Animator

I tend to agree with you. The moderators don't seem to have a common rule though, ambushing random threads with penalties in loose cannon manner. On the thread I posted, a certain member submitted an entire tutorial which was completely their own work. It quickly got auto quoted out and they were given a public warning. Until this is clarified consistently among the moderators, the current status seems to be: Moderators are allowed to not use quotes of their own work but joe average members are not. Hardly fair and reasonable logic. ...should the moderator of the thread I redirected to be told to remove those quotes and "quoting your own work is allowed" be made official?

Nice specs. Watch out though... if this thread is anything to go by, other moderators are likely to get... ... at your lack of quotes. EDIT by xboxrulz: This post was split from http://forums.xisto.com/topic/96221-topic/?findpost=1064394870

Okay, I signed up. So now I have my usual account, and this new one with $0 credit, sure to be updated behind the scenes.I haven't quite registered (in my head) the differences between the two except, does the newer one allow us to use credit as "real" money?I'm thinking many could miss this update bulletin, and that there should have been a way to auto transfer people seamlessly.

Okay... sounds to me that you would understand a beginner tutorial which explains what blender is from scratch. That's definitely not what this one aims to be. I targeted the tutorial towards beyond elementary level 3D modelers & animators, as a specialist interest topic. I'm pretty certain there are people on Xisto who are already using Blender, but would not know how to apply (yet) what my tutorial is designed to explain. I just added a disclaimer right at the start to clarify... would that help?

I'm going to disagree with your disagree... except that links might be a good idea (I'm off elsewhere today, but might include some later on). Unfortunately, Blender isn't a simple program like, say, a Word Processor. Your disagreement is akin to expecting anyone who has written a PHP tutorial to accompany their essay with detailed notes explaining the meaning of HTML tags, tables, Hex colour theory as well... or maybe even CSS. Those things are a "given" when taking on a tutorial for PHP. Likewise, if anyone is wanting to look into Normal Mapping, it is advanced knowledge. Navigating the basic program is a given. Normal Mapping is an advanced UV Mapping technique, and as my tutorial addressed this specific area, it is already long enough. The "real" information is actually only addressed in steps 4 & 5 with the first three steps simplifying a little of the process to get to that point. I should not have to go back and readdress all the basics of UV such as the program interface. I have some beginner books which look at those areas, with easy to understand examples, and they are some 300 pages long. I wrote the above after a fair whack of trial and error (including posting questions on forums) to finally figure out what the magic key presses were to actually get a Normal Map to work correctly. Many of the Normal Mapping tutorials I have seen don't address the difference of "tangent space" and produce maps which are not useful for animated / moving objects. In Industry level modeling, they use expensive programs like Maya, and Normal Maps are common practice because they use other expensive programs like Zbrush. Here, I've figured out a way of getting similar results for free in Blender. It took me a day or two to figure this out. I was looking for something like the above tutorial for my own use... it would have saved my many hours. That is who the tutorial is for. Righto - I'm off. Head spinning because I've been rethinking how to get "reverse foot rigs" working in Blender. I admit this is pretty advanced stuff (I have a diploma in Animation and this tutorial is of that level). Are you guys wanting to see some lower level (I mean not so advanced) tutorials in Blender?

Around 1997, I used to teach "specialist" courses for Microsoft Office and even some Basic programming and HTML. I thought I was pretty savvy, and I wanted to get some work in a certain internet company. My friend there showed my Linux. He showed me Gimp. I wasn't that impressed, I had seen better "free" programs off magazine covers. He kept pressuring me that I (in particular) would like it and I wanted to impress.Then, later on I was tutoring this kid in C++ (long story, but I dind't know C++ that well at all) and my big expensive MMX computer blew a hard drive. It was a disaster; I was computerless. I needed at least a text editor to write programs on to be ready for the kid I was mentoring. I went into a local Cash Converters store (second hand sales) and bought an old 486-DX2 model. I think it may have had an old Windows 3.1 on it, or maybe just DOS. I decided that I didn't legally own the licence for a Windows install on that computer and thought to use it as my Linux experiment while my other "real" computer was away getting serviced.I'd recently got a book "Linux for Dummies" which included a RedHat 5.2 install CD-ROM.Yes the install was a bear, but the Dummies book was very step by step. It even talked about how to probe the modem in console mode. The chapter on setting up graphics (known as "X") had a very big "if you get this working, you are one of the lucky ones" on the first paragraph. I got it working. Slow, but I had achieved something. Now I at least had something I could dump texts onto a floppy with. As a bonus, I discovered that there were also command line C and C++ compilers included (we had searched a long time for Windows compilers before). The screensavers looked pretty good.Then I accidentally left my Linux 486 on... for a week. I came back later and wiggled the mouse, expecting (as with Windows) for the screen to be frozen. No such thing. My desktop snapped into life, the computer just as fast as when I'd left it.That blew me away. This old thing was already outsmarting my bigger expensive machine in terms of stability. I was always having to reboot the Windows box and having to repeat my last page or so of unsaved work. I decided that any "real" text processing should be done in this cool new little machine, porting back to Windows maybe for the printing.But then eventually, over time, I found I was using that little box for pretty much most of my work... I never quite got MechWarrior to run though. It was the "one program" (well maybe two; there was also Bryce3D which I needed to teach later on) but then, there are things I can do now in Linux which I was never able in the other OS. I have full blown up to date Linux (I've been through several different distros) and only generally see Windows computers when I'm troubleshooting other peoples problems.

When I write a page of tutorial, it can take days. Literally. Just to get ten points, I might have to write a tutorial which takes many hours over a few days, along with the illustrations etc in order to complete the task.When I read through what I've written, I see errors. Many errors. In particular, is this thing called "double barreling" where I some times say the same thing twice... other times I use the same or similar words a few times withing a sentence or two... so the word gets repeated over and over. It sounds funny. It's off. The flow of what I'm trying to say is broken. It gets hard to understand. It's just "wrong".Sometimes I go over what I have written and try to fix these errors (normally I do this at least once, but sometimes I go over what I have written several times). It's hard work for me. I try to stop my self from getting up and wandering around the room when my head hurts, because if I do that it's easy to lose my train of thought. Often, on trying to fix the mistakes, my mind goes into a rut, and I fill my work with a whole lot more mistakes.Imagine how I feel when some self righteous prick comes in and pokes fun at the way my effort reads, rather than respond thoughtfully about what I have said.I'm not stupid. I have an extremely high IQ (that's why I chose Xisto over Trap). Apparently, the cause of my writing problems is affected by my thinking a lot faster than I can write. It's like trying to run with your shoelaces tied.I wish I was like one of you who just gets their words right the first time, and doesn't have to check again and again and still get it all wrong.So sue me. I have dyslexic tenancies.

A quick google for "Total Secure 2009" found several solutions, mainly where the answer is to download something else. This is kind of a catch22 as TotalSecure is scareware in the first place... who do you trust? This page: http://www.411-spyware.com/ ...does look promising in that it gives manual instructions for removal, without instead of insisting you have to use yet another install of something else. As a Linux user, I don't have such concerns... I'd recommend you don't use Windows for your internet usage because this kind of thing is so common.

Disclaimer: This is not a beginner "introduction to blender" level tutorial. It addresses the area of Normal Mapping, which is an advanced displacement texturing technique. If you know what Normal Maps are, and are wanting to know how to make them in Blender, then this tutorial is for you. UV unwrapping, basic Blender navigation, Sculpt mode etc are more basic skills which are assumed knowlege for this level. Normal maps are cool. They are blueish textures which work like (but are more accurate than) bumpmaps... apply them to a model and they add bumpy textures & displacement to the surface. This makes it possible to have a low resolution model look like it is a high resolution model, but without the major strain on CPU resources. In this tutorial, you will how to make a Normal Map of a high resolution model, and apply it to a lower resolution model so that it looks like the high resolution version. I am assuming you know the basics of Blender, including how to UV unwrap and also Sculpt mode. The tutorial would be too long if I explained those parts so it's better for you to follow other tutorials on those areas until you are ready for this one. So then; the workflow is you are going to start with a low poly model, make a hi-poly copy of the mesh, sculpt in detail and then create a Normal Map to display the high definition detail on your low-poly character. First, we need a low resolution model. I'm going to use Suzanne (monkey head) for the images here, although she's not ideal because her eyes are separated polys which form nearly overlapping faces against her face, which will likely be troublesome for Normal Mapping. Where possible use a simple base mesh without sandwiched faces. STEP 1: UV unwrap the low poly model. I shouldn't need to tell you how to do this. Add seams, Unwrap, and then rearrange the islands on your UV layout. Don't rush this stage. Normal Maps are affected by the quality of your UV layout. The low poly mesh UV should also have an image associated with it in the UV editor, so assign a "new image" if you have to (and presave it). STEP 2: Create low and high poly versions. Make a copy of your mesh. Name one "Suzanne_high" and then the other "Suzanne_low". Move Suzanne_low to a different layer out of the way, but don't change the physical (x,y,z) position as they will later need to be in the same location when making the Normal Map. STEP 3: Sculpt the high poly details. As with UV mapping, Sculpt mode should be familiar to you. Be careful on excessive use of the "grab" function (you can't normal map hooks). You should be looking to add fine details like muscle bulges, cloth wrinkles, skin textures and so forth. Save as you go, and allow yourself to detail as much as your computer will allow. STEP 4: Create the Normal Map At last you are ready. SHIFT-select both the high and low poly models (the low poly should be selected last). You could move the low poly model to the same layer as the high poly version to do this, but SHIFT-enabling both layers also works just as well and keeps them easily separate. Now you need to bake (Scene (F10) => Bake options) with the following settings... The Bake should be set to "normals" (not "full render") Make sure "Selected to Active" is activated. This compares the high poly one mesh against the low poly mesh in order to work out surface displacements. Normal space should be set to "tangent". This will generate a Map that allows for the object to be animated (e.g. change rotation). Older methods could only make Normal Maps for stationary objects where only the lighting positions could change. Now hit the big "BAKE" button and you should see your new and blue UV map generate. (I like using 1024 sized maps for reasonable resolution) Save the map when you are done. STEP 5: Apply the Normal Map to a low poly figure. This is easy. Simply apply the newly saved image as a texture. Under Shading (F5) => Materials (red ball icon) Under "Map input" change the projection setting from "Orco" to "UV". Under "map to" the default is "Col" (diffuse colour). Change this to "Nor" (normal, or bump). To make the Map work as a Normal Map instead of a Bump Map, under Shading (F5) => Texture (F6) (the leopard skin icon), under "Map image" panel, hit "Normal Map" and select "Tangent" from the next droplist. Your render should now show the low res model with all the bumps that the high resolution sculpt has. For a better result, you may want to apply a Subsurf modifier to the model, and turn off "hard edges". As you can see, this low poly mesh now looks very similar to the higher poly sculpted version. There may be areas where the mesh needs to be tidied up (some show as patches in the UV editor). There are probably various ways to do this, from rehashing the sculpt, to hacking the texturemap in Photoshop / Gimp. I wanted to show the technique for now, may troubleshoot solutions for those at a later time. As a bonus in the new Blender (2.48) you can go to the top menu "Game => GLSL materials" and show a 3D window as "textured" to show the textured mesh in close-to final render quality in your 3D view. The surface also looks good in game mode, but be sure to delete the high res model before hitting P to activate game mode, or you could hang up the computer trying to calculate the high poly mesh. So that's it. Now you can use Normal Mapping to give your low resolution meshes some high resolution punch, without compromising heavily on animation render times.

I tend to agree.Not wanting to make trouble versus moderators etc, but come on... this tutorial was written and submitted by the author. He want's points and has submitted something of his own work to earn them. I'm currently writing a tutorial at the moment, to do with some cutting edge (latest features) in a certain program. I will be posting the tutorial on Xisto, but also, I want to get appreciation by posting it to the forums of that software. If it happens to be spotted by zealous moderators because it get put online there first... is that really breaking the rules?

Nice site yes, but annoyingly slow to load. While I am a dial up user, I'm still used to seeing graphics load quicker than on your current pages. You should be able to hit better compression ratios in Photoshop / Gimp (For photos, have JPG which just start to show something like heat haze, then pull back a little). Alternatively, there are Website Optimizers you can purchase to do the job, like at http://www.webopt.com/index.php/de/ Good luck on the next adding content stage.

No no no... those are not accurate representations of "Open Source" licensing. Open Source does not mean shareware. Developers do not "make money by displaying advertisements" for anything or by asking for donations. That's spamware / nagware and it compromises the freedom offered by Open Source. Neither should Open Source be confused with "freeware", the main distinction being whether the end user has free access to the original uncompiled code. Open Source models can be successful but they are not for everyone. Yes I have seen some very fast bug fixing for projects under OpenSource. On the other hand, I have also submitted bugs long ago where a certain (unpaid in this case) developer assigned to the task has simply never bothered to fix the item. There is also a subtle difference between Open Source and GPL, although the two go hand in hand so well they are often talked about synonymously. To clarify... Open Source: Basically means giving the end user free access to the code of a product, so that they are able (and allowed) to make changes to that product as they see fit. GPL: Gnu Public License, is a well thought out legal-speak license used as a means of distributing Open Source (and similar) products. You can grab a copy of that license from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html Essentially, when you market something under GPL, it is copyright to you. However, instead of a "copyright" law where you would object to anyone redistributing your work, making multiple copies, selling it for profit themselves or even giving it away to their friends... you are declaring "copyleft" which basically means that as the copyright owner, you give permission for the next person to copy your work, you give permission for them to onsell your product, or to give it away. The restrictions you specify are that... They must not impose any less freedom to whoever they pass your product to. If they sell it to a friend, that friend has every right to onsell to their friends or to give away copies as they see fit. The GPL license (or a link to it) should be included with the product to keep the copyleft well known and active. (Does not slip into restrictive commercial "copyright") In the case of computer programs, the uncompiled Source Code of the product should also be made accessible to the end user (essentially, "Open Source"). This means they are able to make alterations with all the power of the original programmer. Derivatives of Open Source are to remain likewise Open Source. So you see, you can make money off Open Source by marketing (selling) the product. What you can't do is stop the next person from doing the same. Some projects make money from combining Open Source with NonOpen Source as a package. Red Hat Linux (now Fedora) has an enterprise version which is very costly. The core Linux is as Open as always but the whole package includes certain proprietary (non free) programs that must not be onsold. This is perfectly acceptable as there are different licenses for different parts of the whole package. The expensive cost also covers the year-long caller support which Fedora offers those who purchase their boxed product. The Linux example: When Linus Torvalds originally made Linux, he was studying with a cut down educational version of UNIX known as MINUX (mini-UNIX). He contacted the author of the Minux package and requested certain changes. The response he got back amounted to "No thanks, we like Minux the way it is. Minux will never have the changes you requested". Linus then decided the only way he could get what he wanted would be to make his own version. He'd have to do this from scratch (as peeking into someone else's code and ripping their product off is illegal) and so pulled in friends over the internet to help with the project. When he was done, Linus could have commercially marketed his new project. Instead, he decided that as he'd made it out of frustration of not being able to tweak the code of the Minux product, he would instead offer his own product under GPL, giving anyone like him full permission make changes... the opposite of how he had been denied. Linux (Linus's UNIX) has since been one of the most well known and successful examples of Open Source to date. Okay... think I got that accurate (explaining what Open Source is, anyway). Kind of a long story. I got a fair whack of my perspective from documentaries like RevolutionOS which you can get at http://www.revolution-os.com/ I have written long enough for now. If you like I can give you a very clear example in how giving my work away under Open Source concept has very quickly earned me thousands of dollars... and the company I was working under much more again. Just let me know if you want the story and I'll continue in this thread (including links to the Educational product in question, the forum I used to seek Open help maintaining it and everything)

I agree that Blender is an awesome package. I would hardly call it a "moderate" learning curve though... it takes years to get up to the standard of what some are doing in the user galleries.I have a diploma in 3D Animation where we were taught in Maya. Even though Maya costs a lot of money, there are always a certain number of things that Blender can do better (and the other way around, it goes both ways). If you were to compare Gimp to Photoshop, I would have to say that Photoshop is the better package. But if you were to compare Blender to Maya, I'd say they were both very good.I used Blender to make the characters for my Maya animations because some of the modeling things in Blender were better than Maya at the time.

Hey xboxrulz... both Linux and Mac have sudo, right?

In my case I'm running Linux, not Windows, so how do I configure sendmail to reach beyond local on Linux?

Are you wanting the Army or the Marine ones?Marine has no "Private" whereas Army has no "Gunnery Sergeant".MSN not good with me. Getting frantically busy and nailing me on messengers would not be ideal.

Oh I get you. Yeah you're right. I misunderstood because of the wording that people would be "stuck with" a given Desktop Environment. Tell me (curious)... does the SuSE live CD actually manage to fit in both Environments as well?

I would have done the rolleyes thing and all, except that I similarly did this with another thread the other day, though mine was about PhotoShop. It happens because the "related posts" often show really old material so people looking for somewhere to post up their point-cound inadvertently answer hot topics not realising how old they are.

There goes another myth. I don't know of many distros at all where you are limited to using KDE or Gnome, unless you're talking about "straight from the box" like you're never going to connect for upgrades. Some specialist minidistros may have limits. I frequently used to opt for FluxBox.

Computer must have been playing up.

You're wanting free help but can't seem to be bothered asking the question clearly. First of all, please make the job easier by bothering to post definite links. You should have posted http://combatcorps.com/forums/rankstructure.php rather than sending me to a non-link of the front page and having to click-through my way to the information. Secondly, the ranks you are wanting, and the reference images you provide (on your site) should at least match up. Your website shows ranks for: Recruit, Second Lieutenant, Corpsman, First Lieutenant, Corpsman First Class, Captain, Senior Corpsman, Major, Staff Sergeant, Lieutenant Colonel, Technical Sergeant, Colonel, Master Sergeant, Brigadier General, Senior Master Sergeant, Major General, Chief Master Sergeant, Lieutenant General, Command Chief Master Sergeant, General, Vice President and President ...whereas you are wanting decorations for: Private, Private First Class, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Gunnery Sergeant, Master Sergeant, Sergeant Major, Second Lieutenant, First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, General, Vice President and President This means that your website shows ranks for Recruit, Corpsman, Corpsman First Class, Senior Corpsman, Technical Sergeant, Senior Master Sergeant, Chief Master Sergeant and Command Chief Master Sergeant but you don't seem to want them and yet... ...you are wanting ranks of Private, Private First Class, Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Gunnery Sergeant, Master Sergeant and Sergeant Major ...but have failed to supply the reference images. I may be able to illustrate, but I'm lacking the military background. You're not paying me to research, so please clarify what you want... ...because, when asking people to work for free, it's really annoying if your mistake means they have to repeat.

This means that sendmail is not fully installed on your PC. It works, but locally only, it has to be configured in order to mail to remote domains.And to configure it I need to.......???

I tried your technique but the email did not get through with "Mailing to remote domains not supported" error. My mail command shows a new message like so...

Hi. This looks like a fun project.You should be up front about whether you're wanting to pay people. It's kind of awkward to expect them to ask.I'm about to run out the door. In the meantime, for all those ranks, do you have available reference to the stripes etc along the lines you would be wanting the designs based on? Without time yet to pull my own research, I'm assuming there's a definite code and it may vary from station to station, country to country etc. Last thing you want to do is to tell a designer they are wrong after they put the hours in.

There are a number of significant differences between the two.Importantly for professionals, the Gimp does not yet have the colour handling capabilities of Photoshop. This is barely relevant to anyone using Gimp for home / personal use though.While Gimp has a layering system similar to Photoshop, it does not have folders for those layers. This is very restricting in that Gimp users have to apply effects & filters to layers one at a time, whereas Photoshop users are able to bung the wanted layers into a folder and then apply said effect to that folder. It's also essential when handing work (which may have many many layers) to other professionals... you want all the layers for the "house" to be separated into a common folder. Otherwise they have to "hide" every single layer of the house one by one (window layer, door, shadow etc).Brushes in Photoshop are vastly more adaptable. They are all immediately resizable (Gimp can also resize but needs a slider or the user has to jump through a few hoops to assign a keypress to the size options of brush tools). Gimp brush manipulations include rotation and a few others neat features.Available scripts / effects are of course different in each package.I really wish Gimp development would hurry up and add folders to the layer window.I prefer / use Gimp in my day to day use as it is Open Source. I'd be a fool to say it was better than PhotoShop. PhotoShop is simply more advanced.