nintendo's games remain my all-time favourites.
Not to mention it's coming to the 3DS, which is an amazing piece of tech - even though I can't say I've used it that much, I've completed Ocarina of Time 3D and the amount of detail and the quality of the graphics, not to mention the amazing 3D effect (galloping across Hyrule Field or fighting the King of Evil, Ganondorf, was even more epic than in the original, which was over 9000% pure epicness) was simply stunning.

...I'm really, really happy right now :D

All the geeky, geeky things...

So, I haz moar updatez for youz :D

First off, the Audi A5 Coupe.  To be perfectly honest, I haven't worked on it since I rendered that last WIP update, the model turntable.  I've been much busier with setting up Linux Mint (more on that later) and a bunch of other things like Minecraft, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Gran Turismo 5 :P  I'm planning on getting back to it this week, so keep an eye out (...gross) for those updates :D

So...From Freedom came Elegance, and from Linux Mint 12 came headaches and over six re-installations.  To be fair though, I love the interface and how the menus and so on work in Mint 12, and oddly enough it feels a bit more professional than Windows 7.  Maybe it's the absence of a few graphical flourishes Win7 uses, or maybe it's just that I'm expecting a Linux distro (aka distribution package/version) to be more professional since it's what they use over at the Blender Foundation in Amsterdam.  Who knows?
Anyway, about those multiple installations... they're all due to FAILs on my part.  Half of those fails were due to my crappy disk-partition management - deleting partitions that had the GRUB loader (what asks you which OS you want to use when you start up your computer) and therefore, I got GRUB errors that I couldn't fix by any method except re-installing everything.  So yesterday I finally got all my disk-partitions setup properly and Linux Mint 12 installed, updates installed and Nvidia GeForce GT520 drivers also installed - which means I also have my two screens setup awesomely.  I'll post a picture of my setup sometime :)
I'm still in the process of installing my essential programs, but hopefully I'll soon be regularly switching between Mint 12 and Win7 to do all my work :D

Yumm, minty chrome...

Two gaming-related updates too!  Yesterday I finally got my hands on...

New Project - 2012 Audi A5 Coupe

Hey Blender-heads!

So, about a week or two back I started working on a new model - a 2012 Audi A5 Coupe.  Yes, it's another German car.  What can I say?  I like German car designs...and most European designs, actually (most of the cars I have in Gran Turismo 5 on PS3 are European)

So far, I haven't even mentioned this project over on BlenderArtists - I'm trying to go it alone on this one and see if I can avoid any nuclear detonations of problematic-ness, but I might just start a thread over there a bit later in the process, I don't know yet.
Anyway, here come the snapshots:

WIP #01 - Outlining important topological features

WIP #02 - Some completed panels with slightly messy topology.

Just a quick post

Hello World!

So, this is just a quick post to prove I'm still alive*, and I just wanted to mention that I'll be posting some new project snapshots tonight or tomorrow - I've begun working on a model of a 2012 Audi A5 Coupe :D  So yeah, I'll be posting a few WIPs tonight, as well as maybe talking about a few new things I tried out recently.

See ya later, Blender-heads!

* No, I'm not actually referencing the ending song from Portal ;)