Nyeng!

Sweet Christ I hate Florida’s climate this time of year… Everything was fine until a couple of days ago, but then the heat and humidity kicked in.

All this means is I don’t have any new scribbles, but I have been doing a little cleanup on Daisy’s model -

I’m holding off on showing the rest of her, because it just looks ridiculous with her breasts sticking straight out (especially with this character).

Something else I experimented with, was this shoulder/hip skinning techinique on CGTalk. Taking it only as inspiration, I made a 5-joint spline-IK chain instead, and placed it in Daisy’s hip. While the results were much better than a single hip joint, in my eyes corrective shapes would still be needed, which makes the added complexity kind of pointless.

Another technique I’m thinking of trying on Daisy is modular skinning - dividing a copy of the mesh into sections, skinning each seperately, and then using them as wrap deformers for the original mesh. In theory this would be a more flexible way of skinning, in specific cases - I could avoid issues with intersecting geometry by deleting the parts of her mesh that won’t be seen.  But if down the line I put her in a different or more revealing costume,  I could simply re-use the skinned wrap influences, rather than having to re-skin her.  Where theory could quickly fall apart, is if the wrap deformers slow Maya to a crawl…

Step 1 - Boot the computer up, and wait as all the factory-installed software is configured.

Step 2 - Once Windows is fully loaded, start installing your programs and any updates.

Step 3 - If the new computer is replacing an older one, start copying your files and settings over.

Step 4 - If the computer came with Windows Vista installed, right about now you’ll be getting increasingly frustrated with its constant security prompts.

Step 5 - Realize that the manufacturer has used up 10 GB of your hard drive for a ‘Recovery’ partition containing a disk image of your hard drive in its original factory state. You feel that you could put that 10 GB to better use elsewhere, so you decide to delete the partition, after compressing and backing up its data to a DVD.

Step 6 - Marvel at the fact that even though only 10% of your hard drive space is used, Windows won’t let you use more than 50% of the C drive’s free space to create a seperate partition for data storage.

Step 7 - Accepting the partitioning limitations, find out that Windows won’t let you make a new partition, since the drive currently has 4, with 2 being hidden.

Step 8 - Become increasingly annoyed when you find that since the Recovery partition and the now-unallocated space occupy different physical locations of the disk, with the OS partition located between them, the two chunks cannot be combined.

Step 9 - Reinstall Windows, after deleting both the recovery and the OS partitions. Take this time to create the C and D partitions with the desired sizes.

Step 10 - Once Windows is reinstalled, format the D drive if you hadn’t done so during installation. Notice that it takes MUCH longer to format in Windows than expected. Selecting “Quick Format” would have been a much better choice.

Step 11 - Sit back and contemplate the fact that you’ve now spent almost a day ‘fixing’ a computer that had already been working fine.

Step 12 - While still waiting, worry that the Recovery Partition may have been a faster solution that is now lost forever. Soon the wait becomes more agonizing, because you want to restore those files (if you backed them up), just to make sure they still work.

Step 13 - With the new D drive FINALLY formatted, and the Recovery files restored, you decide to give it a shot, despite the fact that Windows is once again running fine.

Step 14 - Lose more hair when you find out the ‘Restore Factory Installation’ startup options described in the User’s Manual don’t seem to exist. Search Dell’s forums and Google to find a solution.

Step 15 - After finding and verifying a solution, print it out and tuck it into the User’s Manual for future reference.

Step 16 - After restoring the factory installation, reboot the computer, and wait for your head to explode when you are greeted by a logon screen asking for a user name and password that DOESN’T EXIST!

Step 17 - Waste valuable time talking/chatting to (potentially off-shored) tech support, only to realize THEY CANNOT HELP YOU. If you made it this far on your own, then the chances are good that you know more than the Tech ‘assisting’ you.

Step 18 - Dance through hoops as the tech tells you to do things you’ve already done, until THEY eventually realize the can’t help you, and choose instead to hang up on you and get on with their lives.

Step 19 - Feel vile, racist thoughts you didn’t even think yourself capable of bubbling to the surface.

Step 20 - Reinstall Windows (again) from the manufacturer’s DVDs. Curse yourself for wasting a whole day going in circles, when Windows was technically running fine before you started.

Step 21 - Drinking some hard liquor, take some solace in the fact that your hard drive is at least better partitioned than it was before.

Step 22 - In hindsight, realize it’s possible that when you backed up the Recovery files, some crutial files may have been hidden, and thus were not copied.

Step 23 - Get a copy of Norton Ghost, in hopes of avoiding having to go through all this crap again.

Despite her size, and her doctor’s orders, Daisy is a hell of a runner -

She can also dunk the ball, assuming she makes it to the end of the court.  :P

Mercy isn’t exactly pin-up material, but I thought I’d try anyway -

I should be posting some sketches later today or tomorrow, but for now I’ve got some more ranting to do -

Our politicians are patting each other on the back for approving a deal that would raise the average fuel economy for new cars to 31.5 miles per gallon by 2015.  They estimate that this will save about 55 billion gallons of gas, and about $100 billion at the pump.

Sounds good on paper, but I can’t be the only person who thinks that this is only two steps away from doing NOTHING.  My car, an ‘06 Mustang, gets about 28-30 miles per gallon RIGHT NOW.  I’m currently paying at least $50 each week to fill the tank.  And in 7 years, I can expect to be able to buy a new car that will at best only get an extra 3.5 mpg?  I could probably get that NOW just by putting some lighter rims on my car!

Oh, and the auto companies are pissed.  They haven’t spoken out about the deal publicly, mainly because of the current gas prices, but anyone who’s seen “Who Killed the Electric Car” knows that the auto companies don’t like the government telling them how to build their cars.  New, efficient tech costs money, and they’ll be damned if they’re going to pay to develop it.

The oil companies sure aren’t going to do anything.  They’re making too much money, and they know by now that we will pay whatever they want.  They can just blame the high prices on “regional instability” any time a camel farts.

So that’s it then.  Oil prices will keep getting higher, the auto companies don’t want to make better cars, and our leaders are playing grab-ass.  But I don’t know what I really expected from the politicians…  why should they worry about gas prices, when WE, the tax-payers, are the ones that likely pay all of their travel expenses?

So, I’m ready to wash my hands of the whole damned thing.  Rather than waiting for the chance to buy a SLIGHTLY more efficient car in 2015, I’m thinking of BUILDING one by 2010 instead.  It won’t be cheap, but at least it will serve as my personal “FUCK YOU ALL” to the politicians, auto manufacturers, and especially OPEC.

Right now, I have two options - convert a donor car into a full electric vehicle, or build a diesel/electric hybrid kit-car, like Robert Riley’s XR-3.  Although the plans aren’t yet available, I’m leaning more toward the XR-3.

If I were to do the EV conversion, first I’d have to find a donor vehicle that has the right balance of weight and battery-carrying capacity.  But once the car is done, I could expect a top speed of 60-75 mph, and a range of 40 miles… but only if I maintain a speed of 25 mph.  At top speed, the range would be closer to 15 miles, so it wouldn’t exactly get me to or from work.

With the XR-3 though, I could potentially get 125 mpg with just the diesel engine, along with a top speed of at least 75-80 mph!  Add in the electric motor, and it’s supposed to get up to 225 mpg!  On top of that, I would be able to pay next to NOTHING for fuel - the diesel engine can run off of both petro- and bio-diesel, so if I do build this thing, I’ll likely be hitting up the local fast-food joints rather than going to the pump…

It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve drawn anything, so it’s about time -

This is just a general idea of Mary might wear in the film I currently have in mind.  Whether I’ll be able to pull it off is the question.  I could probably re-work the film so that it doesn’t take place in winter, thus saving myself the pain of modeling, shading, and rigging a new costume, but where’s the fun in that?

After digging a little further, I found a solution for getting OSX to load properly - re-install it without any video drivers.  Amazingly, that little change did the trick!  At the point that I had been getting a blank screen, I was now greeted with Apple’s registration menus!  A few bits of fake personal info later, and I’m staring at OSX desktop!

…though I was left wonder just where the hell to go from there.  With no video drivers, the screen was locked to 1024×768.  The internet worked, so I was at least able to search for working drivers, but found nothing for my particular (crappy) chip.

Even if I did find decent drivers, I still don’t know what I’d do.  The OSX version of Maya 7 was never compiled for Intel, and neither was Painter 9.5.  I’m sure my key for After Effects is Windows-only.  Even some of the free or open-source tools I use are only for Windows.   So really, it’s looking more like OSX is just a morbid curiosity…   One that’s already satisfied.

My nieces are visiting again, and that means one thing - until they leave, I’ll be getting even LESS work done than usual.

Once I have some peace and quiet, I can get back to doing some costume designs for my film… since the current idea takes place in the middle of winter, Mary and Bill will both need some new threads.

Unable a focus on Maya or drawing over the weekend, I set out to experiment - I wanted to boot OSX on my HP laptop, but from an external drive. Thanks to the OSx86 Project, the installation was not only possible, but fairly simple. Booting up was another story, though. At the point that it’s supposed to load the UI, all I get is a blank white screen.  I can’t really say this was a suprise… frankly I’m amazed this machine can even run Windows.  :P

I had a bit of a scare this past Saturday - I knew that I hadn’t yet copied any of my textures over from my old Maya project folder, but now I couldn’t find them anywhere.  I had checked the old folder, and my external drives, but found nothing.  Even more frustrating was that I knew I had recorded everything onto DVDs several months ago, but I couldn’t find those discs either.

Luckily I managed to find the DVDs the next morning, though quite by accident.  Now I’m playing it safe - aside from the DVDs, I’m keeping duplicate backups on one of the external drives.

I hope this is an April Fool’s joke…

I just heard about Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li…   If it’s true, I have two questions -
#1:  WHY?!
#2:  When will Hollywood stop?

In this article on Gamasutra , the film’s writer tries to make a case for why gamers should give Hollywood a chance when it comes to adaptations…  by talking about Halo.  Ignoring that fact that the only thing Halo has to do with Street Fighter, is that they are both video games.

I can see Halo working as a decent sci-fi film, but Street Fighter is a different beast.  As the guy points out, Halo at least has heavily armored space marines that we’ve seen a couple times before, like in Aliens and Starship Troopers.  Street Fighter is a CARTOON.  The characters all have colorful costumes and outlandish abilities that would be difficult to be taken seriously in a film.
Now, super-powers aren’t anything new to Hollywood, and sometimes they are able to make it work - Superman is an alien, so that’s why he can do what he does.  The X-Men are mutants.  The Hulk was in a freak accident.  The Matrix is a glorified MMO.  But the Street Fighter series doesn’t have that sort of simple justification for its characters.  And since the whole point of the games is for the characters to beat the fuck out of each other, the players neither need nor care to know how the characters can fly or toss fireballs at each other.

Because Street Fighter’s story is so thin, Hollywood will essentially have to make a lot of shit up, to the point that anything tying it to the games is superficial.  Gamers know this, and are already pissed at the idea of the film.  The producers are damned either way - Fanboys are easy to piss off, but these films are too expensive to be made just for them.  If they were made just for the fans, people who’ve never heard of Street Fighter might not buy into any of the craziness on the screen, and walk out.  But ignoring the fans leads to a bunch of bitching on forums and blogs, and trying to please both groups usually just gives you a crappy film (such as damn near every game-film so far).

But who knows?  Maybe This film will work. Chun-Li’s story is simple enough and practically made for Hollywood - her father was murdered by an international terrorist/crime lord/super villian, and she wants revenge.  Revenge that involves kung-fu or whatever other martial art Hollywood is currently in love with.  Basically it’s every Steven Seagal or Van Damme movie you’ve ever seen, but with a female lead.

If the fanboys want accuracy, they should just stick to the animated SF2 film*.  At the least, Chun-Li’s shower scene might keep them distracted while the rest of us either enjoy or ignore whatever Hollywood decides to present to us.

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*In my eyes, the animated SF2 film also sucked, but for different reasons - The entire film could easily have been around 30-45 minutes long, but the producers wanted to make sure EVERY character (at the time) not only showed up, but got at least a few seconds of fighting in -

    The film opens with Ryu fighting Sagat.  We see Sagat at several points later in the film, doing NOTHING.

    Right after the opening fight, a brainwashed Cammy assassinates a politician by breaking his neck with a hand-stand, then kicking a few people before she gets tackled.  We barely see her after this, and when we do, she doesn’t even move.

    T. Hawk fights Ken, just because.  Really, I can’t remember if this fight had any reason for occurring, other than to have the character appear in the film.

    Dee Jay shows up as a bouncer, dances a bit, kicks a guy, and cracks a few jokes, with a permanent Joker-smile on his face the entire time.  You forget about him by the next scene.

    Fei Long fights Ryu, again only to justify his presence in the film.  Ryu later confirms this character’s uselessness, by simply walking away mid-conversation.

    E. Honda and Dhalsim beat on each other, because they both had to show up at some point and needed someone to fight.  Plus I guess the producers thought it’d be fun to have a fat man fighting an emaciated Indian.

    Zangief vs Blanka is pretty much the same as the Honda/Dhalsim fight, only shorter, louder, more violent, and with no talking.  Balrog is there too, but he only gets to watch.

    Chun-Li, after spending most of the film as fanboy eye-candy, eventually gets to kick some ass.  This is also the only time Vega does anything in the film, and the producers chose to make him as creepy as possible.  He is quickly forgotten after he gets kicked through a wall.  The next time you see Chun-Li is at the end of the film, where she seems to have reverted to a 12-year-old (brain-damage, maybe?).

    Guile finally does something toward the end of the film, even if he just gets his ass kicked.

    Balrog gets to fight Honda, if only to prove that he can do more than just rip his own shirt by breathing (as during the Zangief fight, for some reason).  Since all other opponents were taken at this point, Honda gets to show up again to continue the fat-jokes.

    Ken and Ryu finally get the rematch that Ken wanted earlier in the film, only now it’s a to-the-death thing.  Until Ken starts crying and runs away.  Then Bison kicks his ass with Jedi mind-powers.  And if you haven’t seen it, I’m not making that up!

    Bison squares off against Ryu, if only to prove that he’s Superman and should not be fucked with.  Ken stops crying and comes to save the day, but Bison continues to prove that he’s not to be fucked with.   After finally getting beaten (and blown up), Bison shows up again as a truck-driver just before the credits!

That’s pretty much the entire film.  I could try to get into the actual story, but there barely is one.  The ’story’ is really only there to tie the fights together.

Sooner or later, I might get some friends together to do a drunken re-dub…   it can’t be any worse!