We’ve launched a brand new website, courtesy of our friends at refresh.cz, with some latest finished projects showcase, including our new demoreel. Head over to duber.cz and leave a comment if you like, hell, even if you don’t like the new site.

Thanks for watching!

I’ve been looking for the perfect phone since my good old Nokia 7650 I had in high school. It was a great phone, back then. Had a very comfy portrait keypad and a large screen. Since then I had a few more Nokias until finally switching to HTC phones. My first HTC was TyTN II, what a beast! Then, after the iPhone introduction, some more touch only or touch + type HTC phones. My last one was HD2. I loved and hated the phone equally.

You see, the problem wasn’t the hardware, which is still one of the best even today. The problem was software. TyTN II with Windows Mobile 5 at least had a stylus and wasn’t that much about touch interface (remember, this was a pre-iPhone era). It was cool. Very expensive, but pretty cool. Then Windows Mobile 6 came around with a touch “skin” made by HTC. It was OK, but far, really far, from being smooth, deeply integrated or polished as iPhone’s was.

I ditched Windows Mobile over a year ago in favor of Android (still on my HD2). It was great! I fell in love with Android very, very fast and love it even today. The problem was, again, the smoothness. It just wasn’t at par with the holy grail, in this regard, the iPhone.

Finally I took a blind leap in Windows Phone 7 direction not very long ago. About two months? I bought a HTC 7 Pro, mainly because I was afraid the touch-type experience was going to be mediocre again, so I wanted to be safe with the full hardware qwerty keyboard on board. Man was I surprised! The user interface is as polished and smooth as it gets! I’m loving my phone again. Even typing short e-mails or SMSes on the software qwerty is a joy!

I love the form factor, I love the size, I love the user experience. I am honestly, deeply impressed with Windows Phone 7 and I wish it succeeds in the mobile OS war.

It still doesn’t have the developer base as it should, so, there certainly are fewer apps than for Android or iOS, but it’s getting there and honestly, everything I personally need is there.

As for sideloading, I’ve purchased a ChevronWP7 Pass (for about $9 USD) and officially unlocked my device, so I can sideload any app I wish! The tools for doing so are freely available directly from Microsoft. And once IronPython makes it to the platform, oh man will I be all over the developer side!

Sweet times ahead. So if you haven’t checked Windows Phones out yet, give them a good hard look, they’re awesome!

I’m, along with Gavin Greenwalt from Straightface, featured in Thinkbox’s study that took a look into the Deadline Power Management feature and how it can help save your studio money in the end.

Go ahead, it’s an interesting read.

I have nothing but huge respect for Steve Jobs and what he has done with the world of technology as we know it today. So the news of him passing away saddened me very much. We lost one of the greatest visionaries of our time.

Rest In Peace, Steve.

That’s right, folks! I am thrilled to announce, that Pixomondo, the company behind some of the most challenging VFX shows, such as Sucker Punch, Iron Man 2 or 2012, has purchased and implemented our duberPython plugin for 3ds Max, allowing them to tightly integrate software, such as Shotgun, into their complex pipeline.

We’ve also helped with scripting Shotgun wrappers and optimizing the duberPython engine to suite Pixomondo’s needs. This resulted in a more refined, streamlined and faster IronPython connection for 3ds Max TDs, scripters, developers or even regular users.

A few key points of duberPython:

• It allows for direct calling of Python code from within MAXScript
• Also allows for Python script files to be called with unlimited number of arguments
• duberPython supports behind-the-scenes data type conversions between Python and MAXScript
• duberPython is a dotNET assembly, which means it’s a 3ds Max version and release agnostic (can run on Max 9 to 2012, both x64 and x86)
• duberPython is built on IronPython and thus supports the latest dotNET version and 3ds Max releases
• duberPython was created for the sole purpose of enabling 3ds Max users to use tools like Tactic or Shotgun
• duberPython is available for licensing! Get in touch for more info.

I’d love to show you more, so, you can either wait for me to make a nice presentation and put it up here, or, you can get in touch and I’ll give you a private presentation and provide you with a fully functional, time-limited, version of duberPython.

So, happy birth day, duber.cz!

I’ve been really lucky to have been able to use Shotgun as a developer for some time now (getting to know the API, integrating it into 3ds Max pipelines, etc…).

Now, for the first time, I’ve actually tried to use it on a production we’re working on here at duber studio. The reason is the sheer amount of shots needed to be done, even though they are not very complicated.

We’re currently working on a number of animated shots for a portable devices app to be released soon, first locally, then globally. It’s an app aimed at helping people with their fitness excercises. So, we have to animate a ton of shots of a main character doing various different excercises.

Again, it’s not very complicated, but since I’m working with a collegue of mine on this project I also need a tool to manage the production. It actually surprised me how useful Shotgun is even for a team of just two people! It’s incredible how much time and effort you save when you don’t have to hassle around with Excel sheets and tons of e-mails.

Further on, I’m currently integrating certain actions into Deadline, so that I can automate a ton of tasks on the production. For example, I’ve setup Deadline so that when we submit the 3ds Max scene files, they get rendered, when they finish, Nuke automatically picks up with a pre-made automated comp (visually approved by the client) and then after that Deadline will process the frames again and will generate QuickTimes, delivery masters and preview JPEGs. While all these steps will get annotated in Shotgun.

Pretty exciting stuff for a geeky TD, right? Anyways, I’m currently just looking into best ways of doing this effectively and as open as possible, so I can share the stuff with others as well.

All in all, Shotgun seems to be one of the tools that you really need all the time, but you know you found the answer only after you’ve fully discovered its possibilities and potential. I highly recommend talking to the Shotgun dev guys in regards to a demo or trial. You won’t regret it. I certainly didn’t!

I think I jizzed in my pants…

Go see this VFX miracle. It’s the holy grail for VFX enthusiasts and artists.

I’m actually scared by the fact that even 24GB of RAM isn’t enough for a high-end workstation these days. And I’m talking about projects up to a maximum of full HD resolution! I don’t even consider 2K or, hell, 4K projects at the moment as I primarily work on TV commercials etc…

This is very interesting as I remember every time I upgraded the amount of RAM of my workstation, I was very pleased with the performance and the amounts of available memory every time I worked on something. But then, not long after, I started to reach the limits of the system’s resources.

The thing is, when you reach the cap of your CPU, or GPU for that matter, your renders just take a bit longer to finish. But as soon as you reach the RAM limit, your apps start crashing and the entire system becomes unstable! So, it is a bit of a problem.

I started reaching the limits not long ago when I had tons of apps open at the same time. Especially Nuke, Max, VMWare Workstation and Photoshop. But on recent projects I started reaching the cap with Nuke and Photoshop alone! It’s terrifying as it suggests that no matter how much RAM I put in the system, it will never be enough!

So, it seems that my next workstation upgrade will, indeed, be a RAM boost. Not sure I’ll be able to buy the full 96GB of ECC RAM at once, but, I’m certain I’ll get there very soon.

I planned to do a similar how-to here, on this blog, in the future. Possibly a videotutorial, so, stay tuned…