Realised I haven't made a post here for a while, I'd say the biggest thing of note since last writing here is how the discord has taken off. I mainly use the discord to occasionally text chat, post a link, but there's a vibrant core community now who are active 24x7, and have especially taken the voice chat and screen sharing to a whole new level.
People sharing techniques, debugging each...
2021-06-14 07:11:59 +0000 UTC View PostBeen on a tops spree at work last few weeks, have gone from seething hatred to quite enjoying it. Lots of rough edges still, but has definitely enabled me to get a LOT of work done that would have been very hard otherwise.
Updated a lot of the tops notes, added examples, have a read:
2020-12-20 23:07:02 +0000 UTC View PostHey all,
As you probably heard by now I've taken a new job with Ryot focusing on AR and realtime. I've had to hit the ground running on some areas I wasn't too familiar with, but was probably well overdue for covering.
Most places I've worked have used git in some form, occasionally I'd learn just enough to help with some pipeline tools, then forget it within a month. Time to write ...
2020-09-14 20:29:57 +0000 UTC View PostMy next wave of activity has been around PDG/Tops. We need to get farm support going for our students this year, so I've done a lot of investigations around Tractor support within PDG.
It's been a bumpy ride, but it feels like its calming down, and I've learned some other important PDG bits on the way. Interesting to realise there's not much coverage of the farm stuff, most people h...
2020-06-26 02:47:20 +0000 UTC View PostI assume you've all seen this by now, Patreon HQ is sending me increasingly panicky messages to remind you all about this update, so I've copied their form letter and pasted it below as our Patreon overlords have demanded.
Basically GST is coming. We're used to it in Australia, I'm guessing most other countries are the same. Cue form letter:
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Hi everyone,
I w...
2020-06-12 02:29:40 +0000 UTC View PostWell, probably closer to 5.0 if you look into the full timeline going back to about 2001, but as far as most people know, 2.0.
I installed MediaWiki in 2014, added some plugins and skins since then, but the core software hadn't been refreshed in 6 years.
Dreamhost forced my hand with warnings that they were depreciating php5 support, which the original mediawiki was locked to.
Hey all, I don't use this handy post thing enough, time to dust it off and say hi.
So like everyone it's been interesting dealing with all this covid stuff. Our uni got 1 week warning to take everything online, luckily our IT stuff (all 2 of them!) are amazing, managed to get all 44 students and 8 staff onto Nomachine setups+Zoom, and we adapted pretty quickly.
This all happened jus...
2020-05-17 11:49:10 +0000 UTC View PostA few of you have boosted your monthly pledge, which is awesome, but not the point of my twitter post. To be clear I don't expect my current patreon folk to pay more money, I'm perfectly happy with whatever you're comfortable to pledge. It was more a drive to get any of the general public who are using the wiki to at least chip in a little. :)
2020-02-08 01:09:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Just thought I'd drop you all a quick note. How are you? Yeah? Oh I'm fine, thanks for asking. :)
You might've seen my twitter post poking folk for Patreon support. I noticed I lost a lot of supporters over January which I understand; it's a new year, take a fresh look at finances and all that. I had assumed that the number of new supporters each month would replace the old ones, and be a...
2020-02-05 23:12:06 +0000 UTC View PostWell that was fun! Amazed that SideFx invited me for a second time, and even more amazed that I got to be part of a panel about the history of Houdini, which is crazy considering how little time I've used it. Still, managed to share some stories (and admit the first time I used Houdini was a cracked copy of v2 circa 2001 or so), offer opinions, and of course enjoy the rest of siggraph.
Also grea...
2018-08-23 13:53:30 +0000 UTC View PostHey Patreots (that's a thing right?)
So I'm 4 month into this new teaching thing, still really enjoying it. Interestingly I've noticed my wiki updates slowed once I joined the university. Most of the wiki updates were directly related to a production issue at Animal Logic, now that I don't have that pressure, the need to write things down in case I forget it has declined. Clearly I need to force...
2018-06-17 12:35:10 +0000 UTC View PostOn advice from my legal team (ok, a offhand comment from a friend), I've added $1, $5, $10, $20 tiers.
There is absolutely no difference between them, no exclusive content, no tshirts, no one-on-one web chats, its just a easy way to set a payment level you're comfortable with.
2018-04-20 23:25:41 +0000 UTC View PostWell that was a crazy month. The vex tutorial was pretty popular, I started a new job teaching at the UTS-Animal Logic Academy, and the new discord chat is a winner. Also there was an amazing increase in Patreon supporters, thanks to all of you who have signed up!
Now that my main role is education, I might be able to start doing 'pro' training via the university. Thinking video tutorials, or if...
2018-03-31 22:12:03 +0000 UTC View PostIf you use the one in the email link its expired. I updated the post on patreon but it doesn't re-send an email. Ugh, computers.
Anyway, this link should work:
Again, don't share it around until I work out the auto-patreon-discord-bot-send-invites thing. :)
2018-02-28 23:44:50 +0000 UTC View PostOk nerds, come at me:
That's a free-for-all link until I work out how to limit the invites and stuff, don't share it around for the moment.
I think it should be possible to auto-generate custom links directly from patreon, I'll have a look tonight.
2018-02-27 23:44:37 +0000 UTC View PostIt's pretty simple to make a discord.
I could see the vex tutorial benefiting from us all interacting, would you folk be interested in a private discord? Patreons only, keep it small, I rule it with an iron fist.
Well, 17 and a half at the moment, but thats the plan.
I had a bit of a chat with Grant Inouye when he became a supporter, talking about how there's a reasonable number of Houdini folk who are comfortable with sops and dops, but still avoid Vex.
Thinking about how to approach this, I was reminded of my current obsession with Melodics ( melodics.com ), a great app for learning keyboar...
2018-02-27 22:53:22 +0000 UTC View Posthttps://twitter.com/thecgwiki/status/960420648097955840
... well, at least until the next one...
Like an idiot I didn't save the file that made the gif, but I reverse engineered something similar from the flap setup.
Main thing here was playing around with the wind tunnel options, it setup...
2018-02-05 08:18:45 +0000 UTC View PostAww, little fireballs, cute. :)
Gif preview:
https://twitter.com/thecgwiki/status/960269285003165697
Here, while I tidy them up and think of more interesting examples for the wiki. :)
edit
Oh, and the flap one too, forgot that! Tho I think I left all the previous versions in each file, so the shockwav3d file has all the bits needed to recreated the earlier files.
Main thing thats interesting (to me anyway) was this was my first time playing with the pyro solver to do fire. ...
2018-02-04 05:58:34 +0000 UTC View PostLots of responses in comments, private messages, even some people on the q2a site itself, that's a pretty clear 'live the wiki alone'. Done.
I think a S.O. style site has lots of potential, but as a few of you have suggested, feels like it'd be better on the sidefx side, or if they decide they don't want to do that, odforce. I mentioned it to some folk at sidefx, we'll see what happens. 2018-01-30 11:10:11 +0000 UTC View Post
First of all, I'm amazed at the update in people supporting me; something happened in the last month or two where there's been a tipping point, and growth is starting to get exponential. Don't know if it'll last, and its still not enough to quit my day job (far from it), but still, wow, thanks everyone for being awesome!
Next, I've been feeling the wiki is getting a bit messy. I can't do tags, t...
2018-01-29 23:12:13 +0000 UTC View PostA work challenge became a fun little diversion, became a super fun time hole.
I just blatted all this down in the last 2 hours, have a read, let me know if anything isn't clear before I share this on twitter n stuff.
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=ConstraintNetworks2...
2017-12-07 14:52:52 +0000 UTC View PostAn odforce post (and some recent work stuff) led me to look at for loops a bit closer, started to sketch out a longer tutorial.
Still a work in progress, needs more images, more text, more hips. If you have any feedback/questions, lemme know!
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=ForLoops 2017-11-27 04:18:31 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been asked to help out with finishing Peter Rabbit, which is interesting in that I'm running shots (I haven't really run shots in years), and do simulation (I don't really like simulation, and simulation under end-of-show pressure, when I haven't done it for a while, is not ideal!).
That said, after 2 weeks of flapping about and feeling pretty useless, it started to click yesterday, which i...
2017-11-19 12:20:03 +0000 UTC View PostNathan contacted me via Twitter, asking if I could help him with a particle droplet problem. The kids were quiet(ish) and I was keen to test the streaming, so thought we'd try a live session. I think it worked pretty well after a few teething issues.
Skip to about 7 mins in, and probably play it at double speed, runs for about 40 mins.
just kicking the tyres on all this stuff (obs, twitch, things), only just noticed that i can do it with youtube too, and its apparently pre-integrated with patreon, might try that next.
2017-09-29 02:13:30 +0000 UTC View PostSo apparently The Young People are into twitch streams. Along with fidget spinners and 'fast and the furious' films, these are things I don't understand cos I'm old, but I can appreciate others enjoy.
I realised that while I don't have enough time to make polished Entagma style tutorials, I could probably turn on a stream when I'm about to tackle a problem from scratch. It'd be unlikely to have ...
2017-09-28 09:46:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Been a while since doing anything fun or silly with Houdini (work is keeping me busy with UE4 atm), but made this after some chat in the Houdini Discord chat. I think this might be the worst thing I've done to that poor pig.
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniDops#Grain_fake_FEM
<... 2017-08-23 02:15:06 +0000 UTC View Post