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Iron Sky – Day 54

I managed to get some sleep earlier yesterday night. I finally figured out at least in part while I am not sleeping beyond the obvious metal rack/cot of death thing I’m laying on when I do manage to pass out. Normally I sleep with a computer on or several if I’m rendering and I usually sleep from around 3PM-6PM to mid-night or so and work from there on in through out the wee hours of the morning because its cooler. At the place I am at the only sound is whatever is outside and the small fridge in the room which kicks in way too often and keeps me awake. I am missing white noise basically in the background. That and its too light out already by 2AM when I usually get in the door to fall asleep. Luke is having the same trouble at his flat and I am sure Phil is as well. At least they have curtains! There is hope however. A cute kitty that I met may drop by and sort me out with some curtains for me to block out the constantly annoying light with -and of course, being “Kat” I can hang off of them when I can’t sleep for something to do. This has the added benefit of course being that this activity is know to sharpen the claws.  I love it when there is dual use applications for everything. Especially in a place of that size. I have some photos of it which I will post later so you can see I’m not making this shit up. The girl with the curtains dropped by so I could show her the place and she laughed when she walked in the door because the room was so small and she thought I was being a joker when earlier I said to her over a beer that the place felt like a prison cell. Why doesn’t anyone believe me? It’s rather annoying. Anything to keep the claws sharp and in shape for duty at the front lines of Iron Sky clawing nazi pixels (Valkyries and death blimps) is good. She’s helping with the war effort at least even if she thinks I’m silly which is more than I can say for some. Speaking of silly. You people must think I’m nutz. =^..^= Yeah well… get bent. If you don’t however think I’m totally out of it (lack of sleep not being a factor in your choice on that one) and you want to read on about some IS stuff here it is. In CG/VFX land news for Iron Sky, Samuli and I have been working on previs of remaining scenes in a sequence in the middle of the film (more or less in terms of feel not for time that is). Meanwhile over in “retrofit from maya into LightWave” department Tuomas has been fighting with the texturing techniques used on various models done in maya to this point – adapting them to “reality”, which is anywhere else in the world except games. Some of this stuff to date has a very “game” look to it and we are fixing that. Hopefully we will be able to do some side by side comparisons so you can see how much work has been put in over all and you can see the time scales for how long it took to get something done in Maya and then how fast it was to get it “reworked” in LightWave. Tuomas rocks in this area as he’s a great modeler and he’s worked with models from all kinds of different packages fixing them usually in LightWave’s modeler exclusively but occasional side trips into modo.  He’s doing a great job even though he’s working with some stuff that just wasn’t ready yet to be handed off to us (this is a time constraint issue, not an artist skill issue in many cases, I’m not slagging the other guys just because they used maya – there are other factors at work here)  so I have no complaints and one of the reasons why I suggested he get on this show is because I have known he knows what he’s doing for some time and it shows through his work each day. Luke has managed to duplicate about 95% of the rigging for a “weapon system” original done in Maya. I say 95% because at 2:30AM in the morning when he left if he had put in the last remaining bits it probably would have brought him back to 50%. We are only human, well at least luke is part zombie – after all. It is coming along rather nicely. So when people say you can’t “rig” in LW (and this rig is insanely complex – and for the most part also totally unnecessary but its how the concept/art director wants it, so we give it to him anyway) – they are lying through their teeth or simple don’t have a clue. Luke has demonstrated this time and again using LightWave’s so called “ancient tool set”. It took him a day and a little bit to get to where he is with it now and I think the original rig, granted Luke had that to work from as an example – several weeks if I am not mistaken – to work out in Maya. According to Luke – the rig is very stable and isn’t doing any wonky IK action which is nice as there were some issues in the past with some rigs and “jitter” because LW’s IK is actually INCREDIBLY precise and if you don’t have things totally lined up properly it will tell you your rigging/modeling sucks. At the moment I need to get back to work setting up previs scenes so Timo, our director can come in today, dragged by his goatee and under threat of death by pixel pushers; to review and make decisions on those scenes. So obviously I need to get back to work. However I wanted to take a moment to give you all an update and also to thank everyone of the Liberty3d.com Citizens plus you, our customers, fans and supporters – by letting you know that we really had a fantastic run for the Liberty3d Fourth of July Week sale. Our bills are paid for another year and we even have some extra to work with even before the sale. I chose that the “site” not take its “fee” which is used to help pay for bandwith and services and process all payments to the Citizens at the full sale value. That means because the site is doing well, I can forward on all of the proceeds from each transaction. It may not be much but it always feels good to be able to do that. While we start building up the war chest again now that the sale is over we will have another one soon and I hope to be able to do the same thing. We are looking to expand the site and its services and thats what the site take and holds onto as a fee from each transaction. I personally only make what I make off of my own video sales, the rest pays for the servers (we have two packages for redundancy) and to have on hand as a slush fund should we all get together and decide we want to do something with that extra cash. What the guys do with their cut is of course up to them, but one of our Artists made enough through his sales of his videos to be able to pick up his LightWave3D 10.0 upgrade. This is great for you because now you will see more LW10 videos from him as well as others. In addition to this, I took some of my profits personally and bundled it with sales of Larry’s videos and sent it along to him. He’s going to need it. While I know its rather depressing – please hit http://csmuse.blogspot.com for more information.  If you can help out in anyway – for example throwing a pie at a politician in NZ or boycotting the freaking Hobbit movie to raise awareness of just how wacked out NZ immigration and health policy is, please do it. Meanwhile our citizens continue, as we always will – to develop new tools, updates and videos for you to enjoy at the best prices (our main competition can barely match our prices even at 50% off – and trust me you don’t want to buy from “them” anyway – directTV? Come on. Is that the best you can do? Do your artists get royalties for every view? Or are you just putting that money if you make anything from it into your pocket as well there fat man?) that are high quality and up to date using the latest editions of the tools we cover so you are on top of things before even “Hollywood” upgrades, and they are slow to upgrade. Trust me on that one. Stay ahead of the “curve” – we thank you for your support and for your patronage and we look forward to bringing you more very soon! Stay tuned for more updates and goodies including modifications to Mental Fish’s awesome “HierClone” which is about to get a major work out once this previs round is done here on Iron Sky. Take care. Kat


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