Found this rather nifty site so, I thought you might be interested to know what’s currently spending most time in my Winamp playlist. It’s weighted towards the heavier end of my collection (more so than I’d normally listen to all the time), but fast, hectic music helps me to be efficient when I work!
The controller looks awesome, the direction they’re taking gaming in looks innovative and interesting and what have they called it? “Wii” (pronounced ‘wee’). Good lord. I know that Nintendo are renowned for not caring about Europe, but have they really thought about this? The connotations? Hell, it sounds weird in France too! Revolution was a good name, even ‘Go’ wasn’t that bad, but Wii? Wii? I think Nintendo have finally lost it! Perhaps the amazing success of the DS and it’s Lite counterpart has fried their synapses? Eurogamer have the full explanation, taken from the official Nintendo site.
I’ve been having a pretty crap day, and in one respect, this has made it that tiny bit worse… on the other hand, the comments section for the EG article has had me crying tears of laughter. If you need cheering up, I suggest you read it!
It’s 3 weeks too late for April Fools and the meaning doesn’t seem to have been lost in translation (Donkey Kong anyone?)… so what on Earth is going on? Given that the Gamecube never lost it’s “kiddy image” (even if it didn’t have one), when will wii (sorry) see an end to the wee jokes?
I really like the logo style and the introduction animation is great… but… /inserts joke about Nintendo pissing their marketing budget up the wall… Ah well, at least it’s not as bad as the Gizmondo… right? Right?
I’ve done a little rearranging so that the blog is a little easier to read and isn’t as broken up as it used to be - when a post is published, the categories it’s been posted in and the comments left now appear under the post title and time/date of posting, as opposed to after the post excerpt itself. I’ve also shifted the edit button (which most of you casual readers probably won’t see) up next to the name of the author. I like this new setup already!
I’m now sick of not being listed ’til about page 16 or something of google.com and so I’ve finally decided to do something about it. I found out today that there are no automatic meta tags in Wordpress (thinking about, that’s completely logical) but there’s no ideal place to put them either. So, following instructions from the Wordpress Codex, I set about editing my tagline field to a bunch of words designed to describe the contents of my site, before placing it into the header information for the main page index. The existing tagline (”I am Daniel’s complete lack of witty tagline.”) has now been hard-coded into the page.
Since I have such a small, piddly online presence, you may also (Daniel Lim) notice that I’ll be (Daniel Lim) dropping my name (Daniel Lim) around the site a little more (Daniel Lim) regularly. Ok, I’m not really! It really doesn’t help that there’s another person called Daniel Lim (ok, that was a necessary one, alright?), in the States, who’s an artist. But anyway I’ve unlocked the hidden ‘Author information’ tag and written a little about myself - you can view that just over there in sidebar. It’s a bit boring though - if you can think of something better, answers on a postcard. The same goes for my About Me page, which lists my education and date of birth (so I expect some cards) and… not all that much else.
Moving swiftly on, I’ve got an update on the NCCAForum! I’ve spoken with the guy who’s hosting it now and I’ve spoken with my lovely hosts, lchost.co.uk, and it’s looking like we’ll finally be getting something sorted this week - oh how I miss the forum! I should be receiving a copy of the database dump from the current hosts and then pressing forwards, deciding on who to continue the hosting with. The only problem at the moment is the domain registration. It’s held by some German company and will probably be charged if we try and transfer it. So there may have to be a minor domain name change. More on that when I’ve got the info. Needless to say I’ll be back to pimp it, whatever new form it takes, as soon as it’s up and running again, stay tuned!
p.s. Since changing the login procedures, the amount of comment spam I’ve been getting is almost non-existent!
Right-click & “Save As…” to download dl_mp_animUpdate_002.mov (1.35mb)
The hallway sequence! My first ever (proper) walk cycle! Pretty pleased with how it’s turned out. There’s a few things I intend to change (after I’ve done the rest of the mammoth amounts of animation required), but on the whole it’ll do for now. Spent a long time trying to not make it as bouncy and think it’s just about there, but there’s still something bothering me about it - can’t work out what it is… perhaps the arms still move too much? If you know, please tell me!
Ok, here we go, quick and dirty post:
Right-click & “Save As…” to download dl_mp_animUpdate_001.mov (1.76mb)
I actually animated this after Animation Update #2, but since this was rendered first, it existed first. I actually managed to animate the entire sequence yesterday (not including the blocking - that’s been there for a few weeks of course)! That’s 500 frames of animation goodness (efficiency, not necessarily good animation! ;)). Makes a wonderful change to the past few days where I’ve had so much stress it was impossible to do any work. This has now been helped further by my tutorial with Phill where he basically told me not to worry, so I feel much better now! 
For the record, this shouldn’t be classed as “Finished Animation” just yet. It’s at a stage where I’m happy with it and should start doing something else. I fully intend to go through again later and make any small fixes prior to final rendering - so if spot anything, let me know!
It seems the server is now back up and all is almost well! Here’s what IT had to say:
The NCCA BA third year’s file server became read-only on sunday night. This is a fail-safe state that is activated when the OS suffers repeat write failures to the hard drive, this prevents corrupt or unreliable data being written. Bad block tests and a file system check have been run on the terra-byte plus array and we have now remounted the volume with write access. It is important to consider this volume at risk for the next few days while we watch it to determine if there is a fault with the hardware. During this time it is advisable that the students keep track of the backups of their most recent and most important work as this server is not backed up. For information: we can account for one corrupt file so far, which may be unrelated and only detected by the full filesystem check.
So there you have it. It’s working, but it could break at any time… the message being that you should make back-ups and do a lot of saving! Still no word yet on the extension rumour.
It would appear that one of the server disks at university has died in the face. As I write this post, I’m using a shitty version of Firefox on the local accounts that seems to crash every time I press the right arrow button on the keyboard. It’s annoying. It means I must write perfectly. Or save often.
I’m killing a bit of time between collecting my Memento DVD from my music designer and my tutorial with Phill at 2pm. I really must go home soon and pick up the renders I’m doing so that he can see them. What’s that you say? You’ve not seen any renders from me? Have no fear, they will be up post haste (as soon as they’re done in fact). As I will explain later, I had a couple of good days then a deluge of really shitty days where I got very little done and then I had a great day yesterday where I polished off 500 frames of (as far as I’m concerned at the moment) finished animation. Yay!
So anyway, the main point was that it’s likely we’ll have an extension at least until 15th Monday but that has yet to been confirmed by Ari. I’m pretty sure that’s great news! I think. It’s not like I’ll be revising 3 days after major project hand-in, is it? 
More updates soon, including how depressing it is that my site is overrun with crawlers and bots.
It occurred to me yesterday, after a response from someone on the Portsmouth University animation forums, that no one outside my house has actually seen my finished character model. So here it is; I ran off some ambient occlusion renders last night (ambient occlusion makes everything alright ;)). It’s basically finalised - I’ve done some skinning and got some blendshapes already, so the only thing that is likely to be added is a bit more hair and I’ll probably just have that as separate geometry, skinned exclusively to the head joint. Oh and the gun holster isn’t finished yet!
Right-click & “Save As…” to download dl_mp_charTurnaround.mov (2.49mb)
And speaking of forums, you will probably be aware that the NCCA forum is having a few troubles at the moment. The domain registration has run out and we’re having some troubles sorting out a new one. Keep checking back and I’ll try and provide details as and when they come in!
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