Share. Inspire. Enjoy.

Here's a nice blog entry at JacksonFish i found while looking for a few cartoon character images online.
http://www.jacksonfish.com/blog/2007/10/10/the-details-of-character-creation/
Pretty informative for concept artists, character designers. Will keep adding links in the category as and
when i find them.

My Gosh! Its been really really long since i last posted.. w00a!!
Well its a general observation for me that I don't blog either when
I am too busy or when I have nothing to do at all.. :)
Both sound unfavorable... :P Seems like its time to blog again.. :))

C ya soon with a new post then..

cheers!

The morning starts with a chilling breeze flowing through the window beside my bed. I didn't feel like coming out of the cozy interiors of the blanket at all. But well, I've got an exam to take today and some more stuff to finish!
After some procrastination [ Gosh! they should have made that word sound a bit sweet and cute ;) ], i finally got up. Man! Mumbai was never supposed to be that cold. What on Earth is happening out here!!

Even though its an exam day, but I do not feel tensed at all. Those days are long gone when an exam day seemed like there's no tomorrow and still we gotta study and clear through that hell :( Those were the days when i thought there must be some damn thing in this world that could spare me one more day before this exam. LoL. Not any more.

For a freelancer like me, this was a perfect morning. I cooked omelette for the first time and boy that was tasty.. ;)
Then I got a call from a web-design company that's now planning to get into 3d gaming business for a job. They offer me to work freelance as a 3d game level designer. Well I need to think over this one. As tempting as it may sound, but I am in no mood to compromise my current commitment. That's all about freelancing I guess!
At least for a freelancer called Kamal. So I set up an appointment with them for tomorrow. Lets see what happens.

The trip to Andheri was, as usual, no less than an adventure. Although chick-sightings in western Mum sure lighten up the mood ;)

Software engineering paper looked like a bumper draw for us tired souls. But it turned out to be pretty tricky in the end. Imagining it is enough of a shock. Three sections. Two of them, 20+15 questions. All "True / False" type :(
Ridiculous!

Well, me and Dez have always lightened up after such a shock with our &g jokes (psst: that's a secret) and well, we finally end up talking about things that matter the most to us. 3D graphics, computer hardware, latest technology.

And today both of us sat wondering, as the train moved saying "babuji ki babuji ki babuji ki babuji ki" (only a few lucky souls have the privilege of ROTFLTAO on this one) :P, what the hell is the difference between 3d rendering in games of today and the 3d rendering using various renderers inside of our common 3d tools (Maya, 3D Studio Max, Blender, etc). The intriguing thing is that high end cards of today, the ones like NVIDIA GeForce 8 series cards that make game engines like CRYTEK (Gosh! If you dont know already, you gotta Google this to know what i am talking about!!!) run smoothly on monstrous display resolutions that I can only dream of but why is it that rendering times in case of other 3d renderers are improved only marginally even if you have a GeForce monster mounted in your rig!!

Of course, its just the lack of knowledge that makes us wonder this, but we (both me and Dez) could not yet find a satisfactory explanation till now for this observation.

More so because game engines like CRYTEK don't appear to use any sort of texture / light baking techniques. They've shown real-time lights, shadows, motion blur, DOF, in game. REAL-TIME! Why not in Maya (Mental Ray)? Why not in Blender (YafRay)? Why can't we see a real-time update of our creations in 3d while we're creating them?
What is it that's different in that game engine? Why is it not implemented in these renderers if its so efficient?

So many questions! We are off to find some answers then. If you know anything that can enlighten us, plz mail me at kmorjal@gmail.com. Thanks for that in advance.

And well, as i write this, i am preparing to get back to work in Vashi. So bidding farewell to home and going back to our little studio that's our second home.

[PS: NVIDIA, CRYTEK, MAYA, 3DS MAX, Blender, Mental Ray, YafRay and Google are trademarks of their respective owners. I disclaim any association or ownership with any of the names mentioned in this blog-post (except Dez, of course :P ) ]

By the way, those of you who wanna know what the hell is ROTFLTAO. <= Rolling On The Floor Laughing Their Ass Off ;)

This is about the beginning of my beautiful journey into the world of FOSS.. :)
Of course that can't be summed up in a single post.. so this is numbered.. and i give myself the liberty of extending it to n number of posts.. :P

One fine day, i went to a crappy MTNL customer service center to inquire about their newly advertised Garuda internet connection on FW phones. Well, that connection ended up with a bad and sad twist that only worsened my standpoint on MTNL. But I got something else there that will remain with me for life.. :)

I met a guy, Devaranjan, there who, I guessed, is quite enthusiastic about FOSS. And indeed, I thank him for introducing me to this world that was previously unknown to me.

He helped me with a Ubuntu 6.06 CD. He gave me a comprehensive primer on using it. He invited me to join the LUG mailing lists. And he told me about the Anushaktinagar Knowledge Network that he has painstakingly put up and still maintains. And he informed me about a LUG meeting at HBCSE that was my first.

The LUG mailing list was the place where I got priceless insight into the way things are happening with GNU/Linux. The technical knowledge base and the huge user-base that exists in this world. I was moved.

Of course, initially I did not completely understand the philosophy that drives this movement in the computer world and was quite unaware about how passionate its members are about FOSS, GNU/Linux and all the things that go with it. But, well, that was just the beginning, it still is; I have a long way to go.

There are so many nice people I met, both online and offline (viz a viz) and really enjoyed getting involved. More on this later.

All these events have started an entirely new era of computing in my personal world, and my sincere gratitude goes to Dev, for booting me into FOSS. :)
Thanks bro.
Cheers!

Well i received this in mail a few weeks ago.. Sounds pretty interesting...
And, i can't think of anything else to write about at the moment so i thought to share this wonderful mail with you all... Remember, if you start reading it.. read it in its totality.. you'll really wonder.. i promise. :)

And yep! Don't cheat.. you'll spoil the fun. ;)

TWO TOUGH QUESTIONS:
 
 Question 1:
 If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis; would you recommend that she have an abortion?
 
 
 Read the next question before scrolling down to the answer of this one. [[ Amateurs built the Ark...Professionals built the Titanic!]]