Houdini 9.1 Released
Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D Animation software announced the release of Houdini 9.1, which for the first time will include access to the new FBX importer. This addition gives studios a clear choice for interoperability with other 3D applications making it easier than ever to leverage Houdini within an existing pipeline. “I need Houdini to work with a variety of different 3D applications,” says Visual FX artist Miguel Salek. “With FBX support, I will have a common file format that works with them all.”
Autodesk® FBX is a well known open-standard 3D file format that promises a high quality interchange of 3D content. As an official Autodesk Authorized Developer, Side Effects is providing early access to the FBX importer with Houdini 9.1. The importer remains in development and will see a variety of enhancements over the coming months. For now, it supports geometry, attributes, lights, cameras, node and joint hierarchies, animation and geometry caches. Support for FBX export is planned and will be released in Q2 of this year.
“Since the release of Houdini 9 last year, we have grown our base of boutique and commercial production studios,” says Kim Davidson, President, Side Effects Software. “Now with FBX support, these customers can more effectively transfer their work between Houdini and their other software tools.”
Optimized for Production
Houdini 9.1 is available immediately for download and includes a variety of enhancements and optimizations to fluids, cloth, character rigging, animation, lighting and UI.
The user interface now ships with an alternative dark color scheme and the ability to download a variety of user-defined color schemes from the net. The Network view and Channel editor have been optimized and the timeline interaction has also been streamlined to make it faster and more intuitive. Animators can now work more easily by using the Channel List to select objects in the 3D view.
New Fluid emitter tools have been added to the shelf and the surfacing of particle fluids are up to 60 times faster than before. Cloth simulations are also faster and more reliable especially when interacting with dynamic volumes.
Houdini 9.1 includes a richer library of production-quality materials and rendering has been optimized to be more reliable and faster, especially when working with many textures. There is now support for triangle strip primitive rendering and for vertex normal rendering.
You can visit the Online Docs for a more detailed list of enhancements.
Now Available for Apprentice Users
Houdini Apprentice users can Download the new version right away and Houdini Apprentice HD customers will find an updated license ready in the Houdini license server. Houdini Apprentice HD customers have all received free upgrades to the new version due to the recent release of the HD program.
Wistron Shows New Upcoming Google Android Phone
Wistron GW4 Home Screen
The Wistron GW4, which could become the first Google Android phone, right now runs a variant of Montavista Linux. It’s fully functional, though; here’s the main menu.
Wistron GW4 Weather Widget
The Wistron GW4 comes with the Opera Web browser and various Web-enabled applications, like this weather widget. The phone uses GPRS and Wi-Fi to connect to the Net.
Wistron GW4 Google Maps
The GW4 already runs Google Maps, one of the applications it would run if Android was installed on this Linux phone.
Wistron GW4 Stock Widget
A stock widget running on the Linux-powered Wistron GW4.
Wistron GW4 Back
On the back of the Wistron GW4 is a 2-megapixel camera.
Wistron GW4 Opera Key
On the Wistron GW4 keyboard, there’s a dedicated key for launching the Opera Web browser.
Jumper - SciFi Movie
Jumper (From the director of The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith )
A genetic anomaly allows a young man to teleport himself anywhere. He discovers this gift has existed for centuries and finds himself in a war that has been raging for thousands of years between “Jumpers” and those who have sworn to kill them.
Google’s new service brings visitors to Google’s China site
The heavy snow in China gave Google, the search engine giant in the world but not in China, a chance to attract great deal amount of visitors to their site by providing real-time weather conditions and freeway status to searchers on Google map.
Google Map for Spring Festival Traffic provided a great way for travellers to check if the road they are going to travel is actually closed. It includes majority of freeways in China. Google staff updating the data constantly to provide real-time status. It is getting very close to Chinese Spring Festival, the most important holiday in China. People who have worked the whole year in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, will go back to their hometown to celebrate the new year with family and friends.
This winter, China encountered unprecedented snow falls and many southern parts of China are covered by thick snow which caused many tragic accidents on freeway. This service will greatly help travellers to reduce the risk while they are travelling.
Although Google is the number 1 outside of China, but Baidu is the number 1 search engine in China. It is quite hard to understand why but certainly Chinese people have different cultures than western people. The ideas worked in Western world does not always apply to China. But I think Google is starting to get it. This new service does not cost much to set up because all the technologies are already available and mature. Yet it is very USEFUL to people in China. A great product does not have to have high-tech, but it has to be wonderfully useful.
Developing Dynamic Website with PHP&MySQL - 4 - Registration and Login
This system is a must have for a website nowadays. Without it, you do not have a way to attract people back to your site.
The logic is very simple: you create a database table to store user registration data such as username, password, urserid, email as well as other information as required.
Database table SQL for member:
CREATE TABLE `member` (
`userid` int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`email` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
`username` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
`password` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`userid`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 AUTO_INCREMENT=1;
Run this code in phpMyAdmin, you will get a table to store user information. When users are presented with the login box, they type in the username and password, php code will compare the input values with the stored one, if all are matched, then a cookie or session will be created for the member and they become logged in.
The simple php process to log in is following:
1. create a page called: “login_form.php”. It will present
<?php
<form action=’login_process.php’ method=’post’>
<input type=’text’ name=’username’ />
<input type=’text’ name=’password’ />
<input type=’submit’ value=’Log in’ />
</form>
?>
2. create another page called: “login_process.php. It will accept values from the first page and process them.
<?php
$_session_satrt();
if($_POST[’username’] && $_POST[’password’]){
//############################
//here you will create a database connection for making sql query
//############################
$mysql_server=”database_server_url”;
$user_name = “username”;
$password = “password”;
$database=”database_name”;
$db = mysql_connect(”$mysql_server”,”$user_name”,”$password”);
@mysql_select_db($database, $db) or die(”<i>Unable to connect to database</i>”);
//to make database query to see if the two values are match
$sql = “SELECT * FROM member WHERE username=’$_POST[username]‘ AND password=’$_POST[password]‘ “;
$result = mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
//to count the number of returned records, usually one
$count = mysql_num_rows($result);
if($count > 0){
//login here
//for example, create a session value here
$_SESSION[’user’] = $_POST[’username’];
} else{
//present error message here or redirect the user back to the previous page
}
}
?>
- Next post I will introduce how to upload images as well as other types of files in PHP
Developing Dynamic Website with PHP&MySQL - 3 - Homepage Design
Someone may ask, why do you talk about homepage, why not talk about how to write PHP code. As I said before, the purpose of this series of posts are not entirely for PHP coding. You can find many good tutorials online talking about how to write a specific module such as member registration and login system. My main idea is to present how I get all the ideas together for my website.
So why homepage? That’s because the homepage is the first page your visitors most likely to see when they visit your site. The layout and colour scheme will be used across the entire site. So after you have planned out what modules you would like to have for your site, found a good domain name and a good hosting service, you should decide what you want for homepage.
Usually for a homepage, you will need a logo, navigation bar, main areas of the content and a footer. The design of logo, navigation bar and footer will be used across the site to unify the interface. For the main content area, it depends on the property of the site. If it is a news site, you will put headline. For my site, I put the recent posed articles’ links on the homepage as well as the newly uploaded 3d models and textures. I also put a search box for products as a side bar so users will have a handy location to find my products. For search engine optimization purpose(I will talk about it in details later on), you want to pay some attention to the homepage design. I prefer to put more contents for the search engine to index my page. Google’s spider will come often to index your site if you put new contents on the homepage often. I usually update my site 3 times per week.
1. Logo design:
2. Navigation bar :
3. Side Search Box:
4. New Products Section:
5. Latest Tutorials Update:
6. Footer:
The reason these elements are on the homepage is because they provide information to visitors and tell them what’s new on my site. They will know what is happening the minute open up your site in their browser. And I believe this type of first impression is very important. It tells the visitors that you do care about them.
Just have a look my homepage , you will understand what I was talking about.
-next post I will talk about how to design a member registration and login system.
Developing Dynamic Website with PHP&MySQL - 3 - Web Programming, Web Hosting Service, Domain Name registration
The reason that I chose PHP&MySQL to create my webiste is because they are free and also as powerful as other tools such as .NET.
The server will be Linux server with Apache server software installed. The Linux server is much cheaper than the Windows one and it has many third party tools for you to use, such as: FFMpeg for audio/video conversion directly on your server; ImageMagick for powerful image manipulation.
Next thing is webhosting choice. You have two choices in this case. One is go for a so-called virtual hosting in which you share the same server with other ones. Or you can rent or buy a dedicated server. The first one is much cheaper than the second one. And the first one has less techinical works for you because there are system adminstrators managing it for you 24 hours a day. The later choice will require more techinical attention from you.
For me, as a fresh starter, I chose the first one because the cose is low and I really do not have much time to solve technical issues on my own. I would rather spend time on building the website and promote it and start make money as soon as I could.
Here is a list of webhosting company I have came accross before:
1. IXWebhosting.com:
2. Hostmonster.com:
There are many other hosting companies out there, but these two so far are what my friends and I have used before. I found they have very good service in terms of providing in time technical support as well as the general hosting qualities such as server reliability.
The final thing of this post:domain registration.
You will definitely need a good domain name to start a website. Good names are just like people’s names. If a person has a easy to understand and meaningful name, then people will remember him/her. They also can recall this person more easily. For your site, before you start coding and designing your pages, you need to decide a name for it and found a good domain name.
Good domain names are not that easy to find nowadays because a lot of them have been registered already. Following are my ideas to find a good one:
1. Good names should be short and simple. You want people to remember your site right?
2. Try to use meaningful names not weired ones.
3. Use .com if you can because normally people remember your domain with .com. People do remember .org, .net, and etc., but .com is by far the easiest.
- the next post will discuss my ideas to design the first homepage
Developing Dynamic Website with PHP&MySQL - 2 - Planning
Good plan means half of the works done!
I know what I wanted for my website (http://en.9jcg.com). Following is the notes I made for my site:
1. It is a trading platform for 3d models, textures and reference photos.
2. All products are download-able , therefore the buyers should be able to make payment online.
3. Sellers will upload their CG assets to my site and trade them. Therefore a user profile and product management interface is required.
4. It is also a place people can find good learning materials. That way, people will stick with the website.
5. A backend management system is required in order to update contents frequently.
6. Pepole should be able to leave comments for tutorials to encourage discussions.
From the notes above, I found out what I will need to develop for:
1. Upload and download system with integration of Payment system (in my case: Paypal)
2. Backend content management system for managing onsite content.
3. Help files about how to use the website.
-The next post will discuss how to find the tools to create website
Developing Dynamic Website with PHP&MySQL - 1 - Intro
(Screenshot of 9jcg.com)
Since I am a PHP web developer and passionate on doing my job everyday, it will be silly not to include this category in my personal blog.
My idea for this series of posts is to write about how I developed my 3d model and computer graphic tutorials website (http://www.9jcg.com). It will not be a step by step tutorial but will cover the ideas of putting together this kind of database driven website. Hopefully you will get the full picture of how to get your own website set up like mine.
I will use PHP&MySQL server side technology with LAMP platform (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP) to demonstrate the process. As you can see, the methods I showed you by no means the best ways of doing them. They were simply the ways I have done my works. There are always better ways to do these things and I would really like to hear from you for your ideas and methods if you could provide feedbacks.
I will try my best to write one post each day to explain the process, from start to finish. But if my works need too much of my attentions, please be patient for further posts.
-The next post will give you a complete picture of how to plan a Database Driven Website.
Top 10 Free Software Applications as Replacements of Commercial Ones
Anyone wants to use software for free. But commercial applications such as Microsoft Office will cost quite a bit pocket money in order to use it without breaking laws. In order to make your home computer useful, you will need to buy a lot of applications. I am here to introduce you to 10 applications, which will not cost anything, at the same time, your computer will be as powerful if you bought those commercial equivalents.
1. Open Office (Replacement of Microsoft Office):
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. It is currently version: 2.3.1. The version 2.4 will be released in March 2008.
Screenshot:
2. GIMP (Replacement of Adobe Photoshop):
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted.
GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X.
Screenshot:
3. LAMP for Web Server: Linux + Apache + MySQL +PHP (Replacement of Windows + IIS + SQL Server + ASP)
Web is now everywhere. If you want to have your own web server, LAMP is definitely the first choice. Not only it is free, it is also more secure and faster than Windows platforms. Best of all, they are all open-source technologies. You got the whole world of developers to help you.
Screenshot:
Here is a pre-configured LAMP installer, very easy and you can pretty much config a web server in 10 minutes.
AppServ 2.5.9
This package includes:
* Apache 2.2.4
* PHP 5.2.3
* MySQL 5.0.45
* phpMyAdmin-2.10.2
4. FTP Client: FileZilla (Replacement: FlashFXP, CuteFTP)
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface.
Among others, the features of FileZilla include the following:
* Easy to use
* Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
* Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OSX and more
* Available in many languages
* Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
* Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
* Drag & drop support
* Configurable Speed limits
* Filename filters
* Network configuration wizard
Scrrenshot:
5. Antivirus Software: Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic
(Replacement: Norton Antivirus, McAfee)
From official website:
“More than 30 million users worldwide trust in the reliable protection of Avira AntiVir. And this is no coincidence at all: Avira has gained several awards.
The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs. For information on Avira’s professional solutions for business, please visit www.avira.com.”
Best of all, it is FREE!
Screenshot:
Download Avira AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic here
6. Photo Management and Editing: Picasa (Replacement of ACDSee)
Picasa is from Google. You can use it to manage all your photos. It has some common editing tools as well.
Screenshot:
7. Web Authoring Application: Nvu (pronounced N-view) (Replacement of Fontpage and Dreamweaver)
Same as Firefox Browser, this app is also from our wonderful Mozilla Family.
A complete Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.
Screenshot:
8. File Compressing: 7-Zip (Replacement of WinRAR)
Open source file compression tool.
Screenshot:
9. Software Develop Platform: Eclipse (Replacement of Microsoft Visual Studio/Borland JBuilder)
Eclipse is an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle. A large and vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities, research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse platform.
Screenshot:
10. Text Editor: Notepad++ (Replacement of EditPlus, emEditor)
Notepad++ is a free generic source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.
Screenshot:
Article Ideas From: http://www.williamlong.info/
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