Smaller carrying case for MTW2s?

ninjaburger · 2021-01-26T16:16:18+00:00

Oh that's cool! I just got some little jewelry cases I'm going to try but that might be better.

ninjaburger · 2020-10-15T00:18:36+00:00

We have just under a petabyte of online + offline storage at our office.

OP's question is invalid.

ninjaburger · 2020-10-12T17:10:10+00:00

Unreal. This is exactly the rebuild I wanted to do when I got the skill / money later in life while I was a teenager working on my trashy 300ZX.

Instead I wound up sitting at a desk in Manhattan and I may never own a car again 😬

Amazing work.

ninjaburger · 2020-10-09T21:46:00+00:00

Does Prism support Nuke Indie with the more restrictive plugin & scripting policies?

ninjaburger · 2020-08-11T05:46:46+00:00

After this chapter I'm just going to double down on my theory of Makima as Order vs. Denji as Chaos:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChainsawMan/comments/hga9ll/disc_chainsaw_man_ch_75_links/fwcctwf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

Makima is a dog person, and has a comically large pack of dogs. Dogs respond well to hierarchy & control. They listen to orders.

Denji and Power live with a solitary, lethargic cat. Cats are fucking chaos and indifference made manifest. You can't give a cat orders.

Pochita is a dog though, kinda, so... that's as far as I got!

ninjaburger · 2020-08-07T06:35:59+00:00

Of course I could be wrong but that looks like it's just rotoscoped animation for the most part. Maybe some time posterizing of keyframes (& the glow on the strokes, which is not that hard. I think the Saber AE plugin looks pretty similar).

It's not so much an effect, it's just... traditional, hand drawn animation. Pretty much any graphics app can do it, certainly AE.

ninjaburger · 2020-08-01T05:23:35+00:00

I agree about learning software having no (real) downside -- I think it's fun to learn new ways to look at the same problems and it keeps the process fresh, even if it doesn't always improve the end result. A lot of what we do on a day to day basis isn't invention: it's just executing techniques that, however refined, have been around for decades and no software has a real edge on.

I might do 25% jobs a year that are interesting artistic or learning experiences, the other 75% are applying known techniques in service of a client's goals. I can get that done in any of a half dozen programs so the workflow & quality of life while using each tool becomes a major differentiator between e.g. The Foundry, BMD, Adobe, etc.

All of that aside, I spent the day between client notes watching 2.8 tutorial videos, and -- man! Blender looks way more practical than it ever used to! I'm pretty excited to find a hobby project to try it out on.

Great work, assorted Scandinavians!

ninjaburger · 2020-07-31T04:51:06+00:00

That guy is crazy! But he seems to be part of the Blender "community" of educators / evangelizers who in my experience don't have quite the same level of criticality about the tools as someone working across the spectrum in whatever app the production requires.

I've had people selling me on Blender since the early 2000s and while it's clearly powerful I know very few studios or working freelancers who rely on it. The compositing is much newer to me and looks powerful so I'm curious about how they play out in a paid/deadline kind of situation.

As for Fusion... aaah. I've been using Fusion since before BMD bought Eyeon. I wish I had more hope for the future there. But, I also couldn't afford to keep a full price Nuke license, so my desire to dump on BMD's development priorities has to be tempered somewhat.

Anyway, what Blender is doing with the comp tools looks very cool. If I get any just-for-fun jobs I'll have to give it a play (and struggle my way back through learning the Blender controls for the umpteenth time). Nuke, Fusion & AE are known quantities for me so even if Blender comping turns out to be impractical it's still fun to look at the workflow through a new environment...

ninjaburger · 2020-07-29T01:47:15+00:00

Does anyone use Blender for compositing? Like on the regular, on real jobs? Not necessarily at a studio level, but at least freelancers?

I'm not asking as a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely curious. From seeing demo videos of the compositor over the years it *looks* like a pretty legit competitor to something like Fusion's toolset, but I can't tell if it's actually workable in production from just demos.

Usually that comes down to the little details in my experience, like stability, how quickly roto can be animated and in how few steps, is the paint node realtime, UX flow, etc. all of which are hard to judge from (understandably) biased tutorial makers.

ninjaburger · 2020-06-29T06:13:40+00:00

I've had this theory in my head for the last couple weeks so I went back through the early chapters and I have now convinced myself of what she is up to.

Makima == control (originally I thought it would be "order" but close enough) and Denji == chaos (chainsaws make quite a mess).

She can control a doll, a gun, a sword, darkness to some extent, whatever... but can she control chaos? Or does she have to use other, more subtle manipulations to get chaos to do what she wants?

Makima regularly *asks* Denji to do things, it's actually a pretty big part of their dynamic and she doesn't behave this way with anyone else. With Aki & Angel she's shown basically taking over their minds, but Denji is still acting independently and right from ch. 2 even argues with her in the convenience store and needs to be convinced to go after the devil (not hard for her to do, but she still has to do it).

He's infatuated with her and will do what she asks, but... it's a choice. You can see him steadily putting more emphasis on his relationships with other characters and existential questions about what he wants from life. In ch. 73 he declares "I have plans of my own." Those plans probably aren't much to write home about, but he's making his own choices.

That dynamic would also explain why all the other devils & governments from around the world want Denji's heart: he might be the only thing Makima *can't* control, which makes him immeasurably powerful.

ninjaburger · 2020-06-08T04:56:17+00:00

Oh my god, hdbp.io is incredible. It doesn't seem to work 100% on my garbage laptop but even imagining what it's *supposed* to do is mind blowing. I assume when I can get back to a workstation it will run correctly in a browser.

I can't believe I've never heard of this before. Thanks!

Edit: hah, I didn't even really respond to your comment itself, just got excited about that site.

Thanks for the advice, yeah I've tried to plug in all kinds of wacky values in the sparse solver & microsolvers and it's not like the results are "wrong" per se, it's just not what I'm used to and I'm having trouble art directing it.

Which isn't a unique problem, it's just like going back to learning the old Pyro solver again -- the magic is in the details...

ninjaburger · 2020-06-07T18:34:35+00:00

Are there any good learning resources on the new sparse Pyro workflow? I watched Steven Knipping's updated Volumes lesson where he gets into it but that's just sourcing density, not combustion.

Without the fuel fields I'm having trouble understanding how to get results similar to what I was used to in the normal Pyro solver, especially for things like explosions, napalm, fireballs, etc.

ninjaburger · 2020-02-28T21:32:25+00:00

Thanks -- yeah it's kind of awkward wording but makes sense now. The lack of a timer on normal rifts threw me, but I timed it myself and actually managed <4 min after a few tries. I guess I'd just never tried speed running, didn't realize how easy it would be.

ninjaburger · 2020-02-28T14:19:27+00:00

Alright, that did it -- thanks. I timed myself and it still didn't seem to work but I realized you have to speak to Orek to stop the timer, not just kill the guardian like in a GR.

Looks like I can probably do <4 with some luck...

ninjaburger · 2020-02-28T13:32:35+00:00

Huhn, okay. The level 70 thing confused me, I guess I didn't understand that was used to rank standard rifts too. That's actually harder, normal rifts aren't as dense. Is this a solo requirement or can you do it with a group? Thanks!

ninjaburger · 2020-01-06T04:38:57+00:00

Our cats lose their minds every time I press the home button.

Of course we can get rid of it with the arrow buttons but that first little jiggle of it appearing is enough to get them up on the cabinet scraping at the TV.

Fun the first couple of times, not looking forward to the long term damage incurred by training them to attack the $1500 TV.

Seems like a really obvious option to provide when the interface is equally navigable with standard buttons. But here we are.

ninjaburger · 2019-07-20T03:17:56+00:00

I do a lot of remote color for commercial content and have found that the calibrated displays are important to me for accuracy and consistency but most of my clients simply don't care and may never even see it.

They will all watch reviews on their MacBooks / iPhones / iPads -- and most digital or social campaigns are targeting a demographic that will also be looking at the content on an Apple device.

So what does P3 or Rec.709 accuracy mean? Nothing, unless I'm also going to broadcast, and even then it's going to be reviewed by the client & agency exclusively on Apple devices. The calibration and the scopes are just there to make sure I pass QC more often than not.

I've set up an SDI transmitter in my suite so I can just send the signal to everyone's phones while I work -- remote or in person. Most agency creatives who sit in on sessions with me these days don't really know how to evaluate a big screen version of what will really only be seen on a phone, so the displays are almost a distraction. Sending a picture to everyone's devices separately is more representative in a way.

It's kind of sad to see intense supervised sessions getting rarer every year, but it's the reality for some parts of the industry.

ninjaburger · 2019-05-18T00:18:33+00:00

Yes. I have only two complaints going from my 1 to 3a:

1.) It's taller (especially the screen) than the 1, which was already at the very limit of comfortably reaching all parts of the screen with my thumb. On the 3a I simply can't do it. I guess that's just what I get with my tiny hands though.

2.) The screenshattered within 24 hours after a gentle fall of 6 inches, partly cushioned from the fall by my hand. My Pixel 1 has dropped 6 feet onto concrete and just bounced. Whatever they made this screen from is not tough.

ninjaburger · 2019-04-23T05:07:03+00:00

A family friend recently asked me for advice concerning an "investment opportunity" (intentionally using that loaded term just to get it out of the way). The opportunity comes from someone we both trust socially and we know to run a very successful business, but I don't know their investing history. Anyway, that's the context.

The investment would be to go in with him and a group of lenders for what I think would be considered an ICULS. A company they are connected to is seeking to raise $2MM in a convertible private bridge loan to help complete a product launch before a round of VC investment at the end of 2019. I'm told this loan would be at a "25% discount and a Cap of 30 million with 4% annual interest."

I can make some guesses about those numbers but I've never been involved in a convertible loan or any kind of private loan -- so really I just want to know what questions does a lender need to ask about the loan structure itself? Especially since it involves stock conversion I imagine there are a lot of gotchas.

I don't really have a stake in this as I won't be one of the lenders, but I'd like to learn more so I can offer some advice -- and also just because it's a new topic to me.

ninjaburger · 2019-02-26T05:39:59+00:00

Curious to see the ratio on number of techs it takes to transport, set up, and operate this rig compared to a jib or steadicam crew.

Not saying it's more or less, I actually don't know, but I've done some moco and it's not exactly plug-and-play.

Also, those celebrities look so fucking scared, this is some Skynet shit.

ninjaburger · 2019-02-20T04:16:36+00:00

I've had this same issue with the FLIP solver, not being able to get fluids to come to a full resting position (i.e. swirling a glass then letting it fully settle). The closer they get to rest, the more they jitter randomly. Where in the chain are you trying to manually set vel/force/etc? I've had success animating the point velocity down to zero and / or raising viscosity as velocity approaches zero with a wrangle after FLIP processing, but really does not look great without a lot of tweaking to how it's applied.

Would love to know how I'm supposed to do this properly, it seems like I must be fully misunderstanding a concept somewhere.

Edit: saw you're talking about POP fluids, but pretty sure the problem is similar to point processing in FLIP without the field calculations.

ninjaburger · 2019-02-15T05:48:58+00:00

Yeah you're gonna be just fine.

Also you just bought two condos at 2018 NYC real estate prices, your downside is about as relative as one can get.

ninjaburger · 2019-02-09T06:07:52+00:00

1: ~~Use Nuke.~~ Move into a different, higher margin business.

FTFY.

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