research paper...

Thought I'd post up a recent research paper I wrote for my Masters course. It's entitled 'Group Behavioural Animation Tools' and looks into using existing and modifications of existing theories to create tools specifically for computer animators.
Have a read and let me know what you think ;)
Group Behavioural Animation Tools - Simon Mann

space navigator annoyance...

I've been using a space navigator for a while now and really like how you can move around the viewport in Maya or 3ds Max without having to use the mouse.
The only problem in Maya is that whenever you install or update the latest drivers it defaults your current Maya shelf to be the 3dconnexion tool shelf - very annoying.
To get around this you need to hunt down and edit a file called MagellanStartup.mel that is located where ever you installed Maya (e.g, C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya\scripts\startup). Once you have found it search for the following line in the file 'C3DxShelfTab();' (without quotes) and comment it out by putting two forward slashes just before it like so: '// C3DxShelfTab();' (again without quotes). Now start Maya again and you should be presented with your old shelf preferences as before.

2D illustrations...

I've just updated my 2D section with a few older illustrations that coincide with the 'warcones' game I made a while back. The idea was to make a few different themed posters and resulted in a war, horror and family oriented style for each. I also made a science fiction one but that was a combination of 2D and 3D so it was added a while ago to the 3D section.
Have a great bonfire night :o)

maxscripting...

I had a go at Maxscript for the first time today. A group project at Uni required some automation of .obj importing and exporting so I sat down and started learning the language. The help in Max is pretty similar to Maya and so it was quite easy to pick up and do the necessaries. Here is the simple script for anyone who is interested import export .obj script
One or two interesting things to note is that running multi-line code in the Maxscript listener doesnt work. It took a while to figure that out and so I moved it all into an actual Maxscript and things started working fine. Another is the use of normal brackets () for loop statements and enclosing functions, a little strange when you've been using curly braces {} for years (PHP etc) and have just started learning not to use them as with Python.
All in all it looks a pretty goof thing to learn alongside Mel/Python and should be of value in the future :o)

bTraffic progress

I'm currently working on a particle based Maya animation tool called bTraffic.
What this allows an animator to do is to draw a series of lines in Maya and auto-generate traffic that drive along the lanes.
Further updates will add in extra functionality such as inner lane changing, exit road options, density controls and replacement of cubes with custom models.
Click the image to see some demo videos.

barcamp leeds...

Thought I'd do a little bit of advertising for barcamp leeds here seeing as I'll be going along and having a look at what 'barcamp' events are all about. It looks like an interesting lineup and has some people there that I used to work with back in the days of hardcore web programming. It's also at the Old Broadcasting House in Leeds which has facilities available for our current Masters group project (more about that when it is complete). It's a rather swanky place, nicely laid out and kitted out with some cool equipment.
Should be fun :)

you tube updates to the site...

Just a little note to say that I've uploaded my 3D videos onto you tube and linked them straight to these pages so people wont have to download movies before seeing what they are.
I've also split the 3D section into relevant categories so that it is easier to follow.
Finally all the videos that I have uploaded can be accessed from the following you tube page: My videos

An example can be seen below:

Boids and flocking...

Currently I'm working on creating a tool called bFlocking in Maya to simulate artifical flocking. This system called 'Boids' was originally created by Craig Reynolds.
My first tests were conducted in Flash using Actionscript 2 and I have now progressed onto writing the system within Maya 8.5 using Python.
If you want to look into what boids are then the best place is to start is at Craig Reynolds website at http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
To see my experiments and to download and test the current version of the tool go to my tools section at: http://www.flash-fx.net/3D/tools/bFlocking/

dvd drive disappeared?...

Well this was an interesting one. Today I was about to do some DVD backups of my system only to find that my DVD drive had strangely disappeared from the system. I've also got an external DVD drive which I bought when my laptop DVD drive packed in and plugging this in even came up with the same error - that windows could not use the drive.
After some digging around it appears that this can happen occasionally on XP machines (XP 64 in my case) and even on Vista machines...
To fix the problem you need to:

1. Click on the start menu.
2. In the search box type in 'regedit' without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11­CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of 'UpperFilter' and 'LowerFilter' or maybe either one or the other - you want to click on each of these keys and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.
This seemed to give me back my original DVD drive and also let me access the external DVD drive. A bit wierd but all in a day's work using Windows ;)

Si

prototype game...

Well today I can reveal a prototype game I've been developing for Uni. Its done in Virtools, a game development system that makes things a little bit easier than jumping into all that crazy coding you hear about in games (although you can still do that).
The game is called Warcones and the instructions in the game tell you what its about and what to do ;)
You first need to have the virtools life player browser plugin installed and then once thats on you can go to play the game.
It's only basic and is a prototype so dont expect rocket science but I hope you enjoy it.

Si