duber’s blog

EULA stands for End User Licence Agreement and everyone that has ever at least intended to install a US manufactured software must have met this caluse’o'law. So what’s so special about 3ds Max’s and Maya’s EULA that I should write about it? Well, first of all, EULA is, arguably, completely void in other countries outside of the US, especially Europe, due to its nature. That’s not only my own opinion, but also a lot of actual lawyers agree on the same argument.

But I’m no lawyer so, that’s not what I want to write about. What I want to write about are some significant differences in those two softwares’ EULAs. As you probably know by now, 3ds Max and Maya both belong to the same company, Autodesk, after, not long ago, aquiring Alias’ intellectual property. (more…)

Here we go again! I took my camera to work today and took some (crappy needless to say) pictures with it. So, here are some more pictures of the UPP folks working on the Nutcracker project.

The materials are back on-line! I’ve decided to move these downloadable materials here, so that anyone can download and use them as they like! I was quite surprised by the response I got from people around the world when I temporarily took the materials down from my business web site, duber.cz, so here they are in their original form in one, convenient, package:

finalRender Stage-1 material set 02 (requires WinRAR to unpack)

Here are the preview renders of the materials included in the package (Advanced Car Paint, Aniso Metal, Carbon Fibre, Electron, Neon, Sand, Sex Toys, Snow and newly added Gold!)

One last note about usage, all the materials are provided under the Creative Commons licence!



finalRender Stage-1 material set 01 by
loocas duber is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The materials are back on-line! I’ve decided to move these downloadable materials here, so that anyone can download and use them as they like! I was quite surprised by the response I got from people around the world when I temporarily took the materials down from my business web site, duber.cz, so here they are in their original form in one, convenient, package:

finalRender Stage-1 material set 01 (requires WinRAR to unpack)

Here are the preview renders of the materials included in the package (Black Car Paint, Red Car Paint, Glass, Chrome, Ice, Stainless Steel, Wax and X-Ray)

One last note about usage, all the materials are provided under the Creative Commons licence!



finalRender Stage-1 material set 01 by
loocas duber is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I’d like to show some more photos I liked. This bunch was shot when on a rare visit to our summerhouse in Chrenovice nad Sazavou. I used to spend summer holidays there and therefore have quite nice and nostalgic memories of the place. We went to visit our ount and uncle last October who were there for a short vacation. The photos mostly picture my bro, mom, my paren’ts dog, Channela, and the beatiful nature and environments of Chrenovice. I really miss those summers.

In early December 2007 me and a good ol’ friend of mine, Hardy (pictured on some of the photos), went for a hike and since it was an exceptionally nice day I didn’t want to forget to take my camera with me. So, here are some pictures I personally liked and postprocessed a bit in Photoshop. All originally taken at 10mpix res. in a RAW format (which I personally prefer) and scaled down to a “desktop” res.

Disclaimer: this article is in NO WAY intednded to guide anyone to using pirated software! It’s solely my own opinion based on my own experience.

So, what is all about that oh-so-prohibited word “warez”? Is it really that bad, evil and immoral using pirated software? It all depends on your point of view and other circumstances. On one hand, companies try very hard to avoid their software being pirated all over the web and even go as far as “hiring” legal force to do whatever it takes to stop you or anyone else from using their software without a “legally” obtained licence. On the other hand, there’re always hobbyists, students who can’t afford it or simply people who don’t like paying big bucks for software that they’re not sure they’ll be able to handle/use and the trials (that are often being crippled by the manufacturers) aren’t good enough for a full and thorough evaluation. Of course, there are also users who simply don’t give a damn and pirate even open source software

One of the major features the companies scream about when it comes to software piracy is support. This, almost mythical, word should mean something like when you run into serious problems with your software, you’re, as a valued customer, eligible for some professional advice, help or simply a solution to the problem of yours. I say “should” as you’ll see it is not always true that you will get an answer to your question/problem, if any!

(more…)

The “new” version of 3ds Max, renamed to a fancy “3ds Max 2008″, has been out for a few months now and one can’t resist to ask one self a question: “where the hell is Autodesk aiming at with 3ds Max?”
I don’t know, but let’s take a look at the features that might at least suggest the way Autodesk might target the market with 3ds Max:

1. The, I need to say great, new MAXScript Pro Editor
2. Some modeling enhancements
3. New Scene Explorer lists
4. Very nice “WYSIWYG” viewport systems
5. Couple more additions and features, but mainly some bug fixes and polishing

All these are great and very much welcomed additions to 3ds Max, however, something “feels” wrong about all this.

(more…)

I’ve been working with UPP for the past four months on an upcoming movie “Nutcracker: The Untold Story” and here are some pictures I’d taken last week and edited slightly in Photoshop, of some of my collegues and friends, working on the project:

Our head of 3d, awesome dude, Buf (btw: I highly admire his stamina!):

Another great 3d dude, Tom:

Other folks, I only took one photo of (from left to right): Viky, fantastic Maya VFX artist, Francesco, XSI guru, JohnBruk, superb Cinema 4D artist, Blitz, great XSI artist and a real good lighting TD and last, but not least, IcemanJ, great 3ds Max modeler:

Here’s one of our cute receptionists, Bara and a picture of the backyard we go to for cigarette breaks

Hey! Welcome to duber’s blog. I’ll be sharing my stuff, pictures, scripts, technical articles and what not, on these pages so I hope you’ll keep coming back for more juicy content

- loocas