I have compiled a program! Actually, if truth be told, the Mac did it all. I just lined things up and pushed the button. But in case anyone feels like doing likewise (Lynda, I know you have a Mac in your lab) ... I had been wanting to have a play with Sodipodi, which is an open-source vector graphics program, currently in early development (0.3.4). Over the weekend I installed OS 10.3, and, feeling my oats, decided to take a crack, taking a lead from ResExcellence.

The whole process involved:

• installing X11 and X11 SKD (see Scott Chitwood's entry on the page above) from the fourth Panther CD (not the third, at least for my version)
  
• installing the basic package of the 10.3 developer tools, Fink and FinkCommander (GUI interface). A useful set of definitions and explanations of the latter two from a Mac perspective is given over at Sao's Place. Fink and FinkCommander both came from Sourceforge
  
• modifying preferences in FinkCommander - I had to check both "use unstable packages" and "use unstable cryptography packages" and rerun the self-update before I could see the Sodipodi in the package list (Question 2 on the FinkCommander FAQ)
  
• hitting "Install", typing my password when told, and answering questions using the default
  
• waiting a long, long time, while 43 supporting packages with cryptic names were downloaded, compiled, and installed - and praying that nothing already installed got broken (GIMP!)
  
• firing up X11 and adding /sw/bin/init.sh; sodipodi to the X11 applications menu
  
• waiting while the computer purred and chuntered, and lo and behold, a palette popped up
  
• opening a new document, drawing a square, colouring it in, taking a line for a walk, failing to work out how to draw a circle, saving the file
  
• feeling very clever
  

I mentioned GIMP. There was a slightly worrisome caution in the Fink introductory matter that one should not install Fink if one had MacGIMP. Now, the first time I installed GIMP it was MacGIMP, but I was never happy with the number of error messages I got at launch, or with XDarwin's interface (I'm such a Mac princess!). So I eventually hunted down the original Apple X11.app beta that ran on OS 10.2 - sorry, I didn't take a note of where I found it. I know I eventually found it by a Google search on the exact package name, as Apple's site only has the official, incompatible-with-10.2 release. I then installedGimp.app version 1.2.3, which was the latest compatible with 10.2. Once I had 10.3 running, I downloaded Gimp.app 2.0.0.5 (GIMP 2), installed it - straight package install, no muss, no fuss - and it, too, launches and runs fine (without a great screed of error messages). And my messing around with Fink does not seem to have broken it. Next on my to-do list is to figure out how to enable a right-click analogue, since it's reminiscent of my piano-playing efforts at age 8 when I decided to leave out the black keys because I couldn't figure them out - I'm missing something. And at some point I have to go and uninstall the various bits of software that I have installed and reinstalled or updated or abandoned ...

The other OS graphics program I have recently discovered and installed is Blender, which is an open-source 3D building and rendering program which originated in a commercial studio. Unlike the other programs I am playing around with, the local library actually has a book on Blender, which I look forward to getting my hot little hands on. Stay tuned ...

BTW, all these programs have been compiled for Windows.
posted by Anonymous at 17:53   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Another go, this time using a Poser 5 figure, so the poor woman has no decent clothes. But the hair is better, and after about an hour intermittent fiddling, I worked out what I'd done to make her eyes go completely white.



posted by Anonymous at 01:13   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
OK, so maybe it's only pure and uplifting thoughts that hold that sword up (and it's a broadsword in profile, really), and there's too much black around for Ditatt's taste, and he hasn't any shoes. But it's a start. I'm learning more about face textures, and hair. Ditatt's has been described as "unruly".


posted by Anonymous at 18:48   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Luthan, first draft. Played around with the shape of her face, eye colour, etc. Hate her hair - it so needs a hairy bump map. Add to learning objectives. She has no Poser 5 fancy features, so I have to test whether I can import her. In the meantime, I pasted her into the rendering of Silver Hearth I did earlier ... unfortunately, at that scale, she looks about to launch into an aria.


posted by Anonymous at 12:57   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Still working off presets, with mapped features (at least, I think they're mapped; the program, like a cat, may have detected my ineptitude and be blithely ignoring me). Mapped or not, I'm tolerably pleased with this one. Right from the start I've had in mind a picture of Erien in the Palace Shell, leaning against the railing with all his worldly goods in a kit bag on his back, rubbernecking. Here's the first draft of Erien, albeit minus kit-bag and scenery.



Actually, it's not all presets. The hair and pose were not.

The set is proving a bit of a challenge. I started building it entire, eventually working out how to map pictures on the inside of a cylinder without them smearing: you have to select map by facets. Here's what I have so far, demonstrating a least part of the problem - where to put the camera angle. This is a panoramic rendering:



What I will probably do is build a set rather than a whole object and only construct the part to be shown in the picture. That will let me give attention to detail. I'm hoist by my own petard, since according to the description from TP, there should be actual scenes in the panels. Going to be rummaging around in search of royalty-free scenes that will convert well to metallic panels. I could cheat and just use fractals ...
posted by Anonymous at 23:32   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Slipping and sliding on the greased learning curve of Poser 5. Discoveries so far - Clothing created in Poser 4 does not clothe Poser 5 figures; this is a known characteristic. There is a very nice evening gown among the Poser 4 presets that I would like to use for Luthan, but fitted to the Poser 5 figure I would like to use - because I can't map faces to Poser 4 figures - it looks like the character has spent 6 months on a desert island in her ballgown. If I try and add Poser 5 hair to a Poser 4 figure, it snuggles into the small of the back. Careful adjustment mounts it up to the head, but it'd be so useful if it could just go straight there.

The manual (ah yes, the manual) ... was it because I am reading it off-screen in PDF, I wondered. Then I found an amusing review by Gary Bradshaw on the Amazon site for a book called "Secrets of Figure Creation in Poser 5" that goes thus: Imagine you unwrapped your brand new Home Nuclear Power Plant and the user manual contained information like "The backcheck feedwater solenoid control can be used to trigger the backcheck feedwater solenoid." You might wonder what the backcheck feedwater solenoid did, and when it should be triggered, but such information was omitted from the manual. You probably even guessed (correctly) that the backcheck feedwater solenoid control had something to do with the backcheck feedwater solenoid, so the information that was provided was of almost no value ... and so he goes on to explain why Poser users are looking for a book that will really explain this program to them. Peachpit Press has had one coming out in perpetuo in the visual quickstart series. According to their website, the release date is 2020. I wonder if that is directed to the address of a deadline-defaulting author, or is simply what their database coughs up when books have been announced but not yet scheduled ...

So I've been messing around with the presets. This was meant to be Alivda (Ameron and Ayrium's second daughter, and a quite different proposition from her sister Amy; she shows up to make trouble for Erien in Avim Oath because, quite simply, she was expecting to get his job), in flight leathers, and I hope sooner or later she will be lounging in the archway of the crumbling heap on Barmi II (or what she would refer to the crumbling heap). Right now, Vue will not load her as a Poser object without crashing. It will load her in .3ds format, but she arrives 20 lbs overweight and bald, her fancy Poser 5 hair not having translated. Final resort is photoshop, once I figure out how to make the lighting consistent between the two programs. She looks OK from a distance, but the closeup (this is from presets) shows her older than I am imagining. Though that expression is right. It's the one that her cousins would describe as "Uh oh, somebody's going to get con-quered".


posted by Anonymous at 20:18   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Delighted to hear from Kathy Plett (KP) that our ORU anthology for 2005 made her list of contests. See http://www.cnc.bc.ca/library/contests.html. She even used a picture. :-)
posted by Lynda at 10:18   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
First shot at depicting a grand manor in the Blue Demish style, with purple hills behind.


posted by Anonymous at 22:28   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Finished a social history book I was reading called A House in Gross Disorder by historian Cynthia Herrup, and have uploaded my commentary on it in connection with the Okal Rel Univerese, called Castlehaven: The Politics of Scandal. Gets at some of the politics and motives behind the controversies surround both Amel and the Monatese scandal over Darren which have "presence" in at least three of the Edge novels and elsewhere.
posted by Lynda at 14:06   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Learning how to use a mapped picture to do transparencies - potential balconies for bits of West Alcove, and a cheap (as in low-polygon) tree. The tree is a flattened sphere, with a procedural mapping - fractal and various colours, over a transparency map generated in photoshop - gradient, noise, zig-zag filter, and crystallize, then greyscale, contrast enhance and bitmap to create a fragmented gradient. The flat panels are black-white stencils, colour mapped, with procedural colours applied. This is how I need to do the screen in the flashing floor scene, rather than using all those terrains! Now if I can just find the manual again to reread the bits on how to modify the settings to deal with the crashes ...



Wikipedia has a page on Open Source software which lists a number of open source graphics programs.
posted by Anonymous at 22:26   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 
Terrains from Vue, colour-mapped with surfaces generated in Terragen.


posted by Anonymous at 11:01   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments

 


More playing around with West Alcove. This is a superposition of 2 terrains, one for the wall and steps, and one for the greenery. I am slowly getting where I want to be with the wall and steps - though I don't know why there's that uneven bottom step, unless it's a camera artefact, and the edges aren't crisp enough - may need to up resolution on the terrain. But the garden just looks like a rumpled quilt. Have to work on (a) getting the surface to look leafy and (b) making a surface map to get a variety of plants. May be Terragen to the rescue, with its fractal surface maps.
posted by Anonymous at 23:24   permalink comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments