Today, for the first time, I found for 3 times my book inside some AdWords around the web.
It is a really nice fact, expecially after receiving the statsistics about the quantity that Hoepli, the publisher, sold in the last year. Well, sincerely I espected a little more as quantity, but speacking with friends I realized that my quantity is really good…expecially because they still have to pay me! 🙂
The other nice thing is that I don’t have to pay for theese advertising: someone created the interactive swf, opened the AdWords account, decided the CPC and other stuff there inside and off course pays for them. I’d like to know who is doing this work for me, I know he/she is paid for that but I’d like to say “thanks, your work is really apreciated!”
And thanks to all the people that bought my book, I sincerely hope it helped you! (and please don’t be angry with me if the latest pages are detaching, I don’t know who printed it, and my copy is detached too 🙁 ).
Yesterday I went to police station to officially declare that someone stole some of our graphics during Cartoomics – Ludica event. They say that will have the security camera recordings and that will try to find who could took out such graphics without being seen. It was quite funny how they work inside the police station: The first thing I noticed is how much time they spend to do things, i mean, every task looks like it is really difficult, like moving a mountain. Some of them have great difficulties to write in italian language. My declaration, for example, has lot of mistakes like verbs, plural words and so on. In 20 lines there are 15 errors: more than 1 every 2 lines!! it’s amazing! The second thing I noticed is how depressing, broken and ugly their offices are. They use really old computers with small and unlit monitors. There is a bad smell inside the rooms, the tables are broken with really old chairs. Sometime you risk to hit a cable on the floor and window are funny broken. I think office’s interior reflect what’s in workers mind and the quality of service. The other “funny” thing is how many tentatives they did to bounce citizens. To enter in the police station you have to pass a strong “examination” and you must answer correctly (+ you must have a bit of luck). I remember when last year someone stole my motorbike, I went to the police station and they ordered me to come back there the next day because they were bored about working. I had to explain that I wanted to declare someone took my motorbike and they replyed that was not important, similar things happens continuously and I would have not to care about it. WTF, is this the pubblic service we pay taxes for?! I finally went able to enter saying that who took my motorbike could rob somewhere and I would be considered guilty. I really hope things will change in future, and our system will start to work as it should do. We spend lot of money in taxes, in future maybe we can have a proper service.
Today Youtube launched a new way to watch movies: TEXTp or “text-only mode”.
Practically speaking the new encoding system substitutes group of pixels with coloured letters. Almost everyone of us has seen pictures or paintings created using ASCII code. The idea behind TEXTp is similar: ASCII art in movement. What to say, it’s a genial system to rapresent images in a new way, expecially in a world in which we are using fullHD resolutions with refresh rate that touch the 600 Hz for everything!
This technology gives to Youtube the possibility to save 1 $ per second
in system maintenance!
For more information read this official post and give a look at the logo on Youtube’s page.
At Cartoomics we spoke about “Br4in D0wngr4de”, the new audio production of PlaySys that will be publish soon and that follows my old production called “wronGrown“. here follows a quick preview, hope you’ll like it.
Durante Cartoomics abbiamo distribuito l’album “wronGrown“, vecchia produzione mia e dello studio. La qualità audio è ascoltabile, sebbene le metriche di composizione e i suoni non siano particolarmente commerciali ed accattivanti. Come promesso, embeddo qui di seguito un’anteprima del nuovo album di prossima pubblicazione.
With some guys we spoke about death Metal and non-electronic productions, here are some albums I played as drummer.
Con alcune persone abbiamo inoltre parlato di produzioni non elettroniche e qui di seguito si trovano alcuni album di gruppi in cui ho suonato come baterista.
Finalmente, dopo tre giorni di duro e rumoroso lavoro, si è conclusa la 17a edizione di Cartoomics e Ludica, i saloni italiani del gioco, videogioco e fumetto. Ovviamente PlaySys non poteva rimanere in disparte e già da Novembre 2009 ci siamo aggiudicati lo stand C20, in cui abbiamo esposto alcuni aggiornamenti dei nostri lavori. Il primo giorno ci siamo sentiti un po’ fuori dal coro, circondati da rivenditori di fumetti, manga , illustrazioni, stampe e altro materiale a tema, poi sabato e domenica siamo stati bombarati di domande tecniche e varie richieste pertinenti al nostro ambito di ricerca e sviluppo.
Beatrice e Luca
Ancora una volta ci è stato propoto di spostare la sede di PlaySys da Milano a Toronto e la cosa sta iniziando a diventare più seria di quanto previsto: “il mercato italiano è morto” è stato affermato da più di una persona, ed in effetti il panorama economico, burocratico e politico che stiamo vivendo nel notro Bel Paese non è dei migliori.
Siamo entrati in contatto con realtà commerciali e produttive interessate ad avvicinarsi alle nostre tecnologie o ai nostri risultati nella ricerca, e questo era il nostro target principale.
Abbiamo conosciuto professionisti che sono entrati in contatto con la nostra realtà…e sicuramente la cosa potrà portare interessanti vantaggi reciproci.
Mona e Luca
Per quanto riguarda i giovani talenti, molte persone si sono avvicinate, attratte dalle nostre realizzazioni 3D, ed hanno scoperto di cosa ci occupiamo. Molti sono rimasti sorpresi nel trovare una delle pochissime software house italiane che si occupa di ricerca in ambito videoludico. Ovviamente non abbiamo parlato solo di videogiochi e 3D, ma abbiamo mostrato i nostri prodotti editoriali, le nostre partecipazioni e collaborazioni in ambito musicale e altro ancora. Sempre a riguardo di giovani talenti, posso annunciare il ritorno a gonfie vele di D3vStudio, che si occuperà proprio di talent recruitment in ambito videoludico.
L’argomento che in assoluto ha avuto più successo, oltre allo sviluppo di videogames, è stata la notizia di Play-Institute, ossia l’istituto di formazione che avvieremo entro la fine del 2010. Si tratterà di un istituto di computer grafica, pre-produzione, programmazione e sound design, interamente orientato al mercato dei videogames. La differenza con gli altri istituti è sostanzialmente questa: noi offriremo conoscenze e insegneremo agli studenti come inserirsi praticamente nel mercato del lavoro. Play-Institute sarà una scuola per offrire istruzione, non per generare un guadagno ai suoi proprietari.
Martinelli e Crimì
Insomma, l’impressione sull’evento è stata più che positiva, dall’organizzazione alla partecipazione dei visitatori. Al nostro stad hanno partecipato alcuni professionisti, miei studenti presso Naba Milano e amici, generando così un dibattito continuo sulle nuove tecnologie e sul loro impiego in tutti i campi di cartoomics e Ludica.
Grazie a tutti quelli che hanno partecipato all’evento e che sono venuti a trovarci!!!
Molly *grafica rubata durante il disallestimento 🙁
Finnally!
These are the shots we did at the photographic studio, with the help of Sara and Pamela. I just told about the shooting session in another post, so here follow the pictures.
These images represent some publishing works we did at PlaySys*: Sprea’s Seven Magazine, Spera’s 3D World and my book for Hoepli, 3ds Max Design e Architettura.
*please don’t give importance to PlaySys webpage, it’s a mess and we are
working on it.
Ci siamo!
Dopo due settimane d’attesa ecco le foto scattate durante la sessione di shooting presso lo studio fotografico, con l’aiuto di Sara e Pamela. Ho già parlato di questa sessione in un post precedente.
Today I got crazy with server stuff at office. Everything looks mad, from the Internet Service Provider to 3ds Max on one computer. The main problem was the hardware firewall, SmoothWall, that wasn’t able to recognize and receive the DHCP from Fastweb. For thoose that doesn’t know, SmoothWall is a release of Linux that permits to create a strong and protected network with some simple steps (of course plus other features that I don’t need). So, if you have a service provider that recognizes and limits the number of MAC address connected, just use this on a old crappy computer, the result is guarantee 😉
From HERE you can freely download a release.
Of course you can use a full Linux release, such as Ubuntu Server Edition to do this thing, but SmoothWall is light, simple and works on lot of old computers. There is Windows Server 2008, everyone looks happy about it, but the price of a license is high; Linux is free.
Later, I got other troubles with CentOS server. It wasn’t able to receive the ip from the SmoothWall OS…strangely this problem solved by himself after 5 hours.
Last but not least, the 3ds Max of Mona, running on a shitty Vista SP2 started crashing after 20 minutes.
After some months spent writing articles and using Windows Seven I have to say that Microsoft did great improvements! Vista is the worst OS I ever used so, if you are in trouble with it, give a look at Seven.
This because 3ds Max won’t run on a Mac OSX 🙁
Let me introduce a plugin I wrote for 3ds Max during our last big-as-size render. It is called P.S.R. (PlaySys Split Render) and is a great tool to render images with amazing size. The idea behing is really simple and partially used by some renderers like Mental Ray, final Render or V-ray: it splits the entire render in sub-pieces and then processes them as single images (subdivided again by the buckets of the renderer in use).
We had to render some images with a size of 7500×5000 for a total of 37.500.000 pixels (37,5 Megapixels) and this saves the entire production…next script I must write has to convert pixels in €! 🙂
HOW IT WORKS
The script’s user interface will detect automatically the renderer and the size you have to process. The first parameter to setup is the fraction of the image, in the picture it is 3, so it means 3X and 3Y so 9 sub-images.
Automatically, based on the render size and the fractions, the script will calculate the size of the sub-image:213×160.
By default I use a tolerance of 25 percent of the image. This tolerance is a little overlap of the sub-images, and is really important to obtain a seamless connection beetween sub-images.
Always depending on the fraction number, you’ll have a number of buttons called Matrix#, theese buttons can show you a preview of the rendered sub-image and, checking the Auto flag, when you press a Matrix# button, it fires up the renderer.
Like lot of my scripts, this can look a little unuseful, but if you have to manage an entire workflow with human-electronic resources, this can save time and money…expecially because avoid crash of big scenes.
…oh, and it integrates with Maxwell~Render 😉
I have yet a list of improvements to do:
First in the image area you see in the middle you will have the entire image, so I will render in a VFB and keep the full quality image in that area. You will have the possibility to reopen it, execute a new sub-image or save the image in a layered PSD Photoshop file;
I want to add a “Batch” command that executes all the renders in sequence;
I have to design a new User Interface that let the team use an N fraction, not only 1, 2^2 or 3^2 sub-images (yeah, I have to remove the 1^2 size ;))
I have to insert instructions and maybe I will append a rollout with a lite version of DMRB, my previous semi-realtime renderer;
We will use this tool internally at PlaySys, but I have not to exclude the idea to share it in future. Before of that, I will speak about it and other pipeline and workflow improvement strategies in my next book.
Yesterday we shooted some high quality photos to the publishing works I did in the past. It was a really nice experience, and I have to say that Sara is a great photographer and Pamela helped us a lot with scene composition, light setup and her hands.
At PlaySys we’ll do some post production and I’ll upload them when ready. I put here a little piece of an image as preview (I aplogize for the watermark but I discovered some “smart” people in this last period!).
Plus two images captured with an old Nokia 6111 phone, showing Sara and Pamela in action.
Last week we started a really cool project for the Apple iPhone/iPod; the name is not official so I will call it “iSomething“.
With iSomething you can simply overlay 3D meshes on real photo, creating a sort of augmented reality. iSomething does not work with movies and requires a quick interaction with the user after the shot.
At the moment I have no official images or videos of iSomething, so this post have to wait a little to be completed, but this confirm how we work at office and how my tech-ideas are transferred to reality…it’s a great satisfaction to see ’em working!
