That’s right! Althought I missed the 100 days anniversary, I am still very happy to see that my server has gone through over 115 days of labor without a single hiccup, error or restart. 
So, hopefully, at the very least another 115 days will come by without any issues what so ever.
It’s been almost two months since I haven’t updated this place! Man!
But it has been pretty busy here. I’ve done countless budget estimates for various projects. Mainly TV commercials. So, hopefully at least some will come to a fruition. 
Also, been pretty busy getting my material for the EUE 2010 master class. I think it’ll be pretty interesting for those new to this topic of Pipeline, Workflow and Data Management.
In case you haven’t seen the TV commercial we finished in the begining of May, Dr.Max (a local chain of pharmacies here in the Czech Rep.), please, check it out, it’s pretty cool I think and all the artists involved worked very hard, very long hours, to bring this, way above average (locally speaking), TV spot to life.
Also, on the technical field, I’ve invested quite some time and cash 
to learning new technologies like WPF along with IronPython and a new IDE, Visual Studio 2010, which seems pretty damn promising (not there yet, but getting close with each release)! So, hopefully, I’ll finally find some time to properly design some nice UIs for our Tactic connections from within 3ds Max. Oh, and I managed to get the very latest build of Tactic from the ever-so-awesome guys at Southpaw, so, I’ll be playing with the new toys pretty soon.
Anywyas, I’ll start posting some interesting stuff as soon as I get back from Utrecht next week, so, please, stay tuned!
It’s confirmed! I’ll have a speech in Utrecht, in June 3-4, at the End User Event 2010. The topic: Pipeline and Workflow issues and solutions for freelancers and studios alike.
I’ll be delighted to see you there for a chat and a few drinks…
I’ll elaborate on this topic some more later, but I thought I’d let you know that I’ve successfully deployed, configured and tested Prime Focus’ Deadline®, the render manager of choice for duber studio.
I’ve had a chance to cooperate with James Hindley from FPA Architects on a pretty comprehensive article on Linear Workflow in 3D. Go check it out!
I’m trhilled to be able to finally showcase, at least, some of our very own Python implementation into 3ds Max!
First off, our primary reason for writing our own, proprietary, Python connection to 3ds Max is Tactic by Southpaw Technology. An awesome asset management system entirely written in Python that I decided to invest in and integrate our tools and software packages into. Another reason for this connection, later came up, was the need for writing much more complex scripts with complex GUIs, since, as you probably know, a few functional lines of code are hardly enough in a modern, efficient, VFX production of today.
The heart of our Python integration is dotNET from Microsoft. I can’t express myself enough how much I appretiate this framework! The brain of our Python integration is IronPython. Also a product from Microsoft, completely open source and free, which are two very important aspects for any pipeline tool in any production facility of any size. Not the price as much as the availability of the software. And with IronPython and Microsoft, I am certain that this piece of software will be around for years!
If you still haven’t bought the book yet, DO IT NOW!
Or at least, do it after you’ve read this thorough review of the book.
I can’t resist to quote what the reviewer is saying about my chapter, of which I’m quite proud, obviously.
The advanced unwrapping chapter I found very useful as unwrapping is not my strongest skill in Max. By the way, none of the authors are shy about suggesting outside plugins and stand alone utilities if they think they will do the job better or at least faster than Max. In this Chapter 4 Lukas Dubeda suggested a small separate program for UV layouts that I downloaded to try myself. It does seem to be quite capable at getting the job done. The following sums up this section pretty well:
…
That “…just scratching the surface” seems to be the sentiment of many of the experts in this book. Believe me that they are all making some pretty deep scratches, providing us with an in-depth look at their chapter’s topic.
Anyways, here’s the full review for those still undecided.
Here are my top 10 reasons why FrameCycler is the single best sequence player on the market:
If you still preview your sequences in an absolutely obsolete and impossible RAM Player in Max, or terribly outdated and rigid FlipBook, do yourself a favour and buy a license today!
I’ve finally received all the parts for my first render slave and immediately got into assembling and installing it. The rig is quite simple, very mainstream and very affordable. A standard ATX board placed in a 1U rack chassis, a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, two drives, one primary for the system and software and the other for buffering stuff, no DVD drive, no GPU, 350W power supply and that’s it. All running 64bit Windows 7 Professional.
I’m still amazed how useful DOS can be, even in 2010! And the main reason I thin it’s the most revolutionary OS of all times is that it actually brought the entire PC industry to regular folks’ hands.
Now, by DOS, I’m actually referring to the simplest form of OS environment, IO.sys, MSDOS.sys and COMMAND.com. That’s all you need in order to communicate with your system. That’s all you need to actually get some work done! Isn’t it amazing?
Obviously, Windows and MacOS heavily extended the OS functionality and brought something else in the game. But that’s just evolution. However, DOS on the other hand was truly revolutionary. I may be skipping some other important OS attempts, but DOS was the first OS I ever used as a little kid. I remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my grandpa had a, at the time, high-end 286 computer, 512KB of RAM, some 30MB HDD, it was a beast! and it was running DOS. I learnt a few basic commands, such as CD, MD, CLS, COPY etc… just to be able to run Prince of Persia or Wolf3D