Shawn Marshall
Forum Replies Created
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This issue perplexed me for a year or so until I found the “Polygon Groups to Objects” command:
If you have polygon objects that are internally made up of non-connected surfaces (as can, for example, be created using the Disconnect command or from editable, connected ExtrudeNURBS), this command will create a separate object from each coherent group, which will be made Child objects of the original object.
In R13 it’s under Mesh: Conversions.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Check out Vertex Pusher:
https://www.vertex-pusher.com/index.php/
I have his rigging, animation and Mograph tutorial sets. I haven’t watched all of them, but from what I have seen they’re comprehensive and well-thought out.
His modeling tutorials are 9 hours long and cost around $35.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Michael, I would concede that Macs are probably priced higher than similarly-configured Wintel machines, but saying they’re OVERpriced is a subjective assessment. Overpriced is a pejorative term, and I maintain that it’s a matter of opinion. Your opinion is that Macs are overpriced compared to Windows hardware, and that’s fine, you’re entitled to that opinion.
My opinion is that there’s more to a workstation than raw processing power, graphics cards, expandability, etc. I like OS X. I’m comfortable in OS X. I like being able to browse the web and check email on my Mac Pro while I’m rendering a 3D frame in C4D or a generating a RAM preview in After Effects. That works for me, in our studio. I’d rather work on a Mac that’s a little slower than give up OS X for a faster Wintel machine. Now at some point, if Apple dumbs down OS X to something I can’t use professionally then we’ll revisit Windows and all of the hassles that will be involved in changing over all of our software.
My opinion is that, in the grand scheme of our business, Mac Pros are priced fairly. Sure, I wished they were closer to $3000 like the top-end models used to be ten years ago, but that premium is worth it to me to be able to reliably run OS X on an 8 or 16-core workstation.
As I wrote earlier, I could live with Apple licensing OS X to other hardware builders. Our first personal Mac was a Mac iici circa 1994, but our first workstation was one of the short-lived Mac clones, a Umax Supermac circa 1997. Back then, just starting out, we couldn’t afford a real Mac. Times have changed.
Cheers.
Shawn
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I submit that “overpriced” is in the eye of the beholder. My 2008 eight-core Mac Pro is the heart of our small business, and we’ve been able to bill many hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past four years, almost all of that flowing through that workstation. So, to me, spending $6000 for a rock-solid workstation is well worth the price.
That said, OS X is more important to me than the hardware. If Apple doesn’t want to make Mac Pros then they should license OS X to other hardware makers.
I just don’t like working in Windows. I have to fire up Windows 7 (via VMWare Fusion) to run Polytrans for CAD conversion, and I find it somewhat unintuitive. I don’t like that Win 7 has to download updates practically every week. Yes, if the only way to upgrade my hardware is to switch to Windows, we’ll do it, and I’ll eventually get used to Windows. But I never would have imagined it would come to this, that Apple would abandon the pros.
As an Apple user I’d always root for them when they were the underdog, like they were part of my family. To say that I’m now conflicted regarding their success would be an understatement.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
We, too, have $6000-$8000 ready to drop on a new Mac Pro with the new Xeon chips if Apple would just release them. That’s the equivalent of 12-16 iPads. Yes, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to all of Apple’s consumer gear, but I find it hard to believe that Apple can’t turn a profit selling Mac Pros. It wouldn’t be a huge profit compared to the consumer market, but it’s not like they’d be selling the Mac Pros for a loss.
And wouldn’t the guys who write code for Apple want to working on beefy desktop computers? Remember those stories about how various aspects of the Windows interface were designed on Macs? Wouldn’t it be sad/ironic if Apple programmers had to design and program on Wintel machines because Apple stopped making Mac Pros?
If you want to see new Mac Pros then let Apple know. I went to this site:
https://www.apple.com/feedback/macpro.html
and told them I’m ready to give Apple $6000-$8000 if they’d just update the Mac Pros. Maybe they read this feedback like they say, maybe they don’t. But it doesn’t hurt to try.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Glad to know you got it to work. I’ll have to play around with dynamics for that next time.
Shawn
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I just did a gear-heavy animation and was wondering the same thing, whether it could be done with Motors. I didn’t have time to do a lot of research on the feasibility, so I went with Xpresso. I’m not what you would call an Xpresso whiz, but the process was fairly straightforward. It’s just a matter of calculating the ratio of the gears based on the number of teeth on each gear. Say a 6 tooth gear is driving an 18 tooth gear. For every 1 rotation of the smaller gear, the bigger gear rotates .3333333. If the gears are rotating along their heading you’d feed the Rotation.H node of the 6 tooth gear into the input of a Math:Multiply node. The other input would be -.333333. Then feed the output of that into the Rotation.H input of the 18 tooth gear, and there you go. Animate the heading of the 6 tooth gear and the 18 tooth gear will follow.
Or perhaps you knew all that and just wanted to do it differently.
And here’s a strange side note. I initially read this post on an iPad. When I went to reply on my Mac in Safari 5.1.2 this post was no where to be seen, even after emptying the cache and quitting and restarting the program. So I went to Firefox, and there it was, so that’s how I’ve replied here. Weird.
Good luck.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics -
Thanks for the reply. I’ll have to confirm with the client whether they want to use something that exists or whether they plan to mock up something. It would be ideal to shoot everything practically.
Shawn
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Hi:
Thanks for the quick reply.
I’m pretty sure these are going to be locked down shots. I suppose I should confirm.
We’re not really demonstrating software; we’re showing off the hardware in lifestyle settings.
Pulling a luminance key sounds tricky, though.
Shawn
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This is swell. We don’t use inDesign, but we were provided a storyboard consisting of a 42 page PDF. Changing the layout to 9 pages per sheet I was able to print out a simple, easy-to-manage five page storyboard.
I can even save that multi-page storyboard as its own PDF.
Thanks for the tip.
Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics