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Iron Sky – Day 87
The battle for Scar… err… sorry, I was having a BSG flash back there. Anyway, the Fight for Freedom here on Iron Sky continues. Even on weekends. I took a bit of time off today to recharge. I’m still exhausted but meh, whatever. Part of the Ozone challenge has been resolved, but no thanks to E-On Software. It wasn’t what they suggested at all. I will have to go into details on it later but its again, all to do with their stupid copy protection and the installer of theRead More
Iron Sky – Day 84
Yeah. I’m still having issues with Ozone, turns out that one of the bug fixes I was sent wasn’t part of the installer used to put ozone on one of the other machines to do render tests. That in turn confused ozones “core” (why is it that everyone wanted to call their apps core for a while? its a stupid name/idea as we have seen – its not sexy, I don’t care what marketing says. HardCore (porn), C4D CORE (rotten to the core?) all come to mind when I hearRead More
Iron Sky – Day 83
Ok, now I’m starting to get mad. I have to say that I absolutely despise E-on Software at the moment. Dear E-on, should you be reading this. I think your software, and your registration technology and “anti-piracy” methods are a bad thing. Why? Because I am a legitimate user who has spent thousands of dollars on your product for the privilege to use it maybe twice a year in a shot or two if not less – but spends even more time in terms of wasted time on getting itRead More
Siggraph Vancouver Day 1
While I am not in Vancouver to attend Siggraph this year, word is from our people on the floor that NewTek has skipped out on the show almost entirely. There will be no “booth” in the traditional sense but only guest speaking spots by NT people (Rob Powers I guess?) at hardware vendors that are NewTek friendly. Such a disappointment. I really don’t understand the decision myself but hopefully one of our Citizens can get the information and kill any speculation as to why from Rob if they meet upRead More
Iron Sky – Day 80
Lee Stringer, Samuli and I are going through the show today (just broke for lunch and now we are back) doing a semi-final shot count along with clarifying a few things with respect to shot numbering (naming really) plus an over all review of the VFX in Iron Sky. It’s an excellent exercise and its absolutely a must do kind of thing. Samuli is able to bounce ideas off of the two of us in private that have been discussed before but with a lot of “deflection” in some ways.Read More
Iron Sky – Day 76
It’s late afternoon here and it’s finally cooling off, but it was a hot day yet again. Renders continue on the farm while we push forward on sequences near the end of the film. We have been jumping around a lot trying to get a few things taken care of before laying everything down in a row and starting the conveyor belt of the assembly line. Thankfully we have been joined by a LightWave legend, Lee Stringer. Lee brings an amazing amount of experience to the show and I amRead More
SquidNet Network Render Manager
A lot of people are aware of my absolute pure hatred of ButterflyNetRender, but what are better alternatives? Well, I’m finding that RenderPal blows in its own way, and Smedge after the change to its licensing set up so you are paying per node instead of a site wide license also sucks – there is little left on the market that is affordable to a small independent user or mid sized shop but can scale easily and not by sucking money out of your wallet. Or is there? A whileRead More
Iron Sky – Day 74
The fight for freedom continues here on Saturday morning. I just went to a local shop to pick up Samuli a replacement for what I destroyed in about 15 seconds simply by doing something I used to do 8 -10 hours a day before getting into this stupid VFX business. They certainly don’t make those things like they used to. Gives me an idea to go back into that business should I decide that being a lowly vfx guy (who happens to know what the fuck he is doing btw)Read More
Iron Sky – Day 73
TGIF! Well maybe if we were not working 7 days a week. But hey, at least all the girls here are out wearing whatever they can to beat the heat. We are unfortunately stuck with it. The compositors are dying in this heat and we are in the same room with them so imagine how we feel. They have all the A/C and we get fans that blow around heat from the render farm. It’s totally awesome! Can’t blame them though, there is just no escaping it so it’s everyRead More
Iron Sky – Day 68
Well its now Monday. Luke and I left here around 10:30 or 11PM I guess – I’m not sure if he stayed around. I told him to go home, but like always he was in the groove doing some neat stuff with LightWave’s ancient and decrepit SDK (by some peoples standards). He never ceases to amaze me that he’s able to code a plug in that would have put a certain someone out of a job on BattleStar Galactica because it completely takes out the tedious set up time involvedRead More
Iron Sky – Day 67
Luke and I are here in the office early on Sunday morning working away. Luke made breakfast which is awesome because nothing is open here at the moment and we were both starving. I think we owe someone a can of baked beans. Regardless of foodstuffs and restocking of the fridge – renders are going and Luke and I are in R&D mode. Luke writing yet another plug-in (this would be number 8 or 9 so far?) and me doing look dev on atmosphere entry effects. This is all stuffRead More
Iron Sky – Day 66
Saturday morning in Tampere is generally pretty quiet so I took the opportunity to come in really early and continue working on shots for Iron Sky here at the Energia Production office. Too bad its not cooler out. It’s about 40 maybe 45deg C in here again with all the machines rendering as fast and as best they can in this heat. The cleaning crew is here doing their thing. First thing the guy said to me as he walked in with his daughter who comes in and helps withRead More
Liberty3D Workstations by Shuttle Computer
Buy any of our training or tools from Liberty3D.com and receive a coupon for $100 dollars to put towards the purchase of a Liberty3D HD Workstation, built by Shuttle Computer.
Iron Sky – Day 62
And after a visit to the happy kitty basket (even if it is a metal rack cot) I’m back here in the offices at Energia. We have a busy day ahead of us full of lots of volumetric effects, rendering for shots and final tests on certain things including various weapons systems that have been under development for the past week or so. We had a bit of a problem with the render controller they are using here yesterday. I don’t know what it is about render controllers that isRead More
Iron Sky – Day 61
I have been up now for almost 25 hours if I do the math correctly. This is the second or third time in the last week I have done this kind of shift. Last time was actually a bit longer than a full day. It’s interesting what happens to your creativity when you are this tired, or wired or insomniac maniac poly-wack kat snack (I shouldn’t have said that, now I want food). It really has its ups and downs. With that said I am going to take my tiredRead More
Iron Sky – Day 60
It’s late night here at the VFX production office at Energia here in Tampere, Finland. For me I’m doing the late night shift by myself as Luke stayed even longer earlier today after we had both done about 16 hours on. I don’t know when he left but I hope he is sleeping well. He deserves it for sure. I’m currently spending my time putting a snazzy weapons effect together and then I have to get back to a series of shots that need my attention before being broken outRead More
Iron Sky VFX (Energia Productions) – Help Wanted! LightWave Artists!
As the post states, Iron Sky Visual FX here in Tampere, Finland is looking for some extra hands on deck and possibly remotely to work on Iron Sky. We are looking for the following: Strong Generalists able to model, light and when required texture. Should have excellent understanding of multi-pass shot break outs and rendering methods. In addition we seek LightWave artists with demonstrable skills (meaning you can do it and show us you can do it over skype session if need be) in PFX, Dynamics (Hard FX, FX LinkerRead More
Iron Sky – Day 58
Tuomas, Luke and I are in the office today with Samuli. We have discovered a really awesome fuck up with Modo if you send a LWO to it and make any changes. The problem is that if you have an object with multiple layers and fire it off to modo to do even the slightest edit, it will re-order the layers on save. When you bring this back into modeler or layout in LightWave3D, and that object is rigged with a purpose… oh boy does it really screw things up.Read More
LScripts and more!
Kevman3D has posted a whole schwack (yes that’s a technical term we use in production) of LScripts in our Forums freebies section. Remember, you have to be a registered user and logged in on our forums in order to access the freebies section, but registration is easy! Go for it!
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 isRead More