Jot – interesting NPR software

I am getting my feet wet in Blender and the aspect I am most interested in is NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering), as evidenced by this post on Freestyle renderer for example. I don’t claim to have any spectacular results yet, but I am following up on different NPR-related news and slowly experimenting with NPR techniques in Blender to be able to make a mixed 2D/3D animation based on my best friend’s art one day.

So far, I have very high expectations concerning Freestyle – I am following the development blog, watching others’ videos and playing with new builds myself (yes, the results are not special, I know). But there was an interesting forum post on Blender artists that caught my eye some time ago – concerning other NPR program called Jot, the source of which has been made public.

The program itself is hardly usable, onee would need to compile it from scratch and even though I officially am a C++ programer, the process turned out to be requiring too much time for me to continue. But the results that can be obtained with Jot seem quite spectacular indeed, as can be observed in the following video:

You can read more about Jot on quite outdated project webpage. Maxime and TK from Freestyle project have expressed cautious interest in checking Jot’s source code and perhaps integrating some of the solutions within Freestyle – but after they are done with current project goals, which I hope we’ll see this year.

Burly Blender Brawl

I am a big fan of Blender, as you already might have noticed. Today note, while not news at all, will be about Blender and Matrix – what’s not to like for geeks like us?

First, I would like to draw your attention to one, often overlooked, feature of Blender, namely Blender Game Engine (commonly abbreviated to BGE). It is what it sounds like – a solution for authoring game content. It allows managing states, creating logical bricks, enabling real-time physics and much more. While it is perhaps not the easiest game engine to use, it is quite capable and does not cost a penny.

Some time ago I have come across a 3D rendition of environment of Burly Brawl fight scene from the second Matrix movie done in Blender Game Engine. Up until that moment, I was looking at BGE in a bit of contemptuous manner, but being able to fly around that very scene changed my mind and I started paying closer attention. Even though the author, Mike Pan, claims to have done it using only his memory due to not having a copy of the movie at the time, it still looks more faithful to me than rendition of the same scene in the offical Matrix game, Path of Neo. Perhaps it’s the green tint to everything, I don’t know.

The file used to be available from Mike Pan’s website, but is not anymore. However, it can be found the Internet Archive. In order to run it, download the copy of Blender from here, load the file and press P to play. Quite impressive, eh?

If I managed to tickle your interest with the above, you’re welcome to see what Blender Game Engine is capable of in this video and if you are curious about projects using it, read more about Yo Frankie! game. Who knows, you might actually get to create something with it?

Gaming on Acer Aspire One

Being a gadgeteer, I too often buy cool technological gizmos just because I get into my head that it would be cool to have one. In most cases I get back to my senses some time later when I realize I am not using them to their full potential or that they are not half as cool as their marketing promised them to be and as a result sell them when in need of money. Examples of things I used to own but don’t anymore include: iPhone, Wacom Intuos3 A4 tablet, Toshiba M200, Toshiba M4, Powerizer clone and, just recently, a cool Acer Aspire One netbook.

In case of the netbook craze, I reckoned it would cool to be able to type my blog posts and other writing thingies when travelling by train to my hometown (you wouldn’t believe how long it takes Polish railways to travel 200km…) or occasionally check mailbox when in one of many cafes in the city center. Being able to watch a movie, do lightweight programming or play some games were additional plus. At first I wanted Asus EEE, but it was expensive and I told myself that I wouldn’t buy anything more expensive than 1000PLN (Polish currency, which I give here because dollar conversion is changing a bit too rapidly these days). Then I fell in love with MSI Wind, because it was prettier, got many things better and also carried 6-cell battery, promising about five hours of battery life. For a short period of time I considered Samsung N10, which was even cooler – however, it turned out to be freakin’ expensive as well.

Finally I settled for a used Acer Aspire One, with 6-cell battery, 80Gb hard drive, 1Gb of RAM and Windows XP for significantly smaller amount of money than my limit. Unfortunately, it turned out that while it is quite capable machine on its own, it also has several drawbacks.

First of all, the keyboard, while often described as the best among netbooks, is still too small for me. I am a tall guy of about 2m (6.6 feet) and I do have large hands with long fingers – which made typing problematic. Secondly, while the screen was wonderfully crisp and colourful, it also had very high DPI (meaning very small pixels), making extended use for writing/reading a strain on my already strained eyes. Coupled together, these two issues made my primary application of notebook – as a portable typewriter – very limited. I would get tired of using it for anything else than games and movies much faster than the battery would run out. Don’t get me wrong – it was a delightful little device, only it turned out to be unfit for my particular purposes and physical build. I use the past tense, because I sold it very quickly (in order not to lose money, since the moment for sale on the netbook market is good).

However, this being primarily a gaming website, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to check Acer Aspire One’s gaming capabilities – and I have to tell you that it makes an excellent portable gaming device. All the emulators run smoothly (PSX, Amiga and others), but what’s more impressive, a good selection of great older (but not too old, mind you) PC titles are playable as well. I immediately checked four of my favourites that I was itching ever since seeing some of the other “Gaming on Acer Aspire One” videos: ONI, Manhunt, Morrowind and Unreal Tournament Classic. ONI and UT run flawlessly at full speed, high details and in perfectly fluid animation. Manhunt is totally playable in all its gory glory, occasionally losing couple of frames in some more graphic-intensive fragments when there are lighting and fog effects present. Morrowind becomes a bit less fluid outside, but in interiors runs great and lowering drawing distance makes the game an enjoyable experience. Without further ado, here come the four classics in action:

I do apologize for the video quality, but I made this movie in my last hour of Acer ownership, when the buyer was already on his way to my place. It was bright spring morning and AAO’s shiny screen did become quite reflective. As a result, not only can you watch my skinny hand and arm, but also reflection of me and the camera. While what you can see in the movie looks a little weird with the glare, it actually didn’t infer with playing. In other words, things look much worse in the video than in reality. Still, this is the video showing in action some games (ONI, Manhunt) that you couldn’t find played on a netbook anywhere else on Youtube and it might be helpful if you are thinking about buying Acer Aspire One with potential gaming in mind.

Av(i)aritia

Avaritia is the Latin word for greed and, in Sesame Street style, it is a sponsor of today’s note.

There are two very interesting free online applications I started using in their infancy (that is when they were still beta). I really liked the results I got and I planned to write about both of them. Unfortunately, both of them became non-free when their creators realised they could be making money out of it.

The first application was VectorMagic. In short, a great online tool for vectorizing images, yielding excellent results in most cases, especially with complex shapes and multiple colours. Used it, loved it – until it suddenly became non-free.

This is particularly nasty case – free for a long time, published at first at Stanford website, no mentions of any possibility of the application ever going to the market. Then one day, bam, out of the blue it changes website, becomes regular pay-for-use service and starts charging (not just a nickel) its users. Had I seen this coming, I would have scanned some of my art in advance, really. Going from “hey, we’re educational institution and we have this cool free tool for you to use” to “it’s a state-of-the-art professional software, so cough up buddy” was like a slap in the face. Steven Clark wrote a very thorough and detailed justification why he thinks it was a bad decision, so I don’t have anything to add here. I wouldn’t have put it better in word myself. Tsk, tsk. Shame on you, folks.

The second application was Aviary – a promising internet suite of different graphical (and in future perhaps more than that) tools realised in Flex technology. While in the beginnning it was free for beta-users, now it became a commercial service. At least they didn’t promise to be free forever.

Out of these two, I think Aviary has better chances of success, because the folks behind it seem to rely more on community and a wealth of functions than single pay-per-use feature. Restricting access to anything but Phoenix editor and placing watermarks for someone who decides not to pay, however, doesn’t sound like fun, especially since there are many free online alternatives to what really boils down to a little more funky image editor. Maybe the community part will make up for it, I am not sure.

Don’t get me wrong – I am all for authors getting paid for their hard work, but I also am fan of freebies, cheap alternatives and solutions that go beyond “pay or be gone” schema. Additionally, in both cases I felt that the amount of money one would have to pay for functionality at hand is a little too much for a home user – especially when it attacks me out of nowhere (I’m looking at you, VectorMagic).

So there you have it. Two cool applications, but unfortunately not free. Two disappointments for students, users from poorer countries, people that don’t have credit cards, and those still infected with “Linux mentality”. Two approaches – one slightly better than the other, but still not fully satisfying. I thought they were both interesting enough to warrant a mention on Barts News nevertheless, but when it comes to me, I think I’ll stick to trustworthy combination of Gimp, Inkscape and Blender.

Freestyling in Blender

Long time ago when I still was a student, I had time and lacked principles (it’s the other way round now, yay for being adult…). Back then I have been playing with pirated 3D Studio MAX and Illustrate! plugin. This combination allowed for creating sophisticated cartoon renderings, way more advanced than just regular cel shading options available in 3DS:

I assume that if you are reading this blog, you must at least have heard about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – this anime was also done using the combination of 3DS MAX and Illustrate!

At some point in my life I have decided to stop pirating software, movies and music. I still occasionally download a cool song or a movie, but I moved forward to using only legal software and paying for cultural goods I consume. From that point on, software such as 3D Studio MAX has become unavailable to me due to its cost. I am not a professional, I do not intend to make a profit from using it and the price tag is way above my financial level.

But I still have this little dream of creating a short animated movie, mixing 3D and 2D, and this is where Blender steps in. Blender is a 3D creation program that has more than enough options for a home user – I have written about it at least a couple of times and indeed I do have a soft spot for it. Some people (cough, Wojciech Orliński, cough) might laugh at free software, claiming it is inferior to commercial programs, and to some extent they are right (although not always so) – but for millions of students and folks from developing countries all around the world, this is a good and legal alternative.

Unfortunately, Blender has always been quite far behind 3D Studio MAX in the cel shading department. Yes, it was possible, there were some tutorials showing how to use it and whatnot, but it was all limited and difficult to use. The results wouldn’t be anything that could really threaten Illustrate! plugin.

While googling furiously for something with more potential, I have found Freestyle project. At the time it was barely usable. Perhaps someone with more skills and time on their hands than me might have managed to make it work – I didn’t. But the sample renderings from the project gallery were quite cool indeed:

Renaissance sketching style

Technical drawing
(compare with similar Illustrate! image above)

Japanese painting style

I have been patiently waiting for Freestyle to be incorporated in Blender ever since, checking back every now and then, when just recently – tada! – it has finally happened. As you can read in this post, Freestyle is being integrated with Blender. You can download the latest Freestyle-flavoured version from GraphicAll (just look for Freestyle branch). The process of setting the whole thing up is made easier thanks to a proper tutorial (download the PDF here). I haven’t given it a try myself yet, but the results look really promising, making Freestyle more reasonable alternative to Illustrate! for home users:

So go watch more videos in the aforementioned post and keep an eye on the project on the official development blog. I am really excited for Freestyle – I guess I might be doing my animation one day after all…

The Tao of Visualisation

Investigating the topic of visualisation of social networks that I have written about recently, I have come across VisualComplexity.Com, a great source of information on visualisation of various networks. Here’s what they say about it:

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project’s main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.

On their main page there are links to different visualisation projects, complete with short description and accompanying images. I have to say that some of them are really beautiful, true bridge between the worlds of art and science, with the exquisite presentation layer serving as the means of conveying actual information. Observe some samples below (and head to the project list on Visual Complexity for more):

Useful and very pretty (if only all women could be too), some of these projects almost make me regret having left my academic career related to visualisation. Also, as a result of visiting numerous sites related to the aforementioned projects, I have stumbled upon this beautiful videoclip prepared by user flight404 (check his blog for more cool things) :

Is there anyone who dares to claim that art and science can’t go hand in hand?

Graph visualisation of social networks

Visualisation has always been one of my points of interest, perhaps due to the fact that I have always been keen on both art and programming. I wrote on this very blog about my master thesis on visualisation of medical imagery. This concept is also directly related to my other hobby, computer games, as visualising imaginary world is the key to making the game interesting.

It is therefore not surprising at all that when I first saw the following video of interactive graph visualisation system, I was hooked:

SkyRails

That beautiful piece of software is called SkyRails and as its creator says, it “was originally aimed for social network visualisation. Then I realised it can also draw any (reasonably sized) graph interactively.” I have to say that I just love the graphical presentation layer, probably due to my nerdy upbringing – all that sci-fi movies in which some really cool interfaces floating in the air obviously had the effect on the way I perceive software aesthetics now.

(Let us open a parenthesis at this point – have you ever wondered who is designing all those futuristic interfaces we get to see in the movies? His name is Mark Coleran and the movie reel of his works can be either downloaded from his webpage or seen here on Youtube. Spectacular!)

Back on topic, Skyrails can visualise pretty much every social network, if only you’re patient enough to convert it to program’s own description (simple, but task could be somewhat tedious if you know many people and are trying to do this by hand). Therefore I tested it with pre-made file containing Naruto’s graph of relations:

Definitely impressive, I have to say. Also, don’t forget it can serve more serious purposes than checking what are the links between Naruto heroes – for example check this post on visualising protein interaction. Program’s author claims that Skyrails can also act as a server visualising live feed data, but I have not found any specific information as to how to do that. Nevertheless, this piece of software is great for any graph visualisation.

Being lazy, I didn’t type all my Facebook contacts into Skyrails, but began with googling to check if there isn’t someone who has done this already. While I have been unable to find any recipe on how to automagically have Skyrails chew on my Facebook data, I have found another very interesting program fit for that purpose.

Nexus is the online application for Facebook social network visualisation and it does the job very well (you can also access it through Facebook apps link). Not only does it take into account how you entourage is connected, but also commonalities between them, meaning for example groups or causes that user’s friends might share. The resulting graph can be presented in two forms (no flashy 3D display this time, sorry), radical graph and spring graph, as well as two themes. Compare how the information is visualised in the screenshots below:

Radical graph

Spring graph

The latter form is more convenient for clear distinction between different social circles user is involved with. On the spring graph above one could distinguish game industry professionals (highlighted with names) that I happen to know, my family members and their friends, two partially overlapping groups of fellow students from two specializations I have studied, very numerous and tightly connected group of AIESEC students, as well as two other groups connected by a person of Adam Lyons, small group of people I have been living with in France and some free electrons, meaning folks not connected to any other of my friends.

Spring graph allows user to observe how the groups overlap as well as the affinity between group members, as well as other little curiosities. For example, in the graph above one can find my buddy, nicknamed Ace of Spades, who is connected to three circles I happen to be involved with – a definite proof of his social skills. Nexus is both very informative and very interesting, plus it makes for really cool patterns (how about putting it on t-shirt?).

Investigating this topic I have also come across Walrus, an open source 3D graph visualisation tool, but since it is definitely less user friendly, I just mention it here as a curiosity. Perhaps someone with either Open Source fetish or more complex problem to solve will find it more approachable than I did. Nevertheless, it’s free and can be used for visualising social networks as well, hence it warrants the mention. Also, Walrus’ rendition of CVS tree has some fractal beauty to it:

If you happen to know any other interesting software that could be used for visualising social networks, let me know through comments!

Liquid scaling in Gimp

This is not exactly fresh news per se, but an interesting information nonetheless. What triggered my long overdue post was the information about certain feature coming to Photoshop CS4, the feature in question being content-aware scaling or, more precisely, seam carving.

First of all, have a look at the movie below explaining what this term even means:

Okay, with that out of the way let us continue.

Now, the normal course of action in the software world is that commercial programs (especially famous juggernauts, such as aforementioned Photoshop) introduce new cool features that free software clumsily tries to catch up with. When it finally does, the commercial software puts the pedal to the metal, accelarates and introduces new, more advanced features. Free software then tries to follow, rinse and repeat. That’s what happens, right?

Wrong. This is not always the case.

Check this post on Seam Carving being introduced in Photoshop CS4 (you can find more details in this article), then have a look at this article on PolishLinux.org – don’t worry, the article is in English. It is quite cool that free Gimp has the same feature available, even though it is not built-in, but requires a plugin. Also, it’s free (contrary to Photoshop), but what makes it really uber-cool is that Gimp has had this feature for almost a year now – just compare the dates. A-ha!

Liquid Rescale plugin in action (taken from Focused on Light weblog)

I am not a drooling Free Software or Open Source fanboy, I do realise that it has its fair share disadvantages (and one huge advantage – meaning he price or rather the lack of thereof) and limitations, but as someone coming from a country where for a long time commercial software would cost half of ones salary, I do have a soft spot for free software in general.

I also know that the comparison of two implementations of seam carving algorithm would be necessary to really judge how well they can compete against each other, but I can’t help but feel a little spark of mischevous joy seeing Open Source software sometimes leading one step before the commercial software, hence this post.

You can download Liquid Rescale plugin here and see some interesting examples here and in Flickr gallery. Good job, guys!

Dot Matrix Revolution

In order to make waiting for some juicier post more bearable, here’s a little video showing computer development in form of animated pixel art (although not displayed via windows this time):

DOT MATRIX REVOLUTION* from superbrothers on Vimeo

I am totally under its retro charm, but would like to know: does it work only on corporate software developers? Or maybe some normal people would also find it cute? Let me know through comments.

Excellent Blender tutorials

Just a brief note to suggest some excellent Blender video tutorials I have recently stumbled upon on YouTube. The videos are very concise, precise and easy to follow (not to mention that the narrator’s voice is appropriately deep, because honestly, squeaking of super3boy in his tutorials is getting on my nerves). They were made by Josh Beck, a technology teacher at iMAK (interactive Media Applications at Krueger) in San Antonio, Texas, for his students.

The tutorials are aimed at the beginners and more proficient Blender users might find them too basic, but they are excellent for getting one’s feet wet with Blender without getting scared of its numerous functions, buttons and menus. Taking the stigma of being hard to learn off Blender is a hard task indeed, but I think if we get more videos like these, we might yet see Blender becoming even more popular.

I have seen a lot of tutorials on Blender, but in my not-so-humble opinion, these are the best entry-level video tutorials available on the web. Click here to see the full list of videos. Thanks a lot, Josh!