Mike's space: Computers and Internet

Using Live Writer Now.

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:24:19 GMT

I am going to try out Live Writer and see if it allows me to do a better job of adding to my tip of the day post. I can see already that it has a spell checker, which will help me out tremendously.

Works great!!

Above is part of my sweep modifier tutorial. I will be adding to this soon..

So stay tuned!

Tip of the day 2

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:58:52 GMT

Here's another Max 9 tip:

In editible poly mode the ";" key will repeat your last action. The problem with this is that it takes selection into account. The thing I like about Maya's repeat key, which is "g" is that it only takes into account the last true action. So I could select a loop and then hit the delete edges button. That would remove the edges and verts. When I go to get more edges, I could select the loop and hit g and it would delete the edges and verts again.

I am going to search around and see if I can come up with a solution to only taking my last true action instead of the selecting of whatever element I am working on. I will hopefully have an answer later today.

In other news, I got Halo3 last night and played through some of it. I am playing the same mission I played a few times while I was over there working on some objects and skyboxes. I was loaned out to them for awhile after we finished Shadowrun. I wish I hadn't played through the first three missions so many times, it was very anti-climatic because of the familiarity I had. If I had been coming into the game with fresh eyes I would have been blown away. They did do a lot of polish and the lighting engine is stunning. I HIGHLY recommend everyone picking it up, just for the visuals alone. (I am not just saying that cause I am an MS employee either)

Well, it's just about meeting time. I hope the tips are going to help someone out there. I will be putting some full blown tutorials of some sort up here sooner or later.

Link of the Day:

http://www.conceptart.org/

Art is subjective, there may be items in the forum that are not to your taste.

For that reason, I am going to say Adults only!

-Porter

Tip of the day (hopefully)

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 16:59:55 GMT

I have decided that I am going to use this space in a variety of ways. First and foremost I am going to use this as a weight loss journal. I figure if I write it down, then I have committed to it. I am sure not many people will find this intersting, but it's a personal thing that I want to track.

I will also use this as a tip of day kind of space. This will allow me to share tips that I have learned through the years. This could be for Max, Maya, Photoshop, Level editing tools.. whatever. After almost 13years in the games industry it's time I did something to help others out as much as I have been helped.

Another thing I want to add is cool links that I find on the internet. I have an eclectic taste for information and I will share some of that with you. There are times when some of this is on a site who's content might be a little off color, I will make sure that I denote those sites BOLDLY

that way no one gets in trouble by looking at the link.

Lastly, I will do my best to document the work that I am doing on Train Sim 2. This will be very a very sparse offering for several reasons.

1. Many of the people on the team have blogs about the work that is far more interesting that what I could write about.

2. Since it's going to be awhile before we ship, there isn't much I can really talk about.

The <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/trainsimulator/">website</a> is the best place to get the latest info.

3. I think the other topics I will talk about will be more interesting than me saying, "Working on this train" or "This contractor did a great job".

So in light of this new format, here comes the information in order.

I am starting on my weight loss plan next week. I have to go get a weigh in, make sure I am healthy and have no issues to start getting the lard off. I want to get back down to fighting weight. That is going to be about 80lbs total. Wish me luck.

Tip of the day: 3D Studio Max ver 9.

When working in editible poly mode when you select edges and want to delete both the edge and vertices at the same time, hit crtl and backspace. This should actually take care of this, unless there are dependant edges or vertices. If verts are left behind, there is a dependancy on them and they must be corrected by either welding or individual deleting.

Link(s) of the day:

Crude language warning. http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/24/asskicking-watercool.html

Great idea!! http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/23/one-laptop-per-child-1.html

That about wraps it up for the day.

Time to get to work.