Rodney

Why did I think of Nancy when I saw this... http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/printed-teddy-bears/ Of course, automated sewing has been around for a very long time...

MOX code will be open. The plugins are just (basically) working proof of how they work (targeting software platforms that the majority of FX creators have in their arsenal (After Effects and Nuke). Anyone will be able to take the code and use it in their own program. I say basically because they also will be fully working plugins ready for production use. Some folks may not need anything else beyond that as the internals (open image formats used by MOX) can already be generated by other programs. Note that I *assume* the code of the plugins will be available to review. I don't know that has been explicitly stated but the concern itself has been specifically addressed by Brendan in interviews. Even barring that ability to look at plugin code... all of the elements of the MOX format are themselves open source so once up and running programmers could use that open source code to program their own plugins. But Brendan has no intention of letting programmers need to go that route so I assume even the plugin code for After Effects and Nuke will be available for download and documented on git. Assuming some critical mass of adoption of the format is reached somewhere in the process other utilities will be written (i.e. foregone conclusion). It should be noted that some software (primarily high end video editors) have already embraced (i.e. they can access) the MXF wrapper planned to be used for MOX. But finalizing all the various formats and creating working software to demonstrate the benefits of the open format is what the crowdfunding is all about. Brendan's primary contribution is to work at approx. 50% of what he'd normally make from programming the code. Although outside of your question/statement, this last bit of info is interesting as a measurement of how much it might take a programmer to create a specific plugin/feature. i.e. if Brendan is saying he normally would be paid $40K to get such a format up and running and accessible that lets us know how much money we often expect programmers to 'freely' code for us. Note also that this isn't the creation of any new codecs (and in an interview Brendan suggested that one company bought another at several million dollars to get at a new codec they could call their own... the cost of which suggested he didn't want to go that route) but rather to use open source codecs in an open source wrapper to achieve am image frame movie format for FX production... the benefits of which are outlined elsewhere online (including indiegogo).

The After Effects plugin (stretch goal) has been reached. The folks at Video Copilot made sure of that with a $4K+ contribution. With six days to go I'll guess that someone will fund the Nuke plugin as well. Time will tell. It'd be nice if a standalone viewer/converter could be created... or perhaps a commitment to add the format into Open Image.

Saw it. Enjoyed it. Need to see it again.

Whoops... a few minutes later... already funded. Now moving on to the stretch goals of After Effects and Nuke plugins (I'm confident those goals will be met because of those deeply invested in those products). Too bad I'm not in a position to suggest an A:M Plugin.

Funding is now at 93% due (primarily) to a recent buy in from Red Giant. MOX will most certainly see it's primary funding level reached but it is uncertain how much farther it may go with other (smaller) corporate heads buying into the idea. In my estimation it's important that MOX reach it's stretch goal of adding an Adobe After Effects plugin (for that Adobe itself should be able to spare a few $). Getting a format into the mainstream so that it can actually be used is that important.

I've always thought of you as an early adopter.

Have any early adopters had a chance to play with A:M on OS X 10.10 Yosemite? Unlike with Mavericks... which threw a lot of folks off a cliff for a brief moment... it would seem most incompatibilities with Yosemite are related to hardware drivers. That sounds like good news for A:M users as keeping hardware drivers up to date is generally a good practice anyway. As Yosemite is a free upgrade for Mac Users it likely to be adopted by many: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/10/16OS-X-Yosemite-Available-Today-as-a-Free-Upgrade.html

It is interesting to note that the MOX format is going to take a large part of its approach from Open EXR becoming, in essence, an EXR movie format. How Brendan plans to get this done is to effectively mirror Open EXR's architecture as a wrapper for other formats. This is a little bit like what the new programming language Julia professes to do in that it provides a intelligent and web enabled wrapper (of sorts) to access other programming languages. What makes Open EXR the ideal 'subformat' to work with is it's access to multiple images (within a single container image) and depth information via channels. As those channels can be user defined this opens up the format for consider (local) programming. The desire is to take a very complex array of image formats and expose the strengths of each wherever they are needed most. Theoretically, at least at the user level, image formats themselves would be largely interchangeable all within the scope of this new file format. While Brendan's immediate goal is more down to earth the potential is there to solve some of image formats more pesky problems: - Image formats that don't display well in a browser - Image sequences that can't leverage transparency - 1D images trying to fit into a 4D world While there have been and continue to be open image formats, MOX is the billed as the first open movie format. 'Tis a lofty goal to be sure. Here's a PDF of the basic MOX proposal: http://www.fnordware.com/downloads/MOX_Proposal.pdf

me = jealous Not that I have anything to render that would require such a renderfarm. Maybe someday! Thanks for sharing Steve. You are an inspiration.

More Birthday wishes for Will!* (All but some minor final texturing created in A:M... and using Will's Tar .stl model from the other topic) *Who wants a great party to end. Although, the next panel in this sequence would be Tar saying, "Bah!" and storming off because nobody is left (conscious) to celebrate with him.

Birthday greetings are a great place to quickly put an idea together (and... hopefully it'll work!). I figure Tar dispatched someone long ago at this exact location and that poor soul became fertilizer for an oasis of life in the desert to grow. During these brief forays into image making I do try to make note of things that I didn't have time to incorporate in a timely manner (sometimes that provides a clue as to an area I need to research). One such thing would be to add some rust to the sword to further indicate the passage of time. And although I do allow myself some room for maneuvering the goal of these doodles is to complete them entirely in A:M (or alternatively to draw them on paper). Now... how does this all relate to Will and his Birthday... well, that's all part of the challenge. I figure in a dozen or so more years I'll finally be able to do his birthday justice.

Brendan Bolles, creator of the ProEXR plugin for After Effects etc. has launched an effort to cull together various open source image and audio formats into a new (more universal) media format for image sequences. It looks like he'll easily make his initial funding goal. This is of interest primarily because having a -simple-, -universal- and -patent free- image format that allows for still and moving imagery has long been of interest. Will MOX just be another file format to contend with or can it achieve it's lofty goal? If anyone can do it it might be Brendan Bolles. This video outlines some of the problems and the support behind the idea:

Yes, what Robert said. Anything that makes A:M crash should be avoided and since Steffen is the creator of the plugin he is the one would will know best how to proceed. I'm not sure how the plugin would test for internal patches but Steffen surely does. I'm not sure if there is a option to select Plugins in A:M Reports but it would be nice to differentiate between crashes internal to A:M and those occurring in plugins.

Mentioning other software isn't the problem*... feature orgies, baseless comparison and promotion of competing products... those will surely run afoul of forum rules and common sense. As long as common sense prevails we can explore A:M in ways few ever imagine. Here's a tip: The key to a discussion that 'mentions' another program is to keep the focus on A:M. If the focus is on the other program then it should probably be posted in a forum dedicated to that program. *I do have to chuckle a little every time someone goes to extraordinary lengths to circumvent forum rules that have never existed. Then I sigh as I realize that folks do take that silliness seriously. (We now return you to your forum topic already in progress)

Here's a modified version of the chair that successfully went through the Correct Normals plugin. Just prior to running the plugin I had removed all internal patches by using the Split Patch plugin. I did have a similar issue with the Split Patch plugin that is possibly related to the same issue with internal patches. Note that the resulting chair (attached) is a little more dense as I didn't take the time to go back in and delete all the unnecessary splines. kitchen chair (no internal patches) after successful correct normals.mdl

The plugin crashes on the kitchen chair here as well. At a guess I'd say this may have something to do with internal patches... (?) That model has a lot of them.

Happy Birthday Will! (my first renderings from v18g)

Big Hero Six character studies:

It would be very hard to get consistent results from a vast number of settings versus only a few or 'none'. One of the ways that Lumion can be optimized so well is that it limits the options available to the user... thereby increasing throughput. A major issue with time-based rendering would be the difference you get say when you use Global Illumination (or all the fancy bells and whistles on) vs when you render with all options off. One minute render of one wouldn't get you near to the other... in fact the first might not even be fully calculated in that timeframe. But here I assume that the 'rendering time' is mostly that from the moment calculations are already performed but now must be executed. The trick to such a thing would likely be to 'entertain' the user while the calculations are being done in the background. In other words, there is a large part of 'rendering' that is perceptual. Current efforts to gradually reveal an image and then refine that image the longer you wait are an example of that approach. The answer to the question of 'How much quality do you want?' then depends on how long you are willing to wait for it. In essence this is almost 'time-set rendering' except for the setting part. In that scheme of rendering the setting is obviously set high and the renderer will keep chugging away until either that level is reached or the user gives up but I'm not sure most of those renderers allow you to change that upper limit (although they should if they don't).

Nuke itself is complicated to use so it's probably a good thing that there is some resistance to be faced getting into it. Otherwise a lot of folks would download only to find they couldn't use it anyway. As for 64bit only... that's a given considering the amount of memory the program needs to use. I'm certainly not trying to defend their license but they know folks will be abusing their license so they want to make sure the rules are known from the get-go that the program is not for usage by those that would otherwise be required to purchase. It's not unlike speeding... we know we aren't suppose to drive faster than the speed limit... we know we are in violation if we do it. And yet we still tend to drive above the speed limit because it's too inconvenient for us not to.

For those of you working on personal projects of the non-commercial variety this might be of interest. Nuke is a high end compositor used in the production of many feature films. And of course Nuke does offer more than just compositing. Some of the features: http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/features/?product=nukestudio The PLE release is designed for learning the software with the obvious hope that you'll want to eventually purchase the commericial release because it is that useful to you. There is a long considerably long list of things you cannot do with the noncommericial release: These constraints may limit usage but they do allow access to some expensive compositing tools. The one question I have would be whether the license allows for a level of collaboration while learning Nuke. The line item "Not available for use in the provision of a service to 3rd parties, whether paid or not' could preclude this. Other restrictions (of the hobble-ware variety) are said to be minimal: The release isn't planned until 2015 so that gives plenty of time to consider the compositing requirements you'll be needing in the future and better determine if the non-commercial usage is appropriate for your personal project. With Nuke Studio The Foundry is trying to get a piece out of the rapidly growing independent film world; an increasingly competitive arena especially in the light of VFX studios seeking to diversify their sources of revenue. Note that there are three different versions of Nuke (Nuke, NukeX and NukeStudio). As near as can be assertained only NukeStudio will be available for the free extended non-commercial usage. The price for commercial use of Nuke Studio is expected to be £5,600.

More you say? Meet the characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe2fqoy0L_s ...and don't forget Fred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q396a9CPJvA

Here is another article that goes into some additional detail on Hyperion, dPix, etc.: http://electronicdesign.com/blog/disney-supercomputer-renders-big-hero-6

Rendered on a 55,000 core supercomputer... There are several names of computer systems/software dropped in this video that haven't been mentioned a lot before, mostly because they've only recently been created in service of Disney's latest movie 'Big Hero Six'. It's well worth a look for the look at technology which interestingly enough isn't related to Renderman.