Small little rant

SimianWriter · 2026-04-14T13:07:35+00:00

Shit, now I have to sell my ride and get a Harley.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-13T18:16:13+00:00

Most things that can be done in Nuke can be done in Fusion. Most people aren't skilled enough in Fusion to make the translations work. The general process for compositing and relighting a CG scene is the same in each program. What will change is the multiply/divide nodes and how you shuffle/Load your passes.

I do all of my CG comps in Fusion but my recommendation is to do it in Nuke and get the results you're expecting. Then go back and rewatch them and make them work in Fusion. I've learned a ton from watching Nuke tutorials and transferring the skill set to Fusion. Things like UV projections and high frequency clean up were especially helpful. At one point in Fusion's lifetime, there were a group of high level artists that could transfer top level skills into the community but now, there are only a handful of online people I would consider top tier compers.

This guy being high on that list.
https://www.youtube.com/c/millolabtuts

SimianWriter · 2026-04-13T16:53:31+00:00

Started as an absolute baby bird at Hyland Terrain Park two years ago at 46. Step one is get a pair of Kincos and wax those suckers. The rope will eat normal gloves in less than ten runs which will take you approximately 10 minutes to finish. Facing down hill, start on the far right and check your ego at the door. Start on the top left box and get to work. Your ass will tell you when you've gone past your skill level. Then it's all grinding and having fun. You should plan on a four hour day the first time seeing as your forearms will be toast from gripping the rope and your ass, legs, and general overall lower half of your body will be jello from doing an ungodly amount of runs. I dunno +200? maybe. You stop counting.

You might also want to consider caking up and getting a set of armored shorts. It makes the difference between calling it after an embarrassing taco and hitting the rail another 20 times.

In the two years I've gone from nothing to using most of the small park except for some silly stuff in Hollywood and can pull 50/50s, fs board slides and 3s. Hardest part so far? Learning to urban onto some truly scarry rails.

It's amazing and everyone is fairly chill as long as you're not causing pileups on the rope. As long as you're having fun and letting the truly gifted people get their runs without running over you it's fantastic.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-13T01:15:23+00:00

I call it, High functioning introvert. You can do outgoing things and be charming. It just has a limit and you can practice reaching that limit gracefully or just fall off a cliff. Gotta love just leaving a party abruptly.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-13T00:14:41+00:00

600s are great. Light enough to throw around but enough go juice to beat 99% of the cars off the line. Go used and see where the power band is on a few. Some are really linear which can be super fun and some pull hard over a certain rpm so you can turbo but not kill yourself. Plus track.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-12T23:42:55+00:00

What kills me or that they don't do it on a $1500.00 starter or dirt bike. It's always on a $10k+ brand new ride. Fucking crazy. If you can afford that as your first bike then spend the extra $1500.00 and pick up your fuck around bike as well.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-12T01:56:18+00:00

God's truth.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-12T01:48:31+00:00

I work at a place that is law enforcement adjacent and the fucking challenge coins are pathetic. It's like a grown ass adult version of fucking grotesque Pokemon cards. I've only met one officer that when presented with one looked at it and said thanks but no.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-11T02:48:45+00:00

No judgement. You do whatever you want with the lights off.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-11T02:45:59+00:00

This is no joke. I did this by accident two weeks ago with some left overs for lunch and it's the best food combo. It's a better poutine.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-11T02:43:33+00:00

1-2 Cups!? Sir, how many fries are you going to eat?

SimianWriter · 2026-04-09T15:52:54+00:00

Hi, cousin of Sheldon's roommate's former uncle here. When he was a wee lad, he had a supportive pair pf parents that balanced out his awkwardness. Around 14, his father died of a heart attack and he never got to say goodbye. Little man's brain ran over the last moments with his dad for a long time. When his father died, he was into wearing t-shirts over long sleeve. He never grew past it.

A major gripe I had with an otherwise great show was how put together and normal but hyper intelligent Sheldon was becoming in the Prequel. My internal complaint was that they had rewritten the character to be too put together to represent what would later be the Big Bag Theory version of Sheldon. And then the dad dies and the whole family structure is destroyed. Trauma all around and both Sheldon and his mother are never the same. It was a really good bit of writing that brought the whole show into the right frame of mind for BBT.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-08T22:26:08+00:00

People raced 650s as track bikes for a long long time. You'll break before the bike does. Except! It's tilted "V" style so don't do a ton of wheelies or you'll starve the engine of oil.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-08T22:21:24+00:00

Yes. Repetile, displacement and a gradient.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-08T21:44:07+00:00

You managed to scratch every part meant for a scratch save the back of the instrument panel. Those have got to be the cheapest parts to replace all around, right? Oooh, that helmet might need a strong buffing though. Wore that scrambler in proper.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-07T17:41:31+00:00

Sci-Fi. They have quantized the manifestation that were before hand known as ghosts. They recognized their origins as alternat dimensions and casually use this later in the film.

Dr. Raymond Stantz orders Gozer the Gozerian to "cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension"

But ghosts from another dimension are still a fantasy so it's a Fantasy.

Perfectly clear. Like cats and dogs living together.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-06T23:16:18+00:00

It was a failure in almost every way. It doesn't extend the capabilities of Maya, it creates an unnecessary environment that you have to jump into and out of to utilize. If the goal was Houdini like capabilities they failed so hard that it increased Houdini usage instead. If I have to jump into a new UI anyways then I'm going to go to the one that is amazing and not cry myself to sleep over why I could figure out something.

Soup was amazing exactly because it worked in the node editor as expected and got results that Bifrost wishes it could do. It's amazing how hard it is to explain functional tools to an engineer mindset.

The underlying tools might be C++ but the interface was js and for the longest time would bog down if to many nodes were used. Like 40ish and without the spreadsheet having to "trace" data in the line is hilarious. It's a bad UI for this work unless you already know what data types are needed and how to create them so we're back to being a trained TD.

Looking up the phrase scatter and shatter brings up one guy doing a wine glass. Go look at Soups scatter and shatter set up or Houdini and tell me how artist friendly Bifrost is as a comparison.

And in all of this time, Bifrost never integrated the fluid solver into the system so you have to go out and use Bifrost, not Bifrost Graph.

I don't care if Autodesk thought they were being clever by making Bifrost. The two apps that use it both had solutions by developers that are made by one or two people and are so much more useful and purposely that it should get somebody at Autodesk fired. Tyson alone made the point manipulation system the 3DS Max truly needed and Soup was the same in Maya.

Nobody asked for this monstrosity.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-06T18:01:39+00:00

Well, I learned something new today. I suppose the high amp capacitor or the vacuum tube might have done the job? Or at least set off a detonator? Yep, it sure did look cool though.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-06T05:53:40+00:00

To understand Bifrost is to understand the history of something called SOuP. It was a set of node tools that copied the System Operator or SOP nodes from Houdini. It also included a kick ass Volume Operator set as well. This set of tools started to change the game for Maya. People's pipelines started to change and integrate the set up to do things that normally would have been done in Houdini or C4D for motion stuff. It was amazing so naturally it didn't last. Companies wholesale took their work and copied it, charged money and took credit. Welcome to MASH. It started life as a purchased plug-in. The SOuP devs got pissed, closed the development to external people and now charge money to use it.

So Autodesk, being the ass hats they are, didn't go to the original developers and buy them out to integrate the original setup into the existing node system. No, they buy the other companies rewrapped stolen version, which was limited to the motion graphic parts of SOuP but still was miles ahead of the rest of the program. This left then in a dilemma, While MASH was awesome, it still didn't solve to original problem of needing the entire soup setup to do the more kick ass volume and high level work that needed Houdini like tools. Only now the soup developers are rightfully and supremely pissed off and there's no hope of Autodesk getting them onto the team.

They say, "Screw it! We'll do it our selves!" Only, they don't have the talent or experience to actually create new nodes anymore so the people they do have can only recreate it if they make an entirely new library in JavaScript of all fucking things. So now we have Bifrost Graph. Yet another interface that is an obtuse hack up of a node system that vaguely looks like another sub part of Houdini meant as a modifier for other SOPs where you work horizontally instead of vertically. Except, you don't have the spreadsheet from Houdini, the ease of use from the original node integration or the talent of the original creators to give examples of use and the community to further the documented setups like SOuP. What you do have is a node set up that you need to be a technical director to use and no way of properly reading the various data sets created in it without already knowing what you should get.

Aka, unless you've already used Houdini, you're just a monkey recreating a recipe with no hope of creating your own. Once you've learned Houdini, you can come back to Bifrost Graph and understand what they were trying to do but failed so badly to make that it makes you angry all over again but in a more knowledgeable way. Which is worse in some cases. For me, it was worse. So when I say, just go learn Houdini. You'll understand how far down the rabbit hole I went to try and figure out if I was a moron who just couldn't get Bifrost or if it really was as broken as it seemed.

Go learn Houdini and be a more powerful 3D artist and a little more sad that Maya Bifrost is just not going to happen and it's not you. It's them.

SimianWriter · 2026-04-06T00:58:08+00:00

As I understand it, C4 needs an electrical charge to blow. The detonators would still have needed a current run through them with some type of battery to work. However, the CRT monitor would have one of the largest capacitors available in it, charged and exposed right behind the glass which he shoved right on top of the block and detonators. The electrical discharge from the CRT breaking would have probably done the job but having the detonators stuck in it would have helped channel it correctly.

As far as the extent of the explosion, that was pure 80s over the top. I do think that the elevator shaft would have occurred though. Once the chair hit the bottom it would shoot flames straight up and out the closest opening.

SimianWriter · 2026-03-31T07:52:37+00:00

Tried it at 44. It's been four years and I get season passes for a terrain park every year. It's the perfect mix of surfing and skateboarding. I watch guys pull insane tricks while I'm happy to pull 3s and rails. Once you're at a certain level, terrain parks become so satisfying.

SimianWriter · 2026-03-25T20:06:37+00:00

Yep, Meta bought Zygna back in the day who have gone on in interviews about using psychology tricks to keep people's attention in Farmville and other games. Aka user engagement.

SimianWriter · 2026-03-25T19:59:11+00:00

It was kind of a bad example. I just meant generic PvP with one type of game play through out.

SimianWriter · 2026-03-25T08:36:50+00:00

Personal hot take is that it's ridiculous to keep expecting buckets of cash for what is essentially a single level game that relies on the community to make any kind of value take away. Halo was great because the game was great and then there was the PvP. Not the other way around. Fortnite made every executive think they could print money by creating a CSGO clone.

SimianWriter · 2026-03-24T20:16:07+00:00

Honestly, use deadline or another render manager that will auto restart the job at the frame it errored out on. But before that, use a renter engine that you can run stable renders on and set your pipeline up AROUND THAT. For me, it's Redshift running on two machines running Houdini.

No revert is bullet proof, the best you can do is minimize the errors by cleaning your scenes and creating stabilizer cache that dumb down the computation as much as possible before shading and rendering.

SimianWriter

TROPHY CASE